by Meg Cabot
The girl shrugged. “Your father, then.”
“Dead.”
Finnula looked so crestfallen that he wanted to laugh. Here she had gone to all the trouble of kidnapping him, and he had no relatives to pay ransom for him.
“Well, what am I to do with you, then?” she demanded, her asperity evident. “I can’t go about with a giant clod of a man forever hanging on my shirttail. There must be somebody who would pay for your release. Think. Isn’t there anybody who might want to see you again?”
Hugo glared at her. He didn’t much appreciate being referred to as “a giant clod of a man.” It didn’t sound very complimentary, and he was used to receiving compliments from women—lots of them, as a matter of fact. And what did she mean, hanging on her shirttail? She made it sound as if she’d been saddled with some sort of invalid half-wit, and not the very good-looking, quite virile seventh Earl of Stephensgate.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, madam,” he said stiffly, and because he would not have her think he was a nobody, he added, carefully, “I do have a cousin who was instructed before I left for the Holy Land to pay any ransom demanded for me—”
“Oh, well, then,” Finnula said, brightening. “That’s all right!”
And she awarded him a smile so full of sunny warmth that he forgot all about being annoyed with her. He was so distracted that he didn’t even hear the crunching of twigs nearby that warned of an interloper, not until it was too late.
Almost from out of nowhere hurtled the body of his squire. Peter collided against Finnula with stunning force, sending the girl sprawling beneath his vastly superior weight. Crushing the slender body down into the forest floor, Peter cried, “Run for it, my lord! Now’s your chance!”
Hugo had never felt such all-consuming fury. Of all the times for his clodpated squire to try to prove himself—and against a helpless girl, no less! Hugo let out a roar that startled birds from the treetops, and sent his own mount’s ears back flat against his noble head. Peter lifted his head from the girl stretched out prone beneath him, eyes closed, and had the grace to look sheepish.
“Get off her!” Hugo bellowed, struggling to his feet—no easy task, he found, with hands bound behind one’s back. “You simpleminded fool, you’ve knocked her senseless!”
Peter looked down at the pale and limp form beneath him, and bit his lower lip. “I’m sorry, sir,” he began, earnestly. “But I thought you were in real trouble. I stepped into a snare back there, that strung me up from a branch near five feet off the ground, and I only just cut myself free, and I thought—”
“And you thought I was in mortal danger from that girl beneath you? Get off her, I said!”
Peter clambered awkwardly from Finnula’s body, and Hugo fell onto his knees at her side, peering down anxiously at her pale face. He could see no outward signs of injury, and no rocks nearby on which she might have hit her head, and decided that she must have only had the wind knocked from her, and would revive anon.
“Go and fill your flask from yon waterfall,” Hugo instructed his squire curtly, “and dampen her face with it. At your peril she does not waken soon, or you will pay with your own worthless skull.”
Shaken at the anger in his master’s tone, Peter obeyed his instructions to the letter, filling his flask and lightly moistening the girl’s lips and face with the cool, fresh water. St. Elias might well have fallen out of favor with the church for not having cured any lepers, but at the touch of his rejuvenating spring water to the fallen maid’s skin, her eyelids fluttered, and color began to return to her high cheekbones.
“But I do not understand,” Peter worried, kneeling at the girl’s far side. “I saw that your hands were bound, and I stumbled upon your sword and knife, lain upon the ground, I thought those men from the inn had followed us, and that it happened she was one of their gang—”
“Nay,” Hugo growled. “She captured me by herself and in all fairness. I will honor her demand for ransom—”
“Ransom!” Peter looked down at the fair form lying crumpled beneath him, and shook his head in wonder. “Don’t tell me! I heard it, but I never believed it true…”
“Heard what?” demanded Hugo, his temper short. “Tell me now, you sniveling brat, or I’ll—”
“I heard it said in London,” Peter continued quickly, “that country maids were known to capture men and hold them ransom for monies they used to buy ingredients to brew ale—”
“Ale!” Hugo echoed, loudly enough to cause Finnula to groan at the word, as if it provoked an unpleasant memory.
