“I see,” she said. “On the journey you mean to make her change her mind and declare for you.”
“Do you think I can?” he said, and it was the first honest thing he’d said to her.
She almost patted his arm in sympathy. “Frances will love you,” she said while laughing inside at her lie. Frances hated anything as splendid as herself. She liked ugly things around her so she would glow more radiantly. “So, you’ve come to marry the Maidenhall heiress? Your family and lands fallen on hard times, have they?”
His eyes sparkled. “I knew I could trust you. From the moment I saw you standing there, brush in hand, I knew you were a trustworthy person. We shall be great friends, you and I. Do you travel with her?”
“Oh yes. Actually, we are cousins.”
“Yes,” he said, smiling, “I too have rich cousins.”
“Tell me, er, ah … I do not know your name.”
“James Montgomery, Earl of Dalkeith. A title, but, alas, no land and no gold to go with it. And you are Mistress … ?”
“Maidenhall, of course, but alas, I am only Axia Maidenhall.”
“An unusual name for an unusual lady. Now tell me what I must do to impress her. A gift perhaps. Sonnets to her beauty? A rare fruit? Yellow roses perhaps? Come tell me, set me a quest. Nothing is too difficult to obtain.”
“Daisies,” Axia said without hesitation.
“Daisies? That most humble of flower?”
“Yes. Frances does not like anything to compete with her beauty. Roses are competition, whereas daisies are a plain setting for a sparkling gem.”
“You’re very clever, aren’t you?”
“People in my station in life must be in order to survive.”
He smiled at her. “Yes, we do understand each other.”
“A cloak lined with daisies,” Axia said. “To be wrapped about her shoulders while she stands with her eyes closed. Is that not romantic?”
“Yes, very.” He was looking at her in speculation. “Do you tell me the truth?”
“I swear in God’s Holy Name that the Maidenhall heiress loves daisies.”
“And why are you willing to help me?”
She ducked her head shyly. “You will allow me to paint the portraits of all your impoverished family?”
“Yes,” he said, smiling. “And I will pay you well. I have a twin sister.”
Axia kept her eyes lowered so he would not see what she thought of his vanity, assuming she’d betray her own cousin just to paint some characterless beauty. “You honor me, my lord.”
“You may call me Jamie.” At that he leaned forward as though to kiss her mouth, but she turned her head so he kissed her cheek instead.
“That is not part of the bargain,” she said in what she hoped was a good imitation of Frances warding off her twelfth suitor of that day. “Not yet,” she added, then scurried away from him and back to her easel. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him running across the orchard, very fast for a man of his size.
Picking up a paintbrush, she held it toward her canvas but could not paint because she was laughing too hard. Wait until tomorrow, she thought, when he saw the truth, that she was the heiress and Frances was only a poor paid companion.
But in the middle of her laughing, her body changed to shaking. Fear was replacing her laughter. If this James Montgomery could so easily come onto the grounds, so could others, men who hated her father for one reason or another (and they were legion), men who wanted to hold her for ransom. Men who—
One minute she was standing behind her easel, and the next she had fallen to the ground in a swoon.
As promised, Jamie wrote to his sisters that night. What to tell them? he thought as he picked up a pen, then smiled. They want a fairy tale so I shall give them one. A man who has to struggle to reach the maiden, then the maiden being beautiful beyond all imagining, as Frances Maidenhall was.
My dearest sisters,
I have met her. My lessons learned in escaping Edward’s tortures at last had some benefit as I used an overhanging tree branch to go over a high wall. The dogs were easy after I borrowed a cloth from a gardener’s shed. It was an adventure worthy of Joby!
The Maidenhall heiress was in the garden sitting for her portrait, as still as a statue and as perfect as Venus. It does not surprise me that her father keeps her locked away, for her extraordinary beauty is worth more than jewels.
I did not speak to her, only gazed upon her, basking in the radiance of her and enjoying her loveliness.
Jamie paused. Yes, that should do it. Adventure and romance. What else to make them stop worrying? Ah yes, to reassure them that he had some help.
