The Heiress

  Angry, he flung open the door, and to his horror and disbelief, he saw Axia undressing Tode!

  His first impulse was to fling her across the room and possibly to use his sword on Tode. But then Axia turned a ravaged face toward him, a face not of a lover, but of one who is deeply afraid, afraid to the point of terror.

  “Help me, help me,” she whispered, her voice trembling.

  Instantly, all Jamie’s anger left him. Setting down his lantern, he stepped forward. “What can I do? I am yours.”

  “His legs,” she managed to whisper as though the words were so disturbing she could not speak.

  Lying on piles of straw and dirty horse blankets was Tode, his face turned to one side so that only his good side showed, and Jamie could see that he was pale to the point of death. “I will get someone to help so—”

  “No!” Axia said as she grabbed his forearm with both of her hands. “Please,” she said, tears in her eyes. She was dripping wet, her dark hair plastered to her head, her dress sodden, and he knew she was cold, tired, and hungry, but she did not seem to be aware of it. “He is proud, and he does not like to be seen. Can you understand that?”

  Jamie was sure that no one could understand pride better than he. “What do you want of me?”

  Wasting no more time, Axia turned back to her friend. “He is in pain. Great pain. Help me get him warm and dry. Get his clothes off.”

  “Yes,” Jamie said, then went to Tode and began to remove his trousers, but they were wet and stuck to his skin so he took his dagger and sliced them off, exposing Tode’s bare legs to the air and the light. Jamie had seen maimed men on the battlefield, and he thought he was hardened, but he had never seen anything like Tode’s legs. They were like raw flesh, scars big and small, great ridges in the skin. And under the skin the bones seemed to have been broken and set at odd angles. How did he manage to walk at all? And if he did walk, how did he bear the pain of every step?

  When Jamie looked up at Axia, he saw that she was holding a bottle of some dark liquid.

  “Put some of this on your hands and rub it on his legs. Quickly!”

  Even as she poured it into his hands, Jamie could feel the warmth of the oil. When he touched Tode’s bare legs, they were as cold as death. Looking across at Axia, Jamie could see the terror on her face. “Give me that,” he commanded, taking the bottle from her. He knew a bit about being cold as he’d spent some time in the Highlands with his relatives there. A Scottish summer could be colder than an English winter.

  His hands were larger and stronger than hers, and he used her warming liquid lavishly as he rubbed it into Tode’s cold skin. “Go into the stables, find my horse and look in the carrying cases on the saddle. There are clothes in there; they should be dry. Get them. Do not hesitate! If anyone sees you, tell them they are for me. And bring the flask in the pouch on the side.”

  With scarcely a nod, she ran out of the little stone room and into the stables where she quickly found Jamie’s horse, his saddle thrown across a wooden trestle against the wall. It took her only minutes to get the clothes, good English wool, from the bag, then the silver flask. Holding them a bit away from her so they would not get wet from her dress, she started to run back to the tack room, but the words of a groom, hidden from her by a stall wall, stopped her.

  “I hear she is the Maidenhall heiress,” a man said quietly. “It is to be a secret, but everyone knows.”

  “I’d like to get my hands on that. Imagine all that gold! Anything you ever wanted for the asking.”

  “Shall you propose marriage?”

  “Ha! I shall throw her over my saddle and charge her father to get her back.”

  At that, Axia kept running, her feet silent across the straw-strewn floor. In the tack room again, she saw that Jamie had Tode’s clothes off except for the linen loin cloth, and he was rubbing her liniment on his chest and arms.

  “Did anyone see you?” he asked, and when she shook her head, he said, “Good. I do not want them being curious. We should have thought of this before.” He was thinking of the many times he’d tried to ride with Berengaria with him, but she always caused confusion, with children dancing about them and shouting, “Blind Girl! Blind Girl!” Jamie could not imagine what would happen if Tode walked down the middle of a village street.

