Jamie did not flinch as the people behind him did. "What is your name?"
"Tode," he said, meeting Jamie"s gaze levelly. He knew everything about what had just happened, about what had been said and what Jamie had done.
"What is your real name?" Jamie demanded, frowning, remembering how many times he"d used his fists to inform people that Berengaria had a name besides Blind Girl.
No one had asked Tode this before. His one concession to vanity was to change the spelling from Toad, as his father had called him. "I do not know," he said honestly, "but Tode does well enough." At that he stepped back and allowed Jamie and his men to enter, and as Jamie pa.s.sed him, he put a hand on Tode"s shoulder and gave a squeeze of rea.s.surance. And it was in that moment that he won Tode"s allegiance forever. Only Axia ever touched him and she rarely. No man had ever touched him in friendship.
As well he could, Tode hurried to keep up with Jamie"s long-legged stride. Even he could see that Jamie"s mood was not something to be toyed with, and he didn"t blame him. To travel the country with those iron-bound wagons with the name Maidenhall painted on the side of them was not what he wanted to do either. Axia would be in constant danger. No, he corrected himself, Frances would be as she was now the Maidenhall heiress. For a moment Tode suppressed a groan. Axia had had to pay every person on the estate to lie about who she was and who Frances was. Thank heaven the secret would only be entrusted to them for a few hours before they left the estate forever.
Frances was waiting for them in the withdrawing chamber, just off the entrance hall.
Now, standing outside the door, Jamie tried to get his bad temper under control. Guilt and fear for the woman"s safety raged inside him. Whatever happened, he would treat her well, he vowed.
She was standing in front of a wall that had been painted with a beautiful scene of Greek legends, and she was so lovely she made Jamie smile. But his smile was not so much for her as at her, for Frances looked exactly like Joby"s parody of the Maidenhall heiress. Her dress of dark green brocaded silk must weigh as much as a small pony. Gold embroidery encrusted the bodice. Across her white-skinned bosom were emeralds, and if the enormous baroque pearls hanging from her ears were real, they could be sold to pay for a war. Even her hair was encased in a net of jewels.
"Lord Montgomery," she said, holding out her hand, and he warmly kissed the back of it, noting the rings on each finger. "So, you are to escort me to my fiance."
"If I may be so permitted," he said, smiling as he withdrew a doc.u.ment from inside his cloak and handed it to her.
But as Frances touched the paper, Jamie"s face turned pink, and he withdrew it. "May I be permitted to read this letter from your father to you? "Montgomery," he begins, "I would like to employ you-""
Frances held out her hand. "Perhaps it would be better if I read it on my own."
Jamie"s eyes widened. "You can read?"
Around them, everyone stopped, stunned at the oddity of Jamie"s remark.
"I mean..." he said, even more red faced and clearing his throat. "I meant no insult. I was told-"
"He cannot believe anyone as beautiful as you can read. It is like covering a pearl"s surface with diamonds. Is that not so, my lord?" Axia said from behind Frances. She was smaller than her cousin and dressed as plainly as Frances was splendid. In her clothing, she was a sparrow next to an exotic bird. But her soft brown dress with white embroidery on the sleeves seemed to make her big eyes more brilliant than any of Frances"s jewels.
However, Jamie looked over Frances"s shoulder and gave Axia a hard look that let her know what he thought of her lying to him. And immediately, he thought of the cloak. No doubt Frances hated daisies. Any woman who dressed as Frances did would not like something as humble as a daisy. But then what woman truly hated any flower? And he had no other gift for her. Better to give her something than nothing.
"Mistress Maidenhall," he said, smiling sweetly at Frances, doing his best to ignore Axia"s smirking behind her, "I have a gift for you."
"Do you?" Frances said, seeming to be genuinely pleased, and Jamie wondered at this. Surely the Maidenhall heiress received gifts daily.
Suddenly, Jamie wanted to wipe that smirk off Axia"s face. "It is nothing," he said in his sweetest tone. "The most unlovely to the most lovely; the lowest to the highest."
"Now I am intrigued," Frances said in delight, very aware of Axia hovering behind her. "Pray, may I see this gift?"
"Not yet," he said. "You must close your eyes."
"Oh yes," Frances said and happily closed her eyes.
Jamie motioned for the boy Smith to come into the room, the red velvet cloak across his arms. With a great show of tenderness, Jamie draped the cloak about Frances, hundreds of daisy heads soft against her body. He pulled the hood over her head so the daisies framed her face, swathing her in them, surrounding her with them, and fastened the intricate hook at her throat.
When Frances took a breath, there was a little catch in her throat.
"Now," Jamie said, stepping back to let all see her, for she looked like a mystical lady of legend, a maiden of spring.
