Truth about Leo (21 page)

“It might give us ideas about what happened.”

“I suppose—”

The doorknob rattled, followed immediately by a demand for the door to be opened.

“It's locked,” Plum yelled at the door. “I don't know where the key is.”

Loud orders could be heard, and a minute later, a key scraped in the lock and the door opened. Two men entered the room only to stop and stare at the occupants.

“Oh, hullo, Harry,” Plum said, kicking her heels over her behind, totally heedless of the fact that her bestockinged lower legs were exposed by her prone position. “Did Noble find you? He went to look for you.”

“That's him, there,” Gillian said, pointing.

Dagmar turned to look at the new arrivals. Harry was accompanied by a tall man with dark hair touched with silver at the temples and pale gray eyes. Both men wore identical expressions of surprise.

“Er…had a little tipple, did you?” Harry asked, passing his hand over his lower mouth.

Thom snored loudly.

“Just a little. We needed it. We were facing Gillian's misconstructed thing and needed it.”

“Justice. Only we decided it wasn't justice. And don't forget Dagmar's
farfugviggler
.”

Both men turned to look at Dagmar. She sniffed sadly at her fate. “
Fortvivlelse
.”

“Just so,” Harry said, his eyes wide behind the lenses of his spectacles. He slid a glance toward his friend, who was looking askance at Dagmar. “Noble, this is Leo's wife, the Princess Dagmar of Sonderburg-Beck.”

“Our Serene Highness,” Gillian said, then smiled at her husband with such obvious desire that Dagmar was simultaneously giggly and envious. “Hello, my lord of deliciousness. Kiss me?”

“You are drunk, Wife!” Noble said, trying to look scandalized, but Dagmar saw him waggling his eyebrows at Gillian as he bent to comply with her demand.

“Oh, Juan, there you are.” Plum pushed herself up to a sitting position. “We need more whiskey.”

“I think coffee would be more the thing,” Harry counter-ordered, and Juan, who had evidently been dipping into the reserves, wheeled about smartly and, after crashing into the wall twice, managed to leave the room, a trail of Spanish oaths following after him. “Let's get you ladies up off the floor, shall we?”

A half hour later, after having consumed three lemon cakes and several cups of strong black coffee, Dagmar felt her limbs and brain had returned to their normal state. Her heart, sadly, was still heavy with the knowledge of what she must do once Julia's situation had been resolved. She was made to recount the story again, after which silence filled the room.

Thom woke up at that point, moaned about a headache, and sat up. She was given cake and coffee, and although she said she wanted neither, she wolfed both down.

“Where's your bastard son?” she asked Noble around a mouthful of cake.

He looked momentarily startled.

“And by that term I mean the son who is a rotter.”

“Which rotten son? I have three.”

“Noble! Don't call our boys and Nick rotten!”

He grinned. “You've said worse about all three.”

“I'm a mother,” Gillian said with a lift of her chin. “I'm allowed.”

“I was referring to your eldest rotten son, not that I think Dante and Sebastian are rotters in the least. They, I'm sure, wouldn't treat a woman who wished to be their mistress so cruelly.”

“Ah,” Noble said, blinking once or twice. “Ah. It's that, is it?”

“He is rotten to the core. A cowardly core. One filled with maggots that are so disgusting, his mere presence would sicken a normal human being.”

“So the fact that he's on his way here after making himself presentable isn't a good thing, then?” Noble asked, and Dagmar could see a twinkle in his eye.

She was pleased by that, since it hinted that both Gillian and Noble looked upon Thom with favor.

Thom sat up straight for a moment, then slouched back in her chair and took another bite of lemon cake. “It's nothing at all to do with me where that bastard takes his maggoty core.”

“Excellent,” Noble said and helped himself to the last cake.

“Hey now,” Harry objected, glowering at the empty plate. “I was going to have that.”

“I'm your guest. Besides, you've put on weight. It won't hurt you one bit to drop a stone or two.”

Gillian eyed her husband but said nothing. Plum stifled a giggle, and Harry, after covertly sucking in his stomach—not that he had much of one, since both men looked quite fit to Dagmar's eye—said to her rather breathlessly, “Where's your husband?”

“He's at the gaol trying to free Julia. How long do you think it will take? I don't want him to remain there for any longer than he has to due to the gaol fever.”

“Gaol fever? They haven't had gaol fever for years n—” Harry jerked when Plum stomped on his foot. “Ah. Yes. Horrible outbreak they've had of late. Very dangerous to ladies. Might be best if Noble and I went to check on him, hmm?”

