But his words were lost in her ears. She was being hoisted up by a pair of iron arms and spun about in mad circles, kisses raining down upon her chin and neck and cheeks. "I love you," he said. "I love you, Emilie. Dash it all, didn't I ever say it before? I love you."
"Mind the floor lamp, there," said Olympia.
Emilie cupped her hands around Ashland's head and kissed him. "I love you. I loved you hopelessly from the first, far too much to draw you into all this . . ."
"But I gave you no choice."
"No." She kissed him again. "And having risked your life for me, you have as your reward only more of the same. A lifetime, if you're especially unlucky."
"Ah yes." Olympia heaved a relieved sigh and walked to a nearby bookcase. "The risk of assassination and whatnot. I've been thinking about that. Clearly, some sort of retreat is necessary. If not for Emilie's safety, then for my own health. Newlyweds have a somewhat deleterious effect on my digestion."
Ashland let her slide downward in his arms, until her feet rested-physically, at least-on the priceless Axminster below. "Retreat? What do you propose?"
Olympia reached out his hand and touched the globe on the shelf, spinning it idly. "As I understand it, the two of you are under a certain impetus to marry, as quickly as possible."
"That is not your concern, Uncle. It is a private matter between the two of us."
Ashland's voice rang out with conviction. "As soon as possible, in fact. Tomorrow, if we can arrange it. My animal lusts, you understand, cannot be reined in."
"Ahem. Yes. Good, then." Olympia twirled his globe. "As it happens, my personal steam yacht lies at anchor in Southampton, with a full complement of water, coal, and crew."
"Your steam yacht!" Emilie gasped.
Olympia's large white hand steadied the Earth. He turned to them, leaned back against the bookcase, and smiled. "Have you given any thought to an extended honeymoon?"
EPILOGUE
The Cook Islands
August 1890
Emilie opened her eyes when the shade shifted, exposing her to the white tropical sun.
For a moment, she didn't move. Her limbs were drowsy with warmth, her heartbeat slow and blissful. Her husband's arm curled just beneath her breasts, and as she lay there, she could feel her body rise and fall to the cadence of his breathing. She curled her toes into the powdery sand.
Her husband.
She savored the word in her head for the thousandth time. "Ashland," she whispered.
A grunt came from the sleeping form under her head.
She tried again, more loudly. "Ashland."
"Hmm?" His chest moved slightly; his arm tightened around her. "What is it?"
"The shade. It's gone. We'll burn in a moment."
Her husband smelled deliciously of salt and sand; Emilie wanted to lick it from his skin. He nuzzled her temple sleepily and said, "Bother the shade."
Emilie laughed and made a lumbering turn in his arms. She was wearing only her chemise, and the thin linen tangled about her legs. "Easy for you to say. You haven't got a baby inside you, kicking away at all that sunlight."
"Mmm." Ashland kissed her neck and found the bottom of her chemise with his long arms. He wasn't wearing anything at all. He was simply and splendidly naked, all gleaming tanned skin and endless muscles: the privilege of having anchored the yacht off an uninhabited island and sent the children off with the Doctor on a voyage of exploration to the other side of it. He'd spent the morning in a slow and painstaking exercise of his husbandly rights, from various inventive positions (the traditional ones having become a trifle awkward of late), and now, having refreshed himself with picnic and nap, seemed to find his bride overdressed. "How vexing, madam. And how long has this condition been troubling you?"
Emilie laughed again and pushed at his elbows, but it was no use. Ashland untangled the chemise with expert fingers and drew it upward over her belly, and she let her arms fall back into the sand. "Several months, in fact. And it grows worse every day. By the beginning of October, I shall probably explode."
"What a beast of a husband you have, putting you in such a state."
"A dreadful beast. And I suspect he feels no remorse at all."
Ashland lifted the chemise over her head and kissed her. "None at all?"
"None. Instead he looks at me with an air of the most insufferable self-satisfaction."
"The cat who caught the canary?" He bent to swirl the tip of her breast with his tongue. His shoulders, broad and hard with muscle, shimmered with the sun's own light.
"Exactly. Though I can't quite understand it, just between the two of us. These days, I begin to resemble the giant dodo more than the canary."
"I suppose your beast of a husband takes the opposite view. No doubt he, in his demented state, believes you grow more beautiful every day." His immense hand cradled her belly; he kissed the very top.
"Then I weep for him, for he has evidently lost the sight in his single remaining eye."
"Or perhaps he sees more clearly than ever."
Emilie giggled aloud. "You, sir, have turned out to be an appalling flirt."
"Ridiculous. I was an appalling flirt from the beginning. I am grieved to say that by the age of twenty, I was notorious throughout London." He kissed his way back up her bosom.
"No doubt. I suppose you once had all those debutantes at your feet, with your Guardsman's uniform and your young Apollo looks."
"Only practicing for you, Your Highness."
Emilie wrapped her hands around his neck. He held himself effortlessly above her, his honed sinews betraying not a quiver. She ran one finger along the pits and scars of his jaw. "Beautiful man. I love you madly."
Ashland turned his head to kiss her finger. "Beautiful lady. I love . . ."
Three faint belches of the ship's horn carried over his words.
"What the devil?" Ashland rose to his knees.
Emilie tried to rise, failed, rolled to one side, and tried again. Her heart made a tiny skip against the wall of her chest. "Not the children, surely!"
"They've an armed guard with them, and the Doctor. I'm sure they're all right."
But Emilie knew his voice, and she could hear the faint note of alarm beneath his steady words. Four months ago in Sydney, they had taken aboard Dr. Yates, a physician with the highest reputation, to keep a watchful eye on Emilie as her pregnancy advanced and to assist with the delivery in October; he was also a devoted naturalist, and he acted in the double faculty of tutor for Freddie and Mary. He was brilliant and trustworthy, almost a member of the family. Surely he wouldn't take any undue risks?
Ashland was already thrusting himself into his shirt and trousers. "I'll go around the point with the glass. Should be able to see the signal flashes from there."
Emilie struggled with her chemise. By the time her head emerged from the neckline, Ashland was striding off at a jog to the rocky end of the lagoon where they'd set up their idyll this morning, deliberately out of sight of the Duke of Olympia's luxurious steam yacht and its curious crew.
She reached Ashland just as he was lowering the glass from his eye.
"Well? What is it?"
"It's your bloody uncle, of course. We're to head home at once."
"Head home?" Emilie said, as she might say, Head into the guano-infested rocks at the entrance to the Underworld.
"Head home." Ashland closed the glass and shoved it into the waistband of his trousers. He turned to her, bent, and caught her up in his arms, belly and all. "But I'll be damned if the old chap can't bloody well wait a few more hours."
And the Duke of Ashland carried his burgeoning young bride straight back to the powdery white sand of the beach, to her endless and rather noisy delight.
HISTORICAL NOTE
While Emilie, her family, and the principality of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof itself are entirely fictional, the dangers she would have faced as a European royal in 1890 were quite real.
If the eighteenth century was the age of great revolutions, the nineteenth century saw the rise of small ones. This was not for lack of big ideas. By the time of the short-lived establishment of the Paris Commune in 1871, any number of "isms" flourished in the cafes, streets, and universities of the Western world, addressing the great problems of social and political inequality with ambitious solutions. Moreover, they had acquired distinctly international goals, and conceived often violent means to achieve them.