Frances looked about her, but she was feeling so strange she could not at first comprehend what was going on. Then she saw them. "Daisies!" she gasped, and her reaction was so strong that Jamie was pleased he"d done this.
Putting her hands to her throat, Frances"s fingers fumbled with the clasp, but she could not unfasten it. When the cloak remained around her, she closed her eyes, her face turning pale, then she fell to the floor in a swoon.
Bewildered, Jamie caught her before she hit the floor, then rapidly carried her to the window seat. "Wine!" he ordered. Was the woman unhealthy? Is that why she was kept hidden away? Did she have a disease that was gradually taking her life? He pushed the hood of the cloak back and unfastened it at the neck. She laid with her head on his lap, her long, thin body stretched out on the bed of daisies. She seemed to grow paler by the second. Was she dying? "Wine, d.a.m.n you! Get a doctor."
At that moment, Tode appeared on his damaged legs, a pewter goblet full of wine held out, but when he saw Frances, he threw the goblet aside. "Get her out of that cloak."
"What?" Jamie was not sure what he meant.
"It is the flowers. They make her sneeze, make her dizzy. Get it off her!"
Within seconds, Jamie reacted, the cloak was torn off Frances and tossed aside onto Smith, who ran from the room with it. Sensing that she needed air, Jamie tried to open the window, and when it stuck, he used his foot to force it open, then half threw Frances across the sill, her head and upper body in the fresh air.
Within moments, she was breathing again. She still looked near death"s door, but she was indeed breathing again.
When his heart stopped pounding and he could think once again, Jamie knew who had caused this: Axia. And it took no wizardry to figure out why she had done this: her petty jealousy of her richer, more beautiful cousin had caused her to do something that had almost killed Frances.
With a nod to Rhys to take over, Jamie stood and looked through the crowd of retainers and servants who had gathered around them, searching for Axia. She was standing stone still, her face unreadable, but as far as Jamie could tell, she was not shedding tears of remorse. What had she planned to gain by her cousin"s death? Did she stand to inherit?
Had a man done such a thing he"d have drawn his sword on him, but she was not a man. And at the moment, in his eyes, she was not a woman either.
"What do you think you are-" Axia said as Jamie grabbed her wrist and began to pull her.
Quickly, the crowd"s attention turned from Frances to Axia, for although they had been paid to keep the secret, they each knew that Axia was the Maidenhall heiress, the person who had to be obeyed at all times.
"You lying little sneak," Jamie said as he sat down on a stool and pulled Axia across his lap, bottom side up.
"Stop it," she screamed. "How dare you do this to me? I am-"
A hard smack to her back side cut off her words.
"Your prank could have killed her," Jamie said, administering another smack.
"I"ll have your eyes for this," Axia screamed. "My father will-"
"Thank me!" Jamie shouted back. "Your father should have done this to you long ago. You are a liar and a self-centered little brat." With that he shoved her off his lap onto the floor where he proceeded to step over her.
Axia, her face red with humiliation, sat up and saw the looks on the faces of everyone in the room. They all knew the truth of who she was yet they"d raised not a hand to help her. And where was Tode?
Across the room Frances was leaning on the windowsill, still pale, but her happiness at Axia"s humiliation was bringing color back to her cheeks.
She knew full well that Axia never meant to actually harm her. Axia had put daisies under her pillow, in her wardrobe, in her clothes, everywhere, since Axia had found out how they made Frances sneeze. Neither of the girls would ever have dreamed Frances would react so violently when she was trapped with the daisies. So why wasn"t Frances telling this odious man the truth, that it was a prank and nothing more?
"He means to get your money!" Axia bellowed across the room, making Jamie halt, his back to her. "He plans to court you, and when you believe you are in love with him, he plans to try to get you to persuade your father to marry him," Axia said. How dare he humiliate her! And it felt good to let Frances know what it felt like to be smiled at, not for her beauty but for her father"s money.
Jamie did not turn around but stood frozen where he was. When he met this girl yesterday, he had liked her, liked her very much. How could he have misjudged anyone so completely?
"Then I hope he succeeds," Frances said as loudly as she could manage.
And at that the household burst into laughter. Smiling, Jamie left the room. And he did not stop smiling until he got to the nearest tavern, where he began the long process of getting drunk.
Chapter 7.
Axia doubled up her fists and hit the bed again and again. She had not meant for this to happen! She had not meant to kill Frances as everyone seemed to think. She had just meant to give her a sneezing fit. How was she to know that spineless Frances would nearly stop breathing just from getting too close to a bunch of daisies? But even Tode had looked at her in accusation.
And that man Montgomery! Axia fell back against the bed, her arms flung out. He had liked her when he first met her. She was sure he did. Not her father"s money, but her.
