by Meg Cabot
“I suppose,” Hugo said, taking quite a large gulp of ale, “that you’ll be marrying your smithy, then.”
It was Finnula’s turn to stare. “What smithy?”
“The village blacksmith. The one you’re going to have the thirteen children with—”
“Oh,” Finnula said. “The drunk one, who’ll demand his supper and beat me if I fail to produce it promptly? No, I don’t think I’ll be marrying a smithy. I tried it once already, you know.”
She had the satisfaction of seeing him drop his knife. At least she’d managed to shock him as much as he’d shocked her.
“You tried what?” he demanded, bending to retrieve his knife.
“Marriage.” Finnula sipped a little more ale. She’d never much liked discussing it in the past, but then she’d never before had such a handsome conversation partner to keep at bay.
Hugo stared at her, his amber eyes turning, for the first time that she could remember, a dark brown. “You were married before?” he asked slowly.
She nodded, her heart in her throat. Lord, she hated this subject. But she supposed she owed him the truth. “Briefly.”
“I don’t believe it,” he scoffed dismissively. “This is a fabrication, an invention on your part purely to annoy me.”
“I wish it had been a fabrication,” Finnula said. She leaned one elbow on the tabletop and rested her chin in her hand. “Unfortunately, it was very real.”
“I don’t understand this,” Hugo declared irritably, leaning forward until his face was just inches from hers. “How old are you?”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Nearly eighteen. What has that to do with anything?”
He looked worried. “How long were you married?”
“A day.”
He let out a bark of laughter and leaned back, strangely relieved. “I thought as much. What happened? Brother Robert forced an annulment when he heard of it?”
She scowled. “No, nothing like that.”
“Then where’s your husband? Surely no man, once he had managed to win the Fair Finn, would willingly let her go.”
Finnula frowned. “Well, this one did. He died.”
“Died?” Hugo sat up straighter, his eyes amber again, and fastened upon her as inexorably as brambles. “What do you mean, he died?”
“He just died, that’s all. As you can guess, it was hardly an enjoyable experience for me. So I won’t be trying it again.”
“Try what again? Marriage?” Hugo’s voice, as well as his expression, was incredulous. “Not ever?”
“No, never.” That said, she took a big bite of her stew, found it delicious, and washed it down with another swallow of Mel’s Brew. Suddenly, she seemed to have recovered her appetite, and she ate hungrily, aware that the knight was eyeing her, but trying to ignore him. It wasn’t easy.
“Strange,” Hugo mused, after a considerable silence. “I never would have taken those leather braies for widow’s weeds.”
“Why should I mourn him?” she questioned indignantly, sampling a bit of cheese. “I didn’t love him.”
Hugo let out something that sounded like a hoot. “Apparently not! Who was this unfortunate fellow, who died on his wedding day to a woman who didn’t love him?”
“He wasn’t a blacksmith,” she admitted.
“I assumed that. Was it an arranged marriage, then?”
“If you mean did I have any say in the matter, no, I hadn’t, obviously. Why would I marry someone I didn’t love?”
He looked up at the ceiling. “People marry for reasons other than love, Finnula.”
“Oh, of course. People like you.” When she noticed his wounded expression, she hastened to explain herself. “I mean landowners. You marry for wealth or property. But people like me and my sisters and brother, we marry for love.”
“And you don’t think you’ll ever fall in love, Finnula?” The soft question was accompanied by a smile of such gentle compassion that for a moment, Finnula was rendered breathless. How could this man, who had irritated and plagued her for two days straight, suddenly make her sigh with a glance, make her blush with a single word? Her gaze flickered to his hands, wrapped around his beer tankard, and she remembered the way those strong, callused fingers had felt on her skin.
Was it possible that she was in love with him? When he wasn’t maddening her with desire, he was infuriating her with his words. She feared his touch because she longed for it, and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to resist him again if he kissed her. He was the most exasperating man she’d ever met, an incurable tease, but he made her laugh, just the same. Was that love?
