“Nando, I’m begging you.”
“La Reina,” Nando said finally.
Maxim didn’t hesitate another moment. He turned and quit the room, his booted feet carrying him as fast as they could travel. He was going to fetch his woman and bring her back to him where she belonged.
And damn it, one way or another, he was going to make her his wife.
In less than an hour,La Reinawould set sail for England.
Tansy should have been filled with a sense of peace, if not relief.
Instead, as she waited to board the ship looming before her at the docks, all she felt was the unbearable weights of dread and regret. She felt like a delicate piece of porcelain which had been left teetering on the edge of a high shelf, only to fall and smashto bits, and regardless of the attempts anyone would make to reassemble the pieces, she would never again be whole.
She’d told Maxim that she loved him. And despite the ferocity of his response and the sensual abandon with which he’d claimed her, he hadn’t spoken of loving her in return. It was just as well. If he had told her he loved her, leaving him would have proved impossible. As it was, she’d needed all the strength she possessed to see her cases loaded into the carriage Nando had arranged before climbing in herself. As the carriage had driven away, she’d looked back, the fanciful notion that she might see Maxim running after her lingering in her foolish mind.
Instead, the palace had disappeared from view, and the carriage had been swallowed by the capital city street traffic. And there she’d sat, alone on the oiled Moroccan leather squabs, leaving the man she loved behind forever.
A cold wind whipped off the water, nearly claiming her bonnet.
Tansy wrapped her pelisse more firmly about herself, shivering. It was difficult to believe that mere hours ago, she’d been in Maxim’s bed. In his arms.
No, she mustn’t think of him now. Already, tears burned her eyes, threatening to spill. She needed to keep all thoughts of Maxim from her mind. To turn her thoughts solely to the arduous journey awaiting her.
A sob rose in her throat, and she pressed the back of her hand over her mouth to suppress it. She didn’t want to leave Maxim. Didn’t want to leave his kingdom. To never again see him, touch him, kiss him, make love with him…
Do not weep now, she ordered herself firmly.Don’t humiliate yourself by turning into a watering pot before all your fellow travelers.
She inhaled sharply. She could leave him. Shehadto leave him, for the sake of her own self-preservation. She had no otherchoice. Just a few more minutes, and then she would be aboard the ship, and even if she changed her mind, it would be too late. She couldn’t weaken in her resolve now.
For if she returned to the palace, she would fall back into his arms, into his bed. She would never leave, and she would spend the rest of her life in the anguish of knowing he belonged to another, that she could never truly claim him as her own. That her children would be born out of wedlock and that she would be relegated to the periphery of society.
Leaving him was for the best.
It was her only choice.
Yes, she could do it. She would be strong enough. She would?—
“Tansy.”
His voice broke through her madly churning thoughts, and she whirled about to find somehow, impossibly, Maxim striding toward her, his cheekbones flushed as if he had ridden to the docks from the palace as quickly as he could. He had come to her, and for a moment, her heart rejoiced at the sight of him, so beloved. So handsome.
He stopped before her, his greatcoat swirling about him, his hat pulled low on his brow. It required every bit of restraint she had to keep from launching herself at him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
He grunted. “I might ask the same of you, madam.”
His tone was displeased. His expression impossible to read.
“I am waiting to board the ship,” she forced herself to say.
“You’re leaving me,” he said bluntly.
And how she hated the hurt in his voice, the pain in his dark eyes. She felt it as surely as a blade slicing into her skin.
“I’m leaving Varros,” she protested. “This isn’t my home.”
“Neither is England your home,” he countered, his voice sharp as a lash.
