“Make it three hundred acres.”
“It is yours.”
“Then I am—”
“Quiet!” Jamie suddenly commanded as, standing, he moved to the other side of the little camp, motioning with his hand that all of them were to crouch down and be quiet while his eyes searched the forest. Tode put his arm protectively over Berengaria, hiding her from whatever it was that Jamie saw.
After a moment, Jamie gave a little smile, then turned to Axia, who had flattened herself on the ground. “It is your cousin,” he said, wonder in his voice. “I would recognize the brilliance of that dress anywhere.”
With disbelief in her eyes, Axia lifted her head and looked over the fallen log Tode and Berengaria were crouching behind, and there, sauntering toward them, as though she had all the time in the world, was Frances.
As soon as Axia could believe what she saw, she jumped up and ran toward her cousin, then stood in hesitation when she was in front of her. For all that Frances must have been through, she looked the same, but at the same time there was something different about her. Just like Tode, Axia thought.
“Well?” Frances demanded. “Are you not glad to see me?”
With that she opened her arms, and the two women ran toward each other, hugging, and Axia was surprised to find that she was glad to see her cousin.
In the next minute Jamie was on the other side of Frances, ready to ask her many questions, but Frances said she had nothing to say until she’d had something to eat. Then she shocked Jamie by telling him where she had hidden a bag full of food.
“Do not look so shocked, Axia,” she said, laughing, after Jamie was gone. “How do you think my family fed itself before they had access to the Maidenhall money?”
“I—I do not know.”
“Thievery, that’s how. When I was a mere four years old, I was an expert chicken thief, and I could steal eggs as fast as they were laid.” With that, she turned away and went toward the others in the camp.
Axia stood staring after her cousin, because in all the time she’d known Frances, all she’d heard was that Frances’s family was the kindest, most wonderful she’d ever imagined. Recovering herself somewhat, Axia followed her cousin back to the camp.
An hour later, a meal had been cooked—Frances had helped—and all of them were sitting in a circle around Frances, waiting for her to tell the story of her escape.
Axia was feeling very strange. It was as though everything she’d ever known in her life was changing. Her beloved Tode, who had always looked at Axia with adoring eyes, was now looking at Berengaria with love. And helpless Frances had managed to escape from a stone prison and had fried bacon and eggs over a campfire as though it were something she had done a thousand times. But Axia knew that Frances could not even tie her own shoelaces, much less feed herself and certainly not others.
And there was something different in her manner, something … Axia thought that maybe it was self-confidence. Frances seemed so much more sure of herself than she ever had before.
“Tell us,” Joby urged, stretched on the grass, looking up at Frances and wondering how Jamie could have turned down this woman for Axia. But then she had had some fun with Axia and … Well, maybe Axia wasn’t so bad after all. “Tell us how you escaped,” she said again.
“I painted doors on the walls,” Frances answered with a smile, looking about the group expectantly, but there was no enlightenment on the faces of anyone.
But then Tode began to laugh. “Like Axia,” he said. When Frances looked at him, Axia saw a look pass between them that she had never seen before. It was as though they shared something private and secret.
Frances motioned for Tode to tell. “It was a trick Axia once played on everyone when she twelve,” he said. “She recruited all the workmen on the estate, then stayed up all night painting half-open doorways everywhere. There were mouse holes, tall doors, short doors.”
“And a few windows,” Frances added.
“The cook drank too much, and Axia almost drove the woman crazy, because for the next several days, she kept walking out open doors, only to find herself running into a wall,” Tode said, smiling.
Axia had forgotten the incident entirely, but now she also remembered the time when she painted daisies all over a wall of Frances’s bedchamber. Considering what had happened with Jamie and the cloak, she hoped neither Tode nor Frances would mention that. “How did you get out?” she urged, trying to divert Tode and Frances from a longer rendition of her childhood pranks.
“I asked myself what Axia would do in this situation, then I did it,” Frances said proudly, then looking at Jamie, she said, “Axia is very clever, you know.”
At that Axia’s lower jaw dropped open so far her teeth nearly fell out, and she would have commented if she hadn’t been sure the world was in imminent danger of ending.
“I must begin at the beginning,” Frances said. “At first everything was fine. Henry was very nice to me because all he wanted was to marry Jamie’s sister. He planned to exchange me for her, but then his awful brother came and said, ‘Henry, you are holding the Maidenhall heiress captive, and you want to trade her for some girl who can’t afford to fix her own roof?’ So he told Henry that he should marry me himself, and I was to be held prisoner in a stone tower until the marriage could be arranged.”
Frances took a breath and looked at her audience. Usually, Axia’s vivacity overrode any beauty and especially any story that Frances might have to tell. But now everyone was looking and listening to Frances. And she couldn’t help reminding herself that it would end as soon as it was found out that she wasn’t actually the Maidenhall heiress. For all that she had been kidnapped and held prisoner, Frances liked being the Maidenhall heiress as much as Axia hated it.
She continued her story. “I was trying to make Henry like me, so I told him that I was the one who had painted the dragon wagon. Oh, I was so afraid on the journey south. When I realized he was not the one Axia, uh …” She glanced nervously from Axia to Jamie.
