The Heiress (6 page)

Jamie smiled. “Ah, to be free,” he said. “To be a farmer's son and marry whom I wish.” He raised his mug. “To freedom,” he said, draining the contents.

Rhys and Thomas exchanged looks before drinking. No matter how long they were with Jamie they'd never understand him. He was one of the few men to ever see the Maidenhall heiress, and he was complaining because she was beautiful.

“To freedom,” they said and drank.

D
id you see him!” Axia said, her face flushed with anger.

“No, I did not,” Tode answered, cleaning his nails with a penknife, not betraying how upset he was.

When a burly gardener had carried her into the house, Tode's heart had nearly stopped at the sight of her unconscious form. For a moment he thought she was dead. He had her taken to her room, and there he'd bolted the door against intruders, demanding that a doctor be sent for from the village. But when Tode realized Axia had merely fainted, he wouldn't allow the man inside. Instead, he'd given Axia a strong drink and had made her tell him everything that had happened. And as she spoke, he did his best to conceal his fear, for she could have been hurt by this intruder.

“He does not walk, he struts,” Axia was saying. Now fully recovered, she was pacing about the room in anger. “He swaggers. He throws back his shoulders and walks as though he owns the earth. Why? Because he is an earl? Ha! My father has two earls a day for breakfast.”

“No wonder he is choleric,” Tode said.

Axia did not smile at his jibe. “You should have seen him lusting after dear cousin Frances. It would make you sick.”

Tode doubted it would but did not say so, especially since he tended to agree with her about Frances. “You were clever to tell him she was the heiress. He might have taken you else.”

“No, no, not him. Not James Montgomery.
He
wants to
marry
me. Her. Marry her gold, that is.” Axia landed hard on a chair. “Why does no one see
me?
My father locks me away as though I have done something wrong. Criminals have more freedom than I do.”

“No heiress or young woman of your standing chooses her own husband,” he said, trying to inject some reason into her anger.

“Yes, but she does not have men coming over the wall just to
see
her. See how she glitters, that is. Sometimes I am grateful to my father. What do
they
”—she waved her hand, vaguely indicating the people beyond the garden walls, people she'd never met—“think I do all day?”

Tode knew he had to, at times, live up to his title of jester. “Eat hummingbird tongues covered with a sauce made of pearls. Spend the afternoons counting your jewels. Choose silk for new dresses every day.”

Axia did not laugh but glared at him. “You speak the truth.”

“I am paid to make you laugh, and what is more humorous than the truth?” With difficulty, he moved away from the plastered wall. His damaged legs were bothering him a lot today.

“Here! Sit down,” Axia said gruffly, knowing he hated her to be soft toward him. “You bother me when you creak about like that.”

“Then pray forgive me for bothering you,” he said as he sank onto a cushioned chair in the rather small and unnecessarily shabby room. Perkin Maidenhall had bought the estate because it was part of a larger tract of land he wanted. When his daughter was born, he'd sent her here to live, hidden away inside the high walls. In the nineteen years since her birth, she'd had only two companions: Tode and Frances. When Tode had arrived, he was twelve years old and had lived a life of endless pain and fear, and he had expected more of the same inside the high walls of the Maidenhall estate. But Axia, only eight years old but more like a small adult than a child, had taken him to her heart and had given him the best the estate had to offer. Under her loving care he had learned to laugh and had found out what warmth and kindness was. It was inadequate to say that he loved her.

“This Montgomery is to escort you—or is it Frances?—tomorrow?” His eyes, Tode's one truly beautiful feature, were sparkling as he teased her and tried to distract her from the realities of her life.

“Frances or me or you,” she said angrily. “He wants only the Maidenhall gold. Were I to put a wig on you, he'd fall to
one knee and declare his love for you.”

“I should like to see that,” Tode said, running his thumb across the scars that extended down his neck. Not many people knew that from collarbone to midthigh, he was perfect, unscarred, unbroken.

