Immediately, Jamie thought of his leaking roof and the villagers who wanted the Montgomerys to again be their landlords. “Nothing?”
Axia smiled. “No major capital outlay. The husband of the heiress would, of course, receive what is her due from her mother, but the bulk of the wealth, the fabulous hoard as it were, will not come to her husband until after the death of Perkin Maidenhall. That is, if he so wills it.”
“Ah, well, if there is enough to put food on the table and buy a few acres of land, I am content.”
“If that is all you want, then why bother with the riches of the Maidenhall heiress? Surely, with your looks you could entrap any wealthy young woman.”
Jamie shrugged. “Frances is here and there is some—some urgency.”
“I see. It does not matter who you sell yourself to.”
“Stop it!” he commanded. “You do not know what you speak of. I am not free to marry. I have responsibilities that you know nothing about. What of you? Who do you marry? How will you be supported?” As he said the words, he felt himself stiffen. What did it matter to him who she married? But even as he thought that, he was very aware of her body in the circle of his arms.
“I do understand responsibility and lack of freedom,” she said softly. “I understand as well as anyone.” For a long while she was silent as she lay back against him, for she well knew that her father would not allow his daughter to marry a penniless knight or to remain married if she dared such. If he were to hear of this, Perkin Maidenhall would react in a rage that such a thing had been done. Her father had not become wealthy by giving anything away for free. Even his daughter. He sold everything.
But he would not care that Frances had married this penniless knight. Perhaps it was cruel of Axia to continue this charade, but if Jamie secretly married Frances for her money, then found she had none, he deserved what he got. But then Axia well knew that she would stop this charade before he went to the altar. It did not matter what happened now, just as long as her father was not involved.
With a crooked smile, Axia imagined halting the wedding ceremony with an announcement that Frances wasn’t worth the clothes on her back. Oh, how she was going to enjoy the look on James Montgomery’s face then.
Just so her father did not know of this, she could play out the game to within seconds of its conclusion.
As for answering him about her own marriage, she did not want to think about that. As soon as they reached their destination, the charade would end and she would have to marry the man her father had chosen for her.
Jamie put his hand on her forehead. “I think something plagues you. You have secrets,” he said softly. “Tell me what is in your thoughts.”
No! she screamed in her mind as she began to remember that night he had made love to her. Sometimes it seemed far away and sometimes only yesterday that he had held her and kissed her and said that he loved her.
“You!” she said. “You make me sick. You try to seduce me as you do Frances. Or do you leave her chaste for your wedding night? Or is it only poor girls like Diana and me who you use for your lechery? What if you have impregnated poor Diana? Who will take care of her?”
Abruptly, Jamie dropped his arms from around her. “You are free to go,” he said coldly, then when she struggled to free herself, he helped with the blanket and she got away from him.
Feeling angry and not knowing the cause of her anger, Axia went to Tode and felt his hands to see that they were warm. When Jamie came to stand near her, her lips tightened. “You may go. Had you better not spend time courting your heiress? I can attest to the fact that Frances will have all the men in the hall swarming about her. And since everyone knows that she is the Maidenhall heiress—”
“What?!”
Axia could not resist a smile at his reaction; obviously he thought his secret safe. “I heard it in the stables when I went to get the blanket.”
“And you did not tell me?” he demanded.
“I beg your pardon, but the life of my friend was more important to me than the protection of gold.”
“The gold you refer to is in the person of your own cousin.”
That sobered Axia. “Yes, do go.” Her head came up. “Yes, please do go. I do not need you.”
“Axia, you …” Words seemed to fail him.
“Yes? I what?” she asked, shoulders back.
For a moment, Jamie could only stare at her. Are beautiful, is what he wanted to say. If beauty was thinking of others, then Axia, standing in this cold room in her wet clothes while nursing an injured friend, was more than beautiful. But self-preservation kept him from saying such. She is not for you, Montgomery. Not under any circumstances can you have her. He had to marry for money. Think of Berengaria, he reminded himself. Think of the villagers who pawned everything they had to make you clothing meant to entice an heiress. Think of … Oh, think of anything except this muddy, damp, bad-tempered, big-hearted witch who has occupied your every thought since you met her, he told himself.
“You are every man’s nightmare,” he said softly, meaning that no man wanted to meet a woman who overtook him as completely as she had.
“Of course,” Axia said, misunderstanding. “Go to your heiress and leave me alone,” she said as she turned away.
“Yes,” Jamie said and left the tack room.
A few hours later, after a bath and a hot meal, Jamie lifted the quill and began to write to his sisters.
I am sending a letter to Perkin Maidenhall to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. I do not know if he will give permission or not. Axia thinks he would like to have an earl for a son-in-law, but I am not so sure.
I have not talked to Lachlan yet, as everyone has now gone to bed. Since it has rained for days here, the roads are like the bottom of a pond, and the wagons were stuck repeatedly. It has caused us some problems, mainly that Axia’s friend was injured.
I have not told you of Tode and I will not now, but suffice it to say that I might bring him home with me. We will need an estate manager, and he comes highly recommended. Berengaria, you will like him very much. You will see him as he really is, as only Axia sees him now.