She turned the question upon the one who’d asked it.
“What about you?” she inquired. “Will you ever marry?”
“Most assuredly,” he said. “It’s my duty to continue the Fitz, er, william line.”
“And will you marry for love?” Finnula teased. “Or money?”
“That remains to be seen.” His glance was bright. “I rather think that I have enough money, don’t you?”
“You do seem to throw it about quite a bit,” Finnula agreed.
“Yes, it’s a bad habit I have. When I see something that I want, I’m afraid I’ll spend any amount I have to in order to get it.” He held up the pitcher containing the beer. “More of Mel’s Brew?”
Finnula nodded, holding out her tankard. Now that she had eaten something, she felt a little more relaxed. She was slowly becoming accustomed to Sir Hugh’s new appearance, and it did not seem nearly so threatening anymore. Talking to him had helped. He was still the same irritating man he’d always been, just with a better-looking face.
Hugo poured her the last of the ale, and she blew on the foamy head as she watched him pick at the remnants of the food on his plate. He’d eaten even less than she had, and he was twice her size. She wondered what ailed him.
“What did you think of it?” she asked, indicating the beer.
Hugo smiled, though the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “A fine brew, overall. Not too rich. I’m honored to be kidnapped in an effort to make more of it.”
Finnula giggled. She stopped herself, realizing she shouldn’t have had so much to drink on an empty stomach.
“How is your side?” Hugo inquired.
Finnula smiled at him sleepily. “Fine,” she said.
“Do you want me to bandage it again before we go to bed?”
Before we go to bed. How domestic that sounded! As if they were an old married couple who climbed into bed together every night. “No, thank you,” Finnula said, and she could not think of the intimate way his fingers had probed her flesh without blushing. She had blushed so many times this evening, he must think her face was always ruddy in hue.
“Finnula,” he said, but when she glanced up at his face, it was unreadable. He looked quickly away. “Never mind.”
He stood up, the legs of the stool scraping against the floor. “Mistress Pitt said to leave the dishes in the corridor.”
“Oh,” Finnula said, setting down her tankard. “Let me.”
“No, I’ll do it,” Sir Hugh said, a little snappishly, she thought.
The blond knight collected the dishes and then carried them, rattling, to the door, where he bent to stack them in the corridor. He made several trips, but never said another word to her. Finnula wondered what she’d done to offend him. Perhaps she oughtn’t have told him of her ill-fated marriage. It was a topic she was generally loath to discuss. The fact that she’d brought it up with him surprised her. He seemed to have a talent for drawing her out on subjects she generally preferred to let alone. Perhaps that was one of the reasons that she liked him: She had the feeling she could say anything to him, however shocking, and he would not think ill of her.
But obviously, she’d done something to annoy him, because he was studiously avoiding her gaze. Well, if he wanted to sulk, she wasn’t going to stop him. Shrugging, Finnula left the hearth and went to the bed, pushing experimentally on the feather tick. She co
uld not sleep on too soft a bed. This one seemed firm, but not uncomfortably so. Finnula felt they’d been lucky that on so horrid a night, there’d been such a nice room left, even if they did have to share it.
There was a single window in the room, much like her dormer window back at the millhouse, only smaller. This one was paned in wavy, expensive glass, against which the rain and wind outside beat. In the only pane that was not cracked, Finnula could see her reflection, a slim girl in a white dress with a large green stone hanging from her neck. Her red hair hung in a single braid across her left shoulder. She looked, even to her own eye, small and woefully defenseless. This, though, was only a distortion of the glass, because Finnula knew herself to be far from defenseless.
When the door closed and the bolt slid back into place, Finnula didn’t move, watching Sir Hugh’s reflection. She wasn’t entirely surprised when she saw him come up behind her. Her heart thumping, she spun around to face him. She knew what was about to happen.
She also knew she had no intention of stopping it. God help her—she now understood exactly why Mellana had acted such a fool with that idiot troubadour.
