How to show only n# posts from a specific category in index.php?

I’m using a theme based off of TwentyTen.

I’ve been using the code below as 2 loop within index.php:

<?php query_posts ($query_string . '&cat=4&showposts=2'); ?>
<?php get_template_part( 'loop', 'index' ); ?>

and

<?php query_posts ($query_string . '&cat=7&showposts=4'); ?>
<?php get_template_part( 'loop', 'index' ); ?>

The problem is that while it does exactly what I want, it is stripping my post of all their formatting – all <h> tags and breaks are removed, even when using HTML mode in the editor.