I must go now as it is late. I would like to sleep, but I must watch for Axia as she is nursing her beloved Tode, and I must see that she is safe.
My love to you both. You are in my prayers always.
With great affection,
James
“One, two, three, four,” Berengaria said. “Yes, I counted that he wrote this Axia’s name four times. Is that right?”
“Mmmmm,” Joby said in disgust. “You are right. And he mentions the heiress only once. Oh, but I would like to go to him and put some sense into his head! One of those odious Blunts burned a field today.”
“Their own field,” Berengaria reminded her sister.
“My point exactly. No longer a Montgomery field. I am tempted to write our Montgomery cousins and tell them what is going on.”
“Jamie would skin you.”
“Better to die that way than of hunger.”
“And how does the burning of a field that is not yours affect your belly?” Berengaria asked her sister, but they both knew the answer. Under no circumstances could they look like failures to their rich, successful cousins. Berengaria took a deep breath. “We should write him. Ask him to tell us more of the heiress. What does she say? What is her favorite music? Flowers? We will think of many things to ask her, so he will have to talk to her to find the answers.”
“If this Axia allows him near her,” Joby said spitefully.
“Do not tell me you have grown to dislike this Axia?” Berengaria said hesitantly.
Joby eyed her sister thoughtfully. “As I think you have also. I am sure she has set her eye on an earl and means to have him. It is her only opportunity to meet a man of his rank. What do you think she does to entice him away from the beautiful heiress? Does she wear gowns that reveal an excessive amount?”
Berengaria was thoughtful. “No, Jamie
would like intelligence, someone who can talk to him. Do you think she entices him with discussions of Aristotle’s theories? Does she read books in Greek to impress him?”
“Come, we must set our minds on this. What can we do to make him love the heiress?”
“I wish we could get them alone, away from this Axia. You know that Jamie cannot resist a weak creature in need.”
“A damsel in distress,” Joby said. “Yes, let us see what we can arrange.”
Chapter 14
The sun was well into the sky by the time Axia left Tode. Only after he had assured her that he could take care of himself did she leave him. Truthfully, all she wanted to do was take a bath and sleep. She’d had all the trauma she could take for one day.
Axia didn’t know her way around this walled estate, and it was drizzling rain so she couldn’t see very well, but she knew she didn’t want to enter through the front. No doubt the tables for breakfast would be set up, and everyone would be eating. Looking as she did, the last thing she wanted was to encounter Frances and Jamie, both of them, no doubt, dressed in clothes made of sunbeams and starlight.
Making her way to the back of the castle, to what had to be the oldest part, she went in through the kitchens—and as soon as she saw them the sleepiness left her.
Chaos was the general air of the place. No one could walk for the number of people in the kitchen: a couple of enormously fat cooks; boys running around with pans and kettles; children chasing each other; men shouting over the heads of others; women screaming at children to behave; dogs rooting in the garbage shoot.
Waste! she thought, looking about her. Incredible waste!
On the floor were great bags of flour, fresh from the mill but open to rats and pilferage; herbs and vegetables had fallen off the center table and were being trampled underfoot. And all the people in the kitchen seemed to be eating anything that came out of the ovens as fast as they could be opened. Axia was nearly knocked down by a man carrying half a cow carcass on his way into the larder, the cold room for meat.
No one noticed her as she slipped past them, where she saw unlocked spice cabinets that could be ransacked by anyone and meat that could be used for soup and stew bases thrown to the dogs. In the buttery, she saw open kegs of beer and imported wines that were free for the taking. The pantry contained great crocks of pickles and salted meats that had been opened and were now being left to ruin.
“Disgusting,” she muttered. “Truly disgusting.” Whoever owned this place was paying twice as much for food as he needed to. There was no order, no organization, and as far as she could tell, no one in charge.
In spite of her exhaustion, Axia had an urge to take a broom, or perhaps a sword, and clear out these superfluous people and stop all this waste. With management, she thought, more people could be fed and less money spent.
“Look out!” she heard just in time to step aside as a piece of meat landed at her feet. To her disbelief, she saw that the meat was an entire cow’s liver, and in the blink of an eye, two dogs had eaten it.
“Aren’t you a tasty bit,” said a man with two hog’s heads in his arms, eyeing Axia up and down, but when she turned on him with a look of fury in her eyes, he backed off. “Sorry,” he mumbled and went into the larder.
Axia didn’t know what made her angrier than waste and the misuse of funds, and this was worse than she’d ever seen before. However, she did not stop to think that this was the only estate she’d ever seen besides her own and that maybe all of them were run this way. Such horror was unimaginable to her.
As she made her way down the corridor from the kitchens to the Great Hall, she saw that the rushes on the floor had not been changed in many months and that, all in all, the place needed a thorough cleaning. If this man, this Lachlan Teversham was feeding all these people, why wasn’t he putting them to work?
