Ransom My Heart (24 page)

“Ah,” said the priest, and he made the sign of the cross over the troubadour's supine body, hoping to speed along the fellow's recovery, as Father Edward was anxious not to miss any of the revelry up at the manor house.

Finnula, who'd bucked against Hugo in her eagerness to join her brother in the minstrel's beating, complained bitterly all the way back to the manor house, insisting that she hadn't wanted to hurt Mallory much—just a few kicks. Hugo, however, would have no part in the squabble, having sworn off violence. Besides, he secretly harbored a feeling of gratitude toward the troubadour, who, in impregnating Mellana, had been the reason behind Finnula's abduction of himself. Hugo could not but be thankful to a man who had brought him such unexpected bounty, and he had already resolved to reward the minstrel somehow, as soon as he regained consciousness.

By the time they reached the manor house, however, Finnula had nearly forgotten her pique. It was difficult to pout when one was jouncing along the road in the arms of one's new husband, especially when the legs of Hugo's mount were surrounded by village children and Finnula's own nieces and nephews, bearing
garlands and singing songs. It wasn't until Hugo turned in the saddle to shoo some of them away—they were intent upon humiliating his noble mount by entwining wildflowers in his mane and tail—that he noticed they were also followed by the largest, ugliest dog Hugo had ever seen.

“What,” Hugo cried, noticing that none of the children seemed particularly frightened of the beast, “is
that
?”

Finnula glanced casually over one shoulder. “That? That's a dog.”

“I can see that it's a dog. Why is it following you?”

“He's my hunting dog, Gros Louis,” Finnula said stiffly, “and of course he's going with me to the manor house. My sisters didn't much care for him, and made him sleep in the barn, but I was hoping, being a man of the world, you'd have a more open view. He does so enjoy sleeping with me.”

“The hell he does. I'm not sharing my bed with that beast.” Hugo eyed the panting animal uneasily. “Where was he when you set off on your quest to kidnap me?”

“I couldn't bring him,” Finnula said, in horrified accents. “He'd have only got in the way. He's a tracking dog. He picks up scents and follows them. I could hardly have used him, when I didn't know who I was tracking.”

“Does he have to come with us now?” Hugo complained. “Couldn't he follow you upon the morrow, with the rest of your things?”

“He won't be in the way,” Finnula said airily. “You'll hardly know he's about.”

Rolling his eyes, Hugo relented, thinking that he'd have his revenge later in the evening—if Mistress Laver managed to get his solar aired out, anyway.

He needn't have concerned himself over Mistress Laver's ability to accomplish all she'd set out to do, however. By the time
the wedding party arrived at Stephensgate Manor, the succulent odor of roasting pig was in the air, all the shutters in the stone structure had been thrown back, and garlands of flowers were strewn across every arch and doorway. Even Finnula, who'd been so loath to return to the accursed place, smiled when she saw the happy faces of the vassals she'd helped through the cold winter, gathered at long, laden tables in the Great Hall. Cries of “Lady Finnula!” and “Fair Finn!” filled the air, as cups were raised to toast the wife of the new Earl of Stephensgate.

It was Matthew Fairchild and his wife who thrust chalices into the hands of the bride and groom, and Hugo thankfully drained his, feeling the tension from his altercation with the Laroches slipping away. Seated in flower-festooned chairs at the head of one of the tables, he and Finnula were subjected to all the humiliations traditionally wrought upon the newly wed. Broad jokes at the expense of the supposedly virginal bride, and even lewder ones concerning Hugo's anticipated performance that evening ran rampant.

Finnula, to Hugo's surprise, took the ribbing with good grace, and did not so much as raise her dinner knife in a threatening manner when a few braver souls made light of the fact that a year before, she'd been seated upon the same dais with Hugo's father. When her family arrived, carting a confusedly blinking Jack Mallory along with them, she smiled quite sweetly at her newest brother-in-law and said nary a word concerning his treatment of Mellana.

