The Heiress (20 page)

I must go now as it is late. I would like to sleep, but I must watch for Axia as she is nursing her beloved Tode, and I must see that she is safe.

My love to you both. You are in my prayers always.

With great affection,

James

“One, two, three, four,” Berengaria said. “Yes, I counted that he wrote this Axia's name four times. Is that right?”

“Mmmmm,” Joby said in disgust. “You are right. And he mentions the heiress only once. Oh, but I would like to go to him and put some sense into his head! One of those odious Blunts burned a field today.”

“Their own field,” Berengaria reminded her sister.

“My point exactly. No longer a Montgomery field. I am tempted to write our Montgomery cousins and tell them what is going on.”

“Jamie would skin you.”

“Better to die that way than of hunger.”

“And how does the burning of a field that is not yours affect your belly?” Berengaria asked her sister, but they both knew the answer. Under no circumstances could they look like failures to their rich, successful cousins. Berengaria took a deep breath. “We should write him. Ask him to tell us more of the heiress. What does she say? What is her favorite music? Flowers? We will think of many things to ask her, so he will
have to talk to her to find the answers.”

“If this Axia allows him near her,” Joby said spitefully.

“Do not tell me you have grown to dislike this Axia?” Berengaria said hesitantly.

Joby eyed her sister thoughtfully. “As I think you have also. I am sure she has set her eye on an earl and means to have him. It is her only opportunity to meet a man of his rank. What do you think she does to entice him away from the beautiful heiress? Does she wear gowns that reveal an excessive amount?”

Berengaria was thoughtful. “No, Jamie would like intelligence, someone who can talk to him. Do you think she entices him with discussions of Aristotle's theories? Does she read books in Greek to impress him?”

“Come, we must set our minds on this. What can we do to make him love the heiress?”

“I wish we could get them alone, away from this Axia. You know that Jamie cannot resist a weak creature in need.”

“A damsel in distress,” Joby said. “Yes, let us see what we can arrange.”

T
he sun was well into the sky by the time Axia left Tode. Only after he had assured her that he could take care of himself did she leave him. Truthfully, all she wanted to do was take a bath and sleep. She'd had all the trauma she could take for one day.

Axia didn't know her way around this walled estate, and it was drizzling rain so she couldn't see very well, but she knew she didn't want to enter through the front. No doubt the tables for breakfast would be set up, and everyone would be eating. Looking as she did, the last thing she wanted was to encounter Frances and Jamie, both of them, no doubt, dressed in clothes made of sunbeams and starlight.

Making her way to the back of the castle, to what had to be the oldest part, she went in through the kitchens—and as soon as she saw them the sleepiness left her.

Chaos was the general air of the place. No one could walk for the number of people in the kitchen: a couple of enormously fat cooks; boys running around with pans and kettles; children chasing each other; men shouting over the heads of others; women screaming at children to behave; dogs rooting in the garbage shoot.

Waste!
she thought, looking about her.
Incredible waste!

On the floor were great bags of flour, fresh from the mill but open to rats and pilferage; herbs and vegetables had fallen off the center table and were being trampled underfoot. And all the people in the kitchen seemed to be eating anything that came out of the ovens as fast as they could be opened. Axia was nearly knocked down by a man carrying half a cow carcass on his way into the larder, the cold room for meat.

No one noticed her as she slipped past them, where she saw unlocked spice cabinets that could be ransacked by anyone and meat that could be used for soup and stew bases thrown to the dogs. In the buttery, she saw open kegs of beer and imported wines that were free for the taking. The pantry contained great crocks of pickles and salted meats that had been opened and were now being left to ruin.

“Disgusting,” she muttered. “Truly disgusting.” Whoever owned this place was paying twice as much for food as he needed to. There was no order, no organization, and as far as she could tell, no one in charge.

In spite of her exhaustion, Axia had an urge to take a broom, or perhaps a sword, and clear out these superfluous people and stop all this waste. With management, she thought, more people could be fed and less money spent.