“If you're going to the prison, then I'm going as well,” Dagmar said, making a snap decision. She was tired of being left out of what was bound to be a delicate situation. Leo didn't know Julia the way she did, and besides, she would feel better knowing everything possible was being done.

“I don't think that would be good—” Harry started to say.

“If Dagmar is going, I shall go too,” Thom said quickly, standing up and lurching over to where Dagmar stood next to the fireplace. “I'll show that bastard that he's not the only one who cares about people to the point of ignoring those he loves.”

Noble started and was about to say something when Gillian whispered in his ear.

Dagmar looked at her newfound champion. “That doesn't make any sense.”

“He's a man,” Thom said loftily. “They frequently don't.”

“True.”

“I suppose if they are going, we should go as well,” Plum said slowly, her gaze moving from Harry to Gillian then to Dagmar. “It's not right to let two young girls go to gaol without some sort of supervision.”

“No one is going with us. Noble and I will—”

“I'll go fetch my hat and cloak,” Dagmar interrupted, not wishing to argue with Harry, especially as now he was going to be her host, but also not prepared to be kept to the side.

“Juan! You will please tell Noble's rotter son that I have gone to be useful and helpful to a woman in need rather than stay here and allow him to grovel before me while begging my pardon, followed by a proposal of marriage, because I know Aunt Plum won't let me live with him in sin as I'd prefer. You'll be sure to tell him that, yes?” Thom asked as she marched out of the room after Dagmar.

“No,” Juan said, shaking his head. “You use the words of too many sounds. I tell him you go and he's a
bastardo
.”

“That works for me.” Thom ran lightly up the stairs while Dagmar gathered her things.

“Would it be asking too much for her not to refer to my son by that sobriquet?” Noble asked mildly over the sound of Harry protesting to no one in particular that prison was no place for a woman and what about that gaol fever?

“I wonder where we should have their wedding,” Gillian mused as she too rose and gathered up her things. “Plum, would you be opposed to us having it in the country?”

“Not at all. I think that would probably be best if we all end up with gaol fever. Harry, dear, stop fussing. It'll be all right if we all go to the prison. What can happen with us all there to see that no one gets into any trouble?”

Princesses never question their mother's homilies that are intended on bettering their character through proper conduct (and if their mothers say adders have beaks, then beaks are what they possess and no amount of questioning the crown prince's learned men of science about adder faces will change that fact).

—Princess Christian of Sonderburg-Beck's Guide for Her Daughter's Illumination and Betterment

“The governor says you may see the prisoner now.”

“And about time too,” Leo muttered to himself as he followed the guard out of the waiting room into the depths of the prison itself. He wasn't an impatient man as a rule, but having to spend hours first convincing the governor that he simply wanted to get to the bottom of the murder and then waiting for permission to see Dagmar's companion had tried his patience almost to its limit. He had time, however, to mentally compose several questions he wanted answers to, and once delivered to a small, dank stone cell, he wasted no time in getting them.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Deworthy.” He glanced around her cell. It wasn't by any sense of the word comfortable, but he didn't see overt signs of filth or vermin. There was one wooden chair and a metal-framed cot bolted to the floor, upon which had been laid a less-than-clean pallet and horsehair blanket. “I am glad to see that you are unharmed by your trip to the prison.”

“Lord March!” She leaped up from where she'd been huddled in a miserable ball at the end of the cot, and rushed toward him. The guard behind him made to check her, but Leo held up a hand to stop him. Luckily, it had the effect of keeping her from leaping upon him in gratitude. “You have come at last! They have set me free, have they not? I am ready to leave this instant!”

“I'm afraid you haven't been released, not just yet that is.”

“But—” Her lower lip trembled and tears filled her eyes. “But they can't be serious in believing that I could have done anything so heinous—so sinful and disregarding of all moral values. I assure you, Lord March, that a horrendous mistake has been made! This slur against my character is unbearable! I would not—I
could
not
have killed dear Mrs. Hayes!”

“And that is why I am here,” he said in a reassuring tone that he was far from feeling. The evidence against Julia was staggering, especially given the eyewitness testimony—his own included. But he owed it to Dagmar to investigate the crime. Until he was easy in his mind that her companion was innocent—or guilty—then he'd do his damnedest to find out the truth. “Be seated, please, and we will discuss the events.”

“I don't want to discuss them!” Julia wailed, covering her face with her hands. “I don't want to think about it ever again. I just want out of this terrible place!”

“I understand that, madam, and you can take my word that I shall do my best to see to it that you are released, but in order to do that I must first be in possession of all the facts, and that includes what you saw and did and heard.”

“Very well,” she said and sat on the extreme edge of the cot, but leaped up a second later when a key sounded in the door.

