The Heiress by Jude Deveraux Read Free Book Online

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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œWhat is she like?” Rhys demanded again. The Maidenhallheiress. 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.
    â€œYes,” 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.
    â€œShe 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—”
    â€œPlump-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?”
    â€œShe is to help me win the heiress,” Jamie said glumly.
    â€œBut I thought your plump sparrow
was
the heiress,” Rhys said in confusion.
    â€œNo,” 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