  “I am going to dress him,” Jamie said, “and I want you to get that into him.” He nodded toward the flask. “As much as he can hold.” When she looked in doubt at him, he said, “It’s good single malt Scotch. McTarvit. The best. Now do as I say!”

  Axia gave the tiniest nod of obedience as she rolled up a horse blanket and put it under Tode’s head, then slowly started forcing the whiskey between his lips. She knew from experience that he was conscious, but the pain in his legs made him wish he were not.

  It was more difficult than Jamie had thought it would be to dress Tode’s inert body. For all that his legs were frail, his upper body was that of a large and healthy young man, and he was heavy with muscle that he’d developed in compensation for his weak lower half. It seemed forever before Tode began to cough at the whiskey that Axia was judiciously forcing down him.

  “No,” Tode managed to say, turning his head away. “Let me sleep.”

  “Yes,” Axia said, sitting by his head, smoothing his hair back from his face. There seemed to be a tiny bit of color in his cheeks now. “Please sleep. I will be here with you. I will not leave you.” Reaching under the blanket that Jamie had spread over him, she took Tode’s big hand in hers and held it to her wet bosom.

  She had no idea how long she sat there, but when Jamie started to pull her away, she fought him.

  Clutching her chin in his hand, he turned her face to look at him. “I am heartily sick of being regarded as your enemy. You are wet and cold and—”

  “I will not leave him,” she said fiercely, jerking away from him. “It is because of you that he is like this.”

  For a moment Jamie stood back, running his hands over his eyes, and with every movement he made, half-dried mud flaked away. How well he had learned not to argue with her. He could force her into the house, into dry clothes, but he had no doubt that unless he tied her inside his friend’s house, she would find a way out.

  Without saying a word, he removed a thick horse blanket from a hook on the wall, then wrapped it around her body. When she was encased, he picked her up, wrapping his arms tightly about her. “Quiet or you’ll wake him,” he said into her ear when she began to struggle.

  “Unhand me,” she said, but Jamie held on.

  Sitting on the straw-covered floor, leaning back against the cold stone wall, he pulled her onto his lap, her back against his front. When she continued struggling, he said low into her ear, “Please do not hurt me more. My body is a mass of bruises and cuts from my days with you. I begin to bleed at the sight of you.”

  If he’d said anything else, she could have retained her anger, could have fought him, but humor took all the rage out of her. To her great embarrassment, she dropped her head against his strong body and began to cry.

  Jamie cuddled her on his lap as though she were an infant, wrapped in the thick blanket, her head against his neck, and her tears further wetted him.

  She did not cry for long. “I am sorry,” she whispered. “I never cry. No one can make me cry.”

  “Except me. Yes, I always have that effect on women.”

  “You are a liar,” she said, sniffing. “I doubt if you have ever made a woman cry.”

  He had no intention of replying to that remark, but he was sure that he’d never enjoyed holding a woman as much as he was enjoying holding her, for all that she was a shapeless lump in a smelly blanket. “Tell me about Tode,” he said softly. “Why is he like this?”

  Axia felt that she was warm for the first time in days as the rain had not stopped long enough for them to have a fire. Frances had begged to stop at an inn, but Jamie had said it was too “dangerous.” Since people did not know who they were, how was it dangerous?
However, the idea of danger made Axia think she should remember something important, but at the moment she couldn’t think what it was.

  Curled in his arms, she felt so warm and safe. Her forehead was snuggled into his neck, and when something scratched her, she drew back and pulled a big chunk of half-dried mud from his face. Unfortunately it took away a bit of his hair with it.

  “Ow!” he said, and when he looked at her in accusation, as though to say, You are hurting me again, she smiled and put her head back down.

  “Did you know that mud is very good for the skin?” she said. “I have been experimenting with mud mixed with the green from the pond and—”

  “Mud and slime?”

  “Mmmm. Very fine mud, very fine slime. When the mixture is allowed to dry on the skin, there is much improvement.”

  She was sounding so scientific that he replied in the same tone. “Yes, Frances has nearly perfect skin.”