To Leo's intense surprise, Dagmar flew into the room.

To his pleasure, she went straight to his side.

To his amazement, she wasn't alone.

“Er…” he said a moment later when Plum, Harry, Gillian, and Noble all trooped in after her. The cell wasn't large to begin with, but filled as it was by seven people, space was at a premium.

“Hello, Leo. We've come to help.” Dagmar squeezed herself up next to him, which pleased him greatly.

“So I see. All of you?”

“Goodness, it is a little tight in here…Gillian, would you mind moving your elbow? Thank you. Oh, hello again, Mrs. Deworthy. We've come to save you.”

“Plum, please,” Harry said in an undertone, flashing Leo an apologetic look. “I suppose you're wondering what we're all doing here.”

“I understand from Dagmar that you're here to help. Hello, Noble, Gillian. It's been a long time.”

“Too long,” Gillian called over Plum's shoulder. Both she and Noble had barely fit into the small cell with the others. There was a general jostling of elbows and shuffling of feet, but at last everyone had a modicum of space. “It's a pleasure to see you again. You must come down to Nethercote as soon as you can. And bring Dagmar, of course, assuming she hasn't cut you free by then.”

“Cut me free?” He twisted around to look down at his wife, who was murmuring soft, supportive platitudes to her companion. “Why would you want to get rid of me?”

Dagmar stopped murmuring and gave him a sad look. “It's what you deserve.”

“Wait…I don't understand—”

The door opened again and smacked up against the back of Noble, who swore and scooted forward just enough to allow Thom entrance.

“Gracious. It's like a pod packed full of peas in here, isn't it?”

“Like a sausage in a glove,” Dagmar said forlornly, which just made Leo hard.

“About this cutting me free—”

“Hello, Mrs. Deworthy. I don't know if you remember me, but I'm Plum's niece, Thom. I'm here to be supportive and helpful and put your wishes and needs and desires above those of certain bastard men who wouldn't know a good thing if it came up and bit him on his backside, which sounds like an obnoxious thing to do, when you think about it, but I don't know, there's something somewhat appealing about it as well.”

“We really have to get her married off,” Plum said in an undertone to Harry.

“I fear for her libido if we don't,” he agreed.

“Hello again, Leo,” Thom said, her hand visible over the heads as she waved at him. Leo couldn't actually see her through the densely packed bodies, but he acknowledged her with a greeting.

“It's nice to hear you, Thom, and I'm sure Mrs. Deworthy appreciates you supporting and helping her, but perhaps if some of you—the female some of you—wouldn't mind returning to the governor's office, I could actually proceed with ascertaining just what happened earlier today in the baptistery.”

Leo had to raise his voice for the last bit, since Plum and Thom started arguing.

“I don't see why you insist on having such a hidebound, rigid attitude. Especially after your experience with your first husband.”

“My first husband was an utter and complete abomination—”

“As is Nick.”

“Do you think we could go five minutes without slandering my son?” Noble asked.

“Not to mention the fact that my first marriage has nothing to do with the situation, nothing at all.”

“I say it does. And Harry wouldn't mind if I just was Nick's mistress, would you, Harry? I mean, you must have had mistresses before you married Aunt Plum.”

“About this cutting loose—” Leo said, leaning down to speak in Dagmar's ear.

“Good Lord, I'm not about to discuss that in front of Plum,” Harry said, struggling to get his arms free enough to cover her ears.

Dagmar sniffled quietly and bit her lower lip. He wanted to bite it as well, but a swift calculation of the remaining space—about a spare inch—left him with no room to maneuver himself into position where he could kiss her.

“Well, I don't care what you say. If that blighted, maggoty rotter ever shows his cowardly face and begs my forgiveness, not that it will be swift in coming because I have five long years' worth of anger to vent on him, but if he does, then I shall stand firm on the subject.”

The door opened again, and once more smacked Noble on the back. A tall young man squeezed his way in, cracking his shins on the end of the metal cot. Plum, pushed forward, oozed out onto the bed and took up residence on it.

“Hullo,” Nick said as the door thumped softly to a close behind him. “Did I hear myself being abused in no uncertain terms?”

“You did,” Thom said over her shoulder, being too firmly packed into the room to turn around. “And I would say it to your face if I could do so. Noble, would you mind moving forward just a smidgen so that I can abuse your son to his face?”

“Hullo, Papa,” Nick called over her head.

“Hello, Nick. You look well. Gillian, doesn't he look well?”

“He does, very well indeed, although we would have known that if he'd come to see us the instant he got back in England, instead of lounging around London.”