“Look out!” she heard just in time to step aside as a piece of meat landed at her feet. To her disbelief, she saw that the meat was an entire cow's liver, and in the blink of an eye, two dogs had eaten it.

“Aren't you a tasty bit,” said a man with two hog's heads in his arms, eyeing Axia up and down, but when she turned on him with a look of fury in her eyes, he backed off. “Sorry,” he mumbled and went into the larder.

Axia didn't know what made her angrier than waste and the misuse of funds, and this was worse than she'd ever seen before. However, she did not stop to think that this was the
only
estate she'd ever seen besides her own and that maybe all of them were run this way. Such horror was unimaginable to her.

As she made her way down the corridor from the kitchens to the Great Hall, she saw that the rushes on the floor had not been changed in many months and that, all in all, the place needed a thorough cleaning. If this man, this Lachlan Teversham was feeding all these people, why wasn't he putting them to work?

As she stepped into the Great Hall, she saw as much chaos as she'd seen in the kitchen. More dogs (how many did this man have?) nosing about under the tables for scraps, dusty pennants hanging from the ceiling, tables with too much food on them. The tables were set in a semicircle, and in the middle of them, wrestling on the floor, were four or five little boys, a bit tattered, but dressed well enough that Axia assumed they were the sons of the owner. If he had children, where was his wife that she could allow such disorder in her house?

Standing in the doorway, Axia saw that Frances was the center of attention, sitting in the middle of the high table, a big good-looking man who was no doubt Lachlan Teversham leaning over her, attentive to everything she had to say. On the other side of her was Jamie, also leaning toward her. He was wearing a dark green velvet doublet, and he was as clean as Axia was dirty, as fresh as she was tired.

Sure that no one would notice her, Axia walked into the middle of the room and into the melee of boys and began grabbing shirt collars as she attempted to pull them apart.

However, she miscalculated the size of the boys, or perhaps her own lack of size was her underestimation. The boys, not used to any form of discipline imposed on them, thought she wanted to play with them. One grabbed her ankle, and with a scream, Axia went down into the middle of them. In seconds, she was nearly smothered by a tumbling, laughing heap of arms and legs and sweaty torsos.

She had no idea what would have happened if someone had not lifted the largest boy off of her. On her back, her arms over her face in protection, Axia looked up to see the smiling face of a big, handsome man, gray at his temples, the man who had seconds before been giving all his attention to Frances. She couldn't help herself, but she smiled back up at him.

The next second, she was grabbed about the waist and lifted, then slung across Jamie Montgomery's hip like a lumpy bag of beans. Her hair had come unbraided during the tussle and now surrounded her so she was like a fish caught in a net. If she moved her arms, she pulled her own hair.

“Jamie, my lad, what do you have there?” Lachlan asked.

“Put me down, you great buffoon!” Axia shouted at him or tried to shout as her lungs were nearly cut in half by his hip and his strong right arm.

“An imp. Satan's very own imp,” Jamie said casually but then yelped when Axia bit him on the leg, and he almost dropped her.

It took Axia a moment to right herself, get her hair out of her eyes, spit it out of her mouth, and look up at the big, red-haired man. He was very nice looking, not at all gorgeous like Jamie, but then who was? However, she did like the way he was looking at
her
.

“Axia Mai—” she began, but Jamie grabbed her upper arm tightly. “Ow!”

“Matthews,” Jamie said plainly. “A cousin to Frances. Isn't that right?”

Behind this big man were standing four handsome little boys, their eyes bright with interest at what was happening.

“Children,” Axia said calmly, “if I give you swords, will you kill this man for me?”

At that the children's eyes widened as they looked up at Jamie. Their father roared with laughter.

“What's this, Jamie? Do I hear aright? This is a woman who does not love you at first sight?”

Jamie grimaced. “Shall I show you my scars?”

Lachlan was looking her up and down and Axia found that she was warming to the way he was looking at her. “I do not think she could give
me scars,
” he said softly.

