Hugo could scarcely believe his ears. “What?” he demanded stupidly.
“You heard me. You’re my prisoner.”
So saying, she loosened her arm from around his neck, and he felt her draw away from him. A second later, his sword, still in its sheath, was detached from his belt, followed by the dagger he’d thought so well-hidden in his boot. Then the light weight of the girl returned, as once again she seated herself astride his wide back.
“So’s your boy, for what that’s worth,” she informed him conversationally. “My prisoner, I mean. He stepped into one of my tree snares a quarter of an hour ago. I’m surprised you didn’t hear him squalling. Quite a temper he has. You’re much easier.”
Hugo digested this small compliment, all the while conscious of the heat from the girl’s thighs, the gentle weight of her on the small of his back, the soft scent of her, all clean and fresh womanhood. She had crept out of the pool and up a hidden trail in the rocks to where he lay. Somewhere along the way, she’d pulled on the chausses and whipped the white lawn shirt over her head—he’d felt the soft fabric against his cheek, where he’d thought to feel smooth skin. So she was not without modesty—but what manner of woman was this?
What sort of world had he stumbled into? When, in the name of God, had maids dressed in leather chausses started capturing grown men and holding them for ransom? He’d been gone from England a long time, he realized, but was it possible so much could have changed in that time? Why, ten years earlier, gentle maids blushed to speak to a stranger—they didn’t strip before one, then leap upon his back and hold a knife to his throat.
Then a horrible thought occurred to him, and he blurted out, before he’d had time to think, “Those men at the inn. You are working with them?”
The girl snorted derisively. “Dick and Timmy? Certainly not. A stupider pair never existed. But I couldn’t let them take what I meant to have myself.”
“Do you mean to say,” Hugo began, slowly, “that you—that all of this was apurpose?”
“Of course,” the girl said, in some surprise. “I saw you at the inn, and decided you would make a good hostage. I’m not certain what to do with your boy. He’s a bit of a nuisance, don’t you think? Still, we’ll think of something.”
Hugo lay beneath her, hardly daring to believe his good fortune. He had been pursued by a great many women in his time, women more beautiful than Finnula Crais, women with more sophistication and worldly knowledge, but none of them had ever appealed to him as immediately as this girl. She boldly announced that she wanted him for his money, and she wasn’t going to resort to seductions and stratagems to get it. Her game was abduction, pure and simple, and Hugo was so amused, he thought he might laugh out loud.
Every other woman he’d ever known, in both the literal and biblical sense, had a single goal in mind—to become the chatelaine of Stephensgate Manor. Hugo had nothing against the institution of marriage, but he had never met a woman with whom he felt he wanted to spend the rest of his life. And here was a girl who stated, plain as day, that all she wanted from him was money. It was as if a gust of fresh English air had blown through him, renewing his faith in womankind.
“So it’s your hostage I’m to be,” Hugo said, to the stones beneath him. “And what makes you so certain I’ll be able to pay your ransom?”
“Do you think I’m daft? I saw the coin you tossed Simon back at the Fox and Hare. You oughtn’t be so showy with your spoils. You’re lucky ’tis me that’s waylaid you, and not some of Dick’s and Timmy’s friends. They have rather unsavory companions, you know. You could have come to serious harm.”
Hugo smiled to himself. Here he’d been worried about the girl meeting up with trouble on her way back to Stephensgate, never suspecting that she was sharing the same concern for him.
“Here, what are you smiling at?” the girl demanded, and to his regret, she slid down from his back and prodded him, none too gently, in the side with a sharp toe. “Sit up, now, and stop sneering. There isn’t anything funny about me abducting you, you know. I know I don’t look like much, but I think I proved back at the Fox and Hare that I truly am the finest shot with a short bow in all the county, and I’ll thank you to remember it.”
Sitting up, Hugo found his hands well-tied behind his back. There was certainly nothing lacking in the girl’s knot-tying education. His bonds were not tight enough to cut off the circulation, yet not loose enough to give way.
Lifting his gaze, he found his fair captor kneeling a few feet away from him, her elfin face pale in a halo of wildly curling red hair, hair so long that the ends of it twined among the violets below her knees. Her lawn shirt was untucked and sticking to her still-wet body in places, so that her pink nipples were plainly visible through the thin material.