“Aye, sir,” Peter said more softly, nodding. “Ale they sell for profit, to pay for their weddings, as a sort of dowry—”
“I never heard of anything so ridiculous,” Hugo declared. Truly, his country was well on the road to ruin if such practices were indeed taking place on a regular basis.
“Well,” Peter said, “I can think of no other reason why this maid would risk her neck capturing strange men and demanding their ransom—”
“She wasn’t risking her neck until you came along,” Hugo declared, accusingly. “I wouldn’t have laid a hand on her, and I’m sure she knew it.”
“I still don’t see—”
“No, you don’t. Now listen to me, before she fully wakes, and listen well. You’ll go on to Stephensgate alone, and wait for word of me there. Tell my bailiff I’ve been delayed, but that I’ll arrive anon. And under no circumstance is the sheriff to be roused, or any such nonsense—” Hugo stopped speaking as Finnula became fully conscious. She blinked up at him dazedly, her large gray eyes filled with confusion.
Then of a sudden she was on her feet, bare as they were, leaping behind a startled Hugo’s back and twining a slim arm around his neck, a small hunting dagger at his throat. Hugo was so tall that, kneeling, he was only a head shorter than she was fully standing, and so it was that he could feel the entire length of her warm body pressed close against his back, from the unsteady hammering of her heart beneath her rounded breasts, crushed up against his broad shoulders, to the trembling of her limbs as she regarded Peter from over the top of Hugo’s head.
“I knew I ought to have checked your boots for knives,” she said angrily to the squire, whose cheeks had been turning steadily a color not unlike umber. “But I thought you were too stupid to have a spare one. You did, though, and you cut yourself free, didn’t you?”
Peter, for the first time since he’d been in Hugo’s acquaintance, was actually tongue-tied. He nodded dumbly.
“I thought as much.” Finnula’s arm tightened around Hugo’s throat, but he thought she did it unconsciously, as if by straining the master to her, she could keep the servant at bay. “Well, do not come any closer, or I’ll have no choice but to cut him.”
It was an obvious lie, which no one who looked into her angelic face would believe, but Peter remembered the men back at the inn, and stayed still. Besides, he’d been given his instructions by his master, and would not but obey them. Never again would he risk engendering His Lordship’s wrath.
“I w-will do as…you say,” Peter stammered, somewhat incoherently. “I am sorry for…for hurting you. You aren’t—Is anything amiss?”
Finnula clung even closer to Hugo, who thought he might be strangled by the tight hold she kept on him. Truly, the girl did not know her own strength, which was considerably greater than one might guess, to look at her.
“You are Sir Hugh’s squire?” she demanded, and Peter, though confused by the title and name change, nodded.
“Good. Then get gone with you to…” She paused, her lips not far from Hugo’s ear, and turned her face toward her captive. “Where did you say you hailed from, sir?”
“You know where it is, boy,” Hugo said, to hurry things along. “Go there, now—”
“And tell them,” Finnula hurried to add, when it appeared that Peter was ready to fly from the clearing, “that they will be contacted in the matter of ransom for their master. And at Sir Hugh’s peril do you contact Sherif
f de Brissac,” she took care to inform him, “because he won’t brook any nonsense, and has more important things to do than trouble himself with so trivial a matter as this.”
Hugo listened to this last with interest. It was spoken with a particular force that indicated that this maiden had tangled with Sheriff de Brissac in the past, and wished to avoid further confrontations. How many other men, Hugo wondered, had Finnula Crais abducted? Considering her tender years and obvious inexperience, not many, he thought. So what sort of troubles could she have gotten herself into that involved the reeve of the shire?
“Yes, madam,” Peter was saying, backing away with no little haste. “I’ll see to it that no one contacts the sheriff, never you fear.”
“Get gone, then,” Finnula said, with a wave of the dagger, and Peter nearly fell over himself in his haste to comply with her wishes.
Finnula never stirred from Hugo’s back until the lad was well away, and the last sounds of his horse’s hooves could no longer be heard above the roar of the waterfall. Then she withdrew her arm from Hugo’s throat, but did not come around to face him.