The dancing started at nightfall, by which point, Hugo later learned, a dozen pigs had been roasted, thirty wineskins opened, and ten barrels of ale tapped. Hugo, having been out of the country for the past ten years, hadn't the slightest clue as to how to perform the complicated reels, and Finnula at first disparaged the activity, since it was Jack Mallory's rebec to which the couples
danced. But after some considerable amount of pressure was exerted by his subjects, Hugo was forced to join the revelers, and Finnula proved a patient dance instructor, who did not seem to mind having her toes trodden now and again.

It was nigh on midnight when Finnula's sisters came to her and gigglingly led her off to Hugo's solar, explaining that they had to “ready” her for the wedding night. Hugo, despite his enormous size—and respected title—was raised upon the shoulders of a half dozen men and carried off in the opposite direction, and it wasn't until he offered to pay the men a goodly reward that they changed their minds, and instead of depositing him in the middle of the woods, as custom dictated, detoured back to the lord's own chamber.

There he found Finnula dressed in nothing but a nightdress that was every bit as diaphanous and revealing as the one Isabella Laroche had worn the night before. Her sisters were plucking limp flower petals from her hair, and their astonishment at seeing Hugo back from the forest so soon was great, but they hastily left the couple alone, and only stood for a little while outside the solar door, banging on pots and shrieking. At that point, Sheriff de Brissac, doing as Hugo had instructed earlier in the evening, called out that there was a wineskin for every man who let His Lordship and lady be. The retreating footsteps of the revelers, in their haste to secure a wineskin, sounded like thunder.

Alone with his wife at last, Hugo glanced about his bedchamber, and saw that Mistress Laver had outdone herself. The drafty chamber had been transformed into a bridal bower, with newly washed bed curtains and linens, the cobwebs swept away, and flowers strewn everywhere. A cheerful fire crackled on the hearth, though the night was fair, and wall sconces burned brightly. The only item out of place was Finnula's mastiff, stretched out upon the hearth like a great hairy carpet, looking distinctly at home.
Hugo chose to overlook this, seeing as how the canine's teeth were as big as Skinner's, and he didn't much fancy having them fastened to his backside.

“Well,” Hugo said, sinking down upon the bed, his gaze on Finnula. “That wasn't so bad, was it?”

Finnula looked at him as if he'd lost his mind and said nothing.

“In any case”—Hugo shrugged, defensively—“you're not dead, are you?” Never had he met a more contrary woman. He had married her, and all he received for his trouble was a shrug.

Finnula added to her repertoire by rolling her eyes. Then, glancing about the room, she asked, in a curiously diffident tone, for a woman so handy with a knife, “Was this where you slept as a boy?”

Hugo grunted, and bent to pull off his boots. “Aye. It's damnably cold in winter. Mayhap my brother's solar would be more comfortable. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet.”

“One of them should rightly go to Jamie,” Finnula said, as she ran a brush through her long hair.

“Jamie?” Hugo, barefoot, reached to remove his tunic. “That scamp? Whatever has he done to merit a bed in a Fitzstephen solar?”

Pausing with the brush in mid-stroke, Finnula eyed him. “Well!” she declared. “I like that! And I suppose our children—if we have any, which I sincerely doubt—won't merit solars, either?”

“What are you talking about?” Hugo asked, slipping out of his braies. Her doubt at his capability to sire offspring ought, he thought pridefully, to be banished with one glance at the large package between his legs.

Finnula laid the brush aside, staring at him. Hugo did not think her steady gaze was the result of lust after his fine masculine
form, but rather of dread, though why she should dread going to bed with him, when she'd done so happily so many times over the past two days, he couldn't ken.

“Hugo,” Finnula said slowly, and he realized, with a rush of pleasure, that it was the first time she had ever called him by his given name. She said it, however, as if the word felt odd on her lips. “Don't you know who Jamie is?”

“No.” Hugo gave the sheets an irritated flick, then slid between them, thinking that it was a fine thing when a man was treated like a veritable stranger by his own wife.

“Hugo,” Finnula said, biting her lower lip. “Jamie is your son.”

M
y
what
?”

Finnula jumped as Hugo's voice thundered through the solar. Never in her life had she heard such a bellow.

“My
what
?” Hugo roared again.

