The Heiress Read online

  “Make it three hundred acres.”

  “It is yours.”

  “Then I am—”

  “Quiet!” Jamie suddenly commanded as, standing, he moved to the other side of the little camp, motioning with his hand that all of them were to crouch down and be quiet while his eyes searched the forest. Tode put his arm protectively over Berengaria, hiding her from whatever it was that Jamie saw.

  After a moment, Jamie gave a little smile, then turned to Axia, who had flattened herself on the ground. “It is your cousin,” he said, wonder in his voice. “I would recognize the brilliance of that dress anywhere.”

  With disbelief in her eyes, Axia lifted her head and looked over the fallen log Tode and Berengaria were crouching behind, and there, sauntering toward them, as though she had all the time in the world, was Frances.

  As soon as Axia could believe what she saw, she jumped up and ran toward her cousin, then stood in hesitation when she was in front of her. For all that Frances must have been through, she looked the same, but at the same time there was something different about her. Just like Tode, Axia thought.

  “Well?” Frances demanded. “Are you not glad to see me?”

  With that she opened her arms, and the two women ran toward each other, hugging, and Axia was surprised to find that she was glad to see her cousin.

  In the next minute Jamie was on the other side of Frances, ready to ask her many questions, but Frances said she had nothing to say until she’d had something to eat. Then she shocked Jamie by telling him where she had hidden a bag full of food.

  “Do not look so shocked, Axia,” she said, laughing, after Jamie was gone. “How do you think my family fed itself before they had access to the Maidenhall money?”

  “I—I do not know.”

  “Thievery, that’s how. When I was a mere four years old, I was an expert chicken thief, and I could steal eggs as fast as they were laid.” With that, she turned away and went toward the others in the camp.

  Axia stood staring after her cousin, because in all the time she’d known Frances, all she’d heard was that Frances’s family was the kindest, most wonderful she’d ever imagined. Recovering herself somewhat, Axia followed her cousin back to the camp.

  An hour later, a meal had been cooked—Frances had helped—and all of them were sitting in a circle around Frances, waiting for her to tell the story of her escape.

  Axia was feeling very strange. It was as though everything she’d ever known in her life was changing. Her beloved Tode, who had always looked at Axia with adoring eyes, was now looking at Berengaria with love. And helpless Frances had managed to escape from a stone prison and had fried bacon and eggs over a campfire as though it were something she had done a thousand times. But Axia knew that Frances could not even tie her own shoelaces, much less feed herself and certainly not others.

  And there was something different in her manner, something … Axia thought that maybe it was self-confidence. Frances seemed so much more sure of herself than she ever had before.

  “Tell us,” Joby urged, stretched on the grass, looking up at Frances and wondering how Jamie could have turned down this woman for Axia. But then she had had some fun with Axia and … Well, maybe Axia wasn’t so bad after all. “Tell us how you escaped,” she said again.

  “I painted doors on the walls,” Frances answered with a smile, looking about the group expectantly, but there was no enlightenment on the faces of anyone.

  But then Tode began to laugh. “Like Axia,” he said. When Frances looked at him, Axia saw a look pass between them that she had never seen before. It was as though they shared something private and secret.

  Frances motioned for Tode to tell. “It was a trick Axia once played on everyone when she twelve,” he said. “She recruited all the workmen on the estate, then stayed up all night painting half-open doorways everywhere. There were mouse holes, tall doors, short doors.”

  “And a few windows,” Frances added.

  “The cook drank too much, and Axia almost drove the woman crazy, because for the next several days, she kept walking out open doors, only to find herself running into a wall,” Tode said, smiling.

  Axia had forgotten the incident entirely, but now she also remembered the time when she painted daisies all over a wall of Frances’s bedchamber. Considering what had happened with Jamie and the cloak, she hoped neither Tode nor Frances would mention that. “How did you get out?” she urged, trying to divert Tode and Frances from a longer rendition of her childhood pranks.

  “I asked myself what Axia would do in this situation, then I did it,” Frances said proudly, then looking at Jamie, she said, “Axia is very clever, you know.”

  At that Axia’s lower jaw dropped open so far her teeth nearly fell out, and she would have commented if she hadn’t been sure the world was in imminent danger of ending.

  “I must begin at the beginning,” Frances said. “At first everything was fine. Henry was very nice to me because all he wanted was to marry Jamie’s sister. He planned to exchange me for her, but then his awful brother came and said, ‘Henry, you are holding the Maidenhall heiress captive, and you want to trade her for some girl who can’t afford to fix her own roof?’ So he told Henry that he should marry me himself, and I was to be held prisoner in a stone tower until the marriage could be arranged.”

  Frances took a breath and looked at her audience. Usually, Axia’s vivacity overrode any beauty and especially any story that Frances might have to tell. But now everyone was looking and listening to Frances. And she couldn’t help reminding herself that it would end as soon as it was found out that she wasn’t actually the Maidenhall heiress. For all that she had been kidnapped and held prisoner, Frances liked being the Maidenhall heiress as much as Axia hated it.

  She continued her story. “I was trying to make Henry like me, so I told him that I was the one who had painted the dragon wagon. Oh, I was so afraid on the journey south. When I realized he was not the one Axia, uh …” She glanced nervously from Axia to Jamie.

  “He knows,” Axia supplied, nodding toward Jamie.

  “Anyway,” Frances continued, “Henry thought I was the greatest painter in the world; I just hoped I’d never have to prove it. So later when he locked me away, it seemed natural to him for me to ask for paints, especially since I was so afraid—and so alone. Only Tode was allowed in twice to try to cheer me up. If it hadn’t been for him, I …” At that she looked away and blushed.

  Which made Axia look in consternation from Frances to Tode to Berengaria, whose mouth was now in a prim little line.

  Frances continued. “I thought for days of some way to get out but could think of nothing, as Henry came personally to give me my food. Perhaps I could have persuaded another man, but not Henry. Once he has his mind made up, nothing changes it.”

  Pausing, she smiled at her audience. “Then I thought, What would Axia do? and I remembered all those painted doors. So I begged Henry for pigments, so I could make myself some paints. Just as I’ve seen you do so often, Axia. When he gave them to me, I stayed up all night and painted three doors on the walls of my room and one window, complete with a bird on the sill.”

  She looked at Axia, her eyes sparkling. “And out the window was a field full of daisies. I’ve seen Axia paint a good number of daisies, so I was rather good at painting them,” she said with a laugh, looking at Axia’s pink face. “Then I painted the back of the real door to look like the stone of the wall.”

  She looked in apology to Axia. “My painting wasn’t very good, but Henry’s eyesight was so poor that I thought I might be able to fool him long enough to escape.”

  “And it did fool him,” Jamie said, making everyone turn to look at him. “I did not dare to try to escape from the tunnels myself for fear of what would be done to Frances if they found me gone. But after several days, I heard the guards gossiping that she had escaped, but there seemed to be some great secret attached to her method of escape. However, with some persuasion, I coaxed the gu