The Heiress (36 page)

T
he sun was low in the sky, and it was cool and quiet in the forest as five people dozed and waited for the concealment of night to make their escape. Twice they had heard the sound of hooves in the distance that told them Oliver's men were still searching for them. Jamie had wanted to press on as he knew his Montgomery cousins would arrive soon, because he had managed to get a message to them when he had first arrived at Henry Oliver's.

But he had been voted down by all of them when they saw him in the light of day. Axia, having known about the whippings, had brought a cooling salve for his back, and she had forced him to lie still on his stomach as she spread the ointment on the open cuts.

Now, hours after emerging from the tunnels, after an afternoon's sleep, all of them were beginning to wake up and become restless. They couldn't move until nightfall, and that was still an hour or two away. Axia's growing worry was that Jamie would try to be a hero and go after Oliver himself, alone with no help. She knew that only exhaustion had persuaded him to sleep this afternoon, and now he looked about restlessly.

“Can you really smell anything?” she asked Berengaria, desperately wanting to think about something other than what they had all been through and why they were waiting. “Did you know that that is a very valuable talent? I have often tried to make perfume like the French do. You can't just dry a bunch of violets and make violet-smelling perfume. I've tried it. You have to mix several herbs together to get something that smells like something else.”

“Like verbena smells more like lemons than lemons do?” Berengaria asked.

“Yes, exactly. I've done some experiments, but after four or five plants I couldn't tell the difference between dirty socks and roses. But if I had someone with a nose …”

“My sister can tell the difference between a hundred plants at once,” Joby said, still smarting from Berengaria's betrayal of her. What had happened in those tunnels to make her sister sit so close to Axia, laughing at everything she said?

At that Axia began pulling plants and holding them under Berengaria's nose and soon discovered that it was true: Berengaria could identify even types of tree bark one from the other.

“Amazing. Truly amazing. What I could do with you in business!!”

“We are not going to put our sister in some shop so people can stare at her,” Joby snapped.

“Stare at her? Oh, you mean because she's so beautiful.”

“No, because she is blind?”

“With a nose like hers, who cares if she can't see?”

“What?” Joby gasped.

Immediately, Axia was contrite. “I am sorry, I did not mean any disrespect. It is just that for a moment I forgot that she was blind. It slipped my mind.”

At that Joby began to sputter, but Berengaria said calmly, “I wish everyone would forget that I am blind. I would like to be something other than the Family Burden.”

“Burden?” Axia said, smiling. “With your talent, you and I could make a fortune.” Standing, she saw that all eyes were on her, and she thought that maybe for a moment she could take their minds off their worries.

“With your talent, we could make a wonderful perfume. We'll call it Elizabeth, and Jamie can present it to the queen.” When Axia saw her husband frown at this suggestion, she knew she'd never be able to stop. “With his looks he'll be the perfect one to woo her into liking it. No one else in the world will be allowed to wear that scent. We'll make it only for Queen Elizabeth, and she'll direct all her courtiers to buy her huge bottles of it for gifts.”

Axia saw that Tode was smiling a bit, and the worry lines were smoothing from Jamie's brow. “Then we will make other scents for other ladies. Having your own scent will become all the rage at court.”

Berengaria smiled. “We will get Jamie to smell the necks of all the ladies at court and tell them whether they are violets or jasmine.”

Until now Joby had been silent, but as Axia continued, Joby
lost her resentment. Putting on a face that was remarkably like Jamie's when he was thinking hard about something, Joby extended her hand, acting as though she were holding a woman's hand and sniffing it. “Yes, yes,” she said thoughtfully. “You are a full, ripe beauty like … ah, yes, like the musk rose. And you,” she said, pretending to take another hand, “are as sweet as violets.”

Dropping the imaginary hands, Joby was suddenly quite serious. “We must give him a list of all the scents, so he sells them all.”

“Yes, of course,” Berengaria said. “And I think we should decide which lady gets which scent before he goes to court so he makes no mistakes. Men are so bad at this sort of thing. He might have a tiny countess smelling of lilies and a great horse of a woman smelling of morning dew.”

