The Heiress

  “Stinking, lying, murdering—” Joby started.

  “Yes,” Jamie interrupted, “but what have they actually done?”

  Estate management was not a strong point of any of the new owners. Terrorizing peasants seemed to be their only real passion. They burned crops and houses, raped any nubile girl they could find, ran their horses over newly planted fields.

  When Jamie heard that Joby had calmed the peasants by telling them that when Jamie returned he’d fix everything, Jamie nearly choked.

  “It is no longer my land,” he pointed out.

  Berengaria shrugged. “Montgomerys have owned that land for hundreds of years, so how does your responsibility cease after a mere two years?”

  “By the exchange of gold, that’s how,” Jamie nearly shouted, but they knew he felt the weight of all those hundreds of years on his shoulders.

  “Speaking of gold,” Joby said, then nodded to a servant standing in back of Jamie.

  Later, Jamie thought that if he hadn’t been drunk, he would have jumped out a window and kept on running. It had been only two weeks ago that he’d accepted this job of escorting this extremely wealthy young woman across England, but during that time his sisters had organized all three of the tiny villages that used to be on Montgomery land, land that Edward had sold.

  Thinking of what must have been said, Jamie’s face turned scarlet. His men had laughed so much they’d had to leave the room. It seemed that his two sisters had “sold” their brother.

  “Just your beauty,” Berengaria tried to reassure him—as though that would help.

  “You know, like a stallion or a prize bull,” Joby’d said, then laughed when Jamie tried to catch her as she darted out of his reach.

  Last night, one by one, a representative of every village house had come to the old hall and shown what wealth he’d managed to save or—Jamie suspected—steal. There were parts of silver spoons, a handle from a gold ewer, coins with faces of long dead kings, bags of goose down that could be sold, piglets (one of which tried to join Jamie in getting drunk), leather pelts, a belt buckle, a few buttons from a rich lady’s dress. The list seemed endless.

  “And what, pray tell, is all this for?” Jamie asked, looking over the heaping table and the piles on the floor. The inquisitive piglet had overturned every wooden goblet on the table and drunk all the remains. What men found unpalatable, he found delicious.

  “We are going to make you a fine wardrobe,” Berengaria said. “We shall dress you as an earthly prince, and the Maidenhall heiress will fall in love with you at first sight.”

  At that absurdity, Jamie threw his head back and laughed, and the piglet, now by Jamie’s wrist, looked up at him and began to laugh too.

  When Jamie looked about him, he was surprised to see that no one else in the room, now probably a hundred people (some of whom had obviously never had a bath), was laughing.

  “Jamie, you are our only hope,” Berengaria said. “You could make any woman fall in love with you.”

  “No!” he said, setting his cup down with a splash and nearly hitting the piglet’s tiny hoof. He was holding the stem of the cracked mug so hard he did not feel the piglet climb onto his hand and stick its face into the mug.

  “I will not do this! The woman is to marry another. Her father would never give permission.” He would have liked to have said that he meant to marry for love, but poor, landless earls could not afford such a luxury. But when he did marry, he wanted it to be in an honorable manner. He had no money, but he did have titles. Perhaps a rich merchant’s daughter …

  Which, of course, described the Maidenhall heiress perfectly. Not that many people had seen her to describe her in any way except as “rich.” She was as elusive as a lady in a fairy story. Some said she was as beautiful as a goddess. Some said she was deformed and hideous. Whatever she was, she stood to inherit millions.

  “I cannot. I will not. No. Absolutely not.”

  That’s what he’d said last night, but today he was being measured and fitted. He was not going to ask where or how his sisters and the villagers had obtained such extraordinary fabrics. He suspected that Edward’s coffers had been regularly emptied, and since he recognized some of the women as having worked in the manor house that had once been theirs, he figured the new owner was also missing some articles of clothing.

  But he wasn’t going to ask because he didn’t want to know.

