The discovery that she was carrying Nando’s baby had been unexpected. The doctor had initially feared she had acquired some manner of contagion from her injury. However, after a fortnight of similar symptoms without fever or festering in her healing wound, the doctor had made the stunning pronouncement.
Eleanora had been cautiously happy at the news. And more determined than ever to go to Nando as her letters went unanswered. He was going to be a father. He had claimed in the note he’d left behind that he loved her, and whilst his manner of attempting to protect her had been thoroughly foolhardy, his attempts to give her everything he thought she needed had confirmed that.
But he’d been wrong.
She didn’t need a town house or all the wealth he had foisted upon her. She most certainly didn’t need—or want—an annulment. All she wanted washim. The man she loved. The one who laughed and teased and charmed and flirted, who cuddled her at his side, who rescued stray cats from the street, who had taken care of her when she had been wounded and broken. The man who loved her enough to give her almost everything he had because he thought she would be better off without him.
He had been wrong about that, too.
She wasn’t better off without Nando—she was better off at his side. And she had crossed an ocean to prove it to him. But before she could, she was going to have to find a means of transportation.
“Perhaps I should see if we can find a hackney,” Southill said at her side.
Benvolio meowed urgently, as if in strong agreement.
Just then, a carriage approached, a dashing young fellow at the reins with golden hair and blue eyes that reminded her of Nando.
He called out something in his native tongue, which made Eleanora realize anew just how foolish it had been to embark on a madcap journey to Varros without knowing the language or having a true plan in place.
“Do you speak English, sir?” Southill asked on her behalf.
Which was just as well, because another lifting of the breeze had Eleanora’s throat going tight. She breathed slowly, shallowly, into the scented linen, trying to think of anything but horse dung and rotting fish.
“Of course I do, milady,” the young coachman called, smiling and revealing dimples. “How may I be of service?”
At her side, the ordinarily stalwart Southill was flushing a becoming shade of pink beneath the man’s regard.
“Can you take us to the Hotel de Varros?” Southill asked, just a touch breathlessly.
The man grinned. “But of course, madam. I can take you anywhere.”
Southill blushed even more.
Holding her handkerchief tightly to her nose, Eleanora moved toward the beckoning confines of the carriage, carrying Benvolio with her.
“You lookas if you’ve been shot by a highwayman, thrown off a boat and nearly drowned, and then been dragged behind a carriage.”
“That pretty, am I?” Nando winced at the light brightening his apartments at the royal palace and glared up at his brother. “Why are you here, Maxim?”
“Here in my own palace, do you mean?” Maxim’s tone was as severe and harsh as his countenance. “Because I am the king, lest you have forgotten.”
His head was throbbing, his mouth was as dry as the sand in a desert, and his stomach was a sickly stew that was threatening to erupt. “I know you’re the fucking king. What I meant was, what are you doing in my private apartment?”
“Keeping you alive.” Maxim raised an imperious brow as he handed Nando a cup laden with a light-colored liquid. “Drink.”
Nando shook his head and felt the room swim around him. “I don’t want another drop of anything. Ever.”
“But only just last night, you were demanding more whisky be brought to you whenever your glass was empty. You were terribly thirsty.”
“Deus.”
What he had been was terribly somber. Missing Eleanora. Miserable. Faced with a packet of letters that had arrived in her neat, tidy script—even her handwriting was prim and perfect—he had not been able to read them, for fear of what he would find within.
The missives had all arrived at once, a sure sign that they had been upheld somewhere along their meandering journey before proceeding on to him. He had been terrified that she would tell him she despised him. That she was relieved he had gone. That she never wanted to see him again. That she had found another man to warm her bed.
And so, after a month of self-imposed exile in Varros, which he had spent doting on his nephew to distract from his misery and abstaining from every vice, Nando had succumbed and drowned himself in drink. Anything to postpone the moment when he would read Eleanora’s letters.
He had also been despicably stupid, he thought darkly as his stomach churned and his head pounded.