“Unless, of course, that is how she sees herself,” Axia said. “Mmmm. What do you think, Jamie?”

“I am honored that the three of you have remembered that I am here. My actions, my very character, are assessed without my input, but now you have decided to ask me a question. At last, my honor is restored.” He smiled at them. “And I have no intention of participating in any of this. I am not going to spend my life kissing hands and telling women how they … how they smell.”

Axia grimaced, then smiled as an idea occurred to her. “Yes! I think perhaps a blind perfume lady would be better.”

“Me?” Berengaria said. She was sure Axia was teasing about all this, but was she? “At court?”

Axia's voice was excited. “You could sit on a velvet chair and allow the women to come to you, hold their hands, talk to
them, then decide what scent most suits them.”

“Berengaria cannot—” Jamie began, but Joby cut him off.

“But what of the men?” Joby said. “Do not forget the men who will want their own scent. What do you think the Richard will smell of? Earthy and rich?”

Berengaria giggled. “What would a perfume named Henry Oliver smell of?”

“Horse sweat!” Joby said, and the women and Tode laughed. Even Jamie gave a little smile, but Joby saw it and it was enough to encourage her. Standing, she puffed her chest out, her shoulders back, her thumbs in her waistband as she began to strut like a vain man. “I'm a
man!”
she boasted. “And I want something truly manly. For a
real
man.”

Axia stepped toward her sister-in-law, acting as though she were holding out a bottle. “Oh, great heroic man, I have here the most manly smell ever made.”

“I want no flowers!” Joby said in a deep, gruff voice. “I must protect my—my finer parts, if you know what I mean, little girl.”

“Oh yes, sir,” Axia said, fluttering her lashes coquettishly, “and I can see that your finer parts are very fine indeed. But I think you will find that we have used the most manly of ingredients.”

“Flowers?” Joby growled.

“Oh, no, none at all. Well, maybe just one.”

“No flowers! You understand me, little lady? I'm a man and
no flowers!
I'm leaving here!”

“But, sir,” Axia called out toward Joby's back. “It is the flower from the skunk cabbage.”

At that the others laughed out loud, even Jamie, so Joby
came back. “What else is in it?” she asked suspiciously.

“Saw blades.”

At that even Joby nearly forgot her role and almost smiled. Joby was used to having center stage and making people laugh, but Axia was a match for her.

“Old, rusty saw blades. And broken swords and mud from places where men have died—in battle, of course.”

Joby did smile at that. “Of course.”

“And, as always, horse manure as a binder.”

“I would want nothing else.”

“But …” Axia looked around as though to see if any one was looking. “For you we have included a very special ingredient.”

“What is it?” Joby loudly whispered back.

“Toe jam. From under the toenail of a huge Turkish man. Never had a bath in his life.”

“I'll take it!” Joby shouted above the laughter of everyone, including Jamie. “I will pay you six castles and two hundred acres of land. Is it enough?”

“Make it three hundred acres.”

“It is yours.”

“Then I am—”

“Quiet!” Jamie suddenly commanded as, standing, he moved to the other side of the little camp, motioning with his hand that all of them were to crouch down and be quiet while his eyes searched the forest. Tode put his arm protectively over Berengaria, hiding her from whatever it was that Jamie saw.

After a moment, Jamie gave a little smile, then turned to Axia, who had flattened herself on the ground. “It is your cousin,” he said, wonder in his voice. “I would recognize the
brilliance of that dress anywhere.”

With disbelief in her eyes, Axia lifted her head and looked over the fallen log Tode and Berengaria were crouching behind, and there, sauntering toward them, as though she had all the time in the world, was Frances.

As soon as Axia could believe what she saw, she jumped up and ran toward her cousin, then stood in hesitation when she was in front of her. For all that Frances must have been through, she looked the same, but at the same time there was something different about her.
Just like Tode,
Axia thought.

