Lightly, she clasped her hands behind his neck, her face very close to his. “Is it truly only my father’s gold that you care about? Do you not find me even a bit attractive?”
“Yes, of course,” he said and moved his lips close to hers to kiss her.
But his lips did not reach hers because Axia kicked at a burning branch so hard it went flying through the air and landed on the ground near Jamie’s leg, where it promptly set the edge of his doublet on fire.
All hell broke out as Tode and one of the drivers helped put out Jamie’s burning clothing, with Rhys and Thomas leaping out of the tents, swords drawn.
When at last he was safe, unharmed, Jamie, shaking with rage, looked down at Axia.
“So sorry,” she said, smiling at him. “I must have kicked a bit too hard. I hope I did not disturb your courting of my rich cousin.”
“Axia,” Frances said under her breath, “I will get you for this.”
Jamie was beginning to recover his power of speech. “Tonight you sleep in my tent with me. I will watch that you do nothing else to harm anyone.”
She smiled at him. “I’d rather spend a week buried up to my neck in horse manure than spend one night in the same tent with you.”
Jamie took a step toward her, but Tode put his body between them. “I will watch over her and protect her.”
“Protect her?” Jamie gasped. “And who will protect us from her?”
“I am not hurt,” Rhys said. “Are you injured, Thomas?”
Thomas gave a tiny one-sided grin. His own father was a merchant, what Frances the heiress had referred to with so much disgust, so he wanted to take Axia’s side. “I am not injured in any way. Perhaps only one man in this company has been injured by this daughter-of-a-merchant.”
Blinking, Axia looked up at the two men with love in her eyes.
Jamie threw up his hands. “Go to bed all of you. I do not care where anyone sleeps.”
And with that they dispersed for the night into two tents and two wagons.
Chapter 11
Wake up,” Axia whispered to Tode. He was sleeping under the painted wagon, next to the driver Roger, while Axia had the interior to herself. She had a bed on top of the bolts of cloth they’d stored there as part of their disguise.
Sleepily, Tode roused himself. “Axia, it is not daylight yet. Nor will it be for hours by the look of it. Go back to bed.”
“Where are all these wagons going?”
With half-closed eyes Tode looked at the many wagons slowly making their way down the road but a few yards from their camp. “I do not know. I have never been here before. Go to bed.”
“If you do not tell me, I will ask them.” Meaning that she would cause a commotion and wake up the entire camp, then no one would get any sleep.
“I would assume it is market day in this village, and they are going to sell their wares,” he answered, then lay back down again.
Standing, Axia looked at the wagons. Market day! She’d always wanted to see market day in a village. What Frances had said so nastily was true: Axia did send produce to the village, and afterward she asked hundreds of questions of the vendor.
Bending, she shook Tode awake again. “Get up. We are going to the market.”
“I …” Tode began, frowning.
She knew what his worry was. He did not like to be seen by people. “Oh, do not fret. You will stand inside the wagon, and no one will see you.”
Slowly, painfully, he crawled out from under the wagon. “You cannot do this. He will be very angry.”
“He already hates me, so what does it matter?”
“Axia …” Tode began in warning.
“Please,” she whispered. “You know what awaits me. Do you think my new husband will allow me to attend the village market day? Or will he exhibit me like a freak? The Maidenhall heiress!” She said the last as though it were something vile and dirty.
The words exhibit and freak made Tode agree. “But he will hear and—”
“Not over the noise of the other wagons. Oh, Tode, please. I cannot allow this man to lock me away from all life. Maybe he will hear, but at least we can try.”
Tode grinned, something he did only with Axia. “We can try to seize the day, can we not?”
On impulse, she threw her arms around his neck and gave him a quick, fierce hug. “Thank you so much.”
Axia didn’t spare the time to see the way her hug had affected Tode but scrambled under the wagon to wake Roger and try to silently escape the everwatchful eyes of James Montgomery.
