“I’m afraid.” She shuddered against him, burying her face in his neck and inhaling deeply, as if to drag his scent into her lungs.
He hated the helplessness in her voice, the tremor of fear making her body quake against him. But he was also perversely thankful that she had come here, that she believed he would protect her.
Because he damned well would, with every modicum of power he possessed.
Maxim kissed her forehead. “You needn’t be afraid with me. I’ll protect you.”
Her eyes were closed, fresh tears seeping from under her spiky lashes. “I want to tell you, but I can’t.”
She was speaking of the princess and her whereabouts, he knew.
“It is for your own good as well as hers that you do,” he told her solemnly.
For that was the truth. He couldn’t protect Princess Anastasia if he didn’t know where she was hiding or what secrets she had been keeping, and he knew just how loyal Tansy was. Her faithfulness was one of her finest traits. He simply wished it were directed at him instead of the princess.
Tansy’s eyes opened, her lips parting on a quiet sigh.
“Tansy,” he pressed. “Tell me.”
“She is with Archer Tierney.”
The man who had been hired to help find Princess Anastasia’s exiled brother, Prince Theodoric. Maxim wasn’t surprised for his suspicions to be confirmed. He should haveasked Felix to assign a detail to watch her movements after she had declined the use of his carriage. He could only blame his lapse upon the twin distractions of the assassins intent upon carving him up and the blazing desire he felt for the woman in his arms.
“Tierney,” he repeated, thinking he would need to pay the man a call. “That is who sent you word about the princess being wounded?”
Tansy nodded. “Yes. I didn’t know what to do, whether I could trust his word. That is why I came to you.”
“You’ve done just as you should,” he said, cupping her cheek with one hand and catching a falling tear with the pad of his thumb. “Aside from putting yourself in danger by traveling on your own. How did you come to me?”
“I hired a hack.”
“Fucking hell,” he swore viciously, thinking of all the harm that might have come to her, taking a hired hackney alone at midnight. “You took a dangerous risk with yourself.”
“I had no other means of reaching you,” she said. “I didn’t dare trust a message to anyone, and even if I had, all the servants were already abed.”
He caressed her cheek, sweeping a stray tendril of hair behind her ear. “I’ll make certain one of my men stays in the house at all times moving forward, so that if you should have to reach me, you needn’t place yourself in peril.”
She shook her head, selfless to the last. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I do. You’re mine, and I will protect you however I see fit.”
The wrong words to say to his spitfire.
Her expression turned stubborn. “I’m not yours.”
He would prove to her just how mistaken she was on that account. With words, with deeds. However he could.
“Tell me you don’t feel what is between us,” he said instead, caressing lightly along her jaw, trailing his fingers down her smooth throat until he found the closure of her cape and swiftly undid it.
The garment slid from her shoulders, pooling on his lap around her in a whisper of sound.
Her eyes widened. “Your Majesty.”
It was a protest and a return to formality, and he wouldn’t allow it.
He kissed her, swift and hard, before retreating. “Maxim.”
“Maxim,” she agreed again, her dulcet tone dripping with reluctance. “There cannot be anything between us.”
