Truth about Leo (8 page)

She picked a stray hair off her sleeve. “You don't know Frederick as I do.”

“Granted.” He considered her for a long moment. “Why is it that you needed an English officer?”

“Erm.” Her brain attempted to come up with a reasonable explanation and quickly gave up the job. “Did I say that?”

“Yes. I'm interested in knowing the reason behind such an odd statement. Oblige me, please.”

He was looking particularly unmovable at the moment. Dagmar hadn't noticed that about him before. Oh, she was well aware that he was very solid, but that was a pleasing sort of solid, the kind of solidity that encouraged her to sport around on his legs, kissing him with every confidence that he wouldn't let her topple over while doing so. But this immovability was something entirely different. It hinted at obstinacy and pigheadedness, and boiled pigs' heads aside, she had never liked porcine beasts in any form. Worse, she had a horrible feeling that this new immovability boded ill for the future. “I am half English, as I mentioned. I wish to visit the homeland of my sainted mother, and since you—the English—destroyed all the ships in Copenhagen, I had to rely on the British navy to transport me.”

“And they wouldn't take you without a husband?” His brow wrinkled as he worked out the confusion. “No, that doesn't make sense. They take women all the time on ships, but generally those women work out their passage on their backs.” She frowned at him, puzzled until he made an annoyed sound and explained, “Harlots.”

“I am gentle,” she said, pinching his arm. “And innocent! Most definitely not a harlot.”

That damned smug eyebrow rose again. “And yet just a few minutes ago you were sitting on my lap, playing with my penis and trying to suck my tongue out of my head.”

“That's because we're married,” she protested, suddenly wondering if she had done something that breached an unwritten etiquette. She bit her lip and said more slowly, “I thought that is what married people do. Do they not touch each other and kiss and do all the things that my sainted mother told me was absolutely forbidden with the handsome blond groom who used to wash his naked upper parts in the stable yard?”

He looked back out the window, a muscle in his jaw working. “Yes, married people do those sorts of things.”

“Then you take back the statement that I was acting like a harlot!”

“I never said such a thing. I was simply trying to reason out why you felt it vitally necessary to wed me when I was insensible, and I have ruled out the idea that Nelson would aid an unmarried woman. The only other reason must be because you're a German princess, and they wouldn't take you unless you were married to a British citizen.”

“I'm Danish, thank you, not German.”

“Indeed? My apologies for the incorrect label. Where exactly is Sonderburg-Beck?”

She looked out the small window. “Prussia.”

He said nothing, but she could feel him thinking, damn him.

“You needn't adopt that martyred expression, Leo. I might have benefited from a marriage to you, but you also benefit. Not only will you
not
have to duel Frederick, but you are now married to a princess. By our marriage, your third cousin once removed is the King of Denmark.”

“That is of great benefit, I'm sure.” He tapped his lower lip. “Might I risk being considered material and ask you how big the Sonderburg-Beck holdings are?”

She stared at him, her mind reeling as she repeated, “The holdings?”

“Yes. Is there a castle? A manor house? How many hectares does the land run to? Is it in an agricultural area or industrial?”

Heat swept up from her neck, making her cheeks burn. “I have no idea how big the holdings are, or what the status is of a house or castle. Papa's title was not landed.”

“Ah.” He continued to look at her, making her feel both irritated (it wasn't her fault that her father had been stripped of his holdings by his family) and embarrassed (she had to admit that Leo had every reason to be angry with her). “I take it that the family fortune went the way of the lands?”

She straightened her shoulders. “Dearest Papa was cut off from his family when he chose to marry my mother, an Englishwoman. Even though she was a duke's daughter, they objected. He refused to give her up, and my grandfather forced him to leave the family home and ensured that he would not inherit anything but the title.”

“A sad story.”

“Not necessarily. My parents were extremely happy together.” Dagmar tried to gather what dignity was left to her. “We were all very happy together until my mother was taken by consumption, and Dearest Papa died a year later.”

Leo murmured a platitude that Dagmar acknowledged with an incline of her head.

“So, to recap the situation—” Leo started to say.

“Oh, I really wish you wouldn't.”

His expression was filled with disbelief at the interruption.

“Well, I don't want you to recap,” she explained with an annoyed gesture. “It's only going to make me blush harder and feel more as though I did take advantage of you, and I didn't, not really. These last few minutes have been painful enough without going over it again, don't you think?”

“On the contrary, I feel the need to make everything absolutely clear. And since the fever has left me a little weak in the thought processes, will you please take pity on me and enlighten me as to exactly how marriage to a penniless, landless Prussian-Danish princess will benefit me? Aside from not having to defend your honor to the crown prince?”

“You are an obnoxious man,” she told him, feeling righteously indignant. “Obnoxious, selfish, and ungrateful.”

“Selfish!”

“And ungrateful. Don't forget the ungrateful part, because I certainly haven't.”

There was a wild glint to his eyes that made her wonder if the fever hadn't affected his brain. “No, we shouldn't forget how ungrateful I am to be married
without
my
consent
to a woman who was not my choice, solely to provide her a means of passage to a country I had no intention of returning to at this time. We shouldn't forget any of that, should we?”

“I saved your life, you self-centered oaf!” Dagmar yelled, poking him on the non-hurt side of his chest.

“After you married me while I was unconscious.”

“You weren't unconscious. You just weren't terribly lucid!”

“Did it ever occur to you to question whether or not I wished to be married?”

Dagmar felt cold and hot at the same time.

“Whether I had a fiancée waiting for me at home?”

Dear God, he had a fiancée? Why hadn't she thought of asking him that before she married him?

“Or a woman whom I loved dearly and wished to spend my life with?”

Her stomach turned over, guilt at her actions making her lash out in return. “I asked you if you were married. You said no. If you were engaged to a woman, you should have said so.”

