Truth about Leo Read online

  She was quite proud of that speech because it didn’t include any outright lies.

  Unfortunately, Colonel Stewart wasn’t as appreciative as she hoped. “I regret to inform you, madam, that although you have my sympathies on the deaths of your parents and grandfather, the crown prince is mistaken in directing you to us for help. The navy has a strict policy regarding the transportation of individuals who are neither a member of its ranks nor a spouse thereof, and you fall outside that policy.”

  She gawked at him for a moment or two. “What do you mean I fall outside of the policy? I don’t care about the policy. Did you not hear the part about me being young and innocent and stranded?”

  “I heard it.” The man, blast his hide, looked faintly amused.

  “Do you not understand that I have no means, no means whatsoever, to get to England, especially as you’ve destroyed so many of our ships?”

  The colonel’s brows drew together. “Madam—”

  “Does my plight, my desperate and potentially life-threatening plight, not tug on your heartstrings? Can you be so cruel as to refuse to save me just because of some silly rules?”

  A hunted look crept across his face. “I assure you, madam, that if it was within my power to help you, I would, but unless you are the daughter or wife of one of our officers, I am unable to do so.”

  “You would leave me here, helpless and destitute,” she almost shouted, gesturing with the cheese, “to a fate worse than death? Yes, I’m talking about that, sir! That most heinous of fates!”

  He looked startled.

  “If that which is most sacred to a young and innocent maiden such as I is torn from her”—Dagmar leaned forward, pressing home her point—“then the blame shall fall on you and no one but you. Your soul will be condemned for all eternity, besmirched by nothing less than my descent into outright harlotry!”

  “Madam!”

  She didn’t think that officers were supposed to be so easily shocked, but the expression on his face said otherwise.

  “I assure you that I do not wish for any such fate to befall you, but unfortunately, the decision is not up to me. If you were the wife of one of our officers, then I could assist you, but in the circumstances of a stranded citizen, my hands are tied. I can refer you to the British ambassador, who I know will be most anxious to give you the aid that you seek.”

  Dagmar shied away from that suggestion. She’d thought of it herself two months ago, but upon consultation of that individual, had been informed that her mother’s birthplace notwithstanding, she was not a British citizen, and thus they had no obligation to assist her.

  “You are a cruel, cruel man,” she said, gathering up her pig’s head and the eggs and sundry other things she’d managed to acquire during the two hours she’d been waiting. “I just hope you will be able to sleep at night knowing the fate to which you have damned me. Good day, sir.”

  She marched away, fuming with frustration. Now what was she going to do? She was shivering by the time she returned home, her fingers numb with both cold and the strain of holding all her acquisitions.

  “Dearest Princess!” Julia gasped when Dagmar stumbled into the two rooms that were all that remained in Yellow House even remotely approaching a habitable state. “You’ve been gone so long, I was most worried. I have something very important to tell…is that a pig’s head?”

  “It is. And there are other things, but you’ll have to take them from me because my hands are a bit cramped from carrying them home.”

  “And no wonder! Merciful heavens, let me help you off with your things, and then I’ll make us both a nice cup of tea. But first, you must be wanting an update about the drunkard…oooh, cheese too? And is that a chicken?”

  “Oh, do I still have that?” Dagmar allowed Julia to remove all the things she had covertly managed to stuff into her pelisse while waiting on the dock, along with her haul from the palace. “One of the fisherman left the chicken unattended while he fetched several of his newly mended nets that I happened to stumble over and knock into the harbor, and I didn’t want anyone to steal the poor man’s chicken, so I took it to keep it safe. I should walk all the way back into town to return it, although the chicken has evidently been deceased for some time, and it might not last. What do you think?”

  “I think it would be a shame for you to go to all that trouble over a chicken. Surely the fisherman will understand. Now, please, do let me tell you about the man in the garden.”

  Dagmar rubbed her stiff, cold fingers. “Did he suddenly appear at the door offering food or a new home?”

  “No, but I really think you will want to know—”

  She lifted a hand, and obediently, Julia stopped talking.

  “Later. Right now I’m so tired I could fall over and go to sleep for a week.”

  “Of course. You’re exhausted, and here I am trying to chat your ear off. But it really is most extraordinary—”

  “Put the kettle on, would you? I need something hot to bring back life to my depressed soul. I think one of those packages has tea in it. At least I hope so. One of the sailors dropped it when I bumped into him coming out of the tea shop, and he didn’t seem to hear me when later I called to him that the packet had fallen from his grasp.”

  Julia cooed and squealed with pleasure as she opened a small brown package, allowing Dagmar to sink into a moth-eaten chair next to the stove.

  “So many good things,” Julia murmured, touching the cheese reverently. “What will we do with them? Soup for the pig’s head, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I’m too exhausted to contemplate doing anything with food that doesn’t involve stuffing it into my mouth. I just knew we had to have something or we’d starve. And speaking of that, if you look in my bonnet, there’s a half loaf of bread. I think we’re due some bread and cheese. Do we have any berries or early apples?”

