The Heiress Read online

Jamie turned away so Axia could not see his face. That night with that girl haunted him. He seemed to remember the smell of her hair, the feel of her skin. “What has happened to her? I left money for her,” he said softly.

  “Do you think I was going to send her to your family? I sent her to—” Where? Axia thought, then remembered she was supposed to be Frances. “I sent her to my family, to my father and sisters.” Now she watched Jamie’s face carefully. Why couldn’t he see that she was Diana? And what did he feel for her? Why was he so gentle to Diana and so harsh to Axia?

  Taking a deep breath, Axia gave him her coldest look. “As for your sermon on my behavior, yes, I will stay away from you. But for Frances, she has been under my care for years, and as you can see, she has come to no harm. As for you, in truth, nothing will please me more than to forget that you are alive.” As she stepped past him, she moved her skirts aside. “To me, sir, you are dead.” With that she left the room.

  Jamie collapsed onto the window seat. All his life he’d been blessed with having no problems with women. Really, none at all. His sister Joby, who plagued every other male she met, only amused Jamie, and when she did get too outrageous, he merely had to lift an eyebrow to bring her back into line. Berengaria was an angel. The queen, who gave so many problems to so many men, smiled at Jamie and danced with him.

  It seemed that all over the world women smiled at him. But not this girl with the big brown eyes and hair that had to be the thickest, most luxurious, most—

  “Hell and damnation!” he said, then purposefully touched his swollen eye so a shaft of pain shot through his face. She wasn’t human! She’d tried to kill her more beautiful cousin, had made him and her cousin into a public freak show, had ridiculed him, taunted him, embarrassed him. The list never seemed to end.

  And now she’d interfered with Diana, his sweet, funny Diana, who’d given him a wonderful gift.

  “Damn her!” Jamie said aloud. All he’d wanted of her was her word of honor—if she knew what that meant—that she would behave on the journey. Why did she have to dramatize everything? And what did she mean that he was dead to her?

  When the door opened and he saw Rhys, Jamie knew his time for reflection was over. Frances, he thought. He must think of Frances and what his family needed. It didn’t help any that that brat Axia had said what Jamie felt, that he was courting the Maidenhall gold.

  “The wagons are ready for your inspection.”

  “Yes, of course,” Jamie said, rising. They would leave early in the morning, and there was much to see to. At the door, he paused. “Rhys, do you know anything about women?”

  “Not a drop in the ocean,” he said pleasantly. “And if any man says he does, he’s a liar.”

  “Mmmm,” was all Jamie could say in agreement as he left the room.

  Chapter 10

  Three days, Axia thought, stretching in the delicious sunshine. She was sitting on a little ridge, the wagons below and behind her. Before her was a field of wildflowers, a pretty little village in the distance. If she were a landscape painter, this is what she’d paint, but now she wanted to sit here alone and look at the world, or at least this tiny bit of it.

  She’d had three days and two nights of freedom, of seeing something besides what was inside brick walls. There’d been villages with houses with the upper floor hanging over the street. There were shops full of goods she’d never seen before, such as religious relics and children’s toys.

  There was food: cream cakes, honey cakes, sugared currant buns. The Maidenhall cooks had been adequate, but none of them had ever been creative. When Axia saw a baker’s shop with a loaf of bread in the front that had been shaped into a standing, roaring bear, a snarling dog before it, she nearly swooned with delight.

  And Rhys had bought the loaf for her. Dear Rhys, she thought now. Both he and Thomas had been so kind and generous to her these last days.

  After that horrible lecture by the traitor, James Montgomery, the day before they left, Axia had vowed never to speak to him again except when it could not be helped. And so far she’d not had to address a word to him. In the first wagon was Frances, her maid, Violet, and the driver, George. In the second wagon was Axia, Tode, and their driver, Roger. Jamie and his two men rode along on horseback.

  From the first day the journey had been joyous to Axia. For the first half of that day she’d said not a word but had gasped at people and houses, at the rutted road, at dilapidated carts carrying goods. On the first afternoon they had stopped to water the horses, and there were three boys playing with a hoop. Another child held a wooden cup that had a ball attached to a string; the child was trying to bounce the ball into the cup. Curious, Axia went toward the children, and because she was small and not much older than they were, she was soon taking lessons from all four of them on hoops and ball bouncing. When Rhys came to fetch her, he informed all of them he was the champion ball bouncer and was soon trying to prove it. When Thomas came to fetch Rhys, Thomas said he could twirl a hoop the best of anyone in the world and started to show them. When Jamie came to get all of them, he found four children and three adults laughing hilariously and playing children’s games. Smiling, Jamie went toward them, but Axia froze, handed the cup back to the child, and walked away, her back stiff. And that abruptly ended the laughter.

  After that day, Axia and Rhys and Thomas had become great friends, the men riding their horses on either side of her and answering all of Axia’s questions. Tode liked to drive the wagon when there were no people near, so Roger went inside and slept. And the four of them made a merry group, laughing, telling riddles, trying to dredge up every children’s game they could remember. Because Axia had spent the first several years of her life exclusively with adults, she had missed most childish activities. The first child Axia remembered seeing was Tode when he was already twelve and the second one was Frances, who had certainly never been any fun.

  In the evenings she drew portraits. Each night they had pulled their wagons into a field, and under Axia’s direction, the drivers had built a camp fire and hung the cast iron pot full of a stew made from meat purchased in the nearest village.

  During the day Rhys and Thomas fed Axia. When the road passed through a village, one of the men would stop at the local bakery or sweet shop, the butcher’s, or even the grog shop to see what he could find that perhaps Axia had not eaten or drunk before. At first they’d bought two of everything and had offered one to Frances; after all, she was the heiress, the one who’d been locked away all her life. But Frances looked at the men as though they were daft. “How can I eat that now?” she asked, annoyed. “My hands would be sticky.”

  They never tried Frances again after the morning of the second day, but they delighted in feeding Axia anything they could find. And in the evening she rewarded them by sketching events of the day. It was as though her mind memorized everything she saw in perfect detail. There was Rhys reaching for a bun, the baker’s wife’s spoon just about to come down on his hand. There was Thomas puzzling over a wooden toy and a little girl looking up at him in impatience because he could not figure the toy out. There was Tode driving the wagon, showing only the unscarred side of his face, and smiling. There was Roger asleep and snoring, a fly hovering over his lips.

  “And what of Jamie?” Thomas asked softly, marveling at her drawings.

  After a quick look at Jamie, standing some feet away, Axia dipped her pen into ink and sketched quickly. In minutes she showed the drawing. There was Frances’s beautiful face, but her body was only a pile of bags of gold. Jamie leaned over her, his face leering, kissing her fingers that peeped out of the bags, his other hand behind his back holding a certificate of marriage.

  No one meant to laugh. It was a hateful drawing and they knew it, but Roger the driver thought it was hilarious, and when he howled with laughter, so did the others.

  And, of course, that was when Jamie chose to walk over to see what everyone was enjoying.

  With a smug little smile, Axia handed him the dr