  “Ha! Frances is a coward. She never allows me to try anything on her. But Tode—” She looked anxiously toward him, sleeping on the makeshift bed.

  “Tell me of him,” he whispered, sensing that she didn’t want to.

  She started to move off his lap. “You must be cold. Let me fetch you another blanket from the stables. Or, better yet, you can return to the house. You must be hungry, and your soldier friend will be looking for you.” It was difficult to move since her arms were cocooned inside the blanket, but when she moved, he pulled her back, his arms tight about her.

  “For once you are not going to have your way. I know you plan to stay here with him, but I mean to stay with you. Do you understand me? For once I am going to win.”

  “Do you not always win? You have had your way about everything.”

  “Oh? I did not think it was necessary for you to come on this trip. I wanted that horrid wagon to be painted over. I—”

  “You wanted to marry the Maidenhall heiress.”

  “I do not think want is the correct word. I have a family to support, and I cannot marry whom I please. Perhaps you do not know that men of my—of my rank, we are not free. Were we free to marry whom we wish, we might marry the chambermaid.”

  “Or pockmarked girls?”

  “Yes,” Jamie said in a way that let her know that this was a subject he was not going to talk about. “Now, tell me about Tode. We have all night, and you are going to tell me.”

  Axia took a deep breath. “His father did this to him.”

  Jamie had already formed a suspicion that what had been done to Tode was no accident. “To make him into a beggar?” he asked as he had heard of this practice before and he’d seen cripples who he thought were not that way by nature. But he had never seen anything like Tode’s legs.

  “To exhibit him,” Axia said softly. “To take him around England in a wagon and charge people to look at him.”

  “But he was sent to the heiress instead.”

  Axia wanted to say, To me, he was sent to me, but she did not. If James Montgomery knew that she, Axia, was the heiress, would he then propose marriage to her? “Yes,” she said softly. “Perkin Maidenhall saw him in the making, so to speak, and he bought the boy and sent him to—to the heiress.”

  “Along with you?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, as though making a joke. “He seems to like misfits and oddities.”

  “You are not a misfit. You are—”

  “Yes? What am I?” Feeling herself stiffen, she awaited his answer.

  “You are unique. You are different from anyone else.”

  “Ah, yes, I am as unusual as Frances is ordinary.”

  “Frances,” he said heavily, “is beautiful.”

  Abruptly, Axia moved so she could glare at him. “Frances is not beautiful.”

  “Oh?” he asked, one eyebrow arched. “Then what is she?”

  “You laugh at me, but I say to you that you do not know what beauty is.”

  “It is what you paint, and since you seem to draw Frances often enough, you must think she is beautiful.”

  “No, beauty is what inspires love. It is …” She lay back in his arms, her head tucked into his neck. “To be beautiful is to make someone love you. It is when a woman is old and fat, and her husband still sees her as slim and radiant, her eyes bright, her hair dark. To be truly beautiful you have to think more of other people than you do of yourself.”

  “So are you beautiful?”

  “You are laughing at me! No, I am not beautiful. I never think of anyone but myself. But Tode is very beautiful. You could not know, but he runs all the Maidenhall estate. He knows every person on it, knows all their problems. When a person is ill, Tode sees that he is taken care of; if he is melancholy, Tode sees to him—or her, he makes no distinction. Small children are the special concern of Tode, for they do not see him as different but …” She smiled. “Children see the kindness within him. Tode is a very good person.”

  “But he does not like Frances.”

  “No one who sees past her face likes Frances,” Axia said in disgust. “Except you. You see past her face to her money. As does everyone else in the outside world.”

  “Frances did not take care of the people on the estate?” He was thinking of his sisters telling him that he was responsible for the surrounding villagers: “Montgomerys have owned that land for hundreds of years so how does your responsibility cease after a mere two years?” was his sisters’ philosophy.

  “Frances does not know their names. Frances wants—”

  “Yes, what does Frances want?”

  “Do you ask me again how to court her? Shall I tell you to give her more daisies? Perhaps you should seal her in a room full of them.”