Quirking up an eyebrow, Hugo realized that the girl was completely unaware of the devastating effect her looks had on him. Or at least aware only that naked, she made a fetching distraction.
“Well,” she said, in that husky voice that hadn’t a trace of flirtation in it, “I suppose that, seeing as how we’ll be seeing a lot of each other over the next few days, I ought to introduce myself. I am Finnula Crais.”
He couldn’t help grinning, though he tried to hide his amusement by keeping one corner of his mouth down in a disapproving frown. “And does your father know that you roam the countryside, trussing up innocent men and demanding recompense for their freedom, Finnula Crais?”
“Certainly not,” she snapped saltily. “My father is dead.”
The corner of his mouth that had been grinning now fell to join the other in a frown. “Is he? Then who looks after you?”
“I look after myself,” she said, with no little pride. Then, pulling a slightly comic face, she amended that statement. “Well, my older brother, Robert, tries to look after me, I suppose. But there are six of us—”
“Six of whom?”
“Six sisters. And it isn’t easy for him—”
“Good God,” Hugo cried. “You mean there are five more like you at home?”
“Of course not. I’m the youngest. Four of my sisters are already married, and the fifth, Mellana, would like to, only—” Here the chestnut-colored eyebrows, like winged birds in the smooth white sky of her forehead, gathered together in a scowl. “See here,” Finnula said, in a voice that was heavy with disapproval. “You can’t draw me out. I’m the interrogator here. Now tell me who you are.”
Hugo had to think a moment. There was every chance that if he told her the truth, she’d release him at once, appalled. After all, her family owed their livelihood to the Earl of Stephensgate. She would have to be a very ungrateful—and stupid—chit indeed to hold her own lord for ransom. No, he wouldn’t risk telling the truth to her just yet. He was greatly looking forward to being held captive by such a fair jailer.
“God’s teeth,” Finnula swore, with some impatience. “I only asked your name. If you’re sitting there, thinking up some great lie to tell me, you’d better think again. Lies will only impede your return to freedom.”
“Hugh Fitzwilliam,” Hugo said, at once, and he told her he was the son of a knight situated in a manor near Caterbury, a village just beyond Stephensgate.
Finnula nodded knowingly, as if she’d guessed as much. “And you’re returning from the Crusades,” she said, touching her chin to indicate that only returning crusaders wore beards in this part of the country. Hugo had meant to shave, but the dispute over the innkeeper’s wife had kept him too busy. “Were you imprisoned there?”
He nodded. “In Acre. For over a year.”
If he’d hoped his woeful tone of voice would engender the girl’s sympathy, he was disappointed. She didn’t seem to possess any of the emotions he’d come to expect in women, pity among them.
“Well,” she said cheerfully, “I’m certain that your wife will be happy to pay for your freedom, now that she has you so close to home. And you needn’t fear, I won’t charge her overmuch.”
Hugo grinned. “But I have no wife.”
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 Sheriff 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,” he 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.”
She was suspicious of him, surely, but what choice did the girl have, so far from home, and in such pain? Hugo felt a sudden and nearly overwhelming sense of anger toward this absent brother, who took such poor care of his womenfolk as to allow them to gad about the countryside, dressed in leather chausses and all but defenseless. He would do more than have words with Robert Crais when he returned to the manor house. Perhaps he might see that he spent a little time in the stockade, as well.
Of a sudden, Finnula capitulated, saying she would taste the medicine—if doing so would “shut him up about it.” Swallowing a rebuke, Hugo hastened to his mount to fetch her the vial in which he kept the foul-tasting stuff. She balked at the smell, then finally allowed two drops to be placed on her pink and pointed tongue. She swallowed, looking unimpressed, and then, with no little urgency, insisted they be on their way.
“For,” she said in her husky voice, “the sun is sinking fast in the west, and we’ve still a long way to go if we’re to get to Stephensgate by nightfall next—”
“And what,” Hugo wanted to know, regarding her seriously, “lies in Stephensgate?”
“Why,” she cried, as if he were the simplest man to have ever walked the earth, “that’s where I live. I must get you back to Mellana.”
