The Heiress (21 page)

Lachlan went to one knee, making his head level with Axia's. “Marry me. What is mine is yours. Come, boys!” he commanded. “Beg this sweet lady to be your new mother.”

The boys had no idea what was going on, but they knew better than to disobey a direct order from their father. Usually, he didn't pay much attention to what they were doing, but when he did give an order, they obeyed. Flinging themselves on Axia, they wrapped their strong young arms about her waist, her thighs, her hips. “Please,” they cried. “Please be our mother.”

Axia was delighted. Touching other humans was something so wonderful, so delicious, and these beautiful boys—

Jamie put a stop to that though.

With his hands firmly on her shoulders, he extricated her from the clutching children, then turned her toward the stairs and pushed her up the first steps, all the while hissing in her ear. “Do you forget that this is supposed to be a secret enterprise? I do not want the world to discover who your cousin is.”

“And how has
my
marriage anything to do with the secrecy of
your
marriage? You could leave me here with your dear, handsome friend, and it would not matter one way or the other.” Oh, but she liked the anger in his voice. Could it be jealousy? But then, how could it be when he was engaged to marry someone else? “Or do you think I should marry Rhys? They are both handsome men, are they not? But if I were like you, I would go with the one with the most money and forget feelings.” She paused on the stairs. “Which man do you think
I should marry?”

“Neither!” he said emphatically. “I'm to take you to your—”

“My what? To
my
intended?” She smiled at him smugly. “As you said, there is no reason for me to go with you.”

“You are Frances's companion.”

At that, Axia laughed with such good nature at the ridiculousness of his statement that Jamie also smiled, but only for a second. “You are under my care and that is that. Until I have received instructions from Maidenhall, you will be allowed to do nothing except what
I
say. Certainly, you are to marry no man.” Turning her around, he made her continue up the stairs.

“Yet Frances
can
marry someone other than the one chosen for her by her father. Is that true? She is engaged, but she is still free to choose. I am engaged to no one, but I am not free to choose. Do I have my facts right?”

“You ask too many questions. Perhaps Maidenhall will not agree to your marriage. If you are related to him and your father is dead, then you must be his ward and he has the right to decide your future. And I might remind you that I am not yet married to Frances.”

“Is there hope in your voice that you may yet be saved? Or do you crave the beauteous Frances in your bed?”

“What do
you
know of beds?” he asked, sounding like a prim old lady as he opened the door to the room that had been assigned to her. Inside were three men with heavy buckets of hot water, and they were filling a big wooden tub for her.

“More than you think,” she said, trying to sound mysterious, then she saw the tub of hot water and knew without a doubt
that he was responsible for this great luxury. “Oh, Jamie,” she whispered, feeling every bit of her cold, clammy skin and her dirty dress and hair.

When she turned to look up at him, he was smiling in a way that made him so handsome she had to take hold of the bedpost to keep from falling. It wasn't the smile she'd seen him give to women when he was flirting with them, but it was a little-boy smile of happiness filled with delight that he had pleased her. He looked like the young son who presented his mother with the broken and crushed head of a flower and his mother had told him she loved him best in the world.

“I thought you might like to take a bath,” he said hesitantly. “But if you'd rather not …”

Knowing that what he wanted was more praise, she said, “Pearls could not have pleased me more.” The sincerity of her words made him almost blush with pleasure. “I shall soak until my skin peels off. Oh, please tell them to make the water very hot.” She had seen Frances do this, ask a man to give an order that she could very well do herself, and it never failed to please the men. To her utter amazement, she watched as Jamie told the servants how to adjust her bath water. “I shall wash my hair,” she said in a voice that told how much she looked forward to that treat.

Jamie nodded toward the side of the bath. “Camomile soap and a rosemary rinse water. I hope it is all right.”

“Yes,” she said, looking up at him. She didn't know what would have happened if the men had not at that moment announced that the bath was ready. But they did, and the moment was gone.

“I will leave you then,” Jamie said, giving her a weak smile before he left the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

For a moment, Axia whirled about the room.
Oh,how lovely freedom is,
she thought. Two men had asked her to marry them and now Jamie was—was … Well, she didn't know what he was up to, but she was certainly enjoying it.

In the next instant, she peeled off her clothes, her undergarments still wet, and gingerly stepped into the very hot bath water. As the warmth soaked into her skin, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

“He sent the letter!” Frances nearly shouted at Axia as she lay back in the big wooden tub full of hot water. “Did you hear me? He
sent
the letter.”

Because Axia had not slept all night, the hot water had soothed her into a delicious and much-needed sleep. “Who sent what letter?” she asked tiredly. She did, of course, know who the “he” was, but not what letter. Now that Frances had ruined her bath, Axia began to soap her hair.

Frances plopped down on a stool at the foot of the bed. “The letter to your father. Lord James sent a letter to him asking to marry his daughter, Frances. Not you. Frances. Me.”

Axia was so tired that it took her a moment to comprehend. Then her eyes opened in horror. “Jamie sent a letter to my father?” she whispered. Putting her hand to her forehead, she tried to think. After Frances had so proudly announced that she and Jamie were to be secretly married, Axia had been too angry to think. She had not looked too deeply into her reasons for her anger, but whatever the reason, it blocked out all rational
thought. Why hadn't she asked Frances questions at the time? “Tell me everything,” she said softly.

“I wanted a secret marriage, with no one else involved, but Lord James said that his honor forced him to ask your father for permission—”

“Now he is
my
father,” Axia muttered.

Frances ignored her. “I agreed, of course. What else could I do?”

“Oh yes, your trickery of the man must make you very thorough in your lies.”

