“James Montgomery,” he said, introducing himself as he dismounted. As he assumed they would, the three men gave him insolent looks. Jamie could have groaned, for those looks confirmed his knowledge that he’d have to show these men that he was to be obeyed. “There are only three of you?”
“Never had any complaints before,” one of the men said, puffing out his chest. “In fact, usually one’s enough.” He looked to the other men, and they smiled smugly in return.
Fat, Jamie thought. Fat bodies, fat brains.
“You forgot one,” one of the men said, repressing a derisive laugh. “There’s four of us.” At that the men fell into great guffaws of laughter, nearly crying at their own witticisms. One managed to recover himself enough to point. “Him. He’s the fourth.”
Standing to one side was a tall, thin, plain-faced boy. At his side was a sword that looked as though it had been brought to England by the Romans. He gave Jamie a tentative smile.
At that Jamie threw up his hands and walked toward a tree where Rhys and Thomas were standing and observing.
Thomas raised his brows in question.
“We will camouflage the wagons as best we can,” Jamie said. “To protect them as it is, I’ll need a hundred soldiers, not just that fat lot. I will get rid of them as soon as I can. As for now, I’ll have to put up with them.”
“And the boy?” Thomas asked.
“Send him back to his mother. Now, go, talk to the drivers. And, Rhys, do not get into a fight with those braggarts. I do not need your temper today.”
Rhys gave Jamie a hard look, but he nodded. Truthfully, he’d taken an instant dislike to those three, and he’d like to slice a bit off each of them.
“Merchants!” Jamie muttered as he strode back to the wagon.
The gate in the wall was still bolted, and Jamie now rang the bell for entry. But no one came. He rang again, but still nothing.
Much to his disgust, he found the three men standing behind him, doing their best to loom over him. He knew their posture, what their bodies were saying: they meant to establish their superiority from the beginning.
“We must warn you,” one of the men said in a smug way, “of ‘it.’”
Jamie did not have time for games. “Open the gate,” he bellowed. How could he protect a lone female if she were surrounded by wagons full of gold? What if something happened to Axia—no, he corrected himself—to Frances, the heiress? He was so busy with his own thoughts he hardly heard the men behind him.
“Have you seen it?” a man said, too near Jamie’s ear, as though they were confidants. “I cannot call it a man. It is stunted, with a raw face. A freak.”
Jamie did not turn around. He daren’t. Sometimes people called Berengaria a freak.
“If it comes out, I’ll have a hard time keeping my breakfast down.” The other men laughed at this.
“It can’t travel with us. I’ll be sick to look at it every day.”
One man laughed aloud. “We should throw it to the dogs along with the rest of the beggars and blind men.”
One minute Jamie was pounding on the door and the next he’d knocked one man to the ground, his foot on his throat, while his sword was at the second man’s throat. Out of nowhere Rhys and Thomas appeared, Thomas with a dagger at the neck of the third man, Rhys taking charge of the one under Jamie’s foot.
“Out of here,” Jamie said through his teeth. “All of you leave before I drain your blood just for the pleasure of it.” He could see that the men wanted to retaliate, and he knew he’d have to watch his back for a while, but they soon scurried away, mumbling curses under their breaths.
“And now how do we guard the wagons?” Thomas asked in disgust as he resheathed his sword. He’d heard what the men said, and when the word blind was mentioned, he’d known what was going to happen.
“And what about the boy?” Rhys asked, as annoyed with Jamie as Thomas was. “We don’t need children along when we have women to protect.”
Suddenly, Rhys was flat on his back. One minute standing, the next sprawling. Over him stood the boy, his corroded, pitted old sword at Rhys’s throat, “Shall I slay him, my lord?” the boy asked.
Although Rhys could see no humor in the situation, both Jamie and Thomas did, as well as the wagon drivers who’d eagerly watched all of it. When Rhys moved in a way that let Jamie know he was going to teach the boy a lesson or two, Jamie prevented him with a wave of his hand. “What is your name?”
“Smith, sir.”
“Have you done any fighting?” Jamie knew of course that he hadn’t, but his test was of the boy’s honesty.
For a moment the boy looked as though he were planning an elaborate story, but then he grinned, his face as plain and as wholesome as the daisies inside the cloak Jamie had in the wagon. “Never done anything except help my father farm, sir.”
Thomas and Jamie smiled at that, and Rhys almost did. He was never one to hold a grudge, and the boy had courage. “You are hired,” Jamie said. After directing the boy to fetch the cloak from the wagon, he turned to the gate bell again.
But before he touched the bell, the gate swung open, and standing there was the “it” he’d heard of. He was a young man, with a tall, strong upper body but made short by crippled legs. Down his face were long, deep scars, all on the left side, running down his neck and into his shirt. The scars had healed at odd angles, and so they pulled his face into a grotesque caricature of a human face. And, obviously, when the cuts were new, something had been put into them so they were forever red and raw looking. It was Jamie’s guess that this man had not been born with these physical deformities.
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 passed him, he put a hand on Tode’s shoulder and gave a squeeze of reassurance. 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 fiancé.”
“If I may be so permitted,” he said, smiling as he withdrew a document 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, damn 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 w
ould 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 off 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—”
The Heiress Page 6