He threw back the sheets, revealing his large, tawny body in all its naked glory. But he seemed unconscious of his nudity as he stalked toward her, where she leaned against the windowsill. Before Hugo could lay a hand on her, however—if, indeed, that had been his intention—Gros Louis was up and growling before his mistress, the hackles on his back rising like a hedgehog's quills.

“Christ's toes, Finnula,” Hugo shouted, backing up hastily. “Call him off!”

“Down, Gros Louis,” Finnula said, and the dog sat back on
his haunches, but did not take his eyes off Hugo. Nor did he stop growling.

“I think I understand a little better how you managed to remain a virgin so long, my love,” Hugo remarked dryly, “despite gadding about in those braies.”

“He thought you were going to hit me,” Finnula said, giving the dog a fond scratch behind the ears.

Hugo grimaced expressively. “Hit you? Someone ought to be hit, for keeping this from me. Why did no one think to mention to me the small detail that I have a son? Like you, for instance? Or were you saving it up for our wedding night all along?”

“I find it hard to believe you didn't realize it for yourself right away. He looks exactly like you.”

“'Tis rather hard to tell, beneath all that dirt.” Hugo strode from one side of the solar to the other, as rapidly as a caged wolf Finnula had once seen in Leesbury. “The boy would be what, ten years old, then?”

“Just.”

Hugo stopped pacing of a sudden, and focused his inscrutable amber-eyed gaze upon her with a directness that was disconcerting. “And his mother would be?”

Finnula rose from the windowsill and moved to the bed. Her brow was knit with annoyance, and she forgot all about Robert's advice that she act more womanly before her husband. “You forget your lovers so soon?” she sniffed. “I wonder how long 'twill be before I'm forgotten!” She knew she sounded a petulant wife, but she could not still her tongue. How was it that a man could bed a woman, and ten years later not remember her name? Finnula would never, did she live to be one hundred, forget Hugo.

“My lover?” Hugo echoed. “I was fifteen! I had no lover then.” Then he grinned rakishly at her. “But
you
I wouldn't dare forget. You're too well-armed.”

Finnula, turning down the sheets on the opposite side of the bed, glared at him. He appeared to be joking, but she could never really tell. He was very strange, this man she had married. For the life of her, she could not decide why he had agreed to wed her. Except, she supposed, to prevent scandal.

“Well, tell me,” Hugo said. “Who is this woman I supposedly got with child?”

“There is no supposedly about it,” was Finnula's tart reply. She slid beneath the sheets and looked at him, unabashedly staring at his nude body, and wondering what it would be like to have that great thing hanging between her own legs. Mayhap, had she one, she, too, would be unable to recall the names of the women into whom she'd inserted it.

“Your father himself recognized Jamie as his grandchild,” Finnula went on, circling her knees with her arms and sitting up in the great bed. “'Tis only because Maggie died giving birth to him that the boy was left to run wild—”

“Maggie,” Hugo said, his brows constricting. “Her name was Maggie?”

Irritated because he still looked blank, Finnula said, “Yes.
Maggie.
I don't know the whole of the story, being myself but seven years old at the time, but you supposedly dallied with her in the milking barn—”

“The milking barn,” Hugo repeated. And then, loudly, he cried, “Not
Maggie
! Not the
milkmaid
!”

Finnula regarded him calmly. “Aye, Maggie the milkmaid. Does it begin to come back to you now?”

This news seemed to stagger Hugo, and he sank onto the end of the bed, oblivious of the fact that he'd nearly trodden upon Gros Louis's front right paw.

“Maggie,” Hugo echoed, like one from whom a fog has lifted. “Maggie the milkmaid. Ah, sweet Maggie…”

Finnula hadn't thought she'd spend her wedding night discussing her husband's past loves, but as her only other wedding night had been even more unpleasant, she imagined she should be grateful things weren't worse. Plucking up the wolf pelt, since a breeze had been rattling the shutters and the chamber had grown a bit chilled, she huddled down beneath it, blinking sleepily against the light from the wall sconce.

“Maggie,” her husband murmured again, and had Maggie still been living, Finnula would have gladly run her through with a shaft from her quiver.