“He knows,” Axia supplied, nodding toward Jamie.
“Anyway,” Frances continued, “Henry thought I was the greatest painter in the world; I just hoped I’d never have to prove it. So later when he locked me away, it seemed natural to him for me to ask for paints, especially since I was so afraid—and so alone. Only Tode was allowed in twice to try to cheer me up. If it hadn’t been for him, I …” At that she looked away and blushed.
Which made Axia look in consternation from Frances to Tode to Berengaria, whose mouth was now in a prim little line.
Frances continued. “I thought for days of some way to get out but could think of nothing, as Henry came personally to give me my food. Perhaps I could have persuaded another man, but not Henry. Once he has his mind made up, nothing changes it.”
Pausing, she smiled at her audience. “Then I thought, What would Axia do? and I remembered all those painted doors. So I begged Henry for pigments, so I could make myself some paints. Just as I’ve seen you do so often, Axia. When he gave them to me, I stayed up all night and painted three doors on the walls of my room and one window, complete with a bird on the sill.”
She looked at Axia, her eyes sparkling. “And out the window was a field full of daisies. I’ve seen Axia paint a good number of daisies, so I was rather good at painting them,” she said with a laugh, looking at Axia’s pink face. “Then I painted the back of the real door to look like the stone of the wall.”
She looked in apology to Axia. “My painting wasn’t very good, but Henry’s eyesight was so poor that I thought I might be able to fool him long enough to escape.”
“And it did fool him,” Jamie said, making everyone turn to look at him. “I did not dare to try to escape from the tunnels myself for fear of what would be done to Frances if they found me gone. But after several days, I heard the guards gossiping that she had escaped, but there seemed to be some great secret attached to her method of escape. However, with some persuasion, I coaxed the gu
ard to tell me all. Henry Oliver opened the door to Frances’s room, only to see her lying on the bed, silent and not moving. But when he went to the bed, Frances was hiding behind the door, so she slipped out and shut the door behind her. Oliver then spent hours in that room, wandering around trying to open painted doors and the window. Truthfully, he thought it was the most wondrous thing he’d ever seen, and he wasn’t at all upset that Frances had escaped.” Looking at Axia, his eyes twinkled. “He swore he could smell the daisies.”
Axia was too busy thinking to smile. She did not have to be told that the reason he had been whipped was because Frances had escaped. “But his brother was not amused,” Axia said softly, reaching out to touch Jamie’s hair.
“True,” Jamie said softly, “his brother was very angry.” For a moment he looked at Axia with love, letting his eyes talk for him, telling her the things he had not yet had time to say to her. While he had been in that prison, he realized that he had never told her how much he loved her. He had thought of her all the time he was in there, thought of how much she had come to mean to him. Part of him wanted to murder her for endangering herself in attempting to rescue him, but another part of him loved her more for it.
Tonight, he thought. Tonight he would hold her in his arms, they would have privacy, and he’d tell her how he felt.
Now,” he said, rising, “it is growing dark, and I think we should all go home.”
Frances was the first to rise, and when she started clearing the camp, again Axia watched her in wonder. When they had been traveling north in the wagons, Frances had never once lifted a hand to help. And when they had lived on the Maidenhall estate, she had seemed incapable of doing anything.
“I do not understand,” Axia said softly when she and Frances were some distance from the others.
“You do not understand what?”
“How … ?” Axia tried to recover herself. “Frances, you are the most helpless person I have ever met, yet you have managed to escape a kidnapping and you have fed us as well as yourself and you have—”
Frances’s laugh cut her off. “Axia, I am not helpless.”
“But you—You …”
Frances looked Axia square in the eyes. “I just pretended to be helpless because that is what you need. You love helpless people.”
“I what?” Axia said, half in anger, half in disbelief.
“Axia, you are terrified that no one will ever love you or like you just for yourself. No matter how much someone loves you, you always think it is because of your father’s money. When I arrived at your estate, I was just a child, but I had been through more horror than most people endure in a lifetime. And I had decided that I was going to be anything you wanted me to be so I would not be sent back to my father.”
“And you think I needed you to be helpless,” Axia said with heavy sarcasm.
“Oh yes, Axia. You must feel ‘useful’ as you call it. You always feel that you have to show people that you are worth more than your father’s money, and you do that by working your little fingers to the bone. Please do not get me wrong, you are so very useful that you make everyone around you feel helpless. It is so much easier to sit back and let you do everything.”
When Axia managed to quit sputtering, her mouth hardened. “And is it also my fault that you extorted money out of me for all those years? You never gave me the time of day unless I paid you.”
“True,” Frances said cheerfully, “and I still have every penny of it. Axia, you do have the most amazing ability to earn money. And I am sure you will be the perfect wife for Jamie, what with his blind sister, and that boyish girl, Joby, you will have a lifetime of being useful.” She smiled. “I am sure, Axia, that in no time at all you will have them all rolling in money. You’ll find ways to turn air into gold—just like your father.”
For a moment, Axia was too stunned to speak. She couldn’t comprehend what Frances was saying. “Everything is changing,” she whispered. “You have changed. Tode has changed.”
