Truth about Leo by Katie MacAlister Read Free Book Online Page B

“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.”
    â€œThere 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.”
    â€œNo.”
    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?”
    â€œNo, 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 Dearest Papa’s knights of yore did it!”
    â€œWhat was right for a knight then isn’t right for a princess now,” Julia said primly, her hands folded as tight as her lips.
    â€œWe aren’t going to hurt him. If anything, we’ll be saving him, since his family won’t want to pay for a corpse.”
    â€œIt’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.”
    â€œWhat 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!”
    â€œThere are always other options. You said yourself that if you were married to an officer—”
    â€œBut 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.”
    â€œYou could know the wounded Englishman. Perhaps he would marry you out of gratitude for saving him.”
    â€œOh, come now. That’s not very likely.”
    â€œBut 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.”
    Julia slid her arm through Dagmar’s and beamed at her. “If he is English and unmarried, then you would agree to marry him?”
    â€œIf it got us to England?” Dagmar thought for a moment. She’d been betrothed from a very early age to a distant cousin who had died some four years before, and hadn’t particularly felt the need to encourage her father to find her a replacement. Marriage tended to restrict one’s activities, since husbands frequently felt they had the right to tell one how to live, but if Julia’s man was indeed English and unmarried, she could do worse than consider him as a suitor.
    The mental image of a dark, cold French nun’s cell came to mind. She shivered and hurried forward. “Possibly. Come along, turtle! Let’s go see if this man