“Why are you sniffling in that pathetic manner?” Leo asked Dagmar. “More importantly, why do you want to leave me?”

“Because I seduced you. I have to let you go.”

To Leo's horror, her lower lip quivered for a moment before she sucked it up. He could handle many things in life—being wounded by a saber-wielding maniac, trying to determine the facts behind a bizarre murder, even handling a wife he hadn't known he'd married—but the sight of Dagmar trying so hard to hold back tears melted his insides. He didn't want her sad and crying. He wanted her giggly and giving him come-hither looks that sent him thither with a song on his lips and an erection in his trousers.

“Noble, please.”

“Eh? Oh. Gillian, I believe if Plum sits on her heels that you can join her on that repulsive cot, and then we will all be able to breathe a bit easier. We'll have to burn your gown later, because I have no doubt the cot is infested with all sorts of vermin, but the loss of a gown is a small price to pay in order for Thom to be able to face Nick.”

Gillian hopped on the cot, and the two ladies did, in fact, sit on their heels, both of them watching with interest as Thom was able to turn to face Nick. Noble, with a wink at the rest of them, jostled her straight into his son's arms.

“My apologies,” he murmured.

Leo took advantage of the fact that everyone was focused on Nick and Thom to speak to his wife. “I don't know why you believe you seduced me, because I have no recollection of any such event, but since you evidently wish to, then I'll go along with that. Why, however, does that make you want to leave me?”

“You are a coward,” Thom told Nick, her face pink at the fact that she was more or less pressed up against him, his arms loosely around her.

“Yes, I am.”

“You are despicably slimy and cruel and heartless.”

“And foolish,” he said, kissing the tip of her nose. “Don't forget foolish.”

“How you could spurn me to go off and do all sorts of good deeds when you knew I would have been happy to do them with you—”

“You wanted to go to that doctoring place in Germany. I knew how much that meant to you, and figured that by the time you were done there, I'd be done doing my work, and we'd both be back in England together. But that didn't quite work out. You stayed in Germany for two years, and then my work took me back to the Continent.”

“—is beyond the understanding of any normal human being.”

Dagmar, rather than turning toward Leo as he hoped, turned away, her little shoulders tight with anguish. “I don't want to leave you,” he heard her say in a very small voice.

“Then why, for the love of God, are you attempting to do so?”

She mumbled something that he didn't hear.

“You didn't even ask me to wait for you!” Thom yelled at Nick.

He looked highly uncomfortable, no doubt partly because, with the exception of Dagmar and Leo, the occupants of the room were all avidly watching him. He tugged at his neckcloth. “I couldn't, Thom. Not without having a fortune. It wasn't fair to you to ask you to wait for a pauper.”

Thom managed to shove him in the shoulder. “You
have
a fortune! Your father gave you one! Enough for us to live on, anyway.”

“But it's not really mine—”

“And I have a dowry!”

“She does,” Harry agreed. “Gave it to her myself.”

“We could have lived on either of those, but no, you didn't want to!”

“Thom, you don't understand—”

“No, I don't! Explain it to me!”

Nick opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, finally looking with desperation at his father.

“Don't look at me,” Noble said, shaking his head. “I thought you should have wed her before you went.”

“Noble!” Gillian protested. “That's not what you told him at the time!”

“I told him what he wanted to hear because he thought he was going to be killed. Do you think I'd send my son off to do dangerous work with an uneasy mind that could distract him at a vital moment?”

“I suppose not,” Gillian allowed. “But that was years ago, and now Nick needs to just do what he should have done then and marry Thom.”

“That's all right,” Thom said, sniffing as she pushed away from Nick's embrace. “It's clear he doesn't want me. I'll just go back to Germany and take care of donkeys and horses and those adorable cows with the pretty eyes and enormously long eyelashes.”

Nick glanced heavenward, but his expression of long-suffering martyrdom switched to one of fury when Thom added, “And I'll find a nice goatherd who isn't a bastard and become
his
mistress.”

“You'll do no such thing. You'll marry me, and we'll live on my father's money, and you'll like it,” Nick said savagely, but immediately began laughing when Thom spun around and punched him in the shoulder.

“We'll live on Harry's money!”

“We'll pool the money together and live on that, all right?” he asked, pulling her back into his arms.

She smiled and leaned up to kiss him. “
After
you've apologized.”

“This is so romantic,” Gillian whispered to Plum.

“It really is.” Plum dabbed at her eyes, then nudged Gillian. “Now we just need to fix Leo.”

Leo, who had been distracted by the Nick/Thom scene, was about to demand that his wife tell him what was wrong but paused to glare at the two women. “I don't need fixing!”