Oh dear heavens.Eleanora stiffened her spine, preparing to enter.
It sounded as if sitting with Prince Ferdinando was going to be a greater challenge than she’d feared.
CHAPTER 4
Nando was reasonably certain that Bruno had poured an inhuman amount of laudanum down his throat. Partially because he felt like he was floating on a cloud made of shimmering mountain mist and partly because the wound in his arm was only producing a small ache. He felt hale enough to climb a tree, for God’s sake. Surely that couldn’t be right after he’d been shot. Could it?
He would worry about that pernicious question later. For now, he had more pressing concerns to fret over. Namely, one. She was a golden-haired spinster who had disappeared from his side in his time of need, and he didn’t like her absence one damned bit.
As the hours had worn into the evening and the sun had faded from the sky, he had decided that if he was going to die, he wanted to do so with Miss Eleanora Brett at his side. No one else would do.
“Your Royal Highness,” Bruno was saying in a coaxing voice. “You need more laudanum to calm you so that you don’t tear your stitches.”
Bruno was playing nursemaid. Nando didn’t want Bruno. He wanted Miss Brett.
“Go to the devil,” he growled, picking up the nearest object and using his uninjured arm to hurl it across the room.
The tumbler crashed into the wall with a satisfying smash, sending shards flying to the floor.
“Your Royal Highness,” his loyal guard chided. “That wasn’t necessary.”
“It was necessary,” he argued, quite irritable at having been repeatedly thwarted and denied his requests. “I’ll have you sent to the dungeon in Varros for your insolence.”
That was an empty threat, of course. But he wanted Bruno to understand that the man had damned well overstepped. He was Prince Ferdinando of Varros, curse it. Healwaysgot what he wanted.
And if there was any moment when he most assuredly should have everything and anything he wished for, it was now, when he was perhaps lying on his deathbed. And what he wanted was decidedly not more laudanum.
It washer.
“Of course it was,” Bruno agreed submissively. “Forgive me, Your Royal Highness. I’ll attend to the broken glass as soon as you take your laudanum.”
The cloud Nando was inhabiting became a thundercloud. “I don’t want any bloody laudanum. Give me Miss Brett, or give me nothing.”
He’d rather raised his voice by the end of his booming demand, and it sounded to his mind every bit like a brutal summer storm cracking across the landscape. Bruno looked alarmed.
As well he ought to.
“I’m afraid Miss Brett is otherwise occupied, Your Royal Highness,” Bruno said. “Now just a small amount of laudanum. Dr. Crisfield said it was important that you stay as still as possible, and I?—”
“No, no, no,” Nando roared, interrupting. “I don’t give a damn what the doctor said. I don’t want more of that poison. I want Miss Brett. She is essential to my recovery. Bring her to me at once.”
Surely there was something else within reach that he might throw. Nando looked around wildly and saw a book. He seized it and drew it into his cloud, thinking it weightless and airy. Existing in a cloud wasn’t particularly vexing. But he would like it far more if Miss Brett were here. Not Bruno. Bruno could lie down in a busy thoroughfare for all he was concerned at the moment.
“Get out of my cloud,” he added, tossing the book toward one of Bruno’s two heads.
Two heads?
What the devil?
The book sailed over both of his guard’s heads and hit the wall just as the door opened.
And there on the threshold, thank the angels in heaven, was Miss Brett. Her countenance was pinched and distraught. She looked as pleased as a woman marching to the gallows. Dare he hope it was worry for him that rendered her so grim? Either way, there was more than sufficient room in his cloud for her.
His arm was beginning to pain him, damn it all. His skin felt too tight, and a persistent ache was throbbing to life. Who’d had the gall to shoot him?
“Eleanora,” he greeted the woman whose presence he’d been demanding for what felt like the last century.
It must have been the last few hours, at least. A lifetime. Fifteen minutes? Who cared? He had her where he wanted her now.