Suddenly, Axia deflated and sank onto a chair, her head back, her face showing her misery. “Is this the way it is to be on the coming journey? Am I to be courted and lied to by every man from here to Lincolnshire? Shall handsome young men pull me into bushes and speak false words of love in hopes of getting my father's wealth?” She snorted. “If they only knew! My father
pays
for nothing. He is
paid
for everything. Only a rich man's son, like Gregory Bolingbrooke, could afford to pay enough to marry
my
father's gold.”

Tode did not interrupt her, for he was fully on her side, but he'd never tell her so. It would only make her feel worse. In her whole life, she'd never been off these grounds. She'd grown up surrounded by people who were paid (as little as possible) by her father. And the people were given bonuses for spying on his daughter and telling her father everything she did. She was a rich piece of property to him, and he was not going to lose something as valuable as her virginity to some lowly retainer.

Therefore, the moment Axia seemed to grow fond of any male, he was removed. Because her friendships with females might cause her to be influenced by them, they too were removed when there was any sign of attachment. Besides Frances, only Tode had managed to stay near her. Perhaps
looking at him, no one could imagine Tode inspiring love in another human. But, in truth, Tode was the only person Axia did love.

“Oh, Tode,” she said, and there was despair in her voice. “Do you know what awaits me in this marriage?”

He was glad she was looking up at the ceiling (which needed replastering) or else she would have seen the despair in his eyes. He knew a thousand times better than she did what awaited her.

“There will be no love. No, I am not naive. Being a prisoner all my life has made me old. There is something wrong with this Gregory Bolingbrooke that his father must pay mine to marry me. I cannot look forward to a life of love with a healthy young man. I wonder if there will be children?”

When she abruptly lowered her head and glanced at Tode, he turned away so she could not see his eyes. “Do not tell me!” she cried. “I do not want to know.”

Jumping up from her chair, she flung her arms out. “I would like to live for once in my life. I'd like to look into a man's eyes and see that he loved me or hated me for myself, not for my father's gold. I am not Frances who cannot wait one second before she tells that she is the cousin to the greatest heiress in the land. You know that I'd rather talk with the cook than with those old men my father sends to visit me.”

Tode's eyes twinkled. “You, dear Axia, would talk to anyone from outside these walls, ask questions of anyone.”

“Oh, to see the world,” she said, twirling about, her skirt belling out about her. “That is what I'd like, to see the world.
Oh, heavens, but I'd like to
paint
the world.” She stopped spinning. “But to see it properly, I must be someone ordinary, like … like Frances. Yes, to be as ordinary as Frances, that is what I would like.”

Tode had to bite his tongue to keep from making a comment. He disciplined himself to keep from again saying what he thought of Frances. When Axia was twelve years old, she'd received a letter from her father saying he was sending her a thirteen-year-old female cousin for a companion. Axia had been so excited that Tode was jealous, and for months Axia had turned the estate upside down as she prepared for the arrival of Frances. Axia had moved out of her own room, the best bedroom in the house, and completely refurbished it for her cousin. When Tode had protested this extravagance, Axia had said, “If she does not like it here, she will not stay,” as though that ended the discussion. And even though Axia lived in fear of displeasing her father and made it a policy to ask for nothing for herself, she never hesitated to ask for something for someone under her care. So before Frances arrived, new curtains, new bed hangings, new cushions, were commissioned for her room.And as the day drew near, Axia was beside herself with anticipation.

But on the day Frances arrived Axia was nowhere to be found. After much searching, Tode found her hiding high up in an apple tree. “What if she doesn't like me?” Axia had whispered. “If she doesn't like me, she will tell my father and he will take her away.” It had taken a great deal of talking to persuade her that no one could help but like her before Axia
would come down and greet her cousin.

