“I merely sought to correct your misapprehensions,” he said, keeping his voice smooth with all the control he possessed. “You seem to be suffering from rather a lot of them, my lord. Beginning with your delusion that I have been bedding your wife.”
“No more of your lies,” Levering roared. “She told me the truth when I confronted her after I learned of the babe. She told me that you are the father, that the two of you are in love, and that she intends to run away with you to Varros.”
Nando might have laughed at the absurdity of such a claim, if not for the pistol pointed at his heart. “If Lady Levering made those claims to you, it was only to keep her lover’s true identity a secret and protect him from you.”
Levering scowled and shook the flintlock wildly. “Cease speaking at once! I’ll not be confused by your falsehoods, nor will I be dissuaded from my course.”
Nando took the final step as the door to his study swung open, and his heart froze. For there, on the threshold, stood Eleanora. His entire world. The woman who had become dearer to him than his next breath.
“Run,” he cried out to her, finally grasping the poker and raising it high.
But she stood there, frozen, stricken. Nando saw it happening as if from afar, horror seizing his chest. Levering wheeled about, eyes crazed. Eleanora’s scream rent the air.
“No!” The ragged cry of pure despair was torn from him as he leapt toward the earl, striking the man’s extended arm with the poker as hard as he could.
The pistol fired in the same moment, flying from Levering’s hand, and she crumpled to the floor.
Nando rushed for the flintlock, taking it in trembling hands and pointing it at Levering. “Don’t you bloody move.”
Bruno rose from the chair, pale and bloodied. “Your Royal Highness. What has happened?”
He couldn’t find the words to answer. His tongue was as numb as his mind, fear making his heart pound. He had to get to Eleanora. Nando backed toward the place where she had fallen, desperate to assess the damage that had been done, keeping the pistol trained on Levering with every step. He couldn’t lose her.
Hewouldn’tlose her. Not now, not ever.
There was a flurry of frightened servants gathering, having been drawn by the cries and the report of the flintlock. “Fetch a doctor at once,” he ordered them. “The princess has been wounded.”
She was so still, so silent. He saw the blood, red and angry, seeping through her gown, and his stomach gave a violent heave. He sank to his knees at Eleanora’s side, and he did something he had not done in many years.
Nando prayed.
The painin Eleanora’s shoulder was excruciating. She could not breathe without agony, each inhalation agonizing. She was mired in the darkness, swirling toward nothingness. Too weak to save herself. And she was cold, so cold, as if she were buffeted by an icy winter’s wind, her body trembling uncontrollably.
A voice pierced the emptiness.
“My love, don’t leave me.”
The voice was familiar, deep, tinged with the hint of an accent.
Nando’s voice.
He was here, somewhere. But she couldn’t open her eyes. Couldn’t raise her arms to reach for him.
“Eleanora, don’t you dare die on me. Please.” His voice was broken now, the anguish in it so heavy that she longed to reassure him.
But she couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. It was as if her body had been weighed down with a thousand stones.
Other voices filtered to her, low and indistinguishable and unknown.
Questions swirled. Who were they? Where was she? What had happened? Why did Nando think she was going to die?
There was a vicious, stabbing pain in her shoulder, and then she succumbed to the blackness surrounding her.
His fault.
Nando paced the hall outside the room where Eleanora was being tended to by a doctor, sick with worry.
Eleanora had nearly been killed, and he was the only one to blame. If he had not married her, she would not have been in his town house when Levering had stolen within, intent upon murdering him. She never would have been shot. And if he had simply heeded Tierney’s warnings and stayed where they both had been safe, she never would have lain on the Aubusson, her life’s source seeping into the patterned wool as he frantically held his cravat to her wound to stop the bleeding.