“Mellana? And who is this Mellana, who holds my fate so casually in her hands?”
“Mellana is one of my sisters. I promised her I would capture a man for her, so that she could ransom him—”
Hugo was not a little disturbed to hear this. “You mean you do not intend to ransom me yourself?”
She made a moue of distaste, wrinkling her small nose in a most illustrative manner. “Of course not!” She spoke as if he’d offended her by the very thought. “When I have need of coin, I have more sensible ways of earning it.”
At Hugo’s frankly questioning look, she shrugged, then winced when the gesture jarred her sore rib. “I merely bag a deer or two, to sell at the local inn. They always have a demand for venison, and the Earl of Stephensgate’s woods are full of game—” She glanced up at him, her eyes wide at her indiscretion. “Not,” she added, speaking like a child reciting its lessons, “that I kill the earl’s game—that would be poaching. Poaching is very wrong.”
Suddenly the reasons behind her reluctance to meet up with the local sheriff became all too clear to Hugo. But he did not want to raise her hackles, not yet, and so he pretended not to have heard the slip, and said only, “You must love your sister Mellana dearly to go to so much trouble for her.”
“Oh,” Finnula replied, a shadow darkening her light eyes. “Everyone loves her. Mellana is the beauty in the family—” This Hugo found exceedingly hard to believe, for though Finnula’s beauty might not be apparent to all, it would be hard to be outdone. “She isn’t a bit like me. She wouldn’t know how to draw a bow to save her life—she is exceedingly maidenly. Or at least she was, before she met that bloody minstrel.”
“I beg your pardon?”
By way of reply, Finnula merely sighed. “But she does make the nicest beer you ever tasted—”
Hugo laughed out loud at this assertion. Beside him, Finnula shot him an aggrieved look, insisting, “You won’t laugh once you’ve tasted her ale. Mellana has a true gift for brewing—”
“And will I taste her ale?” Hugo wanted to know.
She looked arch. “Oh, I’ll see that you get a tankard or two before Mel turns you loose.”
Hugo smiled down at the frank and open face beneath his, all practicality and—albeit recently restored—good humor, quite unlike any other female with whom he’d ever become acquainted. “And it is for her that you are abducting me?”
“Oh, yes.” Finnula waved a hand in irritation. “I promised her, you see, in a moment of weakness. I was distracted by all the stir over Robert’s wedding—”
“Your brother is marrying?” Hugo wondered if this was excuse enough for the lad’s woeful neglect of his youngest sister’s welfare, and decided it was not.
“Most assuredly, and to the mayor’s daughter. ’Twill be the wedding of the year. Of course, ’tis likely to become a funeral, if Robert finds out about that bloody minstrel—”
“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned that unfortunate person. Whatever did the fellow do to warrant such censure?”
She scowled. “Never mind. Suffice it to say, I made a promise to Mellana before I knew what it was she wanted me to do, and now I am stuck with it, and so are you. I hope you do not mind overmuch. I would not,” she confessed, turning her great gray eyes up at him seriously, “ever have really poked you with my knife. That was all for show. I think I did an admirable job of frightening your squire, don’t you?”
Hugo smiled down at her, thinking her impossibly young, and very naive, that she spoke so confidently and so frankly with him, not knowing the least bit about him. But then it occurred to him that perhaps she did know a bit more than she let on. She had known that he would come to the spring, and she had known that he would look over the outcropping and see her bathing—but how?
When he asked, she shrugged and looked suddenly preoccupied, and busied herself with pulling on her boots, which she’d extracted from behind a clump of violets.
“I knew by the route you were taking that you were familiar with the land,” she confessed reluctantly. “No one who has ever been in this area has not been to the spring, and no one who has been to the spring can resist going again. And besides…Well, you remind me a little of someone, and I met him much the same way as I met you—only not by knifepoint.”
This oblique reference would not be elaborated upon, however, no matter how much he pressed. Eventually, in an obvious attempt to distract him from that line of questioning, she insisted that they be on their way; that if they were not on their way soon complications of grave magnitude would ensue; and would he please turn so that she could bind his hands again?