And yet there didn’t seem to be a bloody thing she could do to stop herself from doing the exact same thing over this exasperating, heart-stoppingly handsome…and yet frustratingly kind knight, who would see that he did the right thing by her, even if it meant driving her to distraction.
“Finnula,” he said again, and this time she recognized the need in his voice. It matched the need she felt in her own heart, in the thrum of her own pulsing veins. “I know I gave you my word I wouldn’t touch you, but—”
Finnula wasn’t at all certain how what happened next transpired. It seemed as if one minute she was standing looking up at him, wondering if he’d ever stop talking and just do it, for heaven’s sake…
…and the next, she was in his arms. She didn’t know if he’d moved or she had.
But suddenly, her arms were around his neck, drawing his head down toward hers, her fingers tangled in his soft hair, her lips already parted to receive his.
Those strong golden arms, the ones she’d longed to have round her, imprisoned her, clasping her so close to his broad chest that she could hardly breathe. Not that she could catch her breath anyway, since he was kissing her so deeply, so urgently, as if she might at any moment be torn away from him. He seemed to fear that they’d be interrupted again. Only Finnula realized, with a satisfaction that surely would have shocked her brother, had he known of it, that they had all night long. Accordingly, she lengthened the kiss, conducting a leisurely exploration of those arms she’d so admired. Why, they really were every bit as perfect as she’d imagined.
Abruptly, Hugo lifted his head, and looked down at her with eyes that had gone an even deeper green than the emerald around Finnula’s neck. She was panting from lack of breath, her chest rising and falling quickly, color bright over her high cheekbones. She saw the question in his glance, and understood it all too well. He didn’t know that she had already made her decision, that it had been irrevocably made for her the second she’d seen him without that beard, and her heart—or something very like her heart, anyway—had been lost for good.
Well, maybe her decision had been made the second that bolt had slid into place. What did it matter? They were strangers in a strange—well, strange enough—place. No one would ever know of it. This was no time for his oddly misplaced sense of chivalry.
“Not now,” she growled, knowing full well why he’d stopped kissing her, and what his questioning look implied. “God’s teeth, man, it’s too late—”
Whatever Hugo had been planning to say, her impatient cry silenced him upon the subject forever. Tilting her body back in his arms, Hugo rained kisses upon her cheeks and the soft skin beneath her ears, his mouth tracing a fiery path down the column of her throat to the neckline of her gown. Finnula, still anxious for the taste of his lips on hers, drew his head toward hers again, then gasped as his fingers closed over one of her firm breasts.
The sensation of his mouth devouring hers, his hands on her straining breasts, was threatening to overwhelm Finnula. It was everything she’d suspected it would be…only so much more. The room seemed to sway around her, as if she’d drunk too much of Mellana’s ale, and Hugo remained the only stationary, solid mass within her line of vision. She clung to him, wanting something…and she was only just beginning to understand what that something was.
Then, when his knee slipped between her weakening legs, and she felt his hard thigh against the place where her legs joined together, the resulting shock that shot through her was like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
Suddenly, she understood. Everything.
And the next thing she knew, both his hands had slipped beneath her, and he was lifting her in the air. Finnula squealed instinctively as her head neared the timber beams overhead, then gasped as Hugo’s mouth pressed hotly over one of her nipples, caressing it through the linen of her kirtle with his tongue. Laughing, she looked down at him, admiring his clean-shaven face from this new angle, then felt guilty for giggling. Surely, what they were about to do was no laughing matter…
And then, suddenly, he tossed her onto the bed, where she bounced for a few seconds, before he joined her there, bereft of his shirt and braies.