“Yes,” Frances said, her face losing its smile as she glanced quickly at Tode as he helped Berengaria brush her skirt off. Her voice lowered. “Tode humiliated himself in front of Oliver, making the basest jokes about his face and body. It was awful to hear and worse to watch.”
She took a breath as though trying to calm something inside her. “He did that for me. I always thought he hated me or at least cared nothing about me, but he was—” Quickly, she looked at Tode over her shoulder and closed her mouth.
“He is different,” Axia said. “I cannot put my finger on it, but there is something different about him.” She looked back at her cousin. “As you are different. What has happened to change the two of you so much?”
“Axia,” Frances whispered urgently, grabbing her arm. “I must tell you something. It is very important, and I must tell you before—”
But she never finished her sentence because at that moment Joby came running back toward them. Unbeknownst to Frances and Axia, Jamie had heard horses approaching and had sent Joby to see who they were, all of them hoping the riders were their Montgomery cousins.
“It is Maidenhall himself?” Joby said jubilantly, arms waving, “And he comes now. For his daughter!”
Neither Frances nor Axia had time to think or speak. They merely entwined hands tightly and looked toward where Joby was pointing. Stepping through the trees was a man neither woman had ever seen before but who they knew well. For years Axia had asked every visitor to the estate what her father looked like, and through their descriptions, she had drawn many, many pictures of him, even painted a couple of oils.
Now there was no mistaking the fact that the short, thin man coming toward them, wearing his shabby black wool robe, his lank gray hair hanging to his shoulders, was Perkin Maidenhall—the richest man in England.
Unerringly, he walked straight to Axia. “Well, daughter, what do you have to say for yourself?” His eyes were cold, his voice showing his barely controlled anger.
Chapter 29
When neither Axia nor Frances seemed able to speak, Perkin Maidenhall said, “Come, daughter,” then turned his back as though he expected her to follow him and started toward his men, who were rapidly surrounding the little campground.
“I believe you are in error,” Jamie said, amusement in his voice, as he slipped his arm around his wife. “This is not your daughter.”
Maidenhall turned to look at Jamie as though just now seeing him. He was a small man, with eyes like black glass, and as he turned his hard stare at Jamie, the younger man could see why it was reputed that he had never been bested in a deal.
“Are you saying that I do not know my own daughter?”
Jamie’s arm tightened about Axia’s shoulders. “This woman is my wife.”
At that Maidenhall threw back his head and gave a laugh, an ugly, rusty sound that showed that laughter was not something he was much practiced at. “And what do you think you have done? Married the Maidenhall heiress? You? Poor James Montgomery? James Lackland should be your name.”
Instinctively, Jamie’s hand went to the sword at his side, but as he moved, what now looked to be three hundred men, some on horseback, some on foot, all drew their swords and aimed them toward him.
“Please,” Axia said, moving out of Jamie’s evertightening grip. “I must speak to my father.”
“Your—?” Jamie said in consternation, then his face changed. “I see,” he said. “So this is your great secret. Did you think I was such a mercenary that I would change if I knew of your great wealth? Is this what you thought of me?”
Maidenhall answered before Axia could. “But it is what you wanted, is it not? At first you courted poor cousin Frances, but later your attention turned to my true daughter.” He looked at Axia. “Have you never asked yourself why? Why would he stop courting a woman as beautiful as Frances and turn his attention to a plain, drab little thing like you?”
It was as though he were reading her mind, for it is exactly what Axia had wondere
d.
“I do not know what you are insinuating—” Jamie began, but Maidenhall cut him off.
“I am saying, my lord,” he sneered the words, “that you found out the game played by two foolish girls and immediately changed your attentions to the one who was to be my heir.”
“I did not …” Jamie trailed off, because as he spoke, he looked into Axia’s eyes and knew that she believed her father, or at least there was doubt there. He dropped his arm from around her, his pride damaged.
Axia spoke for the first time. “I want to speak to my father alone,” she managed to say.
“Yes,” Jamie said angrily. “As you are the daughter to the great Maidenhall, of course, you must speak to him.”
“Jamie,” she said, her hand on his arm, but he turned away, so she walked into the trees with her father.
Perkin Maidenhall was short, and his eyes were on a level with his daughter’s.
“What do you want?” she said coldly. All her life she had wanted to meet her father. She had worked in every way at pleasing him, but now that he was here, she could see nothing in his eyes. Nothing but money, that is. It was true what Frances had always taunted: her father had never met her because he had never had a way to make money from her—until now.
At his daughter’s curt tone, Maidenhall allowed a bit of a smile. “I’d heard that you were like me, and now I can see it.”
“Do not insult me,” she said quickly. “Talk to me about money. How much is involved?”
He did not hesitate. “I have a contract with Bolingbrooke, and you must honor it.”
“I am now defective goods; I am no longer a virgin, so I am not worth the bride price.”
“That is all right since Bolingbrooke’s son is impotent. If you are with child, I will charge him more for giving him an heir.”
At the callousness of that remark, Axia blanched.
“What’s the matter, daughter? Did you not believe what you had heard of me? Did you think I was actually a sweet little man with a fondness for dogs and small children?”
The Heiress Page 28