  “No, but once you have eaten, I really must tell you something of much importance.” Julia bustled around the small, cold room, fetching a cutting board and their sole knife.

  “At this moment, there is nothing more important than that cheese.”

  Dagmar watched Julia hack away ineffectually at the cheese until she could stand it no longer and took charge of making a meal from the bread and cheese.

  “I’m sorry I’m such a failure,” Julia said a few minutes later, handing Dagmar a cup of weak tea. “Here you brought home a veritable feast, and all I have to show for my day is a hole in my boots and an Englishman.”

  “We’ll have to get you a new pair,” Dagmar said when she had consumed enough bread and cheese to subdue the ever-growling beast in her stomach. She paused, looking up. “An Englishman? What Englishman?”

  “The man in the garden. He’s English. Or at least I believe him to be. He’s not exactly speaking coherently.”

  “He woke up, did he? Is he still in the garden?” Dagmar ate the last of her bread and eyed another piece, knowing she should save it but mightily tempted nonetheless.

  “Yes, but dearest Princess, I begin to suspect that he’s not the drunkard that we first believed him to be. There is blood seeping through his coat, and he appears to be delirious. I think the two of us together should be able to carry him.”

  “Why on earth would we want to carry some strange, wounded man?” Dagmar set down her cup and delicately sniffed the air. There was a faint, familiar aroma. “You didn’t happen to visit the small shed near the man, did you?”

  “No, Princess, I assure you that I was most attentive to your wishes that I watch the man. It’s true that I discovered a bottle of brandy…er…it must have been the Englishman’s, since I found it near him…but I took only the tiniest of sips from it, just a medicinal amount to warm my blood. You know how my blood suffers in this climate.”

  Dagmar continued chewing, having no doubt at all that Julia found the bottle where she had last
left it in the shed. “Yes, I know how you suffer. What did the man say to you?”

  “Nothing that I understood. It was more feverish rambling than anything else. Thus, as soon as you have contented yourself with this delicious meal, I will assist you in bringing him inside the house.”

  “I don’t need an injured man in the house. What I need is passage for us to England, and then some capital with which we can open a shop.”

  “What sort of shop?” Julia asked, clearly sidetracked.

  “I’m not sure. Obviously it should be a shop for something we know a good deal about. What sorts of things do you know about?”

  Julia’s face wore its usual slightly vacant, vaguely worried expression. “My father always said I was quite capable at darning socks.”

  “Socks. Hmm.” Dagmar allowed herself to relax against the chair, wondering if there was good money to be had in sock darning.

  Julia cast an anxious glance toward the dirty window. “Dearest Dagmar, don’t you think we should commence to rescuing the wounded Englishman? The sun will be setting soon, and I’m sure he’d be more comfortable inside than out.”

  “Allow me to state right here and now that I have absolutely no intention of fetching any man to the house, wounded or not,” Dagmar said, closing her eyes and allowing the exhaustion to sweep over her. Hopefully, Julia would sleep off her intoxication. “Not unless he comes bearing large quantities of money or passage on a ship. Preferably both.”

  “But, Princess—”

  Clearly, she was going to have to adopt a practical line of objection. “No, Julia. We are not bringing home a stray, wounded man. We haven’t enough food to feed ourselves, let alone shelter two days from now, and although it might be entertaining to see Frederick’s face when he has to ship a man along with us to a French convent, that amusement palls when accounted with the trouble we’d have to acquire said man. No more mention of wounded people of either sex, please. I’m sure if we leave him alone, he’ll go away on his own.”

  “But—”

  Dagmar opened her eyes and gave her companion a very firm look. She didn’t like to have to do such things, but Julia was like a terrier once she got her teeth into a subject, and if one didn’t take control, she’d run amok. “I shall tell you about my conversation with the British colonel, and after that you will not be able to think of such petty things as wounded men in our back garden.”

  Julia’s eyes widened as Dagmar did exactly that, filling her in as well with Frederick’s threat of a convent.

  “But we’re not Catholic,” Julia protested.

  “You see? That is exactly what I said to him, and he just threatened to send us to France where they have convents.”

  “I don’t want to go to France!”

  “Nor do I, but unless we can change that stupid colonel’s mind, I’m afraid we’re doomed.” Dagmar absently tickled her mouth with the fringe of her shawl while her brain, charged up by the consumption of foodstuffs, whirled around busily.

  “It’s too bad that you don’t know one of the officers,” Julia said forlornly. She wrapped her shawl tighter around her arms. “You could marry him, and then the colonel would have to send us to England.”

  “Mmm. I don’t know any English officers. And I highly doubt if I were to meet one that he’d offer to marry me in the next two days.”

  Silence fell over the house. Dagmar continued to worry away at the problem, thinking all sorts of thoughts of daring escapes from Frederick’s men en route to the French convent, but sadly resigning them all to the rubbish bin when she realized that she was responsible for Julia, the least daring person she knew.

  “I wonder if he could be an officer.”

  Dagmar dragged herself from a dark reverie. “Hmm? He who?”

