The Heiress Read online

  “Yes, I’m sure you’ll be a great deal of help,” Joby said contemptuously.

  Tode did not bother to speak, but the look he gave Joby made her shut up. He let her know that she was a child, and as such, if she wanted to stay with the grown-ups, she had better mind her manners. Neither Axia nor Tode knew it, but it was the same look that Jamie often sent his little sister’s way.

  “I can come and go freely. No one notices someone who looks like me. I came for just these few hours to explain to you what was wrong.”

  “What of Frances?” Axia asked. “Is she cared for?”

  To Axia’s disbelief, she thought that for a moment Tode blushed, but surely, she must have been wrong.

  “Frances is all right. She is being held in a stone room at the top of the old tower. She is comfortable but frightened. Oliver tends to her himself and rarely allows anyone in to see her.” He gave a bit of a smile. “Except for someone to cheer her up.”

  Axia reached across the table to take Tode’s hand. “Tell me what I can do. I will give my life if it will get Jamie out. Please let me do something.”

  For a moment, his eyes locked with hers, and Tode saw there what had only been a shadow before. Axia loved Jamie. Loved him as she’d never loved anyone else. For a moment Tode felt jealousy, but then he controlled himself and squeezed her hand in return. “There is nothing you can do. I can get into the tunnels well enough, as the guard lets me pass. It is just getting Jamie out that is difficult. I cannot very well lead him through the Great Hall and out. For all that your Jamie is a great soldier,” he said, smiling warmly at Axia, “I do not think he can fight all of Oliver’s men.”

  “What other way is there to get him out?” Axia asked.

  “I cannot tell what the tunnels were, but they seem to go on for miles. Whether they are old mines or crypts, I do not know. Nor do I think Oliver knows, or if he did know, he has forgotten. I think they are mayhaps Roman, and some of them have collapsed. Whatever they were, only a mole could find his way through them.”

  “Or a blind person,” Berengaria said softly.

  “Not on your life!” Joby shouted. “Jamie would—”

  “Quiet!” Tode commanded, then turned to Berengaria, his eyes searching her face. “Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “A blind person would have a great advantage in the darkness of those tunnels. The first day I was allowed to see Jamie, so I took a torch and tried to see where the tunnels led, but the guards saw my torch and stopped me. Another day I spent combing the forest near Oliver’s, trying to find the exit to the tunnels, but I could find nothing. For all anyone knows, they have no exit.”

  “But if we could hide Jamie in the tunnels until a rescue comes, it will get him out from under this Oliver’s rule,” Axia said, her eyes showing her rising fear. When Tode would not meet her eyes, she said, “You are not telling all. I know it! You are holding something back.”

  “Yes,” Berengaria said as she reached for Tode’s hand and ran her thumb over the palm. “There is more danger than you are telling us.”

  “Yesterday morning, Oliver’s brother arrived.”

  When Axia heard the sharp intake of breath from both Joby and Berengaria, she knew there was danger, true danger.

  Tode lowered his eyes and his voice. “The brother, Ronald, told Oliver that he was stupid for wanting a poor Montgomery for a wife when he had the Maidenhall heiress locked away in a tower. Since the brother is already married, he is trying to force Frances to marry Oliver. But Jamie has told them that Maidenhall has made him Frances’s guardian, and she cannot marry without his permission. But, of course, Jamie will not sign any papers giving Frances to Oliver, so he is being held without food and only enough water to sustain life.” Lifting his head, Tode looked at Axia. “He will need a doctor when he gets out.”

  At that Axia rose from the bench and went to look out the window, not wanting anyone to see into her eyes.

  “What has been done to him?” Berengaria whispered.

  “Repeated whippings,” was Tode’s reply. “I was the only one allowed to see him and then only because they did not know that I had ever met him before. For all that has been done to Jamie, he is still making Oliver’s brother believe that he has some hold over Perkin Maidenhall, and it is up to Jamie to agree to the marriage.”

  “So this protects Frances,” Axia said softly, turning back to the group at the table. “Whether she marries or not is out of her hands and in Jamie’s.”

  “Yes.”

  Chapter 27

  Drawing the horses to a halt, Tode sat atop the wagon seat with his breath held as he watched the approach of armed men. Because he knew some of them by sight, he knew they were Oliver’s men. One disadvantage of looking as he did was that people recognized him and remembered him.

  But when the men saw him and started punching each other and grinning, he knew they would not be suspicious. Which was good, because he had three females hidden in the back of the wagon, lying under great mounds of flowers.

  “And what do you have here?” one of the men asked, already laughing at the very sight of Tode.

  “Flowers for the Maidenhall heiress,” Tode said jovially. “What better way to court a woman than with flowers? She will be his by tonight. In marriage or out.”

  Under the coarse linen that covered the three of them, Axia listened in wonder, as she had never heard this tone in Tode’s voice before. By nature, he was a somber man, taking his duties rather too seriously at times. But the man speaking now had a tone in his voice that seemed to expect people to laugh at whatever he said.

  And Oliver’s men did laugh. “You’d better replant those,” one of the men called. “The heiress won’t be needing them.”

  “At least not for marrying poor ol’ Henry,” another man called.

  “Ah, then,” Tode said, “I shall use them for my own wedding.”

  At that the men laughed as though that were the funniest thing they had ever heard. Inside the wagon, Axia felt Berengaria, lying beside her, tense, her hands made into fists at her side.

  “Maybe you can marry the heiress,” one of the men said. “If you can find her.”

  “Oh?” Tode asked as though it meant nothing to him. “Has she managed to hide herself, or has her father come to fetch her?”

  Only Axia heard the fear in Tode’s voice at the mention of Perkin Maidenhall.

  “Escaped,” one of the men said. “Painted her way out,” he said, then shouted with laughter. “If you see her, tell her to find a door and come back inside.”

  After that the men were laughing too hard to speak anymore, and without a word, they left Tode and his wagon full of flowers alone in the road.

  Ten minutes later, Tode had moved the wagon under the dense shade of an oak tree and stepped down to get a drink of water from a little barrel strapped to the side of the wagon.

  “Did you hear?” he asked, looking through the great crack in the sideboards at the three pairs of eyes staring at him.

  Joby did not wait to give an answer but threw back the covering. When she had agreed to being secreted inside a wagon, she had not thought how horrible it would be. “I will find her,” she announced as she leaped over the side.

  “You know nothing,” Tode said, feeling that this gift was his responsibility until Jamie was freed.

  “I know every rabbit hole of this country, and maybe I can find the exit to your tunnels. If this city-bred Frances of yours is lost, she will not know where to go.”

  “I cannot allow—” Tode began.

  Pushing aside great armfuls of flowers, Berengaria sat up and said, “She knows all the shepherds and cowherds in the county. No woman will be able to escape their notice. She must go.”

  Beside Berengaria, Axia sat up. “And you said we do not need her. Oh, Tode, please do not allow Frances to wander about alone. You know that she is helpless. She can do nothing on her own.”

  “You are not right about that,” Tode said, frowning, but then he knew there was