Frances's eyes flashed anger. “Axia, I have done all this for you.”

“You have what?” Axia's eyes were wide.

“I can see that you are attracted to him, and if you married him in secret, your father would disinherit you.”

For a moment Axia could not speak. “So you thought to make yourself into
Lady
Frances in order to save me? I do apologize for ever having had an ungenerous thought about you. Frances, you are the very personification of kindness.”

Frances looked at Axia to see if she was telling the truth or not. With Axia, one could never really tell.

Axia leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. “Please spare me your fairy tales of all you have done for me. I want to know about this letter to my father!”

Frances should have known better than to think Axia would believe anything she said. “As I said, Lord James wanted to send a letter to your father asking permission to marry his daughter, only it would be me, Frances, who was the daughter. I couldn't very well say no, so I said that I would write a letter
too and we'd send them together. And then, of course, I would never send the letters.”

Axia was staring at her cousin in disbelief. “Did you think he would not notice when there was no reply? Or were you planning to write the reply in my father's hand?”

Truthfully, Frances hadn't thought that far ahead, but she'd die before she told Axia that. “None of that matters now. His letter has been sent to your father, and it asks for permission to marry his daughter.” Frances's mouth tightened, something she did not do often as she knew facial movement would give her early wrinkles. Her voice lowered. “What do you think your father is going to do when he reads that
I
am his daughter and not you?”

Axia did not like to think about any of this. It was difficult to control her anger at Frances. “I do not know. Perhaps he will yawn and say, ‘My goodness, there must have been some mistake.' Or do you think he will send an army to fetch me? To escort me under military rule to my beloved fiancé's house?” She took a deep breath. “And you, dear cousin, what do you think he will do with
you?
My guess is that he will dump you naked in the mud at the side of the road. Let us see what your beauty will attract
then
.”

For a second Axia closed her eyes; she needed time to think. “Dump that bucket of hot water over my head so I can rinse.”

Frances stiffened. “For all that you might think it, I am
not
your maid.”

“All right then,” Axia said sweetly, “you can use
your
brain to come up with a solution to this problem.”

Frances only hesitated for a second before lifting the heavy
bucket and sending water cascading over Axia's soapy hair.

When she'd finished, Frances used the one dry towel to wipe imaginary droplets off her blue satin dress. “Perhaps we can intercept the reply to the letter.”

Axia's head was now beginning to clear enough so she could understand what had happened. Because of this letter, her freedom could end much sooner than was originally planned. “It is not the reply that worries me, but the hundred or so armed men that my father will send
with
his reply.” Again she tried to calm herself, as she'd never be able to think if she were this angry.

Standing in the tub, Axia took the towel from Frances, and while she dried herself, she tried to think. “You must disappear.”

“Excuse my vanity, but do you not think someone will notice that I have gone? And really, Axia, I do not understand why
I
am the one to disappear. Your father will be angry at
you,
not at me. I am only the cousin.”

“A cousin with no funds,” Axia reminded her. “And besides, you are the one who caused all this with your talk of a secret marriage.”

Frances gave her a stubborn look, and Axia knew that it would do no good to remind Frances that all of this was her fault. From experience she knew that Frances never seemed to remember that anything had ever been caused by her own errors.

Axia took a deep breath. “When did he send the letter?”

“I think this morning, I am not sure. Yes, yes, it had to be this morning, as he was out all night.” Frances looked from Axia's uncrumpled bed to her. “Where were you last night?”

“With Tode,” she answered, waving her hand in dismissal. “His legs. You cannot be here when my father sends his reply. He will—”

“Yes,” Frances whispered in fear, “what will he do?”

“Throw you out and clap me in chains. Frances, why can't you think of these things first, before you get into these messes?”

“I wanted him to marry me. Is that so bad? He is an earl. An
earl!
Oh, Axia, you cannot imagine what it is like to never be safe. Every day I live with an ax hanging over my head. I do not know what will happen to me, what will—”

“And I do?!” Axia exploded, then forced herself to calm. A clean white linen nightgown was hanging over the back of a chair, and she put it on. With this news of Frances's, it didn't look as though she were going to get any sleep, but for a while she could be comfortable. “Let me think. I am tired.”

Why hadn't she thought to warn Frances about this “engagement” of hers? Why hadn't she thought of what her father would do if he heard that his daughter was to marry someone not of his choosing? In reality, Jamie and Frances's marriage would be a union between a poor middle-class woman and a poor aristocrat. It was their own business and no one else's. But the lie of the switched places and the involvement of Perkin Maidenhall made it all very serious.

Now, thinking of all this, Axia realized how stupid she had been. Why had she not thought of all the possible consequences of this switch with Frances? Why had she not thought of what would happen if her father became involved? For a moment fear ran through Axia. It was true that she'd
never met her father, but she'd corresponded with him since she could write. But no matter what she did or how well she did it, there was never any hint of a visit from him.

As Axia well knew, Perkin Maidenhall was the overruling force in all their lives. Even if he wasn't a physical presence in their lives, the force of his personality always ruled them. And all her life, Axia had wanted to please her father. Maybe if she pleased him, he would visit her. Maybe he would say, “Well done.”

The truth of the matter was that, for all that she liked flirting, liked these men asking her to marry them, she well knew that she'd only marry the man her father had chosen for her. No matter how horrible the man was, she would marry him. If she did not, what would her father do to her?

For all that she'd lived a life of great isolation, Axia was not naive in the ways of the world. Her father had not made his great wealth by being a kind and loving person. He was ruthless, and when someone did not give him what he wanted easily, he found other ways to get it. He had married her mother because he wanted a piece of land her father owned. No matter what he had to do to get what he wanted, in the end, he got it.