“She has gone,” Jamie said under his breath. His anger would not allow him to speak out loud, or he’d bellow so the stars would fall from the sky.
Rhys, just crawling out of his tent, looked at the place where the big painted wagon had been last night. Over the last days he’d grown to like the firebreathing dragon and the lion that Jamie—a still nearly nude Jamie—was ready to slay. Under normal circumstances, he would have worried, would have suspected a kidnapping, but now he knew without a doubt that if there was a domestic problem, Axia would solve it. Yawning, he wondered what delicious thing she’d bring back for supper.
“Wonder where she has taken it?” Thomas asked as he looked about as though the big wagon might be hiding behind a rock.
Only Jamie was in a rage. “I see that neither of you think there has been foul play.”
“She is with Tode,” Thomas said. “He will see that she is safe. And I am sure she will return soon.”
Jamie looked at the two men as though they had lost their minds. They did not seem overly concerned that he had been commissioned to get the heiress safely to her fiancé. But this—this Axia thwarted him at every opportunity. “She must be found.” Turning to the maid who was laying out bread and cheese on the little table from Jamie’s tent, he said, “You must wake your mistress as—”
He broke off because Frances came slowly out of the wagon, and insignificantly, he thought that she did not look so beautiful first thing in the morning. “She has stolen a wagon and gone,” Jamie said, not explaining who “she” was. “And I must find her and bring her back.”
Frances did not like the early morning and especially did not like being confronted with Axia’s misdeeds the first thing of the day. “She has taken the wagon into the village,” she said, reaching for a mug of cider from her maid. Her gown was wrinkled, and she was annoyed with Axia for not having seen that it was properly packed.
Jamie was too busy saddling his horse and too angry to hear her, but Rhys and Thomas, hands full of bread and cheese, turned to look at her. “Why did she want to go into the village?” Thomas asked.
“To make a penny, of course,” Frances answered.
When all three men looked at her in consternation, her lips tightened. When did she become Axia’s keeper? Nodding toward the people on the road a few yards away, all of them walking or riding toward the village in the near distance, she said, “There is a merchant’s fair, is there not? And money is exchanging hands?” Her voice was sarcastic. “If there is money to be made, then that is where Axia is.” She looked up at Jamie, her eyes narrowed. “I told you she had the heart and soul of a greedy little—”
She didn’t finish the sentence because Jamie had mounted his horse and was lost in a cloud of dust as he thundered toward the village.
As Jamie rode, he thought that he wasn’t sure he believed Frances. Why would a gift who lived with the Maidenhall heiress want to go into a country village on market day? And even though he remembered Tode’s words about Axia being good with money, he didn’t believe that termagant was good at anything except drawing pictures. How could she be when she’d been locked away all her life?
No, he corrected himself, it was Frances who had been locked away. Axia had a father and sisters and had lived with them half her life and now visited them regularly.
“Have you seen a wagon with—?” Jamie started to ask as soon as he reached the outskirts of the village, but he broke off when s
omeone pointed and said, “It’s him. The dragonslayer. The lion killer. It’s him!”
Jamie, teeth gritted, reined his horse away from the man and into the crowd of people. Obviously, she was here and people had seen his picture on the side of that odious wagon.
Always, it seemed that Axia had the ability to humiliate him. For twenty-eight years he had conducted himself with dignity and pride, but since he had met her, his life had become a farce. “A Greek tragedy,” he said under his breath as he wove his horse through what seemed to be a few hundred people who were buying, trading, bartering, or just visiting each other.
“Dragonslayer!” he heard called out more than once. Cynically, he wondered how they recognized him, what with the scratches still visible on his cheeks and one of his eyes still bruised.
Toward one end of the town was a large crowd of people, and just above their heads he could see the colors of Axia’s painted wagon. And, believe it or not, he could hear Axia’s voice. How could such a small female be so loud?