As she stepped into the Great Hall, she saw as much chaos as she’d seen in the kitchen. More dogs (how many did this man have?) nosing about under the tables for scraps, dusty pennants hanging from the ceiling, tables with too much food on them. The tables were set in a semicircle, and in the middle of them, wrestling on the floor, were four or five little boys, a bit tattered, but dressed well enough that Axia assumed they were the sons of the owner. If he had children, where was his wife that she could allow such disorder in her house?
Standing in the doorway, Axia saw that Frances was the center of attention, sitting in the middle of the high table, a big good-looking man who was no doubt Lachlan Teversham leaning over her, attentive to everything she had to say. On the other side of her was Jamie, also leaning toward her. He was wearing a dark green velvet doublet, and he was as clean as Axia was dirty, as fresh as she was tired.
Sure that no one would notice her, Axia walked into the middle of the room and into the melee of boys and began grabbing shirt collars as she attempted to pull them apart.
However, she miscalculated the size of the boys, or perhaps her own lack of size was her underestimation. The boys, not used to any form of discipline imposed on them, thought she wanted to play with them. One grabbed her ankle, and with a scream, Axia went down into the middle of them. In seconds, she was nearly smothered by a tumbling, laughing heap of arms and legs and sweaty torsos.
She had no idea what would have happened if someone had not lifted the largest boy off of her. On her back, her arms over her face in protection, Axia looked up to see the smiling face of a big, handsome man, gray at his temples, the man who had seconds before been giving all his attention to Frances. She couldn’t help herself, but she smiled back up at him.
The next second, she was grabbed about the waist and lifted, then slung across Jamie Montgomery’s hip like a lumpy bag of beans. Her hair had come unbraided during the tussle and now surrounded her so she was like a fish caught in a net. If she moved her arms, she pulled her own hair.
“Jamie, my lad, what do you have there?” Lachlan asked.
“Put me down, you great buffoon!” Axia shouted at him or tried to shout as her lungs were nearly cut in half by his hip and his strong right arm.
“An imp. Satan’s very own imp,” Jamie said casually but then yelped when Axia bit him on the leg, and he almost dropped her.
It took Axia a moment to right herself, get her hair out of her eyes, spit it out of her mouth, and look up at the big, red-haired man. He was very nice looking, not at all gorgeous like Jamie, but then who was? However, she did like the way he was looking at her.
“Axia Mai—” she began, but Jamie grabbed her upper arm tightly. “Ow!”
“Matthews,” Jamie said plainly. “A cousin to Frances. Isn’t that right?”
Behind this big man were standing four handsome little boys, their eyes bright with interest at what was happening.
“Children,” Axia said calmly, “if I give you swords, will you kill this man for me?”
At that the children’s eyes widened as they looked up at Jamie. Their father roared with laughter.
“What’s this, Jamie? Do I hear aright? This is a woman who does not love you at first sight?”
Jamie grimaced. “Shall I show you my scars?”
Lachlan was looking her up and down and Axia found that she was warming to the way he was looking at her. “I do not think she could give me scars,” he said softly.
Dropping Axia’s arm, Jamie smiled knowingly. “You, my innocent friend, do not know her. I saw you,” he said to Axia, “come through the kitchens and I saw your anger. Tell my poor, naive friend what is on your mind.”
With a smug expression, Jamie looked at Lachlan as he waited for Axia to speak.
Axia well knew what Jamie was doing. Taking a deep breath, she tightened her lips. She was not going to hide what she was! “Waste is what I saw,” she said, looking Lachlan Teversham in the eyes. “Food thrown to the dogs, trampled in the floor, too many people, filth everywhere.” She took a step toward him. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself for the way this place is run. Look at it! Dirt everywhere
, your children with the discipline of puppies. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
She was advancing on him now, warming to her subject. She had no idea what a scene she presented; though she was rumpled and dirty, her body was small and trim within her pretty, big-eyed face and her hair like a lush curtain. With her hands on her hips, she faced Lachlan, as big as a bear but looking at her with an expression as though he were a schoolboy being chastised by his teacher.
“And your wife should be doubly ashamed of herself. How can she show her face with such mismanagement? You should be running this place with half the expense. Have you no care for your future? Are you so rich that you can waste what other people need? Are you—?”
She stopped because Jamie had taken her by the upper arms and was pulling her back from his friend. There was a look on Jamie’s face that said, See what I mean?
But Lachlan was staring at Axia in wonder, as were his sons behind him.
Then, suddenly, Lachlan grabbed Axia’s face in his hands and gave her a hard kiss on the mouth.
Everyone in the hall, all of whom (except Frances) had stopped eating and were watching the scene in the middle of the room as though it were the most fascinating play they’d ever seen, blinked in wonder at Lachlan’s reaction. But no one was more surprised than Jamie.
“I have no wife,” Lachlan said when he released Axia. “Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” Axia said at once. “I’d like that.”
“You will not!” Jamie roared, startling everyone out of their motionlessness.
“I most certainly will,” Axia said, turning on him. “I can marry whom I wish. It is no concern of yours.”
“Your father—”
She well knew that he thought her father was Frances’s father. “Died last year,” she said quickly.
“I thought he was alive,” Jamie said, confused, trying to think.
“You never asked. Plague. Body buried in a pit. Dissolved in lime. I never even said good-bye.”