I questioned a girl painting the heiress’s portrait. She was like a pretty sparrow caught in a cage, but she had a clever tongue on her and she is to help me win the heiress’s hand. When this is all done I shall bring this sparrow to you to paint your portraits.
With all my love,
James
“That idiot!” Joby exploded upon reading the letter. “He thinks to use a plain woman to help him win the hand of a beautiful one? I know I would not help him.” Several times young men had seen Berengaria from a distance and had asked Joby for an introduction. Without exception Joby had always been enraged at this.
“Our brother is in love,” Berengaria said softly.
“Do you think so? Yes, yes, he does go on and on about her beauty. I am glad. Jamie is plagued with scruples and a conscience. Were it me—”
“No, no, he is in love with that plain sparrow.”
“You are insane,” Joby said in a way that carried no animosity to it.
“We shall see,” Berengaria said, smiling. “We shall see.”
Chapter 4
Well!” Rhys said, glaring at Jamie over a mug of ale. “You saw her. What was she like?”
The three of them, Thomas, Rhys, and Jamie, had been friends for years. They’d been through battles together, shared food when they had it, did without when they didn’t. Jamie had a way about him that could make a person feel that he was soft and sweet and easy to manipulate, but Rhys and Thomas had learned all too well that when anyone overstepped the mark, Jamie’s temper could make heads roll.
But over the years Rhys and Thomas had learned that Jamie had one major weakness: he thought women were angels come to earth. Of course, with Jamie’s looks, women often were angelic. Everywhere they went, every country, whether women were fair Danes or the dark beauties of the Holy Lands, the most vile-tempered virago turned to honey when Jamie approached.
Rhys remembered in France being held off by a farm wife with a pitchfork, then Jamie walked up and smiled at her, and minutes later she was digging out bottles of wine from under the floorboards and offering them feather beds for the night. Or at least one feather bed. To Jamie. To Rhys and Thomas she pointed at the floor.
Had Jamie been a different sort of man, he could have taken advantage of this, but he did not. He was polite and courteous and turned down most offers made to him. “It would not be right to the woman’s husband,” he’d said more than once, a statement that made any man within hearing distance shout with laughter.
What time the men had spent at court could have kept Jamie very busy as there were few women, married or single, who did not try to get Jamie into bed with them, but for the most part, he declined. Not that he was a prude or celibate by any means; he was just cautious.
“I do not try to get myself killed on a battlefield, so why should I risk death for a night with a married woman?” Jamie asked. “Or have the father of a virgin come after me? And I cannot afford mistresses.”
As close as he was to his men, as much as they’d been through together, they knew little about Jamie’s life with women. Sometimes his bed was left empty for nights in a row and the next day he yawned often, but he would say nothing about where he’d been or with whom he’d been.
Now that Jamie would consider marriage showed how worried he was about his family’s finances.
br /> “What is she like?” Rhys demanded again. The Maidenhall heiress. A person of legend, like Midas or Croesus. From the day of her birth, the only child born to a man whose wealth was unimaginable, she had been the object of people’s daydreams. “If I were as rich as the Maidenhall heiress” was something every person in England had said at one time or the other. Even the queen was said to have asked a foreign ambassador if he thought she was as wealthy as the Maidenhall heiress.
However, no one had ever said, “If I were as rich as Perkin Maidenhall” because that had no romance to it, especially since Perkin Maidenhall was known for his parsimony. Stories of his tightness with a coin were legendary. It was said that he wore the same suit of clothes until they hung in rags on his body, and he was emaciated because he would not spend money to feed himself. He had no pleasures, spent no time in games. It was said he’d married once (because the bride’s father would not sell him some land that lay between two pieces he already had), gone to bed with her once, and his daughter was the result. His wife died just days later.
No, few envied Maidenhall himself, just his daughter, a motherless girl who was never seen in public but lived behind high walls in the south of England. Even the villagers near the estate where she lived had never seen her. And if anyone on the estate talked about her, he soon “disappeared,” as Maidenhall had spies everywhere.