He heard a sigh, and turning his head, saw that she had sunk down to rest upon the rocky shelf upon which he’d lain, observing her. Her elbows on her knees, her face resting in her hands, she huddled there, cloaked in her thick mane of auburn hair, no longer the spirited Diana who’d trussed him like a calf, but a small, defenseless maiden who had been taxed beyond her strength in the last few minutes.
Hugo, still kneeling with his hands bound behind his back, began to have misgivings about the entire situation. Damn that boy! He would never forgive him for scrambling the girl’s brains so, and would see him duly punished when he finally reached Stephensgate Manor.
“Does aught ail you, Mistress Crais?” he asked gently. “Is there naught I can do for you?”
She looked up, her face pinched with pain. “’Tis nothing,” she said stoutly, like a child too proud to share her hurts. “It will pass.”
Hugo knew then that she was badly injured. So stubborn a girl would never admit to pain were it not of the worst kind. “Show me,” he said.
“No.” She shook her head firmly, the red hair bouncing wildly around her slim shoulders. “I told you, ’tis nothing. Come, we must move on in order to be at our destination by dark. ’Tis not safe to roam these hills after sunset—”
She started to get up, but pain creased her lovely visage, and Hugo lost all patience, and bellowed at her in the same manner he’d chastised his squire.
“Foolish girl, you’re hurt. Unbind me and let me examine your wounds. I will not slip away from you, not when you have captured me in all fairness. I will play your game until the end, bound or unbound. Now, loose me!”
She snapped back at him, for all the world as if she were his wife of long standing. “Don’t bellow at me! I am not your serf, that you can tell me what to do. ’Tis I that does the bellowing round here, not you!”
Taken aback by her considerable spirit, Hugo blinked. Never before had he encountered a woman so completely unmoved by his ire. He realized that she was immune to fear of him, and cast about helplessly, wondering how to proceed. Never had he dealt with so contrary a lass. There was no use trying to intimidate her, much less seduce her. Would she respond to logic?
None too patiently, Hugo snapped, “Around my neck you’ll find a silken cord. Pull it out.”
She stared at him round-eyed, as if he had taken leave of his senses. “I’ll do nothing of the kind.”
“Pull it out, I tell you. Upon it hangs an uncut gem of far more worth than any ransom, given to me by a daughter of the Sultan of Egypt.”
“And tainted with some foul foreign poison, no doubt, with which you hope to kill me,” she sniffed.
“Are you as stupid as that sniveling squire of mine? It will do nothing of the sort. Pull it out, I say!”
Seeing that she hesitated still, regarding him as suspiciously as if he were the ferret-faced Dick, he roared, so thunderously that his mount reared behind them, “Do it!”
“Don’t tell me,” she roared back, every bit as loudly, “what to do! If you don’t stop bellowing at me, I’ll gag you!”
Hugo was so angry, he thought he might burst his bonds through sheer frustration alone. Then, just when he thought he might do himself—not to mention the intractable young miss who’d captured him—a harm, she rose from her seat with a painful wince, stalked toward him, and did as he bid, plucking from beneath his shirt the black cord about which he’d been speaking. The large, uncut emerald fell heavily into her hands, and she stared down at it in wonder, her lips parted moistly.
“’Tis yours,” Hugo said, realizing he was breathing hard with the effort of not knocking her about the head. “Until my ransom is paid, in any case. Take it, Finnula. If I escape, then you may keep it, to do with as you like. It will pay,” he added, with ill grace, “for a great deal of hops and malt.”
Her eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline, so great was her surprise that he’d sussed out the true reason for her kidnapping of him. “How did you know…?”
“Untie me.”
“But—”
“Untie me. Now.”
