Maxim grunted. “She is mine to protect.”
Mine to kiss, mine to hold, mine to love.
The last thought struck him with the force of a blow. Love? He didn’t. Couldn’t.
Could he? Did he?
“Is the lady in agreement?” his brother asked sagely, piercing the confused questions muddling Maxim’s mind, the emotions warring with each other.
“Of course she is,” he lied smoothly.
“She seems terribly loyal to Princess Anastasia,” Nando pointed out, stroking his jaw now. “One of the Boritanian courtiers told me that it was widely claimed Lady Tansy would forfeit her life for the princess, so steadfast is her loyalty.”
“She is loyal,” he agreed.
To a fault. And he hated it and admired it all at once. He wanted to be the sole recipient of that devotion. The princess could find another to take Tansy’s place.
“Have you bribed her?” Nando’s tone was curious.
“Hell and damnation, Nando. Do you think I can’t attract the attentions of a lady in my own right, without need to lure her with the promise of baubles and gold?”
His brother shrugged. “I’ve never witnessed you wooing a lady before. If anything, it was Lucinda who seduced you. Lady Tansy doesn’t seem such a bold sort.”
She wasn’t. Not until one grew to know her better. And Maximhadgrown to know her. He knew her very well indeed. He would like to know her better still. But there was time aplenty for that.
“She is different,” he said quietly, the revelation torn from him.
Startling him as much as it appeared to surprise his brother.
“Different,” Nando repeated. “Different from Lucinda?”
He didn’t want to admit the truth, and yet to keep it within seemed a base insult to Tansy. “Different from every other woman.”
He heard his brother’s sharp inhalation and saw the shock in his expression. “Even Mina?”
Maxim was silent for a few moments, considering his words with great care. “I will always love Mina. Nothing and no one can change that. But neither can I deny what I feel for Lady Tansy.”
“You love her,” Nando breathed, understanding dawning on his expressive face.
He swallowed hard. “I’ll not put a name to it. Everything is new and we are in a strange and foreign land, so much danger swirling around us. It’s not the time to be fanciful.”
“Fanciful,” his brother repeated, lips twitching as if he were valiantly attempting to suppress his mirth after hearing the world’s greatest sally.
“What is so amusing?” he demanded, though he suspected he already knew the answer.
“The impenetrable King Maximilian, in love.” Nando shook his head ruefully. “But not with his bride.”
Maxim’s lip curled. “You know why I have to marry Princess Anastasia.”
“For the good of the kingdom,” his brother said instantly.
Likely, those words had been emblazoned upon Nando’s mind, for Maxim had repeated them often enough. It was what he had been taught, from the time he’d been a lad. Every action he had undertaken had been in the name of Varros, her people, the future of the kingdom, regaining the throne. Every privation, every battle, every wound, all those desperate years of war. The death, the destruction, the agony, the loss. All had been in the name of Varros. His own father had planted the seed in Maxim long ago, and Maxim had carried on the tradition.
He nodded. “For the kingdom. I haven’t any other choice.”
Nando cocked his head. “What if you did have another choice? What if you could have whatever you wanted? If you could marry Lady Tansy instead of Princess Anastasia? Would you do it?”
Maxim didn’t answer that question. It didn’t signify. Because the King of Varros didn’t have the freedom to do as he wished, whether that meant bedding five goddesses for days or making the woman he truly wanted his wife. There was only duty, obligation, and alliances.
