He laughed again. She was unlike anyone he had ever met before. It was as though she knew none of the rules of behavior. “Yes,” he murmured and began to move within her.
Axia’s eyes widened in surprise. She’d thought his being inside of her was all there was, but now … Oh, now, this was even lovelier. Closing her eyes, she instinctively arched her hips upward and felt his silken strokes. And when he began to move faster and deeper, she flung both her legs and arms around him and pulled him as close to her body as she could.
Then he seemed to stop, shudder, and in the next moment he collapsed on top of her and she thought how sweet and tender he felt. He’d been so heavy and strong moments before, but now he was as light as a child.
Gently, she stroked his hair, glad she had been able to give him this pleasure.
“Did I hurt you much?” he asked softly.
“No, not at all,” she said honestly, then had a horrible thought. “I must go.” Tode would be looking for her, and if he didn’t find her, there would be an alarm sounded.
“No!” he said sharply. He’d moved so he was only half on her, his arm tightly around her waist. Relaxing his grip, he turned his head away from her. “Yes, of course, you must go.”
Let them look for me, she thought. In truth, what did she care if they found her? How were they going to punish her? Lock her up for the rest of her life?
Wiggling her body back under his, she stroked his face so he turned toward her. “What plagues you?” she whispered. “Tell me.”
After days of worry, it felt good to Jamie to be so relaxed. “I do not know how to protect her,” he said, knowing the woman would have no idea what he was talking about.
“Ah, yes,” Axia said. “The heiress.” Her arm was under his neck, his cheek on her shoulder, one of his heavy thighs across hers. How intimate, yet how right, she thought. “Is she so valuable to you?”
“I cannot fail. People depend on me. But the wagons …” He was feeling drowsy.
“Yes, the wagons,” Axia said with a grimace. She had dreamed of a trip across England without people gawking at her—or now it was Frances—because of the Maidenhall name. But her father had sent those heavy wagons that were no doubt full of untold wealth, and all along the journey they would create curiosity. She gave a great sigh. “Were I the Maidenhall heiress I would want to be someone else.”
He gave a sleepy smile. “And who would be greater than she? The Queen of England?”
“No, of course not. I would be … someone ordinary. A merchant’s wife mayhaps. Staying at inns or in a tent like this one. I would want no one to know who I was.”
“Yes, but people have seen her.”
“Who?” she asked. “I have heard she’s been a prisoner all her life. Never allowed out of the gates. It is my guess that she has never seen the world, never seen a puppet show, never seen a cathedral, never met anyone who was not properly introduced to her, never—”
Jamie chuckled. “You do have an imagination. Frances is so beautiful she would call attention to herself wherever she went. If I traveled alone with her, I’d have trouble protecting her.”
“Shall I infect her with smallpox?” Axia asked helpfully.
Jamie laughed again. “I wish I could take you with me. You please me. You give me ease.”
“Oh yes! I would like that,” she said, sounding like a child.
“Alas,” he said sadly, “I cannot.”
“Why? Because I am so ugly? You would be ashamed of me?”
He didn’t know how he’d feel to see her in daylight, but that was not his worry. “She might try to kill you.”
“Who? Why would anyone try to kill me?”
“The heiress’s cousin. Frances, the heiress, is a sweet-tempered, lovely woman, but she has a cousin who is eaten with jealousy.”
“Oh?” Axia’s voice cracked. “How do you know she does not have cause for her—her misdeeds? Sometimes women appear one way to a man and another way to a woman.”
“Like you? Do you appear attractive to me yet hideous to others?”
“Sometimes. But what of the cousin? Does she have nothing to recommend her?”
“I thought she did, but no, she is not what I thought. I do not like liars.”
“But perhaps there were reasons why she lied.” Her voice was rising above a whisper.
Jamie raised himself on his elbow. “You sound as though you know her.”
“No, of course not. How could someone like me know her? But I know what it is to have a beautiful older sister.”
“And how do you know that the cousin is not beautiful?”
Axia’s mouth was a tight line. “From the way you speak of her. There is a different tone in your voice when you speak of the beauteous Frances than when you speak of the cousin. I have heard that tone all my life when people speak of my sister. But never have I heard it addressed to me.”
“Sometimes a woman needs more than beauty,” he said, thinking of Berengaria. Axia could feel a change in him. “You shall go to my sister,” he said softly, as though this were a great honor.
“Go to your sister? Why? What—?”
“I will not leave you to your fate. I feel responsibility toward you after tonight. Yes,” he said, and she could feel that he was smiling, pleased with his idea. “I will leave money and a letter with the Maidenhall steward, and tomorrow you shall leave. I will write my sisters and tell them you are to arrive.”
For a moment Axia was overwhelmed by his generosity. No one gave gifts to one as rich as she. At Christmas she was expected to hand out gifts to everyone, but only Tode ever gave her anything in return. Frances had never once given her a gift. But this man, a stranger really, was asking to take on responsibility for her entire life. Were all poor people so kind and generous to one another? She had always fantasized about poor people’s lives of loving each other, helping each other. Every year Frances went home to her family for one month, and Axia dreamed of what it would be like to have a family.
