The Heiress (3 page)

“Yes,” she said, “so you have thought of this, too?”

“A time or two.”

“Perhaps every time Edward pushed you into a pile of horse dung? Or tied you to a tree branch and left you? Or destroyed your possessions?”

“Or when he called you names,” Jamie said softly, then his eyes twinkled. “Or when he tried to marry you to Henry Oliver.”

At that Berengaria groaned. “Henry still petitions Mother.”

“Does he still have the intelligence of a carrot?”

“More of a radish,” she said bleakly, not wanting anyone to see her despair that the only honest marriage proposal she'd ever had came from someone like Henry Oliver. “Please, no more talk of Edward and how he decimated what little we had. And definitely no more talk of—of that man! Tell me of your heiress.”

Jamie started to protest but closed his mouth. “His” heiress had everything to do with the gambling and whoring and
general depravity of his “brother” Edward. In Jamie's mind no one as degenerate as Edward deserved the title of brother. While Jamie had been away fighting for the queen, performing tasks for the queen, endangering his life for the queen, Edward had been selling off all that his family owned so he could afford horses (whose legs or necks he broke), fine clothes (which he lost or destroyed), and his never-ending gambling (where he invariably lost).

While Edward had been rapidly bankrupting the family, their father had imprisoned himself in a tower room to write a history of the world. He ate little, slept little, saw no one, spoke to no one. Just wrote day and night. When Berengaria and Joby confronted their father with proof of Edward's excesses, including deeds of land he'd signed over to pay his debts, their father had said, “What can I do? It will all be Edward's someday, so he may do what he likes. I
must
finish this book before I die.”

But a fever had taken the lives of both Edward and their father. One day they were alive and two days later they were dead.

When Jamie returned for the funerals, he found what had once been a moderately profitable estate now unable to support itself. All the land except what the old keep was standing on had been sold. The manor house had been sold the year before, along with all the fields and all the cottages where the farmers lived.

For days Jamie had been inconsolable in his rage. “How did he expect you to live? If there are no rents or crops, how did he expect you to feed yourselves?”

“With his gambling wins, of course. He was always saying
that he was going to win next time,” Joby had said, looking both prematurely old and heartbreakingly young. She raised an eyebrow at her brother. “Perhaps you should spend less time ranting about what you cannot change and do what you can with what you have.” She had given a meaningful glance toward Berengaria.

Joby meant that no man wanted a blind wife no matter how beautiful she was or even what her dowry was. Always it would be Jamie's responsibility to provide for her.

“Pride,” he said now. “Yes, you and Joby had too much pride to call me home.”

“No, I had too much pride. Joby said … Well, perhaps it is better left unrepeated what Joby said.”

“Something about my cowardice at leaving you two at the hands of a monster like Edward?”

“You are kinder to yourself than she was,” Berengaria said, smiling, remembering exactly what Joby had said. “Where
does
she learn all those dreadful words?”

Jamie winced. “No doubt about Joby being a Montgomery. Father was right when he said that Job had not been through so much as he had with his youngest child.”

“Father hated anything that took him from his precious book.” There was bitterness in her voice. “But Joby could read aloud to him and I could not.”

Jamie squeezed her hand, and for a moment they were lost in unhappy memories.

“Enough!” Berengaria said sternly. “Heiress. Tell me of your heiress.”

“Not mine by any means. She is to wed one of the Bolingbrookes.”

“Imagine such wealth,” Berengaria said dreamily. “Do you think they burn great logs each day so all the house is warm?”

Jamie laughed. “Joby dreams of jewels and silk, and you dream of warmth.”

“I dream of more than that,” she said softly. “I dream of you marrying your heiress.”

Annoyed, Jamie pushed her hand away and got up to go to the window. Without realizing what he was doing, he pulled the worn dagger from its sheath by his side and began to toy with it. “Why do women put romance into everything?”

