Truth about Leo Read Online Free PDF Page A

sending home someone who’s only half English.”
    â€œIf you know what’s good for you,” the crown prince said, dusting off his front and swallowing the last of the grapes, “you’ll see to it that they do just that. Because your options otherwise are quite limited.”
    â€œOh really?” Dagmar crossed her arms and allowed a mulish expression to play across her face. “Or what? You’ll throw me out onto the streets? You’re my nearest living male relative, Frederick. Thus, you are responsible for my well-being, which includes providing shelter for me. Not to mention the fact that if you shirk that responsibility by casting me aside, you will prove to the citizens of Denmark that you are a heartless tyrant who preys on innocent cousins.”
    The servants gasped en masse.
    Frederick looked as if she’d kicked him in an extremely sensitive location, an expression that quickly changed to one of calculating fury. “Oh, I wouldn’t let you starve on the street.”
    Dagmar smiled, feeling a sudden sense of smugness. She had a feeling that he wouldn’t like the idea of all the notoriety that would come of such a callous action.
    â€œAlthough there are times when I feel you deserve it, especially after last month when you attempted to murder my wig in front of the French ambassador.”
    â€œI thought it was a rabid poodle!” she protested, trying very hard to keep from smiling at the memory.
    â€œYou ripped it from my head and used my ceremonial sword to gut it!”
    Dagmar strove for a dignified mien. “I was attempting to save your life.”
    â€œYou weren’t. You were trying to shame me in front of important visitors, and it was the last straw, do you hear me? The last straw! If you refuse to take yourself off to your family as I have repeatedly requested you do, then I shall have no recourse but to send you to a convent. There you will learn humility and the wisdom of treating your superiors with the respect due to them.”
    â€œA convent?” Dagmar shook her head. “But…we’re not Catholic.”
    He waved a hand. “That matters not. I will find a convent, and you will go to it. If not here, then somewhere else. I have connections. Perhaps life in a French convent would teach you some meekness.”
    Dagmar didn’t like the sound of that at all. She was not, by nature, a meek or humble person, and she had no intentions of changing her ways now. “You can’t do that!”
    â€œI can.” Frederick considered his fingernails, then delicately brushed them against the soft velvet of his waistcoat. “You yourself said that I am responsible for you, thus I have the right to dispose of you as I desire. You may hie yourself to a convent or go plague another family member. The choice is yours.”
    â€œBut, Frederick—”
    â€œNo!” The word was snapped with the velocity of a musket ball. It served to startle Dagmar enough that she stopped her protest. “Hear me, Dagmar: I am at the end of my patience with regards to you. You will leave in the next few days of your own volition, or you will leave by mine, and that is the end of the matter. I care not where you go—either your Sonderburg-Beck relations or your mother’s family or to a convent in France—but go you will. Upon that, I will brook no further debate.”
    Without so much as a good-bye, he turned on his heel and strolled out of the kitchen. Dagmar fumed for a few seconds, wanting to hurl at his head all the naughty words that she’d learned from the stable boys, but she knew that doing so would have no benefit.
    â€œFabulous. Just fabulous,” she snarled, her scowl of such a quality that the kitchen maids scurried out of her way. “A convent! Of all the ridiculous ideas.”
    She stomped over to the table where the boiled pig’s head sat, picked it up by an ear, and glared at the cook