“Your sister is beautiful?” Axia asked. “As you are?”
“How do you know what I look like?” He had his hand on her stomach, touching her, feeling her thighs, moving up toward her breasts.
Axia was having trouble thinking. “I have seen you. You are—”
He kissed her. “Do not say it. I do not want to be judged by my looks any more than you do.”
She smiled. Turning, she let her arms slide around him. “Make love to me again. Please.”
“Yes,” was all he said before his mouth covered hers.
This time he was slower, and Axia enjoyed their union very much, but what she loved most was the closeness, the feeling of not being alone.
When at last he collapsed on her, she knew that this time he was going to fall into a heavy sleep, but she also knew that she had to leave. After planting many kisses on his sleeping face, she struggled out of strong arms that held her to him as tightly as her father held onto his gold. Quietly, she found her clothes and dressed, but look as she could, she could not find her little embroidered cap. Her mother’s cap, she thought in a panic. She’d rather lose anything than that. Including her virginity, she thought and couldn’t suppress a giggle.
“What was that?”
Axia froze as she heard the man’s voice outside the tent.
“All this gold makes me nervous. If a shadow moves, I may kill it before I see what it is.”
That statement made Axia realize that she had to get out quickly. Now that she was no longer in Jamie’s arms, she was beginning to wonder what her father would do if he found out she’d surrendered her virginity to someone he had not chosen. If Jamie did leave money for the woman he knew as Diana, maybe he’d leave the cap also.
“Farewell, my love,” she said and silently left the tent.
Her eyes were adjusted to the dark, and the guards were carrying lanterns so she was able to slip past them without being seen. For a few moments she panicked when she couldn’t find the rope hangin
g over the wall. After she found it, it took her three mighty swings before she could get enough height to get over. She knew she’d made noise and she heard the guards, but by that time she was on the other side of the wall, leaning against it, her heart pounding.
“Must have been a squirrel,” a guard said.
“A squirrel the size of a man,” the other guard said before they left.
When all was silent again, Axia ran through the dark, across the orchard, and back to her own bedchamber.
She did not see Tode rise from his huddled place in the deepest, darkest corner of the wall and, frowning, slowly and stiffly go to his own bed, his head bent in thought.
Chapter 8
He is here!” Frances said as she burst into Axia’s room and threw back the bed curtains. Because the window curtains had not been drawn the night before, sunlight hit Axia square in the face. “Oh, he is divine, so kind, so considerate. Manners like a prince. And he is the most handsome man on earth.”
There was no need whatever to say who “he” was. “And my lover,” Axia muttered, only reluctantly waking up.
“What? What was it my poor cousin said?”
“Nothing, Frances. Why are you up so early? And what do you have on?”
“Yellow silk. Is it not divine? I have been saving it.”
Axia grimaced. Her father often used the estate as a stopping point for his wagons of goods traveling across the country. Whenever a load of silks came from France or leather from Italy, Frances helped herself. Of course she told the steward to report that the fabric had been used for the heiress. As for Axia, she found that stiff silk impeded her climbing of ladders to pick apples. And paint did not wash out of satin. Truthfully, clothes had never been of much interest to Axia.
“Saving it?” Axia asked, yawning. “And how many other gowns have you ‘saved’ for this journey? A queen’s wardrobe perhaps?” Both of them knew that Axia knew to a penny how much Frances spent or took.
Frances looked at herself in the mirror on the little stand on the table under the window. “You should hear his plan,” she said, watching Axia in the mirror. “I am to be his wife.” To Frances’s great satisfaction, Axia sat bolt upright in bed.
“His what?”
Turning, Frances gave her cousin a sweetly catty smile. “Oh, my, it is getting late. I must run. I am so glad you slept late, cousin, as you have given James and me time to become such good friends this morning.” With that, she slipped out the door.
Axia looked about her for something to throw at the door and found only her shoes, which made an unsatisfyingly weak sound when they hit the door. However, Frances must have been listening because her laugh rang out loud and clear before she ran down the hall.
Throwing back the covers, Axia thought, His wife? Now what has Frances been up to? And how can anyone cause so much trouble in so little time?
She dressed quickly, pulling her own laces together, gave a regretful glance toward the stand where her mother’s cap usually sat, then ran from the room. How her life had changed! First last night and now today! Today she was to start the most wonderful journey of her life. As she ran down the stairs, tying her hair into a tidy knot, she thought, What will I see on this journey? Who will I meet? What food have I not tasted? What smells will be new to me? What sounds are to be heard?
When she opened the door of the withdrawing chamber, she stopped short. He was there, standing so the sunlight hit the back of his head, playing on the dark curls of his hair, then running down his warm neck that she’d kissed so many times last night and onto his shoulders, so broad and strong. He was standing by a table, a map in his hands.
At the sight—and memory—of his hands, Axia had to catch herself against the door jamb. Would he recognize her? Would his spirit know who she was?
Blinking, she looked away from Jamie, bent so intently over the map, to see that both Tode and Frances were staring at her, Frances with a smirk on her face. Axia forced herself to remove the expression from her face. She wasn’t going to let anyone know what she was feeling.