Never taking her large gray eyes from his face, she carefully dropped the silken cord from which the gemstone hung about her own long, slender neck. Then she reached for the knife she’d sheathed in the belt at her narrow waist, and, leaning so close to him that he could once again smell the fresh scent of her, she sliced cleanly through the rope that bound his wrists. Freed, Hugo stood, pulling himself up to his full height, and looked down at her. Finnula, who stood hardly past his elbow, regarded him without trepidation, a rare occurrence for Hugo, who engendered as much fear as admiration in the hearts of the many women he had known. Perhaps that brother of hers had seen that she led a sheltered life, never knowing of the cruelty of which men were capable, he thought. Foolish boy! Better that the girl should know the truth, that most men would not have her best interests at heart.
“Show me where it hurts,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. There was something about her proximity, which was close indeed, that caused him no small degree of discomfort. He did not know whether he wanted to thrash her or kiss her.
Without a word, she sank back onto the rock outcropping, and lifting her white lawn shirt no higher than the beginning of the curve of her right breast, revealed a bruise already mottled. Hugo sank to one knee to examine it, then reached out a tentative hand to touch the sensitive skin. When Finnula drew away before he had even touched her, her expression clearly challenging, he looked into her wide eyes and asked politely, “May I?”
She looked scornful. “What do you know,” she demanded, “of tending to wounds?”
“What choice do you have?” he snarled right back at her. “I don’t see any of your many sisters about, do you?”
Capturing her lush lower lip between her white, even teeth, Finnula nodded, closing her eyes against the anticipated pain—or perhaps, Hugo considered, against the humiliation of his touch.
Carefully, he laid his hand upon the bruised flesh, feeling skin that was smoother than any he had ever encountered, as soft as silk, but as hot as a feverish brow. She had very little fat on her, her muscles well-honed from riding and hunting. Her ribs protruded slightly beneath her small breasts, and the one he felt was surely bruised from Peter’s blow, though not likely broken. He had long experience with wounds, having spent so many years on battlefields, and he was well-versed in the arts of medicine.
But he had never, in all his healing experience, had so comely a patient.
Hoping that his voice carried no hint of the desire he felt at the touch of her bare, silken flesh, he asked, “Does it hurt when you breathe?”
She said, keeping her face turned well off to the side, so that all he saw was the curve of her high cheekbone, “A little. Is it my rib?”
“It is.”
“Is it broken?”
“I think not,” h
e said, straining to keep his voice light. “Bruised, surely, though. But such a slight wound is surely nothing to a woman of your stamina—”
The gray-eyed gaze swiveled toward him, the dark fringe of lashes narrowed suspiciously. “Do you mock me, sir?” she inquired.
“I, dare to mock a great huntress such as yourself? Forsooth!”
Her cheeks, which had been pale, flushed a hot pink. “You will regret making light of my hunting skills, sir, when I sup tonight on roast rabbit, and leave you to forage for yourself.”
“Ah, but ’tis the responsibility of a captor to see that her prisoner is well-fed.” Seeing her raised eyebrows, he added, to see how she’d react, “And even better bedded—”
She regarded him with just a trace of a smile on her lips. “Oh, you’ll be well-bedded, sir,” she assured him. “With the horses.”
Hugo grinned back at her, liking her for her mettle. “If you will permit me, I will bind it.”
She inclined her head regally in response, every bit as proud as the princess who’d given him the gem she now wore around her neck, and perhaps with more cause. After all, the sultan’s daughter had possessed great beauty…but no skill with a short bow.
Tearing a wide strip of material from the lining of his cloak, which was satin, and ought not to irritate her delicate skin, he had her inhale, and wound the impromptu bandage round her narrow rib cage. It would suffice, he decided. Now he had only to convince her to take something for the pain—
“I have,” he began, without preamble, “the essence of the poppy in one of my saddlebags. A few drops only will help lessen the pain. Will you take some?”
She eyed him narrowly, already clearly feeling better. “What kind of fool do you take me for? I know of a woman who took it, and remembered not what she did for twenty-four hours after, though all the village saw her skipping naked to the well—”
Tempting as that sounded, Hugo was already responsible for her bruised rib. He would not also be branded as her despoiler. There was that brother of hers to remember.
“Nay,” he said lightly. “I would not let you take so much. Only a little, for the pain.”