“I was wounded!” he yelled. “Feverish and insensible by all accounts. Do you really expect that I'd enter into a lengthy discussion of my hopes and dreams at that moment?”

He had hopes and dreams? Dagmar wanted to cry. Princesses don't cry, however, at least not where others can see them. Her mother had never cried in front of anyone. “I…I…”

“No, you didn't think of any of that. You simply saw a chance to use me and use me you did.”

Leo's eyes were molten with anger, his jaw tight, and his hand clenched where it lay against his hip.

It took a moment of blinking back the pricking in her eyes, but at last she was able to say, in a voice that was much smaller than normal, “I did the best I could at the time. I admit that my actions don't appear in the best light now, but you were not merely a means to an end.”

“No?” The word had the velocity of a whip crack. “You married me, used me to get out of Denmark, and now you will expect me to provide for you for the rest of your life. How is that not using me?”

“Julia and I plan to have a shop to support ourselves. I mentioned that.”

“A shop.” He snorted, his expression telling her without words what he thought of that idea. “Do you have any idea what people would say about my wife being forced to run a shop in order to keep herself?”

The sick feeling in her stomach grew. She swallowed a couple times, wondering if she might not have need of Julia's bucket. “I did mention divorce. I am aware that I was not your choice, and that if it turned out that we couldn't get along amicably, we could divorce. You would then be free to wed the woman of your desire.”

“Things may be different in Denmark, but in England we do not get divorces.” His voice was as cold as the spray that blew up from the bow of the ship.

“It is illegal? I thought I read of a duke who—”

“It's not illegal, but it is just not done.”

The emphasis of his words was unmistakable. “Then I will divorce you in Denmark,” she said a bit desperately.

“Denmark or England—so far as society is concerned, it matters not. I would still be divorced, and thus a social pariah. I would effectively be ostracized from all polite society, from my friends and family, and any polite acquaintances. Do you know what society says about a man whose wife has divorced him?”

“No, but I've never been one who cares what society thinks. Do you?”

“Not particularly.”

“Then why are you yelling at me about it?” Dagmar asked, relieved and frustrated at the same time.

Leo adopted a righteous tone. “Because you didn't know that I don't care what society thinks when you forced me to wed you!”

She looked at him sadly. “We're back to that, are we?”

“It seems a difficult subject to escape from,” he said in a definitely gritty tone of voice.

“Only because you keep harping on it. No,” she said, holding up a hand and forestalling the objection he started to make. “You've made it quite clear that divorce, even one conducted in Denmark, is unacceptable to you. That leaves us with two options: an annulment or we remain married, and I support Julia and myself by some method that will not derange your sense of dignity.”

“If there's anyone who knows about derangement, it's you,” he muttered quietly, but not quietly enough to avoid being heard.

“Then we will simply have to have the marriage annulled.”

“Annulments are just as scandalous as a divorce,” he snapped.

Dagmar chose to ignore his tone of voice and said, with quiet dignity that bespoke a princessly demeanor, “Since no other option will please you, I will look around when we get to England for some way to support us. You need not worry that I will shame you in any way. I worked too hard and too long to save your life to wish you ill, Leo. Or would you prefer, given your feelings about me, that I call you Lord March?”

“Leo is fine,” he answered in a somewhat strangled voice. “Er…I don't believe I thanked you for the fact that you took me in when I was wounded.”

“No, you haven't.” Dagmar adopted a noble expression and decided that a little appreciation wouldn't go amiss. Leo might be in the right when it came to their unconventional wedding, but it wouldn't hurt him to realize just how close to death he had been. “The doctor told me you wouldn't last the night. He refused even to give you medicine for the fever that consumed you. My mother, however, taught me well, so Julia and I fed you fever draughts for days on end. I was at your side day and night during the worst of your fever, when you kept calling me a harpy and demanding that I let you suffer in peace. Yes, even when the ship's surgeon said he would assign men to watch over you, I left you only to snatch a few hours' sleep when I was about ready to fall to the floor with exhaustion. I did nothing but tend to you,
Lord
March
, only so you could get well and become what Mama called the hindquarters of a donkey, which I shall not repeat because she only said that word during times of great stress and afterward always made me promise to forget I'd ever heard her say it. But I can think it, and I assure you that I'm doing so right now.”

“I told you to call me Leo.” His jaw worked for a few minutes before, to her intense surprise, he took her hand and lifted it to his mouth, pressing his lips to the back of her knuckles. “You can think that word with impunity because you're quite right—I am being an ass. And ungrateful and boorish. You might not think me worth the saving, but I do appreciate the fact that you took care of me so very well. The surgeon said you were a most devoted nursemaid.”

Mollified, she withdrew her hand, mostly because her fingers were tingling where his mouth had touched her skin. She wondered if she could tempt him back to the bunk where she could kiss him again. “If we're apologizing, then I should do so as well. The doctor said you would not live through the night, and I thought that it wouldn't matter to you if you died married or unmarried. I never thought of my actions as using you, but I see now how it can appear that way. For that, I am sorry.”

He looked silently at her, as if weighing her words. She gazed serenely back at him and was struck again with how pleasing his face was. Not handsome but…interesting. Intelligent. A pleasure to look at. She liked his eyes and his long nose and the way his lips quirked at the edges.

“It would appear we are at a
détente
.”

She nodded. “I hope so. I raised my voice, and Mama always said that a princess should never raise her voice unless a wild boar or a bear was attacking.”

“How oddly specific.”

“Mama had very strong notions on how women should behave,” Dagmar said with a little smile that turned into a rueful grimace. “She would have a few things to say to me about wedding you while you were…”

“Unconscious?”

“…not in the best state of mind. She'd expect me to be prostrate before you in penitence.”