  “Mmed eig!” he said through the pins, his arms outstretched.

  Joby removed them. “Yes, dear brother?”

  “Get this damned pig out from under my feet!”

  “But it loves you,” Joby said, everyone in the room trying to suppress their laughter. They all felt happy because they knew that Jamie would solve all their problems. How could any woman not love him? Six feet tall, two hundred pounds, with broad shoulders; a slim waist; huge, muscular thighs; and a face like a dark angel: beautiful dark green eyes, black hair, honey-colored skin, lips sculpted like those on a marble statue. It wasn’t unusual for women to be struck dumb at the sight of him.

  “The piglet is female,” Berengaria said, and everyone released their pent-up laughter in shouts.

  “Enough!” Jamie roared above the people falling all over themselves in laughter, then gave a pull to the black velvet jacket that swathed him. With a cry of pain, he pulled back, two pins embedded in his palm, and waited impatiently as Joby removed the pins.

  Grabbing his own old, worn clothing from atop a chest, he started for the door, not bothering to dress, when the piglet ran under his feet and nearly tripped him. Angry, Jamie grabbed the animal up and started to toss it out the third-story window. But as he did, he looked into its eyes.

  “Hell and damnation,” he muttered and slipped the fat creature under his arm. As he slammed the door behind him, he heard gales of laughter. “Women!” he muttered and practically ran down the ancient stone stairs.

  Chapter 3

  Axia neither saw nor heard the man before he threw one strong arm about her waist and a big hand across her mouth and dragged her to a secluded spot behind the hedges. With her heart racing, she told herself, I must remain calm. At all costs, I must remain calm. And in that flash of a moment she forgave her father everything. This was why she’d lived all her life behind high walls, why she’d spent her life in near imprisonment. In another flash she thought, How did he get into the garden? The wall was topped with sharp iron spikes; dogs ran freely to give alarm at any intruder; workers were everywhere.

  It seemed to take an eternity as the man pulled her to the back of the hedge. One minute she’d been sketching a portrait of her beautiful cousin Frances—what surely must be the twentieth portrait this year—and the next she was being kidnapped. How did he know? she wondered. How did he know who I am?

  The man stopped, holding Axia close to his body, her back to his front, his muscular arm tight under her breasts. She’d never been this close to a man before. Her household was full of her father’s spies, and if a man, a gardener, a steward, whoever, so much as smiled at her, she’d find him gone within days.

  “If I remove my hand, will you promise not to give an alarm?”

  His breath was in her ear.

  “Perhaps you will not believe me, but I mean you no harm. I merely want some information.”

  At that Axia almost relaxed. Of course. All men wanted information from her. How much gold did her father have in the house? How many estates did he own? What was her marriage portion to be? People’s desire for knowledge about her father’s wealth was endless.

  She nodded. Of course she’d tell him all she knew. She’d tell anyone all she knew—which was exactly nothing.

  But the man didn’t remove his hand from her mouth right away. Instead, for a few seconds Axia was aware that he was looking down at her. Her neck was bent backward, the top of her head nestled into his shoulder; his cheek was pressed against her forehead.

  “You’re a nice little handful,” he said, and for the first time Axia
was afraid. She struggled against him. “Stop that! I have no time for dalliance. I have to attend to business.”

  At that Axia turned to give him a look. Should she apologize for delaying him from kidnapping her?

  But his head was turned away, peering through the shrubs toward Frances. “She is beautiful, is she not?”

  At that Axia bit his hand, and he freed her mouth, though not her body.

  “Ow! Why’d you do that?”

  “I will do more than that if you—”

  He clamped his hand over her mouth again. “I told you, I mean no harm. I have come to lead her, the Maidenhall heiress, across England.”

  At that Axia calmed and at once understood the situation. He wanted to see what this woman was like, and it was only natural that he should think Frances—who hadn’t a bean to her name—was the heiress. After all, Frances dressed in finery that out-shone the queen’s, and she lived as she thought a rich woman should. In other words if she dropped a needle, she’d call a servant to pick it up for her.