Hugo looked down at her in disbelief. “I thought we had settled that. I looked after your wound, and you untied me—”
“But I can’t risk your riding away when my back is turned,” she declared staunchly. “Surely, as a soldier of war, you can understand that.”
Hugo stared down at her, unable to think up a reasonable argument in the face of such logic. Then suddenly it came upon him. She was a slight creature, and would do well situated in the saddle before him. He could not very well run away when she was seated right there with him.
He put the suggestion in just such a light, and though she balked at first, he knew it was just for show. Finnula Crais was a young lady who liked having things her own way, and she seemed quite keen on keeping his hands tied behind his back. Hugo wasn’t certain if she considered having his hands tied a means of keeping him from escaping so much as a way of ensuring that those hands wouldn’t wander where they weren’t supposed to. Despite her earlier exhibitionism in the pool, Finnula was not without an inconvenient amount of modesty—quite a surprising trait, Hugo found, in a kidnapper.
Eventually Finnula capitulated, but only after some more grumbling about how she ought to have gagged him from the beginning, and how she’d never in her life met such a verbose knight.
“Aren’t you,” she demanded, every bit as peevishly as Peter might have, as she cautiously loaded his sword and dagger onto her mount’s saddle pack, “supposed to be consumed with brawling and cursing and tossing bits of bone to your hounds?”
“Certainly not,” Hugo declared. “A knight is a paragon of virtue, his sole pursuit that of justice for the good of the realm.”
“Pshaw,” Finnula snorted. “I never saw such a knight.”
“That is your misfortune. I have met many such men,” Hugo lied, “and enjoyed hours of enlightening conversation at their tables.” Generally while dancing girls waved their bosoms in his face, if truth be told, but there was no reason she needed to know that.
Finnula snorted again. “I spent hours at the table of a lord once, and all I heard were belches. And he was an earl.”
Hugo stared at her curiously. “What were you doing, dining with an earl?”
“Never mind,” Finnula said, scowling. “You have an unnerving habit of drawing me out. I swear I never saw such a talkative soldier.”
“And I,” Hugo countered, watching disapprovingly as she tucked the trailing ends of her oversize shirt into her tight-fitting braies, “never saw such unmaidenly behavior in all my born days.”
Finnula just laughed, and placing a dainty foot in the stirrup, swung herself expertly into his saddle, the bruised rib apparently not bothering her.
“Well,” she said impatiently, looking down at him. “Are you coming, or not?”
Hugo glanced at the girl’s mare. “And what of your mount? Should we not tie her bridle to Skinner’s?”
“Certainly not,” Finnula scoffed. “Violet will follow.”
Hugo quirked up a single eyebrow. “Violet?” he repeated, with a mocking smile.
“Aye, Violet is her name, and I’d appreciate it if you’d wipe that smirk off your face. She’s as well-trained as any destrier, and better tempered besides. I’ve had her since I was a child, and I wouldn’t trade her for anything.”
Hugo smiled at the loyal indignation in Finnula’s voice. “Since you were a child, eh?” He laughed. “And what are you now, pray? You look hardly a week past your sixteenth birthday.”
When Finnula pressed her lips into a thin line, obviously determined not to allow him to goad her into losing her temper, and haughtily tossed her long hair back behind her shoulders, he laughed again. She was a little fireball, this Finnula Crais, and he was going to be hard put to keep his hands off her. Perhaps he should have allowed her to truss him up again after all.
Grinning, Hugo swung himself into the saddle behind the indignant girl, and started to reach around her narrow waist for the reins, but received a sharp slap on the backs of his hands for his efforts.
“I will hold the reins,” Finnula informed him tersely, and, indeed, she’d already gathered up the leather leads in her gloved hands. “There’s no use you holding them. You don’t even know the way.”
Hugo shrugged and placed his hands on the girl’s hips, liking the velvety feel of her leather braies beneath his fingers.
This time, he received an elbow in the midriff for his trouble.
“God’s teeth, woman,” he cursed, clutching his middle. “What was that for?”
“If you can’t keep your hands to yourself, I’ll tie them behind your back, I swear I will.”
