The Heiress by Jude Deveraux

with this Gregory Bolingbrooke that his father must pay mine to marry me. I cannot look forward to a life of love with a healthy young man. I wonder if there will be children?”
    When she abruptly lowered her head and glanced at Tode, he turned away so she could not see his eyes. “Do not tell me!” she cried. “I do not want to know.”
    Jumping up from her chair, she flung her arms out. “I would like to live for once in my life. I’d like to look into a man’s eyes and see that he loved me or hated me for myself, not for my father’s gold. I am not Frances who cannot wait one second before she tells that she is the cousin to the greatest heiress in the land. You know that I’d rather talk with the cook than with those old men my father sends to visit me.”
    Tode’s eyes twinkled. “You, dear Axia, would talk to anyone from outside these walls, ask questions of anyone.”
    â€œOh, to see the world,” she said, twirling about, her skirt belling out about her. “That is what I’d like, to see the world.Oh, heavens, but I’d like to
paint
the world.” She stopped spinning. “But to see it properly, I must be someone ordinary, like … like Frances. Yes, to be as ordinary as Frances, that is what I would like.”
    Tode had to bite his tongue to keep from making a comment. He disciplined himself to keep from again saying what he thought of Frances. When Axia was twelve years old, she’d received a letter from her father saying he was sending her a thirteen-year-old female cousin for a companion. Axia had been so excited that Tode was jealous, and for months Axia had turned the estate upside down as she prepared for the arrival of Frances. Axia had moved out of her own room, the best bedroom in the house, and completely refurbished it for her cousin. When Tode had protested this extravagance, Axia had said, “If she does not like it here, she will not stay,” as though that ended the discussion. And even though Axia lived in fear of displeasing her father and made it a policy to ask for nothing for herself, she never hesitated to ask for something for someone under her care. So before Frances arrived, new curtains, new bed hangings, new cushions, were commissioned for her room.And as the day drew near, Axia was beside herself with anticipation.
    But on the day Frances arrived Axia was nowhere to be found. After much searching, Tode found her hiding high up in an apple tree. “What if she doesn’t like me?” Axia had whispered. “If she doesn’t like me, she will tell my father and he will take her away.” It had taken a great deal of talking to persuade her that no one could help but like her before Axiawould come down and greet her cousin.
    But Frances had not liked Axia. Tode, more worldly than Axia and hardened in the first horrible twelve years of his life, saw that Frances had learned to take what she could when she could and with anxious, eager-to-please Axia hovering about her, she managed to take a lot. It was no wonder this James Montgomery thought Frances was the heiress because she dressed as she thought someone who was related to the Maidenhall heiress should: dressed, ate, lived. And the more Axia gave, the more Queen Frances seemed to believe was her right. In the seven years since Frances’s arrival, many times Tode had tried to get Axia to stop giving so much to Frances, asking her father for whatever Frances wanted, whether it was oranges in winter or a special shade of silk, but Axia just waved her hand and said, “If it makes her happy, why not give it to her? My father can afford it.” But Tode knew that Axia, so lonely, imprisoned all her life, would always be that little girl, afraid of being left alone with strangers. And all these years, even though Frances had never reciprocated, Axia had never stopped taking care of Frances. Axia’s only retaliation to Frances’s