But now, of course, his eyes were on Frances and on the wagons full of whatever her father had filled them with, and he hadn"t so much as looked at Axia. After this morning, Axia had retired to her room to pack her pigments and brushes, her sticks of charcoal and the wax crayons, and she"d stayed there the rest of the day. Maybe she should be saying good-bye to the people here in this beautiful prison, but her father had changed them often, so she"d never become attached to any of them except Tode. And to Frances, if unholy bonds counted.
For a moment tears came to her eyes, but by force of will she made them retreat. There wasn"t a person on earth who understood how she felt. After all, who was going to have sympathy for the richest woman in England? No one, that"s who. Even as a child when she cried, some undergardener would say, "Use gold to wipe away the tears." Never had there been anyone in her life who was there only because he wanted to be. Because she"d never been allowed oft? these grounds, every person she"d ever met had been paid by her father to be there.
For years she"d been introduced to people and watched their eyes change. So many times young men had come to the house and, not knowing who she was, looked at her in speculation, either their eyes roaming her body or they"d dismissed her according to their taste. But when they"d heard she was the legendary Maidenhall heiress-oh yes, she was not so isolated that she"d never heard that-their eyes changed. Interested eyes turned to fawning. Disinterested eyes became alert. Never once had Axia not seen the change in the eyes. Or in the manner and voice. Sometimes people were rude to her to show they didn"t care. When she was a child, a few people that she"d just met told her they weren"t going to allow her to treat them badly, as though it were a foregone conclusion that she would be a monster. She"d had a teacher whose favorite expression was, "Your father"s money doesn"t allow you to-"
"My father"s money doesn"t allow me freedom," she said aloud. The freedom to walk through a village fair and watch a puppet show, the freedom to have someone like or dislike me according to who I am.
"The right to have a normal marriage," she whispered and had to swallow tears. Any man who would imprison his only child so that the mystery of her would enhance her worth was not going to waste her on a strong, healthy husband. She wasn"t sure what was wrong with Gregory Bolingbrooke, but she knew something was. Every time she asked one of her father"s emissaries what her betrothed was like, the man"s eyes skidded to one side. It was her guess that he was mad. Or evil. Or diseased. Or maybe all three. Whatever he was, his father was willing to pay Perkin Maidenhall a fortune to bring the Maidenhall heiress into the family, with the stipulation, of course, that upon Perkin"s death his daughter was to inherit everything.
Of course, Axia knew her father better than other people did. It wouldn"t surprise her to hear that her father had sold everything just before he died and buried all the proceeds where no one could find them. Maybe he wouldn"t be able to take it with him, but he could prevent others from getting it. And Axia knew better than anyone that he loved to lock his possessions away.
So now, tomorrow, she was to start on the greatest adventure she was ever going to have in her life. She had no illusions that her life as the wife of Gregory Bolingbrooke would be any freer than her life had been so far. At least her father allowed her painting and drawing materials. What if her husband-or his father who seemed to control everything-believed that women should sew and pray and nothing else?
"Aaaargh!" Axia said, again beating her fists against the bed. So far she"d done well. She"d arranged to escape being the Maidenhall heiress for the entire journey. Oh, in the last day, the men and women on the estate had taken delight in not opening doors for her; the cook had chased her out of the kitchen, and one of the servants had snapped at her to get out of the way, but nothing really awful had happened. No, they were just pleased to be able to pretend that she was an "ordinary" person.
But in Axia"s eyes she was ordinary. "Ordinary as a weed in a flower patch," Frances had said once when they were children. "And just as strong," Axia said before she pushed Frances backward into a newly manured flowerbed.
"Ordinary," she said aloud now. "Ordinary, but not free."
So, she thought, what would an ordinary person do now? She would apologize to James Montgomery and get on his good side is what she thought. Her immediate response to that thought was, I"d rather eat dirt.
Her nails bit into her hands at the memory of how he"d looked at the beautiful Frances. Yesterday he"d been looking at her, Axia, with interest, and the next day he was swooning over the rich Frances.
As for what he did afterward, Axia refused to remember. The many snickers she"d heard throughout the estate might have something to do with why she"d been hiding, er, resting in her room most of today.
"d.a.m.n him!" she said aloud. He never even asked, just a.s.sumed she was jealous, spiteful, and... and was capable of murder!
The tears returned, but she made herself sit up and clear her eyes. Just in front of her was an embroidered plaque, Carpe diem. Seize the day. It was her motto. Take everything you could get from every day. Take the sunshine; take the raspberry tart off the windowsill; steal a kiss if you could; stay up all night and let the next day take care of itself. Tode said such a motto was going to get her into trouble someday, but Axia had laughed and said, "I hope so. Just so I am not bored."
Trouble is what I want, she thought now, then giggled at a thought. "I ought to show up on Gregory"s doorstep pregnant. That would break the contract." She stopped smiling and grimaced. "Or at least prevent me from having a madman"s mad baby."