Dropping Axia's arm, Jamie smiled knowingly. “You, my innocent friend, do not know her. I saw you,” he said to Axia,
“come through the kitchens and I saw your anger. Tell my poor, naive friend what is on your mind.”

With a smug expression, Jamie looked at Lachlan as he waited for Axia to speak.

Axia well knew what Jamie was doing. Taking a deep breath, she tightened her lips. She was
not
going to hide what she was! “Waste is what I saw,” she said, looking Lachlan Teversham in the eyes. “Food thrown to the dogs, trampled in the floor, too many people, filth everywhere.” She took a step toward him. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself for the way this place is run. Look at it! Dirt everywhere, your children with the discipline of puppies. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

She was advancing on him now, warming to her subject. She had no idea what a scene she presented; though she was rumpled and dirty, her body was small and trim within her pretty, big-eyed face and her hair like a lush curtain. With her hands on her hips, she faced Lachlan, as big as a bear but looking at her with an expression as though he were a schoolboy being chastised by his teacher.

“And your wife should be doubly ashamed of herself. How can she show her face with such mismanagement? You should be running this place with half the expense. Have you no care for your future? Are you so rich that you can waste what other people need? Are you—?”

She stopped because Jamie had taken her by the upper arms and was pulling her back from his friend. There was a look on Jamie's face that said, See what I mean?

But Lachlan was staring at Axia in wonder, as were his sons
behind him.

Then, suddenly, Lachlan grabbed Axia's face in his hands and gave her a hard kiss on the mouth.

Everyone in the hall, all of whom (except Frances) had stopped eating and were watching the scene in the middle of the room as though it were the most fascinating play they'd ever seen, blinked in wonder at Lachlan's reaction. But no one was more surprised than Jamie.

“I have no wife,” Lachlan said when he released Axia. “Will
you
marry me?”

“Yes,” Axia said at once. “I'd like that.”

“You will
not!
” Jamie roared, startling everyone out of their motionlessness.

“I most certainly will,” Axia said, turning on him. “I can marry whom I wish. It is no concern of yours.”

“Your father—”

She well knew that he thought her father was Frances's father. “Died last year,” she said quickly.

“I thought he was alive,” Jamie said, confused, trying to think.

“You never asked. Plague. Body buried in a pit. Dissolved in lime. I never even said good-bye.”

“Wait!” Rhys said, coming around the tables to join the group in the middle of the room. “I have some land from my father. I am not rich, but I too would like to marry you. If you will consider me.”

“Like hell you will,” Lachlan said as he reached for Axia.

But Jamie was faster than either man as he shoved Axia behind him. “This girl is under my protection and I must—”

“I am
not
under his protection. He didn't even want me to come on this journey. His only duty is to get the Mai—er, ah, Frances to her beloved fiancé. Besides, he's trying to marry Frances himself.”

At that everyone turned to Frances, who was eating and doing her best to ignore all of them. Wherever Axia was, she managed to pull the attention onto herself. Frances would very much like to get rid of Axia. If Axia married this man Lachlan, who Frances had already discovered had no title and whose sons had the manners of wolf cubs, then Frances would be alone with Jamie.

“You forget, dear cousin,” Frances said sweetly, “that your father left you in my care. And I give permission for you to marry either of these men. Now. Today, if you'd like.” She gave her most beautiful smile to her cousin.

Wonder what's wrong with him?
Axia thought, looking up at Lachlan. Frances was as anxious to marry and find herself a home as she, Axia, was, so what was wrong with this Lachlan? It never occurred to Axia that Lachlan had not first asked Frances to marry him and been turned down.

But the truth was that Lachlan had been widowed for two years now, and he'd had several opportunities to marry, but he wanted more in a woman than just a pretty face. He needed a woman who could control his unruly, headstrong boys, and he wanted wine without sand in it. He'd been raised with a strong mother and had thought he wanted a dainty wife so he'd married a fragile flower of a woman. But ten years of nursing an invalid had made him want a second wife with a whip in one hand and a crossbow in the other. He was sure it
was the only thing that could control those boys of his.