Finnula had turned in the saddle to glare at him, and in doing so, her pert backside pressed against the front of Hugo’s braies, causing a reaction so immediate and unexpected that Hugo was momentarily nonplussed by it. Shifting so that she would not become aware of it, Hugo wondered at the instantaneousness of his body’s response to her touch. What was wrong with him? The girl was attractive, yes, but it seemed as if every pore in his body was crying out for her touch. This was not how he usually responded to a beautiful woman. Usually he was master of himself, and his very self-restraint was what drove women into his arms. No beautiful woman could stand being ignored, and that was the trick in attracting them. Ignore her, and she will come.
But how could he ignore this girl when every fiber in him was twitching to strain her to him? How could he ignore her when the soft fragrance of her wildly curling hair was constantly in his nostrils, the memory of her slim thighs tightening around his waist constantly in his mind? And he didn’t think it would matter if she were seated in a saddle before him or at a table in a tavern twenty leagues away; Finnula Crais, like a splinter, had worked her way beneath his skin with remarkable speed, and digging her out, he realized, was going to be no small task.
Shaking his head, aware that those gray eyes were fixed on him curiously, he clenched his teeth and tried to will himself to relax. He couldn’t let her know the devastating effect she had on him.
But it was already too late. The sooty lashes lowered over those silver orbs, and Finnula demanded, staring below his belt suspiciously, “What is that?”
“What is what?” he inquired loftily.
“That,” she said, and there was no mistaking what she was referring to when she wedged her hip up against it and lifted accusing eyes to meet his mortified gaze. “Is that a knife hilt? Do you have a weapon beneath your belt you didn’t tell me about?”
Was the girl serious? He could tell by the angry set of her mouth that she was, that she honestly had no idea what lay beneath a man’s chausses. Again, he felt a spurt of irritation against Robert Crais, for letting this child gad about the countryside in such ignorance. Surely one of those married sisters would have told her the facts of life—and yet she seemed truly annoyed that he had not surrendered to her his most prized weapon of all.
Hugo wasn’t at all certain how to proceed. He had no experience whatsoever with virgins. And this one was armed. The very thought of what she might do when he unveiled the hard object about which she was making such a fuss made his blood run cold. She seemed to have no compunction about wielding that blade at her waist—
“It isn’t a knife hilt,” Hugo said finally, unable to keep wounded dignity from creeping into his voice. After all, it was considerably larger than a knife hilt.
“Well, what is it then?” Finnula demanded. “I can’t ride comfortably with that thing poking at my back.”
Hugo opened his mouth to reply, hesitating because he was uncertain exactly how to phrase what it was he wanted to say, and was relieved to find that no further explanation was required. Suddenly Finnula’s cheeks flooded with color. Her eyes widened, and her jaw dropped. Yes, one of those five sisters had spoken to her about the facts of life. It seemed that this was the first time, however, she’d chanced upon an occasion that required her to put that information to practical use.
Turning quickly away, Finnula seized the reins, breathing a horrified “Oh!”
Hugo’s discomfort was dissipating, but his amusement over the way it had unsettled Finnula mounted as the girl’s cheeks turned an ever-deepening shade of red.
“I’m afraid that it’s a natural reaction to your proximity, demoiselle,” he said, delighting in her mortification. “Perhaps you haven’t encountered such a strong response in any of your previous prisoners—”
Finnula’s voice was so soft that he had to lean forward to hear her reply.
“I’ve never done this before,” she whispered. “You’re the first man I’ve ever—I’ve never—” She broke off, obviously frustrated. “Oh, bloody hell,” she swore, and gave Hugo’s horse a pretty vicious kick in the sides. “Just keep it to yourself, or I’ll…I’ll cut it off!”
Grinning, Hugo sat back in the saddle, well-contented with the way his day was proceeding. Who would have thought, when he’d wakened that morning in a hayrick with straw in his hair and dew in his clothes, that by evening he’d be the prisoner of so winsome a captor?
It amazed him to think that all those years ago, when he’d left England, he’d ridden right by his father’s mill, and given nary a thought to the possibility that years hence, the thatched roof might house so delectable a distraction as a Finnula Crais. He was going to enjoy his homecoming considerably more than he’d ever expected, thanks to this redheaded Valkyrie in the saddle before him, ignoring him so pointedly.
He chuckled delightedly to himself, not caring if the girl thought him mad.