“Yes,” Thomas said, “out with it.” Usually he allowed Rhys to find out what he wanted to know, but this time Jamie’s silence called for drastic measures.
“She is a pretty little sparrow,” Jamie said, his eyes far away. “Big brown eyes that can look through a man, plump bosomed, with the quick, sure movements of a sparrow.” A slow smile spread over his face. “And she has a tongue as sharp as a sparrow’s beak. She could make a man bleed with that tongue of hers.”
Throughout this, Rhys and Thomas showed their shock, their jaws dropping open. Rhys recovered his powers of speech first. “You have fallen in love with the Maidenhall heiress?”
Jamie looked at the two men as though they were daft. “Axia?” The word had hardly left his mouth before he realized that he was saying too much. Some things deserved privacy. “Love? Love has nothing to do with this. I am to escort a woman to her—”
“Plump-bosomed sparrow, eh?” Rhys said with a laugh, poking Thomas in the ribs. “I think we will be eating fat this winter if he has set his sights on the Maidenhall heiress.”
Thomas did not smile. “Who is Axia?”
“She is to help me win the heiress,” Jamie said glumly.
“But I thought your plump sparrow was the heiress,” Rhys said in confusion.
“No,” Jamie said, looking into his mug. “The heiress is named Frances, and she is as beautiful as sunlight. I do not know that I have ever seen a more perfect woman: golden hair, lashes like fans, rosy cheeks, lovely mouth, a chin of perfection. She is a pink and white goddess.”
Rhys was trying to understand. “Your words and your tone do not agree. You describe a wonder of nature, but you sound as though she is a virago. Come, tell me, what could a woman who looks like that do to discourage a man?”
“She cannot read or write,” Jamie said. “And she loves to have her portrait painted. She—”
Rhys laughed. “A true woman. Perhaps I shall try for her if you are too good for her.”
At that Jamie gave Rhys a look that stopped him cold. “I must do what I must. I have to think of my sisters, and if this woman is winnable, I shall do it.”
“I do not believe it will be such a hideous task.”
“You have not seen how beautiful she is,” Jamie said. “She will take much wooing. It is what she is used to.”
“As opposed to your plump-bosomed sparrow?” Thomas asked as he studied Jamie. He was older than Rhys or Jamie, neither of whom had reached the age of thirty. But Thomas, at nearly forty, had seen enough of the world to know to attach himself to a man like Jamie. Once James Montgomery thought of a person as “his,” he took care of that person, going without if need be, but he made sure that those who belonged to him had what they needed.
Jamie smiled. “Ah, to be free,” he said. “To be a farmer’s son and marry whom I wish.” He raised his mug. “To freedom,” he said, draining the contents.
Rhys and Thomas exchanged looks before drinking. No matter how long they were with Jamie they’d never understand him. He was one of the few men to ever see the Maidenhall heiress, and he was complaining because she was beautiful.
“To freedom,” they said and drank.
Chapter 5
Did you see him!” Axia said, her face flushed with anger.
“No, I did not,” Tode answered, cleaning his nails with a penknife, not betraying how upset he was.
When a burly gardener had carried her into the house, Tode’s heart had nearly stopped at the sight of her unconscious form. For a moment he thought she was dead. He had her taken to her room, and there he’d bolted the door against intruders, demanding that a doctor be sent for from the village. But when Tode realized Axia had merely fainted, he wouldn’t allow the man inside. Instead, he’d given Axia a strong drink and had made her tell him everything that had happened. And as she spoke, he did his best to conceal his fear, for she could have been hurt by this intruder.
“He does not walk, he struts,” Axia was saying. Now fully recovered, she was pacing about the room in anger. “He swaggers. He throws back his shoulders and walks as though he owns the earth. Why? Because he is an earl? Ha! My father has two earls a day for breakfast.”
“No wonder he is choleric,” Tode said.
