“Wait!” Rhys said, coming around the tables to join the group in the middle of the room. “I have some land from my father. I am not rich, but I too would like to marry you. If you will consider me.”
“Like hell you will,” Lachlan said as he reached for Axia.
But Jamie was faster than either man as he shoved Axia behind him. “This girl is under my protection and I must—”
“I am not under his protection. He didn’t even want me to come on this journey. His only duty is to get the Mai—er, ah, Frances to her beloved fiancé. Besides, he’s trying to marry Frances himself.”
At that everyone turned to Frances, who was eating and doing her best to ignore all of them. Wherever Axia was, she managed to pull the attention onto herself. Frances would very much like to get rid of Axia. If Axia married this man Lachlan, who Frances had already discovered had no title and whose sons had the manners of wolf cubs, then Frances would be alone with Jamie.
“You forget, dear cousin,” Frances said sweetly, “that your father left you in my care. And I give permission for you to marry either of these men. Now. Today, if you’d like.” She gave her most beautiful smile to her cousin.
Wonder what’s wrong with him? Axia thought, looking up at Lachlan. Frances was as anxious to marry and find herself a home as she, Axia, was, so what was wrong with this Lachlan? It never occurred to Axia that Lachlan had not first asked Frances to marry him and been turned down.
But the truth was that Lachlan had been widowed for two years now, and he’d had several opportunities to marry, but he wanted more in a woman than just a pretty face. He needed a woman who could control his unruly, headstrong boys, and he wanted wine without sand in it. He’d been raised with a strong mother and had thought he wanted a dainty wife so he’d married a fragile flower of a woman. But ten years of nursing an invalid had made him want a second wife with a whip in one hand and a crossbow in the other. He was sure it was the only thing that could control those boys of his.
Lachlan went to one knee, making his head level with Axia’s. “Marry me. What is mine is yours. Come, boys!” he commanded. “Beg this sweet lady to be your new mother.”
The boys had no idea what was going on, but they knew better than to disobey a direct order from their father. Usually, he didn’t pay much attention to what they were doing, but when he did give an order, they obeyed. Flinging themselves on Axia, they wrapped their strong young arms about her waist, her thighs, her hips. “Please,” they cried. “Please be our mother.”
Axia was delighted. Touching other humans was something so wonderful, so delicious, and these beautiful boys—
Jamie put a stop to that though.
With his hands firmly on her shoulders, he extricated her from the clutching children, then turned her toward the stairs and pushed her up the first steps, all the while hissing in her ear. “Do you forget that this is supposed to be a secret enterprise? I do not want the world to discover who your cousin is.”
“And how has my marriage anything to do with the secrecy of your marriage? You could leave me here with your dear, handsome friend, and it would not matter one way or the other.” Oh, but she liked the anger in his voice. Could it be jealousy? But then, how could it be when he was engaged to marry someone else? “Or do you think I should marry Rhys? They are both handsome men, are they not? But if I were like you, I would go with the one with the most money and forget feelings.” She paused on the stairs. “Which man do you think I should marry?”
“Neither!” he said emphatically. “I’m to take you to your—”
“My what? To my intended?” She smiled at him smugly. “As you said, there is no reason for me to go with you.”
“You are Frances’s companion.”
At that, Axia laughed with such good nature at the ridiculousness of his statement that Jamie also smiled, but only for a second. “You are under my care and that is that. Until I have received instructions from Maidenhall, you will be allowed to do nothing except what I say. Certainly, you are to marry no man.” Turning her around, he made her continue up the stairs.
“Yet Frances can marry someone other than the one chosen for her by her father. Is that true? She is engaged, but she is still free to choose. I am engaged to no one, but I am not free to choose. Do I have my facts right?”
“You ask too many questions. Perhaps Maidenhall will not agree to your marriage. If you are related to him and your father is dead, then you must be his ward and he has the right to decide your future. And I might remind you that I am not yet married to Frances.”
“Is there hope in your voice that you may yet be saved? Or do you crave the beauteous Frances in your bed?”
“What do you know of beds?” he asked, sounding like a prim old lady as he opened the door to the room that had been assigned to her. Inside were three men with heavy buckets of hot water, and they were filling a big wooden tub for her.
“More than you think,” she said, trying to sound mysterious, then she saw the tub of hot water and knew without a doubt that he was responsible for this great luxury. “Oh, Jamie,” she whispered, feeling every bit of her cold, clammy skin and her dirty dress and hair.
When she turned to look up at him, he was smiling in a way that made him so handsome she had to take hold of the bedpost to keep from falling. It wasn’t the smile she’d seen him give to women when he was flirting with them, but it was a little-boy smile of happiness filled with delight that he had pleased her. He looked like the young son who presented his mother with the broken and crushed head of a flower and his mother had told him she loved him best in the world.
