The Heiress Read online

  “James Montgomery,” he said, introducing himself as he dismounted. As he assumed they would, the three men gave him insolent looks. Jamie could have groaned, for those looks confirmed his knowledge that he’d have to show these men that he was to be obeyed. “There are only three of you?”

  “Never had any complaints before,” one of the men said, puffing out his chest. “In fact, usually one’s enough.” He looked to the other men, and they smiled smugly in return.

  Fat, Jamie thought. Fat bodies, fat brains.

  “You forgot one,” one of the men said, repressing a derisive laugh. “There’s four of us.” At that the men fell into great guffaws of laughter, nearly crying at their own witticisms. One managed to recover himself enough to point. “Him. He’s the fourth.”

  Standing to one side was a tall, thin, plain-faced boy. At his side was a sword that looked as though it had been brought to England by the Romans. He gave Jamie a tentative smile.

  At that Jamie threw up his hands and walked toward a tree where Rhys and Thomas were standing and observing.

  Thomas raised his brows in question.

  “We will camouflage the wagons as best we can,” Jamie said. “To protect them as it is, I’ll need a hundred soldiers, not just that fat lot. I will get rid of them as soon as I can. As for now, I’ll have to put up with them.”

  “And the boy?” Thomas asked.

  “Send him back to his mother. Now, go, talk to the drivers. And, Rhys, do not get into a fight with those braggarts. I do not need your temper today.”

  Rhys gave Jamie a hard look, but he nodded. Truthfully, he’d taken an instant dislike to those three, and he’d like to slice a bit off each of them.

  “Merchants!” Jamie muttered as he strode back to the wagon.

  The gate in the wall was still bolted, and Jamie now rang the bell for entry. But no one came. He rang again, but still nothing.

  Much to his disgust, he found the three men standing behind him, doing their best to loom over him. He knew their posture, what their bodies were saying: they meant to establish their superiority from the beginning.

  “We must warn you,” one of the men said in a smug way, “of ‘it.’”

  Jamie did not have time for games. “Open the gate,” he bellowed. How could he protect a lone female if she were surrounded by wagons full of gold? What if something happened to Axia—no, he corrected himself—to Frances, the heiress? He was so busy with his own thoughts he hardly heard the men behind him.

  “Have you seen it?” a man said, too near Jamie’s ear, as though they were confidants. “I cannot call it a man. It is stunted, with a raw face. A freak.”

  Jamie did not turn around. He daren’t. Sometimes people called Berengaria a freak.

  “If it comes out, I’ll have a hard time keeping my breakfast down.” The other men laughed at this.

  “It can’t travel with us. I’ll be sick to look at it every day.”

  One man laughed aloud. “We should throw it to the dogs along with the rest of the beggars and blind men.”

  One minute Jamie was pounding on the door and the next he’d knocked one man to the ground, his foot on his throat, while his sword was at the second man’s throat. Out of nowhere Rhys and Thomas appeared, Thomas with a dagger at the neck of the third man, Rhys taking charge of the one under Jamie’s foot.

  “Out of here,” Jamie said through his teeth. “All of you leave before I drain your blood just for the pleasure of it.” He could see that the men wanted to retaliate, and he knew he’d have to watch his back for a while, but they soon scurried away, mumbling curses under their breaths.

  “And now how do we guard the wagons?” Thomas asked in disgust as he resheathed his sword. He’d heard what the men said, and when the word blind was mentioned, he’d known what was going to happen.

  “And what about the boy?” Rhys asked, as annoyed with Jamie as Thomas was. “We don’t need children along when we have women to protect.”

  Suddenly, Rhys was flat on his back. One minute standing, the next sprawling. Over him stood the boy, his corroded, pitted old sword at Rhys’s throat, “Shall I slay him, my lord?” the boy asked.

  Although Rhys could see no humor in the situation, both Jamie and Thomas did, as well as the wagon drivers who’d eagerly watched all of it. When Rhys moved in a way that let Jamie know he was going to teach the boy a lesson or two, Jamie prevented him with a wave of his hand. “What is your name?”

  “Smith, sir.”

  “Have you done any fighting?” Jamie knew of course that he hadn’t, but his test was of the boy’s honesty.

  For a moment the boy looked as though he were planning an elaborate story, but then he grinned, his face as plain and as wholesome as the daisies inside the cloak Jamie had in the wagon. “Never done anything except help my father farm, sir.”

  Thomas and Jamie smiled at that, and Rhys almost did. He was never one to hold a grudge, and the boy had courage. “You are hired,” Jamie said. After directing the boy to fetch the cloak from the wagon, he turned to the gate bell again.

  But before he touched the bell, the gate swung open, and standing there was the “it” he’d heard of. He was a young man, with a tall, strong upper body but made short by crippled legs. Down his face were long, deep scars, all on the left side, running down his neck and into his shirt. The scars had healed at odd angles, and so they pulled his face into a grotesque caricature of a human face. And, obviously, when the cuts were new, something had been put into them so they were forever red and raw looking. It was Jamie’s guess that this man had not been born with these physical deformities.

  Jamie did not flinch as the people behind him did. “What is your name?”

  “Tode,” he said, meeting Jamie’s gaze levelly. He knew everything about what had just happened, about what had been said and what Jamie had done.

  “What is your real name?” Jamie demanded, frowning, remembering how many times he’d used his fists to inform people that Berengaria had a name besides Blind Girl.

  No one had asked Tode this before. His one concession to vanity was to change the spelling from Toad, as his father had called him. “I do not know,” he said honestly, “but Tode does well enough.” At that he stepped back and allowed Jamie and his men to enter, and as Jamie passed him, he put a hand on Tode’s shoulder and gave a squeeze of reassurance. And it was in that moment that he won Tode’s allegiance forever. Only Axia ever touched him and she rarely. No man had ever touched him in friendship.

  As well he could, Tode hurried to keep up with Jamie’s long-legged stride. Even he could see that Jamie’s mood was not something to be toyed with, and he didn’t blame him. To travel the country with those iron-bound wagons with the name Maidenhall painted on the side of them was not what he wanted to do either. Axia would be in constant danger. No, he corrected himself, Frances would be as she was now the Maidenhall heiress. For a moment Tode suppressed a groan. Axia had had to pay every person on the estate to lie about who she was and who Frances was. Thank heaven the secret would only be entrusted to them for a few hours before they left the estate forever.

  Frances was waiting for them in the withdrawing chamber, just off the entrance hall.

  Now, standing outside the door, Jamie tried to get his bad temper under control. Guilt and fear for the woman’s safety raged inside him. Whatever happened, he would treat her well, he vowed.

  She was standing in front of a wall that had been painted with a beautiful scene of Greek legends, and she was so lovely she made Jamie smile. But his smile was not so much for her as at her, for Frances looked exactly like Joby’s parody of the Maidenhall heiress. Her dress of dark green brocaded silk must weigh as much as a small pony. Gold embroidery encrusted the bodice. Across her white-skinned bosom were emeralds, and if the enormous baroque pearls hanging from her ears were real, they could be sold to pay for a war. Even her hair was encased in a net of jewels.

  “Lord Montgomery,” she said, holding out her hand, and