Abruptly, she realized it had grown dark, and no one had come in to light her candles. She realized that this night people were showing the Maidenhall heiress that they were just as good as she was.
Frowning, feeling sorry for herself, Axia got off the bed, rearranged her clothing, combed her hair, and started to leave the room. On impulse, she turned back and s.n.a.t.c.hed a pretty little embroidered cap off the wooden stand on the table under the window. It was the only thing she possessed that had belonged to her mother: several layers of dark blue silk embroidered all over with fantastic beasts such as dragons and unicorns and griffins. As a child Axia had spent hours contemplating the cap, and now it was her most precious possession. She rarely wore it and only when she needed comfort-which she did now.
Outside it was a cool spring evening, but the budding trees made the air fragrant. If she wouldn"t miss any of the people from the estate, she"d miss her garden, she thought as she ran across the grounds, securely pinning her mother"s cap onto her thick hair. Because most of the staff were inside having their supper, Axia had nearly all the garden to herself.
Walking along the north wall, farthest from the house, she noticed the top of one of the walls had been damaged and the guarding spikes were missing. As she made a mental note to tell someone to fix it, she saw fresh cuts on the overhanging branch of an oak tree. Puzzled for a moment, she wondered what the gardeners had been doing to create such marks.
"That"s how he got in," she said in wonder, then looked to see if anyone had heard her. No one was about. She could see now that he"d thrown a rope over the branch and swung up and over. Simple when you knew how to do it.
Axia didn"t hesitate but lifted her skirts and ran for the nearest garden shed to get a length of rope. Fifteen minutes later, after very little struggle, she was over the wall.
For a moment, Axia leaned back against the bricks, still warm from the day"s sun and looked about her. In the growing dark, she could see across fields to houses, to pastures. She could see people-strangers, people who were not paid by her father-walking down lanes. Her heart was pounding, and she almost grabbed the rope to swing back inside the safety of the walls.
But her fear soon turned to curiosity when she heard voices around the corner of the wall to her left. Slowly, tiptoeing so as not to make noise, she crept around the wall to see three tents there, one of them flying a flag of three gold leopards.
"Maybe if I shoved a barrel of sugar down his throat, that would sweeten his temper," she heard a man say, and Axia flattened herself but not before she saw that they were the two men who"d been with him. That man who"d-She was not going to remember that!
"With or without the barrel?" the other man said.
"With. Staves and all. Wide end first."
Who were they talking about, Axia wondered. Whose temper needed sweetening? Not hers? Please, not her. But no, the first man had said he.
"Something set him off," the second man said, and he had a nice, pleasant voice. He sounded older than the other man.
"Couldn"t be the heiress. What a beauty. Sweet tempered, gentle, shy. No wonder her father kept her hidden away."
Axia"s fingers were biting into the rough brick behind her.
"I think it"s more the other one who"s bothering him," the second man said.
The first man snorted. "The pretty little one. It"s true she has a bosom to make a man weep, but a man would be insane to take on a temper like hers. Ah, there he is. Hide."
Axia"s eyes were so wide they hurt. A bosom to make a man weep? Was this her bosom? Was she the "other one"? She looked down as though seeing her own chest for the first time. She did have a great deal of trouble sleeping on her stomach. But she wasn"t sure how she compared to women in the world at large.
It was nearly full dark now, but Axia"s eyes were adjusting. She saw the slim boy, one of the guards her father had hired, slip out of the tent with the leopard pennant and hurry away toward the road leading into the village. And a moment later she saw him leave the tent and disappear into the darkness.
Overwhelmed with curiosity, Axia ran toward the tent quickly and silently. What was this man like? she wondered as she quietly slipped inside. There was only one candle lit, and it made shadows inside the tent, which was disappointingly empty: a folding table, a folding camp chair, and in the back, a bed of sorts, more a pallet with coa.r.s.e linen sheets and a wool blanket than a real bed. His clothes were lying across a big leather trunk, and she could not resist looking at them, touching the fine velvets and the satins. Without a doubt in her mind, she knew her father had not paid anyone enough to buy clothes like these. Unbidden, the thought came to her courting clothes. Clothes made to entice an heiress.
In disgust, she dropped a velvet sleeve, then heard a noise, and he was there, entering through the open flap. Instantly, Axia blew out the candle.
"Who is it?" he asked, his voice menacing, and she could see the outline of the sword in his hand.
Would he murder her for trespa.s.sing? She gulped. "It"s me," she said, her voice a high falsetto out of fear.
"Oh," he said flatly. "Get your clothes off and lie down. I will be there in a minute."
Axia"s jaw dropped nearly to her knees. Who did he think she was?
Frowning into the darkness, he said, "You are the girl Smith sent, aren"t you?" Between the darkness and all that he"d had to drink, he was having difficulty concentrating.