Axia did not smile at his jibe. “You should have seen him lusting after dear cousin Frances. It would make you sick.”
Tode doubted it would but did not say so, especially since he tended to agree with her about Frances. “You were clever to tell him she was the heiress. He might have taken you else.”
“No, no, not him. Not James Montgomery. He wants to marry me. Her. Marry her gold, that is.” Axia landed hard on a chair. “Why does no one see me? My father locks me away as though I have done something wrong. Criminals have more freedom than I do.”
“No heiress or young woman of your standing chooses her own husband,” he said, trying to inject some reason into her anger.
“Yes, but she does not have men coming over the wall just to see her. See how she glitters, that is. Sometimes I am grateful to my father. What do they”—she waved her hand, vaguely indicating the people beyond the garden walls, people she’d never met—“think I do all day?”
Tode knew he had to, at times, live up to his title of jester. “Eat hummingbird tongues covered with a sauce made of pearls. Spend the afternoons counting your jewels. Choose silk for new dresses every day.”
Axia did not laugh but glared at him. “You speak the truth.”
“I am paid to make you laugh, and what is more humorous than the truth?” With difficulty, he moved away from the plastered wall. His damaged legs were bothering him a lot today.
“Here! Sit down,” Axia said gruffly, knowing he hated her to be soft toward him. “You bother me when you creak about like that.”
“Then pray forgive me for bothering you,” he said as he sank onto a cushioned chair in the rather small and unnecessarily shabby room. Perkin Maidenhall had bought the estate because it was part of a larger tract of land he wanted. When his daughter was born, he’d sent her here to live, hidden away inside the high walls. In the nineteen years since her birth, she’d had only two companions: Tode and Frances. When Tode had arrived, he was twelve years old and had lived a life of endless pain and fear, and he had expected more of the same inside the high walls of the Maidenhall estate. But Axia, only eight years old but more like a small adult than a child, had taken him to her heart and had given him the best the estate had to offer. Under her loving care he had learned to laugh and had found out what warmth and kindness was. It was inadequate to say that he loved her.
“This Montgomery
is to escort you—or is it Frances?—tomorrow?” His eyes, Tode’s one truly beautiful feature, were sparkling as he teased her and tried to distract her from the realities of her life.
“Frances or me or you,” she said angrily. “He wants only the Maidenhall gold. Were I to put a wig on you, he’d fall to one knee and declare his love for you.”
“I should like to see that,” Tode said, running his thumb across the scars that extended down his neck. Not many people knew that from collarbone to midthigh, he was perfect, unscarred, unbroken.
Suddenly, Axia deflated and sank onto a chair, her head back, her face showing her misery. “Is this the way it is to be on the coming journey? Am I to be courted and lied to by every man from here to Lincolnshire? Shall handsome young men pull me into bushes and speak false words of love in hopes of getting my father’s wealth?” She snorted. “If they only knew! My father pays for nothing. He is paid for everything. Only a rich man’s son, like Gregory Bolingbrooke, could afford to pay enough to marry my father’s gold.”
Tode did not interrupt her, for he was fully on her side, but he’d never tell her so. It would only make her feel worse. In her whole life, she’d never been off these grounds. She’d grown up surrounded by people who were paid (as little as possible) by her father. And the people were given bonuses for spying on his daughter and telling her father everything she did. She was a rich piece of property to him, and he was not going to lose something as valuable as her virginity to some lowly retainer.
Therefore, the moment Axia seemed to grow fond of any male, he was removed. Because her friendships with females might cause her to be influenced by them, they too were removed when there was any sign of attachment. Besides Frances, only Tode had managed to stay near her. Perhaps looking at him, no one could imagine Tode inspiring love in another human. But, in truth, Tode was the only person Axia did love.
“Oh, Tode,” she said, and there was despair in her voice. “Do you know what awaits me in this marriage?”
He was glad she was looking up at the ceiling (which needed replastering) or else she would have seen the despair in his eyes. He knew a thousand times better than she did what awaited her.