“Romance, ha!” she said with passion. “I want to put food onto the table. Do you know what it is like to eat nothing but moldy lentils for a month? Do you know what they do to your stomach, not to mention your bowels? Do you—”

Putting his hands on her shoulders, Jamie forced her back into the chair. “I am sorry. I—” What could he say? While his family had been starving, he had been dining at the queen's table.

“It is not your fault,” she said calmly. “But weevils in the bread do take the romance out of one's life. We must look at the facts, look at what we have. First of all we could go to our rich Montgomery relatives and throw ourselves on their mercy. We could move into their houses and begin to eat three good meals a day.”

Jamie looked at her for a moment, one eyebrow raised. “If that is an alternative, why did not you and our foul-mouthed little sister go to them years ago? Edward would not have cared, and Father would not have noticed. Why did you choose to remain here and eat rotten food?”

Slowly, Berengaria smiled, then as they often did, together
they said, “Pride.”

“Too bad we cannot sell our pride,” Jamie said. “If we could, we would be richer than the Maidenhall heiress.”

At that they burst into laughter, for “richer than the Maidenhall heiress” was a saying throughout England. Jamie had even heard it in France.

“We cannot sell pride,” Berengaria said slowly, “but we do have something else that is very valuable.”

“And, pray tell me, what is that? Is there a market for crumbling stone? Perhaps we should say the well water has healed us so we could bring wealthy patrons here. Or we could—”

“Your beauty.”

“Sell the dung from the stables,” he continued. “Or we could—My what?”

“Your beauty. It was Joby who said as much. Jamie, think of it! What cannot money buy?”

“Very little, if anything.”

“It cannot buy beauty.”

“Oh, I am beginning to see. I am to sell my … beauty as you call it. If I am for sale, then money
can
buy beauty—if that is what I have.” His eyes twinkled as they always did when he teased her. “How do you know that I am not as ugly as … as a pile of your mouldy lentils?”

“Jamie, I cannot see, but I am
not
blind,” Berengaria said as though talking to a simpleton.

Jamie had to suppress a laugh.

“Do you think I do not hear and feel the sighs of the women when you walk past? Do you think I have not heard filthy things said by women when they say what they would like to
do to you?”

“This interests me,” he said. “You must tell me more.”

“Jamie! I am serious.”

Taking her shoulders in his hand, he put his nose close to hers. “Sweet little sister,” he said even though he was only minutes older than she, “you are not listening to what I said. I'm to escort this rich heiress to the man she is to marry. She does not need a husband; she has one.”

“And who is this Bolingbrooke?”

“As you well know, rich is what he is. His father is almost as rich as hers is.”

“So what does she need of
more
money?”

Jamie smiled indulgently at his beautiful sister. She had lived all her life in the country, and to her, wealth was warm clothes and plentiful food. But Jamie had traveled, and he knew that there was no such thing as “enough” money, “enough” power. For many people, the word
enough
did not exist.

“Do not patronize me,” she snapped.

“I said not a word.” He held up his hands in protest, the dagger in one of them.

“Yes, but I could hear your thoughts. You know that the queen has hinted that titles could be given to Perkin Maidenhall if he paid enough.”

“And he has refused. The man's miserliness is known throughout England. And for once I am glad of it or else he would not have hired a man as poor as I to escort his precious daughter.”

“Poor, yes, but you have now inherited all Father's titles.”

For a moment Jamie was startled. “So I have,” he said musingly. “So I have. So I am an earl, am I?”

“And a viscount, and you have at least three baronetcies.”

“Hmm, do you think I can make Joby kneel before me and kiss my ring?”

“Jamie, think of the marriage market. You are titled; you are gorgeous.”

At that he nearly choked. “You make me sound like a prize bird to be auctioned for the Christmas table. Lord Gander. Come, ladies, look at his fine plumage. Will he not look splendid on your table? Take this bird home, and your husband and children will love you forever.”

Berengaria tightened her lips into a fine line. “What else do we have if not you? Me? Is a rich man going to marry
me?
Blind with no dowry? What about Joby? She has no dowry, she will never be a beauty, and her temper leaves a great deal to be desired.”