“Well?” Frances demanded. “Are you not glad to see me?”

With that she opened her arms, and the two women ran toward each other, hugging, and Axia was surprised to find that she
was
glad to see her cousin.

In the next minute Jamie was on the other side of Frances, ready to ask her many questions, but Frances said she had nothing to say until she'd had something to eat. Then she shocked Jamie by telling him where she had hidden a bag full of food.

“Do not look so shocked, Axia,” she said, laughing, after Jamie was gone. “How do you think my family fed itself before they had access to the Maidenhall money?”

“I—I do not know.”

“Thievery, that's how. When I was a mere four years old, I was an expert chicken thief, and I could steal eggs as fast as they were laid.” With that, she turned away and went toward the others in the camp.

Axia stood staring after her cousin, because in all the time she'd known Frances, all she'd heard was that Frances's family was the kindest, most wonderful she'd ever imagined.
Recovering herself somewhat, Axia followed her cousin back to the camp.

An hour later, a meal had been cooked—Frances had helped—and all of them were sitting in a circle around Frances, waiting for her to tell the story of her escape.

Axia was feeling very strange. It was as though everything she'd ever known in her life was changing. Her beloved Tode, who had always looked at Axia with adoring eyes, was now looking at Berengaria with love. And helpless Frances had managed to escape from a stone prison and had fried bacon and eggs over a campfire as though it were something she had done a thousand times. But Axia knew that Frances could not even tie her own shoelaces, much less feed herself and certainly not others.

And there was something different in her manner, something … Axia thought that maybe it was self-confidence. Frances seemed so much more sure of herself than she ever had before.

“Tell us,” Joby urged, stretched on the grass, looking up at Frances and wondering how Jamie could have turned down this woman for Axia. But then she had had some fun with Axia and … Well, maybe Axia wasn't so bad after all. “Tell us how you escaped,” she said again.

“I painted doors on the walls,” Frances answered with a smile, looking about the group expectantly, but there was no enlightenment on the faces of anyone.

But then Tode began to laugh. “Like Axia,” he said. When Frances looked at him, Axia saw a look pass between them that she had never seen before. It was as though they shared something private and secret.

Frances motioned for Tode to tell. “It was a trick Axia once
played on everyone when she twelve,” he said. “She recruited all the workmen on the estate, then stayed up all night painting half-open doorways everywhere. There were mouse holes, tall doors, short doors.”

“And a few windows,” Frances added.

“The cook drank too much, and Axia almost drove the woman crazy, because for the next several days, she kept walking out open doors, only to find herself running into a wall,” Tode said, smiling.

Axia had forgotten the incident entirely, but now she also remembered the time when she painted daisies all over a wall of Frances's bedchamber. Considering what had happened with Jamie and the cloak, she hoped neither Tode nor Frances would mention
that
. “How did
you
get out?” she urged, trying to divert Tode and Frances from a longer rendition of her childhood pranks.

“I asked myself what Axia would do in this situation, then I did it,” Frances said proudly, then looking at Jamie, she said, “Axia is very clever, you know.”

At that Axia's lower jaw dropped open so far her teeth nearly fell out, and she would have commented if she hadn't been sure the world was in imminent danger of ending.

“I must begin at the beginning,” Frances said. “At first everything was fine. Henry was very nice to me because all he wanted was to marry Jamie's sister. He planned to exchange me for her, but then his awful brother came and said, ‘Henry, you are holding the Maidenhall heiress captive, and you want to trade her for some girl who can't afford to fix her own roof?' So he told Henry that he should marry me himself, and I was to be held prisoner in a stone tower until the marriage could be
arranged.”

Frances took a breath and looked at her audience. Usually, Axia's vivacity overrode any beauty and especially any story that Frances might have to tell. But now everyone was looking and listening to Frances. And she couldn't help reminding herself that it would end as soon as it was found out that she wasn't actually the Maidenhall heiress. For all that she had been kidnapped and held prisoner, Frances liked being the Maidenhall heiress as much as Axia hated it.