“Aye,” she said irritably. “Now put out the sconces, will you? I'm tired and want to go to bed.”

Hugo turned as if startled, and looked at her over his naked shoulder. She tried to keep her face impassive, but something Hugo saw in it caused him to grin in a completely infuriating manner. “Jealous, are you, love?” he asked, reaching out to give one of her feet a poke through the bedclothes.

“Certainly not,” Finnula sniffed, and she kicked at the hand that teased her. “You think a mite too much of yourself, my lord.”

“Oh, do I?”

There was something distinctly lascivious in his grin, which Finnula chose to ignore, turning to beat her pillow into a plumper shape. “There's no use your looking at me like that,” she informed him sharply. “And since I'm not going to swoon at the sight of your naked body, you might as well put on a bed robe—”

“You're very proper now, aren't you?” Hugo stretched his long frame onto the bed beside her, his eyes glowing unnervingly gold in the light from the hearth. “Quite the prim lady, now that you're married.”

Finnula shrugged. “I told you that you'd regret marrying me.”

“Oh, yes, I'm already beginning to.” Hugo lifted the wolf pelt and looked beneath it. “And wearing clothes to bed, too! How
novel! I must say I preferred what you wore to bed that night at the inn—”

“That night,” Finnula snapped, sitting up, “was a mistake—”

“Oh, most certainly. A very grave one.”

“—and 'tis not too late to rectify it,” Finnula went on, as if he hadn't spoken.

“Not too late?” Hugo grinned quizzically. “And how might that be? If I recall rightly, Father Edward pronounced us man and wife—”

“But the marriage has yet to be consummated,” Finnula hastened to explain, “and can still be annulled…”

A single raised eyebrow joined its twin in a downward rush as Hugo glowered at her. “I see,” he said, and his deep voice no longer held any amusement.

Finnula eyed him uncertainly, hoping that she hadn't angered him overmuch. He ought, if he was any sort of man at all, to be overjoyed that she was again offering him a way out of this ridiculous marriage. He had already told her that no man wished to be saddled with a wife. Here she was, generously agreeing to release him from the unwanted shackles of wedlock. But, alas, no! Judging from his expression, he wasn't pleased at all.

And yet, as if she hadn't said a word, he reached forward, seemingly unconsciously, and found a limp flower petal that lay tangled in a curl of her long hair. Finnula watched as his large, callused fingers gently drew the white petal down the length of the curl, his knuckles brushing one of her breasts as he did so. Her rebellious nipple sprang erect at the contact, pressing insistently against the thin material of her nightdress. Finnula looked down at it, nibbling on her lower lip. Fie! Was she so wanton that his barest touch set her aflame?

She was only too aware of the answer to that question.

If Hugo noticed her body's reaction to his touch, he didn't say
anything. Instead, successfully removing the petal from the loosened auburn curl, he held up the fragile leaf, and examined it in the firelight.

“And you would be released from this marriage,” he said, looking at the flower and not at her, “because you despise and revile me?”

God's teeth! The man was impossible.

“Nay, not that,” Finnula said, making an effort to keep her voice steady and low. “I am…fond enough of you.”

“Fond of me?” The golden gaze swiveled toward her, and Finnula was uncomfortably aware that, with his back now to the fire, she could not quite make out his expression. “Are you? Then why this urgency to annul what I have spent so much time—and coin—to arrange?” When Finnula, frustrated, did not formulate a reply with enough alacrity to suit him, Hugo went on, “Is it because of the boy?”

Finnula hesitated. “Nay…”

“Is it because of his mother?” Hugo leaned forward and captured yet another flower petal between his thumb and forefinger. Extricating it from a silken tress, the back of his hand brushed her other breast, and the nipple reacted as sensitively as its twin. “Do you not ken how much I regret what happened to her? Maggie was sweet…but she was older than me by a good five years, and I won't say she didn't know what she was doing. Far more than I did…But I regret I was not here to see that she was better taken care of…she and the boy…but you'll recall my family did try to send me off to a monastery.”