In order to get near the wagon, he had to go around the crowd and come in the back way, and then it was only because he was atop the horse that he could see what was going on.
He’d purchased the wagons as a pretense only, never thinking what they were meant for. Tode had told him that there was cloth in the cellars, so Jamie had decided to use some of it as part of their disguise. But now he could see that this wagon had been built for what Axia was using it for. One side of it, most of the dragon’s belly, had been raised, making an overhead door, held aloft by two posts that were fitted into iron rings bolted to the side. There was a shelf, which had probably been attached to the inside of the wagon, fitted across the bottom of the opening, making a convenient counter.
Axia had draped a bolt of cloth across one end of the inside of the wagon, forming a curtain, and Jamie had no doubt that Tode was hiding behind that, out of sight of the crowd. Inside the wagon was Axia, Roger with her as he rushed to cut and measure, according to what Axia was telling him to do.
But what confused Jamie at first was why there was so large a crowd around the wagon. Had they never seen a cloth merchant before? Or was it the way the wagon was painted? He could imagine that they would gather in crowds to see it, but these people were buying as fast as Roger and Tode, hidden behind his curtain, could cut. Jamie knew that a few hours ago there had been tall stacks of cloth inside the wagon, but now there was very little. However, there did seem to be a huge wheel of cheese, some bags of flour, a haunch of beef, and, unless he missed his guess, a couple of chickens, and they were only what he could see. He had no doubt that there was a great deal more on the floor out of his view.
He had just urged his horse forward when Axia’s voice rang out, making him halt.
“My ancestors were the greatest merchants ever put on this earth,” she shouted, even though she seemed to be talking to a man only a foot in front of her. “I’d sooner give this cloth away than accept what you are offering. See that glimmer? Dragon scales, that’s what makes that shine. Have you never wondered what happened to the slain dragons of old? The great knights killed them, true, but my ancestors skinned them and salted the skins, scales and all. They saved them for generations, not knowing what to do with them, but then my own grandmother, blessed be her name, discovered a way to spin the scales into threads and my sainted grandfather oversaw the massive looms it took to make the scales into cloth. Now, see the way it shimmers in the sun? Dragon cloth,” she shouted. “Dragon cloth for sale. It never wears out.”
It took Jamie some moments to clear his head of the lies he had just heard. Dragon cloth? It never wears out?!
Every knightly vow he’d ever taken rose up in him. How could she lie like that? How could she—?
He didn’t bother wasting any more time thinking but kneed his horse forward into the crowd, scattering them as he rode to stand in front of the wagon.
“What—?” Axia began, then groaned when she saw who it was. “Close up, men. The devil has eaten the sun,” she shouted, ostensibly toward Roger and Tode in back of her.
“Get out here,” Jamie said to her, his jaw clamped shut.
A man standing by his foot, a fat goose tucked under his arm, stared up at Jamie and started to say, “Dragonsl—” but the look Jamie gave him kept him from finishing his cry.
“Now!” Jamie commanded to Axia. “Leave the wagon and let the men take care of it.” He turned to Roger and Tode, who he knew was listening, “And that wagon had better be back in camp immediately.” Roger just nodded as Axia opened the door and stepped out.
“Could someone ask this man what he is angry about now?” she asked, squinting against the sun as she looked around the crowd but refusing to look up at Jamie. “Or perhaps it is just the fact that I live and breathe that offends him?”
Jamie wasn’t about to make himself more of a laughingstock before this entire village and the neighboring population than her half-dressed painting of him had already done. “You there!” he said to a burly man with muscles bulging. “Lift her up to me.” Nor was he going to dismount and get closer to these people who were comparing the painting to the actuality.
The man’s face lit up as though he’d received the keys to the kingdom, and in an instant he had put his hands under Axia’s arms and was lifting her into Jamie’s saddle to sit before him. But as the man started to drop her, he felt the sharp point of Jamie’s dagger just under the tip of his chin.
