The Heiress by Jude Deveraux Read Free Book Online Page B

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.”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œHere! Sit down,” Axia said gruffly, knowing he hated her to be soft toward him. “You bother me when you creak about like that.”
    â€œThen 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.
    â€œThis 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.
    â€œFrances or me or you,” she said angrily. “He wants only the Maidenhall gold. Were I to put a wig on you, he’d fall toone knee and declare his love for you.”
    â€œI 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. Perhapslooking at him, no one could imagine Tode inspiring love in another human. But, in truth, Tode was the only person Axia did love.
    â€œOh, 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.
    â€œThere will be no love. No, I am not naive. Being a prisoner all my life has made me old. There is something wrong