  “No, I was not asking you how to court her. I was …” Yes, what was he asking? “What do you want in life?”

  “Freedom,” she said quickly. “To not live locked away, secret. To be able to go where I want when I want.” Quickly, she turned to look up at him. “Have you been to France?”

  “Many times.” Smiling, he looked down at her. He was still damp, parts of his body were cold, he was caked with thick patches of dried mud, and he held a girl wrapped in a smelly horse blanket. None of these things in themselves were conducive to romance, but he felt as though he wanted to—

  Axia drew back from him in disgust, tried to get away from his grasp. “Do you mean to try to seduce me?” she asked in horror. “Is that the way you are looking at me? First poor scarred Diana, then witless Frances, and now me?”

  “No, of course not,” Jamie said tiredly. “What could I have been thinking of? When I am around you, I should not take my clothes off—I should put my armor on.” With more strength than he meant to use, he pulled her back down on his lap.

  “I can remain here alone,” she said stiffly. “There is no need for you to stay with me. I am sure that Tode is all right. He has had many attacks with his legs, and I have been there with him. Tode and I need no one else.”

  Abruptly, Jamie tightened his arms around her, pinning them immobile to her sides so she would not be able to fight her way out of the blanket. “Are you two lovers?”

  For just a second, Axia tried to loosen herself, but his hold was too strong, so she gave a great sigh and quit fighting. “No, we are but friends. Why do you put everything in such terms? Is it the great love for Frances that runs through your veins night and day that causes you to think of nothing else?”

  “I do not love Frances, and you know I do not.”

  “But you plan to marry her.”

  “As you said, I plan to marry her money. It will be a good match for us.”

  “For her perhaps, but you will be very unhappy. Frances is quite stupid, you know.”

  “So is my horse, but I still like him.”

  Axia gave a sigh. “It is not my concern who you marry.”

  Jamie was thinking that her father would never give his permission. Or was he just hoping that Maidenhall would refuse? He took a deep breath. “I have heard that Gregory Bolingbrooke’s
father paid a lot to have her inheritance.”

  “Where did you hear that?” Axia snapped.

  “What the Maidenhall heiress does is the interest of all England. But then, perhaps her father will not accept me as his son-in-law.”

  “I’m sure he will love having his daughter at court,” Axia said.

  “If Maidenhall charges a man to marry his daughter rather than giving her a dowry, why would he welcome the marriage of his only child to a penniless earl like me?”

  “Perhaps he loves her and will allow her anything,” Axia said softly.

  “A man who has never bothered to see his daughter in all of her life cannot bear her much love.”

  “That is not true!” Axia said fiercely. “Perhaps he loves her very much. You do not know.”

  “Perhaps,” Jamie said, puzzled by the vehemence of her outburst.

  “Perhaps he locked his rich daughter away to protect her,” Axia insisted.

  “The queen was not so protected in her childhood as the Maidenhall heiress is. Prisoners have more freedom than she does. Criminals—What is wrong with you?” he asked when she began to try to get off his lap.

  “There is naught wrong with me. I do not think it is amusing to make light of parents who do not love their children.”

  “Oh,” Jamie said in understanding. “Because of what Tode’s father did to him?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, refusing to think about what he had said. It was not something she wanted to think of. When she was with Tode or Frances, Axia mentioned her father often. Even though they’d had a regular correspondence since Axia was a child, it was true that she had never seen him, never once held his hand … No, she did not like to think of that.

  Settling back against Jamie, Axia took deep breaths to calm herself.

  “What do you think Perkin Maidenhall would say if I were to marry his daughter in secret?” Jamie asked honestly. Twice now since that first night, Frances had said they must marry in secret.

  Axia liked this kind of question as it implied that she knew her father well. Tode often asked her what she thought her father would say about this or that. Pulling back, she looked at him. “I think Maidenhall would like to have his daughter marry into the aristocracy if he can get the man without paying him anything.”