The Heiress Read online

  “I see,” she said. “On the journey you mean to make her change her mind and declare for you.”

  “Do you think I can?” he said, and it was the first honest thing he’d said to her.

  She almost patted his arm in sympathy. “Frances will love you,” she said while laughing inside at her lie. Frances hated anything as splendid as herself. She liked ugly things around her so she would glow more radiantly. “So, you’ve come to marry the Maidenhall heiress? Your family and lands fallen on hard times, have they?”

  His eyes sparkled. “I knew I could trust you. From the moment I saw you standing there, brush in hand, I knew you were a trustworthy person. We shall be great friends, you and I. Do you travel with her?”

  “Oh yes. Actually, we are cousins.”

  “Yes,” he said, smiling, “I too have rich cousins.”

  “Tell me, er, ah … I do not know your name.”

  “James Montgomery, Earl of Dalkeith. A title, but, alas, no land and no gold to go with it. And you are Mistress … ?”

  “Maidenhall, of course, but alas, I am only Axia Maidenhall.”

  “An unusual name for an unusual lady. Now tell me what I must do to impress her. A gift perhaps. Sonnets to her beauty? A rare fruit? Yellow roses perhaps? Come tell me, set me a quest. Nothing is too difficult to obtain.”

  “Daisies,” Axia said without hesitation.

  “Daisies? That most humble of flower?”

  “Yes. Frances does not like anything to compete with her beauty. Roses are competition, whereas daisies are a plain setting for a sparkling gem.”

  “You’re very clever, aren’t you?”

  “People in my station in life must be in order to survive.”

  He smiled at her. “Yes, we do understand each other.”

  “A cloak lined with daisies,” Axia said. “To be wrapped about her shoulders while she stands with her eyes closed. Is that not romantic?”

  “Yes, very.” He was looking at her in speculation. “Do you tell me the truth?”

  “I swear in God’s Holy Name that the Maidenhall heiress loves daisies.”

  “And why are you willing to help me?”

  She ducked her head shyly. “You will allow me to paint the portraits of all your impoverished family?”

  “Yes,” he said, smiling. “And I will pay you well. I have a twin sister.”

  Axia kept her eyes lowered so he would not see what she thought of his vanity, assuming she’d betray her own cousin just to paint some characterless beauty. “You honor me, my lord.”

  “You may call me Jamie.” At that he leaned forward as though to kiss her mouth, but she turned her head so he kissed her cheek instead.

  “That is not part of the bargain,” she said in what she hoped was a good imitation of Frances warding off her twelfth suitor of that day. “Not yet,” she added, then scurried away from him and back to her easel. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him running across the orchard, very fast for a man of his size.

  Picking up a paintbrush, she held it toward her canvas but could not paint because she was laughing too hard. Wait until tomorrow, she thought, when he saw the truth, that she was the heiress and Frances was only a poor paid companion.

  But in the middle of her laughing, her body changed to shaking. Fear was replacing her laughter. If this James Montgomery could so easily come onto the grounds, so could others, men who hated her father for one reason or another (and they were legion), men who wanted to hold her for ransom. Men who—

  One minute she was standing behind her easel, and the next she had fallen to the ground in a swoon.

  As promised, Jamie wrote to his sisters that night. What to tell them? he thought as he picked up a pen, then smiled. They want a fairy tale so I shall give them one. A man who has to struggle to reach the maiden, then the maiden being beautiful beyond all imagining, as Frances Maidenhall was.

  My dearest sisters,

  I have met her. My lessons learned in escaping Edward’s tortures at last had some benefit as I used an overhanging tree branch to go over a high wall. The dogs were easy after I borrowed a cloth from a gardener’s shed. It was an adventure worthy of Joby!

  The Maidenhall heiress was in the garden sitting for her portrait, as still as a statue and as perfect as Venus. It does not surprise me that her father keeps her locked away, for her extraordinary beauty is worth more than jewels.

  I did not speak to her, only gazed upon her, basking in the radiance of her and enjoying her loveliness.

  Jamie paused. Yes, that should do it. Adventure and romance. What else to make them stop worrying? Ah yes, to reassure them that he had some help.

  I questioned a girl painting the heiress’s portrait. She was like a pretty sparrow caught in a cage, but she had a clever tongue on her and she is to help me win the heiress’s hand. When this is all done I shall bring this sparrow to you to paint your portraits.

  With all my love,

  James

  “That idiot!” Joby exploded upon reading the letter. “He thinks to use a plain woman to help him win the hand of a beautiful one? I know I would not help him.” Several times young men had seen Berengaria from a distance and had asked Joby for an introduction. Without exception Joby had always been enraged at this.

  “Our brother is in love,” Berengaria said softly.

  “Do you think so? Yes, yes, he does go on and on about her beauty. I am glad. Jamie is plagued with scruples and a conscience. Were it me—”

  “No, no, he is in love with that plain sparrow.”

  “You are insane,” Joby said in a way that carried no animosity to it.

  “We shall see,” Berengaria said, smiling. “We shall see.”

  Chapter 4

  Well!” Rhys said, glaring at Jamie over a mug of ale. “You saw her. What was she like?”

  The three of them, Thomas, Rhys, and Jamie, had been friends for years. They’d been through battles together, shared food when they had it, did without when they didn’t. Jamie had a way about him that could make a person feel that he was soft and sweet and easy to manipulate, but Rhys and Thomas had learned all too well that when anyone overstepped the mark, Jamie’s temper could make heads roll.

  But over the years Rhys and Thomas had learned that Jamie had one major weakness: he thought women were angels come to earth. Of course, with Jamie’s looks, women often were angelic. Everywhere they went, every country, whether women were fair Danes or the dark beauties of the Holy Lands, the most vile-tempered virago turned to honey when Jamie approached.

  Rhys remembered in France being held off by a farm wife with a pitchfork, then Jamie walked up and smiled at her, and minutes later she was digging out bottles of wine from under the floorboards and offering them feather beds for the night. Or at least one feather bed. To Jamie. To Rhys and Thomas she pointed at the floor.

  Had Jamie been a different sort of man, he could have taken advantage of this, but he did not. He was polite and courteous and turned down most offers made to him. “It would not be right to the woman’s husband,” he’d said more than once, a statement that made any man within hearing distance shout with laughter.

  What time the men had spent at court could have kept Jamie very busy as there were few women, married or single, who did not try to get Jamie into bed with them, but for the most part, he declined. Not that he was a prude or celibate by any means; he was just cautious.

  “I do not try to get myself killed on a battlefield, so why should I risk death for a night with a married woman?” Jamie asked. “Or have the father of a virgin come after me? And I cannot afford mistresses.”

  As close as he was to his men, as much as they’d been through together, they knew little about Jamie’s life with women. Sometimes his bed was left empty for nights in a row and the next day he yawned often, but he would say nothing about where he’d been or with whom he’d been.

  Now that Jamie would consider marriage showed how worried he was about his family’s finances.