  Yes, Axia nodded.

  “Will you be quiet if I remove my hand?”

  Again Axia nodded vigorously.

  He removed his hand from her mouth and loosened his hold on her waist at the same time.

  Axia, being a sane and sensible person, made a great leap to get away from him.

  He flattened her. Slammed her against the ground so hard the breath left her, then threw his great, heavy body on top of hers.

  When she recovered enough to be able to see, she looked up at him. Heavens but he was stunning. Not pretty, but just divinely male. He looked like something off the pages of a fairy tale.

  As for Jamie, he saw a very pretty young woman, not beautiful like the heiress, but the animation in her face made up for everything. She had a heart-shaped face with dark brown hair, huge brown eyes surrounded by short, thick dark lashes, a little nose, and the most perfect little mouth he’d ever seen. Her eyes were gazing at him levelly, as though she expected him to prove himself. No woman had ever looked at him this way before, and he found it intriguing. As for the rest of her, she had a full bosom, a tiny waist, and full, curving hips. She made a man’s hands itch—or at least his anyway.

  After she recovered from her shock of the beauty of him, she wondered why her father had hired such a beautiful man to lead her to her fiancé. Always her father hired ugly men, men who would not tempt a rich young woman. But above all, her father got value for his money. As she’d learned from Frances, beautiful people were useless. They seemed to believe that their mere presence was all that was needed from them. So why had her father sent this beautiful, useless man to be the heiress’s escort? What was her father up to now?

  “Would you please listen to me?” he said.

  As he spoke, he looked down at the small, curvaceous body under his, and she felt his hand on her waist move upward. She had never seen that look before, but instinctively, she knew what was in his mind.

  “Touch me and I’ll scream,” she said, her eyes cold.

  “I’m not usually given to rape,” he said as though she’d wounded his pride.

  “Then remove your hands and your body from mine.”

  “Ah yes,” he said, smiling in a way that she was sure had devastated many women. But then handsome young men always smiled beatifically at the Maidenhall heiress or, in this case, at a woman he thought was connected with her.

  Yet he did not roll off of her. “You’ll be quiet?”

  “Only if you remove your person from atop me. I cannot breathe.”

  With seeming reluctance, he rolled off of her, but this time when Axia made a try for freedom, he was prepared, catching her skirt and pulling her slightly back under him. “You are not a person of honor, are you?” he asked seriously.

  “I have a great sense of honor,” she said, eyes flashing, “when I deal with honorable men. You, sir, are trespassing.”

  “I prefer to think that I am a day early, ’tis all.”

  Once again, his hand was creeping upward.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “If you will unhand me, I will tell you anything,” she said, sounding as though his touch was more repulsive than all the sins of the world.

  She could see by his expression that he was shocked by her words. No doubt he’d never heard any word except yes from a woman. Having spent most of her life with Frances’s beauty, Axia knew the power it had. Axia could argue for an hour with a gardener over how to prune the apple trees, but Frances would stroll toward them, bat her lashes, and say she thought the trees should be cut such a way, and two minutes later three men were falling over themselves to cut just where she’d said. In the herb garden a lovesick boy had trimmed the rosemary into great F’s for Frances. And there were swans—Frances’s favorite bird—everywhere.

  Perhaps it was going too far to say so, but Axia hated beautiful people. Oh, she liked to make sketches and paintings of them, but as for company, she much preferred men who looked like Tode and the head steward.

  “Yes, of course,” he said, rolling off her once again. “But please do not run or make any noise. Or I will have to—”

  Axia raised herself to a sitting position. “Put your hands on me again? To prevent that I will tell you anything you want to know.” His look of puzzlement at the disdain in her voice made her smile.

  Once he was on his feet, he held out his hand to help her up, but she ignored it. Standing, she said, “What do you want to know? Pound per pound the amount of gold owned by Maidenhall? Or will you take an estimate in cartloads?”

