The Heiress Read online

  Lightly, she clasped her hands behind his neck, her face very close to his. “Is it truly only my father’s gold that you care about? Do you not find me even a bit attractive?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said and moved his lips close to hers to kiss her.

  But his lips did not reach hers because Axia kicked at a burning branch so hard it went flying through the air and landed on the ground near Jamie’s leg, where it promptly set the edge of his doublet on fire.

  All hell broke out as Tode and one of the drivers helped put out Jamie’s burning clothing, with Rhys and Thomas leaping out of the tents, swords drawn.

  When at last he was safe, unharmed, Jamie, shaking with rage, looked down at Axia.

  “So sorry,” she said, smiling at him. “I must have kicked a bit too hard. I hope I did not disturb your courting of my rich cousin.”

  “Axia,” Frances said under her breath, “I will get you for this.”

  Jamie was beginning to recover his power of speech. “Tonight you sleep in my tent with me. I will watch that you do nothing else to harm anyone.”

  She smiled at him. “I’d rather spend a week buried up to my neck in horse manure than spend one night in the same tent with you.”

  Jamie took a step toward her, but Tode put his body between them. “I will watch over her and protect her.”

  “Protect her?” Jamie gasped. “And who will protect us from her?”

  “I am not hurt,” Rhys said. “Are you injured, Thomas?”

  Thomas gave a tiny one-sided grin. His own father was a merchant, what Frances the heiress had referred to with so much disgust, so he wanted to take Axia’s side. “I am not injured in any way. Perhaps only one man in this company has been injured by this daughter-of-a-merchant.”

  Blinking, Axia looked up at the two men with love in her eyes.

  Jamie threw up his hands. “Go to bed all of you. I do not care where anyone sleeps.”

  And with that they dispersed for the night into two tents and two wagons.

  Chapter 11

  Wake up,” Axia whispered to Tode. He was sleeping under the painted wagon, next to the driver Roger, while Axia had the interior to herself. She had a bed on top of the bolts of cloth they’d stored there as part of their disguise.

  Sleepily, Tode roused himself. “Axia, it is not daylight yet. Nor will it be for hours by the look of it. Go back to bed.”

  “Where are all these wagons going?”

  With half-closed eyes Tode looked at the many wagons slowly making their way down the road but a few yards from their camp. “I do not know. I have never been here before. Go to bed.”

  “If you do not tell me, I will ask them.” Meaning that she would cause a commotion and wake up the entire camp, then no one would get any sleep.

  “I would assume it is market day in this village, and they are going to sell their wares,” he answered, then lay back down again.

  Standing, Axia looked at the wagons. Market day! She’d always wanted to see market day in a village. What Frances had said so nastily was true: Axia did send produce to the village, and afterward she asked hundreds of questions of the vendor.

  Bending, she shook Tode awake again. “Get up. We are going to the market.”

  “I …” Tode began, frowning.

  She knew what his worry was. He did not like to be seen by people. “Oh, do not fret. You will stand inside the wagon, and no one will see you.”

  Slowly, painfully, he crawled out from under the wagon. “You cannot do this. He will be very angry.”

  “He already hates me, so what does it matter?”

  “Axia …” Tode began in warning.

  “Please,” she whispered. “You know what awaits me. Do you think my new husband will allow me to attend the village market day? Or will he exhibit me like a freak? The Maidenhall heiress!” She said the last as though it were something vile and dirty.

  The words exhibit and freak made Tode agree. “But he will hear and—”

  “Not over the noise of the other wagons. Oh, Tode, please. I cannot allow this man to lock me away from all life. Maybe he will hear, but at least we can try.”

  Tode grinned, something he did only with Axia. “We can try to seize the day, can we not?”

  On impulse, she threw her arms around his neck and gave him a quick, fierce hug. “Thank you so much.”

  Axia didn’t spare the time to see the way her hug had affected Tode but scrambled under the wagon to wake Roger and try to silently escape the everwatchful eyes of James Montgomery.

  “She has gone,” Jamie said under his breath. His anger would not allow him to speak out loud, or he’d bellow so the stars would fall from the sky.

  Rhys, just crawling out of his tent, looked at the place where the big painted wagon had been last night. Over the last days he’d grown to like the firebreathing dragon and the lion that Jamie—a still nearly nude Jamie—was ready to slay. Under normal circumstances, he would have worried, would have suspected a kidnapping, but now he knew without a doubt that if there was a domestic problem, Axia would solve it. Yawning, he wondered what delicious thing she’d bring back for supper.

  “Wonder where she has taken it?” Thomas asked as he looked about as though the big wagon might be hiding behind a rock.

  Only Jamie was in a rage. “I see that neither of you think there has been foul play.”

  “She is with Tode,” Thomas said. “He will see that she is safe. And I am sure she will return soon.”

  Jamie looked at the two men as though they had lost their minds. They did not seem overly concerned that he had been commissioned to get the heiress safely to her fiancé. But this—this Axia thwarted him at every opportunity. “She must be found.” Turning to the maid who was laying out bread and cheese on the little table from Jamie’s tent, he said, “You must wake your mistress as—”

  He broke off because Frances came slowly out of the wagon, and insignificantly, he thought that she did not look so beautiful first thing in the morning. “She has stolen a wagon and gone,” Jamie said, not explaining who “she” was. “And I must find her and bring her back.”

  Frances did not like the early morning and especially did not like being confronted with Axia’s misdeeds the first thing of the day. “She has taken the wagon into the village,” she said, reaching for a mug of cider from her maid. Her gown was wrinkled, and she was annoyed with Axia for not having seen that it was properly packed.

  Jamie was too busy saddling his horse and too angry to hear her, but Rhys and Thomas, hands full of bread and cheese, turned to look at her. “Why did she want to go into the village?” Thomas asked.

  “To make a penny, of course,” Frances answered.

  When all three men looked at her in consternation, her lips tightened. When did she become Axia’s keeper? Nodding toward the people on the road a few yards away, all of them walking or riding toward the village in the near distance, she said, “There is a merchant’s fair, is there not? And money is exchanging hands?” Her voice was sarcastic. “If there is money to be made, then that is where Axia is.” She looked up at Jamie, her eyes narrowed. “I told you she had the heart and soul of a greedy little—”

  She didn’t finish the sentence because Jamie had mounted his horse and was lost in a cloud of dust as he thundered toward the village.

  As Jamie rode, he thought that he wasn’t sure he believed Frances. Why would a gift who lived with the Maidenhall heiress want to go into a country village on market day? And even though he remembered Tode’s words about Axia being good with money, he didn’t believe that termagant was good at anything except drawing pictures. How could she be when she’d been locked away all her life?

  No, he corrected himself, it was Frances who had been locked away. Axia had a father and sisters and had lived with them half her life and now visited them regularly.

  “Have you seen a wagon with—?” Jamie started to ask as soon as he reached the outskirts of the village, but he broke off when s