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never meet anyone suitable locked away here with you. But perhaps my sisters will make good marriages because of my sacrifice.”
    â€œI would not send you away,” Axia said softly as she’d said many times before, but Frances never believed her. Every time they had a disagreement, Frances had said, “Now you will send me away, and my family and I will starve.”
    After a while, Frances gave a slow smile. “Perhaps we shouldwork out a financial arrangement. I do not think you believe I am so stupid as to risk my life for nothing.”
    Axia smiled. “If you are asking if I thought you would do something for me out of friendship, no, I can honestly say that never crossed my mind. I took the liberty of making a list of possible payment,” she said, unrolling a parchment.
    Taking it, Frances glanced down the list, then smiled. “Not nearly enough. I do not risk my life for so paltry an amount.”
    As always, Axia was prepared for this. “Shall we sit?” she asked tiredly. Bargaining with Frances always took time.
    Hours later, gold, jewels, cloth, and even revenues from land that had belonged to Axia’s mother had exchanged hands. Truthfully, it was less than Axia had expected to pay.
    Standing, Axia rolled up the parchment. “You will not like being me,” Axia said at last.
    â€œNor will you like being me,” Frances answered.
    Then, tentatively and very, very quickly, they shook hands.
    The bargain was made.

Chapter 6
    J amie was in a foul mood.
    At home, laughing, teasing with his sisters, it had seemed like a splendid idea to try to win the hand of a rich young woman. It was time he married; he was not averse to the idea. He was tired of sleeping on the ground or in flea-infested inns. He’d like to get back what his father and brother had sold, but to do that he needed money. And so it had seemed the answer to everything to make a young and protected girl believe she loved him, loved him so much that she’d beg her father to allow her to marry someone other than the one he’d chosen for her.
    And of course, Jamie thought in his vanity, he’d felt that he was the better prospect than the one who she was to marry. He was a Montgomery, of an ancient family, and if he had no money, his titles and blood would surely make up for that.
    But last night, as he paid halfpence to children to gather daisies to be sewn into a cloak, his conscience began to hurt him. Perkin Maidenhall had given him this job on trust. Trust. He was to guard a woman from enemies, not become her enemy.
    How could he do this to either of them? he asked himself. Yet never once had he wondered if he’d succeed. Whatever his pretended modesty, he knew that women liked him. But every time he thought of courting the beautiful Frances, he remembered the feel of pretty little Axia under his body. He remembered her breasts against his arm; remembered her brown eyes looking at him with disdain. Maybe that’s what he liked about her: she wasn’t falling all over herself at the sight of him. She stood with her shoulders back as though to say, I’m worth something!
    Just thinking of her made him smile, but the smile didn’t last long. How was he going to travel for weeks with
her
while trying to get the Maidenhall heiress to love him, which of course was a dishonorable thing to do since he didn’t love her and very much doubted that he ever would, and besides she was engaged to another, and besides that—
    â€œHell and damnation!” Jamie said. “What in the name of the devil is
that?
”
    Sitting atop his horse, Jamie looked down at the sight before him and rubbed his eyes. Surely what he was seeing couldn’t be real. It must be the early morning sunlight playing tricks on him. After all, he’d been up late last night supervising the sewing of daisies into a cloak (which he could ill afford), and now the cloak with its lining of hundreds of