“I thought you might like to take a bath,” he said hesitantly. “But if you’d rather not …”
Knowing that what he wanted was more praise, she said, “Pearls could not have pleased me more.” The sincerity of her words made him almost blush with pleasure. “I shall soak until my skin peels off. Oh, please tell them to make the water very hot.” She had seen Frances do this, ask a man to give an order that she could very well do herself, and it never failed to please the men. To her utter amazement, she watched as Jamie told the servants how to adjust her bath water. “I shall wash my hair,” she said in a voice that told how much she looked forward to that treat.
Jamie nodded toward the side of the bath. “Camomile soap and a rosemary rinse water. I hope it is all right.”
“Yes,” she said, looking up at him. She didn’t know what would have happened if the men had not at that moment announced that the bath was ready. But they did, and the moment was gone.
“I will leave you then,” Jamie said, giving her a weak smile before he left the room, pulling the door closed behind him.
For a moment, Axia whirled about the room. Oh,how lovely freedom is, she thought. Two men had asked her to marry them and now Jamie was—was … Well, she didn’t know what he was up to, but she was certainly enjoying it.
In the next instant, she peeled off her clothes, her undergarments still wet, and gingerly stepped into the very hot bath water. As the warmth soaked into her skin, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
“He sent the letter!” Frances nearly shouted at Axia as she lay back in the big wooden tub full of hot water. “Did you hear me? He sent the letter.”
Because Axia had not slept all night, the hot water had soothed her into a delicious and much-needed sleep. “Who sent what letter?” she asked tiredly. She did, of course, know who the “he” was, but not what letter. Now that Frances had ruined her bath, Axia began to soap her hair.
Frances plopped down on a stool at the foot of the bed. “The letter to your father. Lord James sent a letter to him asking to marry his daughter, Frances. Not you. Frances. Me.”
Axia was so tired that it took her a moment to comprehend. Then her eyes opened in horror. “Jamie sent a letter to my father?” she whispered. Putting her hand to her forehead, she tried to think. After Frances had so proudly announced that she and Jamie were to be secretly married, Ax
ia had been too angry to think. She had not looked too deeply into her reasons for her anger, but whatever the reason, it blocked out all rational thought. Why hadn’t she asked Frances questions at the time? “Tell me everything,” she said softly.
“I wanted a secret marriage, with no one else involved, but Lord James said that his honor forced him to ask your father for permission—”
“Now he is my father,” Axia muttered.
Frances ignored her. “I agreed, of course. What else could I do?”
“Oh yes, your trickery of the man must make you very thorough in your lies.”
Frances’s eyes flashed anger. “Axia, I have done all this for you.”
“You have what?” Axia’s eyes were wide.
“I can see that you are attracted to him, and if you married him in secret, your father would disinherit you.”
For a moment Axia could not speak. “So you thought to make yourself into Lady Frances in order to save me? I do apologize for ever having had an ungenerous thought about you. Frances, you are the very personification of kindness.”
Frances looked at Axia to see if she was telling the truth or not. With Axia, one could never really tell.
Axia leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. “Please spare me your fairy tales of all you have done for me. I want to know about this letter to my father!”
Frances should have known better than to think Axia would believe anything she said. “As I said, Lord James wanted to send a letter to your father asking permission to marry his daughter, only it would be me, Frances, who was the daughter. I couldn’t very well say no, so I said that I would write a letter too and we’d send them together. And then, of course, I would never send the letters.”
Axia was staring at her cousin in disbelief. “Did you think he would not notice when there was no reply? Or were you planning to write the reply in my father’s hand?”
Truthfully, Frances hadn’t thought that far ahead, but she’d die before she told Axia that. “None of that matters now. His letter has been sent to your father, and it asks for permission to marry his daughter.” Frances’s mouth tightened, something she did not do often as she knew facial movement would give her early wrinkles. Her voice lowered. “What do you think your father is going to do when he reads that I am his daughter and not you?”
Axia did not like to think about any of this. It was difficult to control her anger at Frances. “I do not know. Perhaps he will yawn and say, ‘My goodness, there must have been some mistake.’ Or do you think he will send an army to fetch me? To escort me under military rule to my beloved fiancé’s house?” She took a deep breath. “And you, dear cousin, what do you think he will do with you? My guess is that he will dump you naked in the mud at the side of the road. Let us see what your beauty will attract then.”
For a second Axia closed her eyes; she needed time to think. “Dump that bucket of hot water over my head so I can rinse.”
Frances stiffened. “For all that you might think it, I am not your maid.”
“All right then,” Axia said sweetly, “you can use your brain to come up with a solution to this problem.”
Frances only hesitated for a second before lifting the heavy bucket and sending water cascading over Axia’s soapy hair.
When she’d finished, Frances used the one dry towel to wipe imaginary droplets off her blue satin dress. “Perhaps we can intercept the reply to the letter.”
Axia’s head was now beginning to clear enough so she could understand what had happened. Because of this letter, her freedom could end much sooner than was originally planned. “It is not the reply that worries me, but the hundred or so armed men that my father will send with his reply.” Again she tried to calm herself, as she’d never be able to think if she were this angry.
Standing in the tub, Axia took the towel from Frances, and while she dried herself, she tried to think. “You must disappear.”