  “Cynical little thing, aren’t you? No, I want to know about her.”

  “Ah yes, the beautiful Frances.” Axia was dusting herself off. He was dressed in black velvet, whereas she had on rough linen. But then velvet was so impractical for the muddy countryside.

  “Is that her name? Frances?”

  “Do you wish to compose love sonnets to her name? It has been done, and I warn you that it is difficult to rhyme.”

  Laughing at that, he glanced through the shrubs at Frances sitting on the bench in the sun, a book open before her. “Why does she sit so still? Is she such a scholar that the book engrosses her so?”

  “Frances doesn’t know how to read or write. She says reading would cause lines on her perfect brow and writing would wrinkle the white skin of her hands.”

  Again the man gave a bit of laughter. “Then why does she sit so still?”

  “She is having her portrait painted,” Axia said as though he were an idiot for not seeing the obvious.

  “But you are the painter and you are here. Has she not noticed your absence?”

  “The thought that she is being looked at is enough for her.” Axia glanced down at his doublet. “Are you bleeding?”

  “Hell and damnation,” he said. “I forgot the cherries.” He began pulling cherries from his pocket, some of them crushed.

  “So you are a thief as well as a trespasser.”

  He had his back to the shrub. “What does she care? She is so rich she will not miss a few cherries. Want some?”

  “No, thank you. Would you please tell me what it is you want to know so I can get back to my work?”

  “Do you know her well?”

  “Know who?” Axia pretended ignorance.

  “The Maidenhall heiress, of course.”

  “As well as anyone. Is she who interests you? All that gold?”

  “Yes, all that gold,” he said, looking at her seriously as he spit a cherry seed onto the ground. “But I want to know about her. What could I do for her or give her that would please her?”

  Axia looked at him a moment. “And why would you want to please her?”

  The man’s face changed, softened, and, if possible, became more handsome. Had he looked at another woman so, Axia was sure she would have melted as quickly as cheap candle wax. Leaning toward her, he whispered in his voice that was as splendid as his face and body. “Come, tell me,” he said seductively, “what gift could I give
her that would please her?”

  Axia gave him a sweet smile. “A double-sided mirror?” Meaning, of course, that he could see himself as Frances looked at herself.

  At that the man started to laugh, then caught himself from making noise that might call attention to them. Tossing the last of the cherries to the ground, he said, “I need a friend. Actually, I need a partner in some business.”

  “Me?” she asked with false innocence, and when he nodded, she said, “And what do I receive if I help you?”

  “I am beginning to like you.”

  “As I do not feel the same about you, I wish you to get on with your request so we may part company.”

  “Go,” he said, sweeping his arm out. “Go and leave me. I will be here on the morrow. Perhaps I will see you then. Perhaps not.”

  Axia cursed herself, but she was intrigued. “What do you offer me for helping you?” Heiresses were never offered money; they gave money.

  “Riches beyond your wildest dreams.”

  Ah, she thought, the Maidenhall gold—and silver and land and ships and warehouses and—

  “No,” he said, “do not look at me like that. I mean no harm. I mean to …” He hesitated, looking at her as though judging her.

  “You mean to have her for your own, do you not?” When, for just a flash of a second, she saw his eyes look startled, she knew she’d guessed right. But then he wasn’t the first; he was one of thousands who wanted to marry the Maidenhall gold. But let him keep his illusions that he was the first to think of such a thing. Why did her father hire a man who looks like this one? she wondered again. A man who thought all women were dying to give him anything.

  Axia smiled. “You are indeed ambitious. Is she not already engaged to marry?”

  “Yes, well … ,” he said and idly removed a little dagger from the sheath at his side. For a moment Axia’s heart leaped to her throat in fear, but then she realized it was an unconscious gesture on his part and she doubted if he was aware he had the weapon in his hand.