The urge to plant his fist in his brother’s irritatingly perfect nose was strong, but Maxim resisted.
“Of course she can have me,” he countered. “She already has me. She has my heart in her hands.”
“She can’t bear to stay in Varros and watch you marry another,” Nando explained. “Lady Tansy asked me to secure her return passage to England.”
She was not just leaving him. She was leaving his kingdom.
He nearly doubled over at the blow. “Why did you not tell me this?”
“Because she made me promise not to.”
“And when have you ever kept a fucking promise in your ne’er-do-well life?” he roared. “You’ve done nothing but bed everything in skirts, and now you’ve chosen to be honorable for the first time with the woman I love? Damn you, Nando. If you weren’t my brother, I’d thrash you to within an inch of your life right now.”
Nando flinched, and Maxim knew a pang of guilt for the harshness of his words, spoken in anger and the furious need to find Tansy before it was too late.
“Thrash me, then, Maxim. I don’t regret helping her to flee your selfish plan of keeping her as your mistress when it’s as plain as the nose on my face that you love each other and should marry.”
“You know why I can’t marry her.”
Nando made a show of flicking a speck from his immaculate sleeve, effecting a mien of boredom. “I know why yousayyou can’t marry her.”
Maxim raked a hand through his hair and hissed out a frustrated sigh. “I need Theodoric as my ally, and I can’t have him as my ally if I jilt his sister in favor of her lady-in-waiting. This is bigger than my own needs and wants, Nando. Perhaps if you bore the responsibilities I do, you’d understand.”
“And perhaps if you’d stop being so damned selfish, you’d look at the matter from Lady Tansy’s perspective,” Nandosnapped. “Do you want her to spend the rest of her life as your wicked little secret? To bear your bastards and never know respectability? To always know that you’ve chosen the throne over her?”
His brother’s words shook him. Maxim couldn’t deny it.
“I would give her everything I’m able,” he said, some of the fight leaving him.
Was he being selfish in wanting Tansy at his side despite being obliged to marry Princess Anastasia? Such an arrangement was not uncommon. Royal marriages were made for dynasties and not for love. When he’d married Mina for love, he hadn’t been king. He hadn’t had the weight of the kingdom’s future bearing down upon him. He’d been young and reckless, a soldier on the battlefield who didn’t know if he’d live to see another day.
“But it wouldn’t be enough,” Nando said quietly. “You see that, don’t you, brother? That’s why she’s left you. She wants more than you’re willing to give.”
It wasn’t that he wasn’t willing. It was that he was mercilessly trapped by obligation and duty. But what if there were another way? What if Nando was right? What if he could marry the woman he wanted to marry instead of the woman he felt compelled to marry for the sake of future alliances and the kingdom?
“When is her ship leaving?” he asked, needing to see her.
To speak with her.
To beg her to stay.
Just…needingher.
“At two o’clock this afternoon,” Nando answered.
Maxim extracted his pocket watch and consulted the time. “I’ve an hour.” His mind spun. His carriage was slow, and assembling the outriders he required for leaving the palace gateswould take far too long. He’d miss her. He had to reach her before her ship left. “What is the name of the ship?”
“You’re not going to force her to stay, are you?” Nando asked instead of answering his question.
Not precisely a testament to what his brother thought of his character.
“I’m going to speak with her,” he ground out. “Now tell me the name of the blasted ship before I blacken your eye.”
“Always threatening me with harm.” Nando shook his head and gave a tsk. “What would our mother say?”
“She would say that you should give me the name of the fucking ship,” he growled.
His brother arched a brow. “Mother never swore.”