“Excuse my vanity, but do you not think someone will notice that I have gone? And really, Axia, I do not understand why I am the one to disappear. Your father will be angry at you, not at me. I am only the cousin.”
“A cousin with no funds,” Axia reminded her. “And besides, you are the one who caused all this with your talk of a secret marriage.”
Frances gave her a stubborn look, and Axia knew that it would do no good to remind Frances that all of this was her fault. From experience she knew that Frances never seemed to remember that anything had ever been caused by her own errors.
Axia took a deep breath. “When did he send the letter?”
“I think this morning, I am not sure. Yes, yes, it had to be this morning, as he was out all night.” Frances looked from Axia’s uncrumpled bed to her. “Where were you last night?”
“With Tode,” she answered, waving her hand in dismissal. “His legs. You cannot be here when my father sends his reply. He will—”
“Yes,” Frances whispered in fear, “what will he do?”
“Throw you out and clap me in chains. Frances, why can’t you think of these things first, before you get into these messes?”
“I wanted him to marry me. Is that so bad? He is an earl. An earl! Oh, Axia, you cannot imagine what it is like to never be safe. Every day I live with an ax hanging over my head. I do not know what will happen to me, what will—”
“And I do?!” Axia exploded, then forced herself to calm. A clean white linen nightgown was hanging over the back of a chair, and she put it on. With this news of Frances’s, it didn’t look as though she were going to get any sleep, but for a while she could be comfortable. “Let me think. I am tired.”
Why hadn’t she thought to warn Frances about this “engagement” of hers? Why hadn’t she thought of what her father would do if he heard that his daughter was to marry someone not of his choosing? In reality, Jamie and Frances’s marriage would be a union between a poor middle-class woman and a poor aristocrat. It was their own business and no one else’s. But the lie of the switched places and the involvement of Perkin Maidenhall made it all very serious.
Now, thinking of all this, Axia realized how stupid she had been. Why had she not thought of all the possible consequences of this switch with Frances? Why had she not thought of what would happen if her father became involved? For a moment fear ran through Axia. It was true that she’d never met her father, but she’d corresponded with him since she could write. But no matter what she did or how well she did it, there was never any hint of a visit from him.
As Axia well knew, Perkin Maidenhall was the overruling force in all their lives. Even if he wasn’t a physical presence in their lives, the force of his personality always ruled them. And all her life, Axia had wanted to please her father. Maybe if she pleased him, he would visit her. Maybe he would say, “Well done.”
The truth of the matter was that, for all that she liked flirting, liked these men asking her to marry them, she well knew that she’d only marry the man her father had chosen for her. No matter how horrible the man was, she would marry him. If she did not, what would her father do to her?
For all that she’d lived a life of great isolation, Axia was not naive in the ways of the world. Her father had not made his great wealth by being a kind and loving person. He was ruthless, and when someone did not give him what he wanted easily, he found other ways to get it. He had married her mother because he wanted a piece of land her father owned. No matter what he had to do to get what he wanted, in the end, he got it.
If her father received the letter from James Montgomery asking if he could marry his daughter Frances, what would be his reaction? Rage? For surely he’d figure out about the switch, and Perkin Maidenhall was not known for being kind to people who played him false. Would he decide it was his mission in life to bankrupt James Montgomery? Would he really throw Frances out without so much as a copper penny? Or would he marry her off to someone who made the devil look sweet tempered?
And, heaven help her, how would he punish his disobedient daughter?
r /> “It is bad, is it not?” Frances whispered, watching Axia’s face anxiously.
“I think we have gone too far,” Axia answered, and Frances was so relieved at that “we” that she could have burst into tears.
“What do we do?”
“You must not be here when my father’s men arrive. And we must get him out of here. Jamie must not receive the reply from my father. If we could make him think there was some danger and he had to move quickly—”
“He will not leave without you,” Frances said grimly. “He will want to get you away from those men. All of them fawning all over you. As always, you made a spectacle of yourself.”
At the thought of this morning, Axia smiled. “Two men proposing marriage in one day. Was it not divine?”
“Am I to say yes? From where I was sitting, it was disgusting. You are not considering marrying either of them, are you? That Rhys has nothing, and the other one breeds animals for children.”
“You know that I am not to be given a choice for a husband,” Axia snapped. “That is what this is all about! I am not free as you are. You can have any man who wants you, but I cannot. You are free to marry your earl if you can continue tricking him all the way to the altar.”
Frances brightened at that thought. She would not tell Axia, but she was beginning to like this James Montgomery, not just because he was an earl, but because he was always so polite to her. It was a change from men clutching at her, wanting to touch her, for Frances did not much like being touched.
“Kidnapped!” Axia said brightly. “You shall be kidnapped.”
Instantly, Frances said, “I do not like that idea.”
“You should have thought of that before my father was informed of your marriage plans.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, drying her hair with the damp towel, she looked at Frances. “I will get Tode to arrange a kidnapping. Yes, yes, this is right. I have told Jamie that I heard in the stables that they know you are the Maidenhall heiress, so it will seem natural that you are abducted.”