“You are being kind,” he teased.

“And you are being stupid.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said, anger in his voice. “When I look in a mirror, I see only myself, not this Apollo my two sisters seem to see.” He took a breath and calmed himself. “Sweet sister, do you not think I too have thought of all this? Not quite in the way you have stated it, but I know that if I made a good marriage, it would solve many problems. And do you not think that my first thought of this heiress was that she would be a way to solve all our problems?”

Berengaria smiled in a way that Jamie knew too well.

He did not return her smile. “What are you and that hellion sister of ours up to? What are you planning?” For all that two people could not be more different, Joby and Berengaria were thick as clotted cream.

“Berengaria!” he said sternly. “I'll not participate in anything you two have devised. This is a job. Honest employment. If I deliver this girl safely into her fiancé's hands, I will be paid handsomely. There is nothing more to it than that, and I refuse to allow you or that brat sister to—”

He stopped and gave a groan. He could fight wars, lead men into battle, negotiate contracts between countries, but heaven help him when his two sisters got hold of him!

“I will
not
participate,” he said. “I
will not!
Do you understand me? Berengaria, stop smiling in that way.”

I
f she falls in love with you, Jamie, of course her father will allow her to marry you. She's his only child, she's to get everything, so of course he'd give her anything she wanted.”

Even to Jamie's ears, Joby sounded convincing. He had a few comments to make, but he couldn't say anything because his mouth was full of pins. He had been standing in his undershirt, his legs bare, all morning and half the afternoon as Joby directed the village tailor and six seamstresses in the fashioning of a wardrobe meant to win an heiress's heart.

Last night he'd drunk half a hog's head of horrible wine while he listened to an outrageous plan that Joby and Berengaria had concocted. Distasteful as the plan was, that they had done so much work in so few days impressed him.

As he listened, he heard more than he ever cared to know about the perfidy of his brother (or, as he liked to think, his
half
brother). Edward had not only sold the Montgomery land but had sold it to men whose characters matched his own.

“Stinking, lying, murdering—” Joby started.

“Yes,” Jamie interrupted, “but what have they actually
done?”

Estate management was not a strong point of any of the new owners. Terrorizing peasants seemed to be their only real passion. They burned crops and houses, raped any nubile girl they could find, ran their horses over newly planted fields.

When Jamie heard that Joby had calmed the peasants by telling them that when Jamie returned he'd fix everything, Jamie nearly choked.

“It is no longer my land,” he pointed out.

Berengaria shrugged. “Montgomerys have owned that land for hundreds of years, so how does your responsibility cease after a mere two years?”

“By the exchange of gold, that's how,” Jamie nearly shouted, but they knew he felt the weight of all those hundreds of years on his shoulders.

“Speaking of gold,” Joby said, then nodded to a servant standing in back of Jamie.

Later, Jamie thought that if he hadn't been drunk, he would have jumped out a window and kept on running. It had been only two weeks ago that he'd accepted this job of escorting this extremely wealthy young woman across England, but during that time his sisters had organized all three of the tiny villages that used to be on Montgomery land, land that Edward had sold.

Thinking of what must have been said, Jamie's face turned scarlet. His men had laughed so much they'd had to leave the room. It seemed that his two sisters had “sold” their brother.

“Just your beauty,” Berengaria tried to reassure him—as
though that would help.

“You know, like a stallion or a prize bull,” Joby'd said, then laughed when Jamie tried to catch her as she darted out of his reach.

Last night, one by one, a representative of every village house had come to the old hall and shown what wealth he'd managed to save or—Jamie suspected—steal. There were parts of silver spoons, a handle from a gold ewer, coins with faces of long dead kings, bags of goose down that could be sold, piglets (one of which tried to join Jamie in getting drunk), leather pelts, a belt buckle, a few buttons from a rich lady's dress. The list seemed endless.