  “The person you told me not to mention again.” Julia was barely visible in the gathering twilight, but Dagmar could see the silhouette of her arm as she gestured toward the door, adding in a whisper, “The wounded man.”

  “Oh, him. I’m sure he’s just some merchant.”

  “He didn’t look like a merchant. He had documents written in English in his boot.”

  Dagmar sat up and stared into the deepening shadows. It was one thing for Julia to have a few nips of brandy and become overly concerned about a drunkard in the garden, but another for her to create such an odd detail. “How do you know what he had in his boot?”

  “One of them was partially off, and I saw a bit of paper, and naturally, I thought it might give some insight into who he was, so I peeked at it. It appeared to be something about the Czar in Russia, but it was most definitely written in English. And no merchant would have that, would he?”

  Dagmar sat silent for a minute, considering this. “The English navy attacked four days ago…I suppose it’s possible that he might be one of them. But he wasn’t wearing a uniform.”

  “No, but his clothes were very nice. Dirty and torn and bloody, but you could tell they were of a good quality.”

  Dagmar gave in to the inevitable. She hadn’t at first believed the man could truly be wounded, since she hadn’t seen any signs of injuries, but Julia’s tale was beginning to cast an ominous light on things. She couldn’t leave a wounded man to lurk about her garden. Directly on the heels of that thought came another, one that had so much potential, she allowed it to dance in her brain, illuminating all sorts of very interesting possibilities. “His driving coat did seem to be made of nice cloth. And you say the rest of his clothing was similar?”

  “Very nice quality, yes. As nice as the crown prince’s garments, I would say.”

  “He might be someone visiting the ambassador. Or one of the ambassador’s staff, itself. How very interesting.” Dagmar sat indecisive for a moment, then got to her weary feet. There was no avoiding the fact that she needed to go see if this man was as injured as Julia said. Her sainted mother had brought her up to take care of those less fortunate, and she knew full well that Mama would haunt her to the end of her days if she shirked that responsibility. There was no reason she shouldn’t benefit from such generosity, however. “It’s entirely possible that he’s English and of some worth, and if that’s so, then he must have family somewhere who would pay good money to have him back.”

  “Princess!” Julia gasped as Dagmar scrabbled around under the stove until she found a length of tattered rope. “What are you saying?”

  “Were you never taught history as a girl? Dearest Papa used to tell wonderful tales about knights of yore and how they were always capturing each other and then ransoming their captors back to their families for massive mounds of gold and jewels.”

  Julia weaved a little. “You don’t mean…you can’t really intend to hold that poor man hostage, can you?”

  “Of course I can. It’s the most logical thing ever.” Dagmar ticked the items off on her fingers. “It will allow us to get the money we will need once we get to England. It will allow us to save that man without draining our meager resources to the point where we might as well march down to the dock this very evening and begin harlotting, and it may very well force that annoying ambassador into sending us to England.”

  Julia gawked at her. “But…what you suggest is illegal, surely.”

  “There is a time and place for nice morals, Julia, neither of which is here and now.” Dagmar, invigorated by the mouthwatering thought of a veritable mountain of gold, flung open the kitchen door. “Now let’s go fetch our captive.”

  “No.”

  Dagmar was halfway down the path through the kitchen garden before the softly spoken word attracted her notice. She marched back to where her companion stood in the doorway. “What do you mean, no?”

  “No, I will not help you commit a sin so great as holding a poor, injured man prisoner and selling him to his family.”

  Dagmar slapped her hands on her legs in a most unprincessly manner. “But Dea
rest Papa’s knights of yore did it!”

  “What was right for a knight then isn’t right for a princess now,” Julia said primly, her hands folded as tight as her lips.

  “We aren’t going to hurt him. If anything, we’ll be saving him, since his family won’t want to pay for a corpse.”

  “It’s wrong, and you well know it.” Julia’s stubborn expression, barely visible in the gloaming, softened as she laid a hand on Dagmar’s arm. “My dear, you know yourself that it is wrong. You are simply grasping at the idea of salvation because the crown prince put you into a temper.”

  “What I am grasping at is the only avenue we have open to us.” Dagmar took a deep, calming breath, and tried to reason with her friend. “It’s this or harlotry, Julia. I cannot go to the French convent. I’m not at all the sort of person who would thrive in such a strict environment, and if you had any love for me, any love at all, you would help me ransom that hurt man!”

  “There are always other options. You said yourself that if you were married to an officer—”

  “But I don’t know any officers!” Dagmar rubbed her forehead. They were arguing around and around in a circle, and it was starting to give her a headache. “I’ve explained to you already that I don’t know any Englishmen, let alone officers.”

  “You could know the wounded Englishman. Perhaps he would marry you out of gratitude for saving him.”

  “Oh, come now. That’s not very likely.”

  “But it’s a possibility, and you said we had no other possibilities.”

  Dagmar made a face and snatched up a lantern near the door, quickly lighting it. “If he wasn’t already married, and if he survives whatever wounds he has, and if he is, in fact, English, not to mention an officer in their navy, then yes, that might be a possibility, but those are an awful lot of ifs, and I don’t intend to hang my future on anything so nebulous.”