Nando had never liked bees.
Which was why, when the buzzing sound followed by the intense sting in his upper arm hit him on the Mayfair street as he approached his waiting carriage, he was so damned infuriated. It was also why he didn’t understand the hot rush traveling down his arm. Or the sight of his coat sliced open to his flesh as he glanced down to find the offending insect and deliver it to its rewards.
Dimly, it occurred to him that he’d heard a resounding bang just before the infernal bee had struck him with its pestilential vengeance. Something that, now that he thought upon it, had been rather reminiscent of a flintlock firing.
“Your Royal Highness?”
The voice of his guard, Bruno, permeated Nando’s bewildered musings. There was something warm and wet on his arm, something stinging and fiery too. Bruno looked distressed. Nothing made sense, Nando’s mind whirling with countless thoughts that were unrelated. What social engagements had he agreed upon for the evening? He was desperately in need of a whisky. What time of day was it? Why was his vision turning black around the edges?
Something was terribly wrong with him.
Damn it all, had Miss Brett laced his tea with poison? He wouldn’t put it past the cunning minx.
Nando’s head continued to swim. Blood. That was the wetness. Red and dripping from his left hand.
“Your Royal Highness, you’ve been shot,” Bruno told him in their native language, his voice curt and clipped. “We need to get you to safety.”
Shot?
He swayed.
Ye gods, shot.
So that was what this was.
It hadn’t been a bee after all. Fancy that.
A great commotion swirled around him suddenly. A sea of faces. Shouts. People were pouring from town houses. Horses were neighing. Bruno shielded him with his body.
“Take me home,” he ordered his guard, thinking that if he had to die, he may as well do so from the comfort of his own bed.
No sense going to Hades right here in the street like a stray mongrel.
“We need a doctor, Your Royal Highness,” Bruno said. “You’re losing too much blood.”
“Eh, I’ve plenty of it.” He attempted to reassure his faithful guard, but his lips felt numb, and so did his tongue. “Some to spare.”
Nando wasn’t certain what he’d said, if anything. His vision was growing increasingly blurred and dark, as if he were watching the world become smaller and smaller until there was nothing left but a pinprick of light to call him back to the living.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to go there.
His knees weren’t sustaining him any longer. Drowsily, he looked down.
More blood.
So much of it.
A puddle in the street. Marring the boots he favored.
“Damn it,” he slurred to Bruno, “this is my favorite pair of boots.”
“Come, Your Royal Highness,” Bruno said sternly, his face as tense and taut as Nando had ever seen it. “You mustn’t stay on the street. It isn’t safe here.”
Nando wanted to argue, but his mind felt as if it were fashioned of porridge.
“Someone shot me,” he announced as if it were a new development.
“Yes, Your Royal Highness.” Bruno was shepherding him back up the walk as others swarmed around them.