“If you would like to keep those thumbs of yours,” Jamie said, “watch what they touch.”
The man looked properly chastised, but the crowd, already excited by the wagon and Axia’s promise of dragon cloth, found this whole scene appealing to their imaginations. One man in the back, far away from Jamie, yelled, “Dragonslayer!” and within minutes the whole of them had taken it up. “Dragonslayer! Dragonslayer! Dragonslayer!”
Rolling his eyes skyward, Jamie, Axia before him, turned his horse and started to make his way out of the village. With some effort he was able to disentangle himself from the crowd and head toward the fields that lay in the direction of the camp. But he did not go quickly there, for he wanted some time to try, once again, to talk some sense into this disruptive young woman.
“You are drawing attention to us,” he began, meaning to wait until they were someplace where he could dismount, but he couldn’t seem to wait. “What is the use of a disguise if you parade us before the whole town, making us a spectacle and a laughingstock?”
She did not say a word.
“Do you have no answer?” he demanded. “Do you never have an explanation for your actions? Do you never think before you act?”
Axia was in the saddle before him, both her legs to one side, his arms were around her, albeit to hold the reins but still around her, and her entire left side was pressed against his body. In spite of the fact that she had decided that she hated him for all the things he had done to her and most of all for not recognizing that she was Diana, he did feel rather nice.
“Axia,” Jamie said sternly, “what do you have to say for yourself?”
Axia bent her head forward. “Horse, do you hear anyone talking? No? Nor do I. It must be the breeze in the trees.”
Jamie gave a heavy sigh of exasperation. “When I received a letter from Perkin Maidenhall asking if I would escort his daughter across England, I thought it would be an easy way to make money,” he said as though talking to himself. “But now I know that I’d rather rout criminals in the Highlands of Scotland than deal with—with …” As usual, Axia seemed to defy his powers of description.
He took a deep, calming breath. “Axia,” he said softly, for now, holding her like this, he could remember that she was a woman. Most of the time it was difficult to remember that she was anything but an imp put on earth to harass him. “You cannot take the wagon and disappear at will. You and your cousin are under my protection. I must know where you are and what you are doing at all times. Do you understand me?”
Again h
e awaited her answer, even if it were addressed to his horse, but when he looked down at her, he saw that she had fallen asleep. Her head was nestled into the hollow of his shoulder, her hands were primly in her lap, and she had fallen asleep against him.
And no wonder, he thought. She did twice as much work as anyone else in their troop. Not that she ever did any work for him, but he saw all that she did for the others. And now, from the look of the contents of the wagon, he wouldn’t have to buy food stores for the coming week. Maybe, he thought reluctantly, Tode had been right and Axia was, well, competent with money.
However, he must speak to her about her outrageous lies about “dragon cloth.”
A few hundred yards before him, he could see the camp, and he knew that the others awaited them. But Jamie was sure that soon Tode and the driver would bring the other wagon, what Rhys called the dragon wagon, and shortly they would be off on the day’s journey.
Knowing that he should join them at once, instead, on impulse, Jamie turned his horse off the road and rode up a hill toward a huge oak tree that provided deep shade. It wasn’t easy, but he managed to get off the horse while holding Axia and without waking her, then, carrying her as though she were a child, he sat down under the oak tree, Axia cuddled on his lap.
She slept for nearly an hour, curled on his lap, his hand holding hers. He hadn’t realized before now how small she was. Maybe it was just her character that was large, he thought, because now, as he looked at her little hand and felt the way her head did not reach his chin, she made him feel very protective. Somehow, right now he felt as though he actually was the man she’d painted on the side of the wagon.
Fastening his arms about her tightly, he pulled her close to him, put his head back against the tree, and began to doze himself.
Minutes later, he awoke with a start.
“Get your big, horrible hands off of me!” Axia yelled at him, hitting him in the ribs with her elbow. “Do you think that I am a loose woman who you can be free with?”
The Heiress Page 11