He was having a bit more trouble removing this flower petal than he'd had with the last. His thick fingers worked with surprising dexterity, but occasionally, Finnula felt the gentle warmth of his hand against her throat, or excruciatingly close to her ear-lobe. She swallowed, her mouth gone suddenly dry.

“Aye,” she said, and her voice was oddly hoarse. “But you have amply proven that you care not how many women you bed—”

“That was once so,” Hugo said, gathering her lock of hair toward him, ostensibly to better examine the tangled leaf. “And I am fortunate that, with the exception of poor Maggie, no one was harmed by my amorous adventures. But now that I have a wife, I shall cleave only unto her, as the priest so instructed me, not twelve hours ago.”

Finnula snorted, though it was difficult to keep her head about her while he lay so close, playing with her curls, the firelight casting his naked flesh in bronze. The mat of golden hair that carpeted his chest, then tapered down toward his flat belly, was particularly distracting. “A wife who brings you no fortune, no property?” Finnula shook her head. “A wife who can neither cook nor sew? Verily, my lord, you have been too long away from England, and have lost all sense of practicality. Such a wife is nigh useless—”

“Useless?” The fingers Hugo had been running through her hair dipped suddenly to close over one of her small breasts. Gasping at the sudden contact, Finnula raised startled eyes to meet her husband's.

“I believe the outpouring of folk who came to our wedding today proved how useful you have been to many in the past, Finnula,” Hugo said, his fingers kneading the soft flesh. “Not least with a bow. Nay, I can think of many things at which you are quite useful—”

So saying, he lowered his head and, through the thin batiste of her gown, delicately tasted her taut nipple with his tongue. Finnula, suddenly feeling quite warm, pushed back the wolf pelt, revealing long legs bared from the thighs down, since the hem of her nightdress had become twisted round her hips.

Noticing this, Hugo lost no time in sliding his free hand be
tween those slim white thighs, before Finnula, her cheeks blazing, could adjust the gown. Then, when she made a movement as if to snatch away from him, Hugo rose up suddenly, and lowered his heavy body over hers, effectively cutting off all escape routes.

“Nay, madam,” he said, his laughing amber eyes gleaming down at her. “I'd say you are quite useful at other things not requiring a bow, as well…”

Finnula struggled to keep her wits about her, but the introduction of a hardened thigh between her legs once again made rational thinking impossible. Hugo's body was weighing down upon hers, and it was a weight she welcomed, for her body was instantly reminded by it of pleasure received in the recent past. Before she could stop herself, her arms were curling around his neck, her legs spreading to better accommodate him between them. God's teeth, but she wanted him. Perhaps it was just as well that they stay wed after all…

And then Hugo's lips came down over hers, and all ability to think left her. She closed her eyes, feeling a familiar rush of warmth between her thighs as Hugo insinuated first one, then another finger within her. Instinctively, she arched her pelvis against him, and had the satisfaction of hearing him moan.

“Not yet, my love,” he whispered raggedly against her mouth. “Not yet.”

His hands moved to the neckline of her gown. Finnula's eyes flew open as she heard the fabric rend. Gasping as he tore her nightdress down the middle as effortlessly as if it were made of parchment, Finnula cried, “Hugo! Are you mad?”

Now that her creamy skin, tip-tilted breasts, and the silken patch of red hair between her thighs were revealed to him, Hugo grinned, eminently satisfied. “Nay. Let that be a lesson to you, love.” He chuckled. “Wear naught when you come to bed with me, or all your gowns, however pretty, will meet a similar fate.”

Finnula eyed him, thinking that she'd married a barbarian, and was about to make her feelings on the matter known when, of a sudden, the lips that moments before had ravaged her mouth suddenly settled over a pink nipple. The sharp words that had been on Finnula's lips turned to a moan of pleasure as Hugo's mouth, hot on her tender skin, burned a trail of kisses down her flat white belly, and then even farther down, until once more his tongue tasted the russet curls at the joining of her thighs. This was definitely not something her sisters had mentioned that their husbands practiced—and the Crais sisters had been quite thorough in their sexual education of Finnula while dressing her that morning. But it was something Finnula was fairly certain she could get used to.