But Frances had not liked Axia. Tode, more worldly than Axia and hardened in the first horrible twelve years of his life, saw that Frances had learned to take what she could when she could and with anxious, eager-to-please Axia hovering about her, she managed to take a lot. It was no wonder this James Montgomery thought Frances was the heiress because she dressed as she thought someone who was related to the Maidenhall heiress should: dressed, ate, lived. And the more Axia gave, the more Queen Frances seemed to believe was her right. In the seven years since Frances's arrival, many times Tode had tried to get Axia to stop giving so much to Frances, asking her father for whatever Frances wanted, whether it was oranges in winter or a special shade of silk, but Axia just waved her hand and said, “If it makes her happy, why not give it to her? My father can afford it.” But Tode knew that Axia, so lonely, imprisoned all her life, would always be that little girl, afraid of being left alone with strangers. And all these years, even though Frances had never reciprocated, Axia had never stopped taking care of Frances. Axia's only retaliation to Frances's ingratitude was barbed remarks and a pretense that she didn't care. And, Tode thought with a smile, an occasional practical joke, such as painting an ugly woman on one of Frances's mirrors or putting daisies under her pillow because daisies made Frances sneeze.

Tode was suddenly brought back to the present when Axia turned a face full of wonder toward Tode. “I shall
be
Frances.”

“Ah yes, of course. We shall cover the walls of your
bedchamber with mirrors as hers is and remove all those dreary books you love so much. And of course your paints must go. And—” He broke off. “Pray tell, who will Frances be?” But as he said it, he knew. “No! Your father—”

“Will not know, will not care. I will tell him I did it to protect his precious commodity. If the Maidenhall heiress is kidnapped, it will be worthless Frances, not I, who is taken captive. And I am sure she would soon enough tell her captors the truth. But this is of no concern as we will be under guard. There will be no danger.”

“This is because of that Montgomery, isn't it? He put this idea into your head.”

“He can go to blazes for all I care. He has no honor, no sense of decency. He has no soul that he would lie and deceive so.”

Tode well knew how Axia felt about men or women who wanted to be near her because of her father's money. Once she'd said about Frances, “At least her friendship can't be bought. I've tried.”

Going to his chair, she put her hands on the armrests, her face near his. She was the only person in the world who did not turn away in revulsion at the sight of him, and when she put herself this close to him, a wave of love ran through him.

“Do you not see?” she said. “It is my only chance. My
one
chance. I could travel as my rich cousin's poor companion.”

“Poor indeed if you have less than Frances,” he said, his eyes soft as a doe's.

Axia was not oblivious to Tode's love for her, and when needed, she used it to get round him, for ostensibly, he was
her father's chief spy. She gave him a sweet smile. “It all depends on you.”

“Away from me,” he said, throwing up his arm, for he saw what she was up to. “You think you can persuade me to anything. This is dangerous. Your father's rage is—”

“What would be his rage if I were taken by brigands and held for ransom?” Looking at him, she lowered her voice and hoped he would not catch the hole in her logic, as just moments before she had been reassuring him that she would be safe. “What would you feel when my father refused to pay the ransom and they murdered me?”

When she saw his eyes flicker, she knew that she had won. Clapping her hands, she laughed aloud as she danced about the room. “No one will know who I am! No gawking boys staring at me as the new men my father hires do. No one staring at my clothes and food, asking whether I wear silk in bed or not. No one judging every word I say because England's richest heiress has said it. No marriage proposals at the rate of three a day.”

At that Tode smiled. Axia exaggerated, of course, but declarations of love were tossed over the walls regularly. Young men sang love songs from outside the walls. They wrote sonnets to Axia's beauty and said they'd glimpsed her in a dream or “from afar” or had climbed a tree and watched her and fallen hopelessly in love with her. Whenever Frances heard that, she always said, “They must have seen
me
.”

“Will Frances agree?” Tode asked softly, buying time to allow him to think this out. “You know how she loves to thwart
you.”

“Agree?” Axia asked, aghast. “Agree! Are you asking me if she'll agree to have it
all?
To have the gold
and
the beauty? Do you ask me if this is what she wants?”

She laughed happily. “You leave Frances to me.”