Finnula stopped giggling at once. She’d seen naked men before—she and her sisters had done their fair share of spying at the village pond—but never one as incredibly well-made as Hugh Fitzwilliam of Caterbury. Bronzed all over from the Egyptian sun, his skin was stretched taut over rippling muscles, marred only by a few long-healed, but vicious-looking scars. The golden hair that furred his chest and arms was echoed on his legs, and a thick patch of it nested between his legs, where—
Finnula quickly lifted her gaze, her lips parting. But Hugo wasn’t about to give her a chance to reconsider. Lifting her skirt up to her knees, he pulled off her boots with quick, precise tugs. Finnula wouldn’t be distracted, however. Rising up on her elbows, she said, “Perhaps—”
But Hugo had already taken up one of her bare feet in his hands, and began kissing its delicate arch. Finnula gasped and tried to pull her foot away, shocked by the intensity of the sensation—and her body’s instant reaction to it.
But Hugo stopped kissing the sole of her foot only to burn a trail of kisses up her legs, his tongue branding her calves, the backs of her knees, the insides of her thighs—
That was when Finnula fell back against the pillows, certain he would stop. Surely this had gone far enough. But instead of stopping, Hugo took hold of one of her wrists, pulling her into a sitting position, and in a single, practiced motion, whipped her kirtle over her head, leaving her naked to his glance—all but the emerald pendant—as well as to his touch.
Finnula instantly tried to cover herself with her hands for modesty’s sake, forgetting that he had already seen her undressed, back at the spring, and that all this had been her idea in the first place. But Hugo kept hold of her wrist, and a second later, his heavy, masculine weight was pressing her down against the bed, making escape impossible. Again, his hard leg pressed against the slick crevice between her thighs, and again, she felt a jolt of desire throughout her entire body. She arched instinctively against him in response, and it seemed as if just seconds later, instead of his thigh, it was the velvet head of his penis that pressed against her.
Finnula had thought initially, based upon her first view of it, that incorporating Hugo’s length was going to be a daunting prospect. But now she found that she didn’t care…her desire outweighed all anxiety and inhibitions.
As for Hugo, he seemed unaware of her initial hesitation. His mouth hot on hers, he slid smoothly inside her. Finnula gasped, recognizing that perhaps this wasn’t going to be quite as easy as she thought…until, hearing her quick inhalation of breath, he withdrew a little, and looked down at her uncertainly, and she realized that she had, in fact, been wrong. She could contain all of him without being broken in hal
f…and also that the pain of losing one’s maidenhead—which, apparently, had been lost long ago, no doubt on the back of Violet—had been grossly exaggerated by her sisters. Now she felt only completely filled by him, and her need for release was of primary concern.
But Hugo had no way of knowing that. “Finnula?” he asked uncertainly, aching to continue, but not at all certain what her feelings on the matter were—though he rather hoped she was game. “Are you—”
Rather than reply verbally, she arched against him, silencing him with her lips and signaling her need. And Hugo, with a cry that might have been one of exultation (though it was difficult to tell, since it was muffled against her mouth), plunged deep within her.
She climaxed almost at once, crying out against his mouth as wave after wave of release crashed over her. His own release came just seconds after hers. His heart pounding, his breathing hard, his first words were of concern for her, as he asked raggedly, “Did I hurt you, Finnula?”
“Hurt me?” she echoed dazedly. “I should say not.”
His head sagged in relief, until it lay upon her slender shoulder. Finnula didn’t know how long they lay like that, but the fire had died to a ruddy glow and all the candles had burned themselves out before Hugo finally lifted his head and kissed her again, this time gently.
“You changed your mind at the last minute, didn’t you?” was his unexpected observation.
Finnula reached up to stroke some of his overlong blond hair from his eyes. “Only for a second.” She paused, embarrassed. “’Twas a fairly daunting prospect,” she went on vaguely. “I didn’t believe it could be done, or that if it could, I’d survive the accomplishing of it. But I did”—she shrugged—“and I enjoyed it.”
“You are a strange woman, Finnula Crais,” Hugo said, one finger lazily tracing circles around her shoulder, sending shivers up and down her arms. “So stubborn in so many ways, with your leather braies and your poaching and your temper. Yet beneath it, so kind and giving—”