“Good morning,” she said lightly. Tode nodded at her silently, still looking at her in an odd way; Frances continued smirking, and Jamie looked up frowning.
“You sleep late, I see,” Jamie said flatly, as though he now had further proof of her worthlessness.
From the way he glared at her, she knew that he did not recognize her from the night before. “Not usually,” she began, because he made her sound as though she were lazy. “Usually I—”
“No matter.” He cut her off, and looking back at the map, he continued as though she were of no consequence. “We will meet the wagons here and here—”
“What are you doing?” Axia asked, leaning over the map as close to Jamie as possible. Tode had moved to stand on the other side of her.
“Lord James has the most marvelous plan,” Frances purred. “Oh, please, do tell her,” she pleaded prettily.
Involuntarily, Axia smiled. Frances would do anything to get a man’s attention, pretend to be stupid, helpless, whatever. Axia had seen her ask men shorter than she was to reach for things for her. Frances could gag a person, but the men all seemed to love whatever she did.
Frances batted her lashes at Jamie. “Please,” she repeated.
With obvious reluctance, Jamie turned to Axia. “I have sent a messenger to my relatives to send guards for the wagons. Anyone who sees them will think they carry the Maidenhall heiress and her dowry. But in truth I have hired someone else to take her role.”
“And you will never guess who is to be me,” Frances said as she put her hand on Jamie’s forearm.
“Me?” Axia asked tentatively. Was she to be the heiress playing someone playing the heiress?
“Of course not!” Jamie snapped as though she had offended him. “I do not risk women, and any woman traveling in those gaudy wagons is at risk.”
Axia was glad he did not mean for her to be harmed, but the way he was looking at her made her think he hated her.
“Smith!” Frances burst out. “The tall boy who Father hired is to be me.”
It took Axia a moment to remember that “Father” was actually her father. She gave a weak smile, but she didn’t like the way Jamie was staring at her.
“Tell her the rest,” Frances urged. “It is such a brilliant plan.”
Jamie began rolling up the map, obviously very reluctant to tell Axia anything. “I and my two men will take another two wagons. We are to be cloth merchants, and Mistress Maidenhall will travel as my wife. That way, I will be able to protect her, free of the Maidenhall name.”
Thrusting the map under his arm, he looked at Axia, almost sneering at her. “Is there anything else?”
Axia swallowed. Why was he looking at her with such anger? “How do I travel?”
He gave her a look up and down. “You do not. You remain here.”
For a moment Axia could not speak. It was as though the bottom of her world had fallen out. Not to go? To remain here?
“You are not necessary,” Jamie was saying. “I was hired to protect the Maidenhall heiress, and you are one of the dangers. You have shown your jealousy and the lengths to which you carry it.”
Axia was in such a state of shock that it was as though her soul left her body and, hovering above the room, she could look down on everything and everyone. Not to go? She had been put inside these walls when she was three weeks old, and until last night she had never been outside of them. And after this journey she knew she would be locked up again. But now this man was saying that this one bit of freedom was to be denied her.
She could see Frances’s face. Never had a countenance registered such joy as Frances was feeling at this news that Axia would not be allowed to go on this journey.
Maybe James Montgomery did not remember last night, but she knew that she had given him her most precious gift, had told him she loved him, and today he was saying there was no reason for her to be given these few weeks of freedom. He was denying
her what she most wanted on earth.
Axia went into a rage such as she’d never felt before. Leaping on Jamie, her hands formed into claws, she raked the skin of his cheeks. Her attack was so unexpected, it stunned everyone in the room. No one could move. Jamie tripped over his own feet, staggering backward in his confusion as he tried to shield his face from her hands. Doubling her fist, Axia hit him in the face as she kicked him at the same time, all the while screaming, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”
Tode was the first to recover. He was the only person in the room who knew what Axia was feeling. Wrapping his arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides, he pulled her off Jamie. By this time, Jamie’s men had recovered enough to step between him and the little wildcat.
“Ssssh, quiet,” Tode was saying, holding Axia as tightly as possible. “Of course you can go. You will not be left behind.”
Jamie, the back of his hand to his scraped face, looked up. One of his eyes looked as though it might turn black. Looking at the blood on his hand, he said, “She is insane.”
At his words, Axia began to struggle again, but Tode bellowed across the room, “Frances! Tell him!”
Frances gave a great sigh because she knew exactly what Tode wanted her to say. “I will not go if my cousin Axia does not go with me,” she said tiredly, obviously not wanting Axia to go but still saying what was demanded of her.
Jamie looked from Frances to that crazy girl being held by Tode. What was this? What hold did that murderous girl have on the heiress?
“You do not have to do this,” Jamie said to Frances. The scratches in his face were beginning to sting. “She is a madwoman. She has tried to murder you, to murder me. Am I to carry her in a locked cage?”
Shaking all over, still trembling in the aftermath of her rage, Axia had not known she was capable of such anger. But not to go? Not to go?!
Tode relaxed his hold on Axia as he felt her subside. “Frances,” he said in a voice that carried warning, “if you do not say what needs to be said, then I will tell him all.”