Ransom My Heart (5 page)

H
ugo wasn't certain how much longer he was going to be able to abide his squire's incessant whining. First about the girl in the inn, and now the fact that his horse didn't have the strength of Hugo's and needed a rest. Hugo himself had selected Peter's mount, and knew that the animal was as sturdy as his own, though not as highly trained. No, it was
Peter
who wanted to rest, though it was only just past midday and the weather fine, and they had been riding for only a few hours. What had Hugo done in this life to deserve the torment this sniveling youth was putting him through? Couldn't the lad keep his mouth shut and let them ride in peace?

“My lord,” the boy called, from some distance behind. “My lord, hold up. We haven't had a bite to eat since Leesbury and I'm near faint with hunger—”

Hugo rolled his eyes. The boy's appetite, like his love of chatter, was insatiable.

“There's bread and bacon in your pack,” Hugo growled, in his most menacing manner. “Gnaw on that awhile.” Hopefully, the youth's mouth would be too full for conversation. Or, Hugo considered, brightening a bit, he might choke to death—

But they were entering familiar ground at last, and Hugo could not stay irritated long. Here was the grove where he had bagged his first stag some twenty years earlier, there the copse where he'd first laid Fat Maude, some ten years later. They were still a good two days' ride from the manor house, but it was two days of territory that was as familiar to Hugo as the back of his own hand. Ah! It felt strangely good to be home after a decade of fairly aimless wandering.

When they came to the turn in the sheep track that led to the rock formation that towered above the Spring of St. Elias, Hugo hesitated. The spring was a delightful place for a dip. Many a boyhood summer had been spent hunting in these hills, and the spring was where Hugo and his brother had bathed, learning to swim in the deep pool, and learning to dive from the towering rock outcroppings above the spring.

No longer tended by the church, St. Elias having fallen out of favor some fifty years back when water from his spring failed to cure a single leper, the pool was overgrown and desolately beautiful in its remoteness. Wildflowers flourished in the crevices of the gorge, and the branches of the trees that grew twistedly out of the rock skimmed the water's surface. It was a perfect place for a swim after a hot and dusty ride—and that's precisely what Hugo decided his charge needed.

Of course Peter had other ideas.

“Go for a swim?” he echoed, in disbelief, when Hugo imparted his plan. “What,
me
? Born and raised in London I was, don't
forget, my lord. What do I know about swimming? Couldn't swim a stroke to save my life!”

“How fortuitous,” Hugo rumbled, quite audibly.

“I mean it, my lord. I'm happy to water the horses while
you
swim, but you won't catch
me
jumping in for a dip. Besides, what would I want with a lot of icy cold spring water? It's just turned May, sir, not July. There's quite a distinct nip in the air—”

There wasn't, but Hugo wasn't in any mood to argue. Slipping from the saddle, Hugo grasped his mount's bridle and steered his horse first toward the rocky prominence that towered above the spring, so that he could gaze on it fully and see whether it had changed overmuch in the ten years since he'd last seen it. He left the boy grumbling behind him, and slipped through the fresh green grass alongside the sheep track and into the quiet solitude of the woods.

There, the bright afternoon sunlight slid in golden shafts through the ceiling of newly burst leaves overhead. The forest floor was sun-dappled and fresh with the scent of last year's mulch, and Hugo inhaled deeply. It had been too many years since he'd last smelled good English peat.

Heedless of the twigs and bracken crackling beneath his large boot soles, Hugo strode forward, hearing only birds calling to one another from the canopy of leaves above, the roar of water from the spring's cascade, and the sudden shouting of his squire behind. He stopped for a moment, wondering what ailed the boy, but decided it could only be more of the lad's foolish complaining. Rolling his eyes again, Hugo strolled toward the rock outcropping that overlooked the gorge in which the spring lay, and stood upon the gray stones, looking down.

With the exception of the trees, which seemed taller and more twisted than ever, the spring was much the same as when he'd last seen it. The water below was as clear as the air around him,
green in the golden light that streamed through the blanket of leaves overhead, its glasslike surface disturbed only by the waterfall from the rocks upon which he stood. St. Elias's spring flowed beneath the ground and bubbled up here through a crevice in the rocky gorge, cascading in white froth a dozen feet down to the pool below.

The sweetest, most refreshing water imaginable; one had to catch it directly at the source, before it hit the pool below, to truly divine its worth. Hugo and his brother had spent hours on their stomachs on the very prominence on which he now stood, straining their arms down the cliff side to catch skinfuls of the cool water.

Eyeing the nearly empty water flask on his saddle, Hugo decided to repeat the practice of his childhood, and fetched the skin, emptying its stale contents on a bed of white violets. Striding back to the outcropping, he lay full down on the sun-warmed stone, stretching one long arm, flask in hand, to catch the burbling cascade at its mossy source.

It was as he was thus engaged that a flash of color, quite unlike the cool greens and golds of the woods around him, caught his eye, and he looked down into the gorge…and froze.

It was the girl from the inn.

He knew her instantly, though she wore neither chausses nor white lawn shirt now. Indeed, her ivory flesh gleamed in the afternoon sunlight as she stretched languidly upon the stony banks of the pool. Naked, all that glorious auburn hair unbound, she looked as delicate as a water sprite: Her pert breasts were no larger than would fit in a man's hand; her slim thighs, long and white, met in a fluff of silky hair that echoed the shade of the curtain of curls that fell around her slender shoulders; her waist was so narrow his hands would fit around it, his fingers meeting in the
middle; her flanks were lean and white, and, as he'd noticed back at the inn, her backside distinctly heart-shaped.

All this he observed in the moment she hesitated upon the bank, first stretching and then coiling that long cape of hair into a knot on the top of her head. Then, with the grace of a porpoise, she slipped into the crystal waters.

It was then that Hugo realized he'd been holding his breath, so anxious was he not to break the spell of the moment. Lying flat as he had been, there was no possibility of the girl seeing him, but he had lain frozen just the same, afraid he might do something to alert the maid to his presence and cause her to flee.

That she would flee if he revealed himself he was quite certain. He readily equated her to the wild things that lived in the woods around them, most especially with the shy red foxes inhabiting burrows at the forest's edge. She had the look of a vixen about her, wild and sly and yet strangely diffident. Like any virtuous maid, she would not welcome intruders to her bath, and would surely run at the first sign of having been observed.

Hugo stared down at the lovely apparition swimming below him, his thoughts a-jumble in his head. Foremost among them was the question,
Who is she?
, though he knew the answer to that. Finnula Crais, the miller's daughter. There had been a family of that name in villenage to his father, Hugo remembered. This, then, must be one of their offspring. But what was this miller about, allowing a defenseless maid to roam the countryside unescorted and dressed in such provocative garb—or completely undressed, as the case now stood?

As soon as Hugo arrived at Stephensgate Manor, he would send for the miller, and see to it that the girl was better protected in the future. Did the man not ken the riffraff that traveled the roads these days, the footpads and cutthroats and despoilers of
young women such as the one below him? Of course, the girl had more than proven her mettle back at the inn, but Hugo knew that most criminals were nowhere near as stupid as Dick and Timmy. The girl would not have lasted a second in London, and it was miraculous that she had not yet met with disaster here in Shropshire.

So fixed was Hugo upon his musings that for a moment, he did not realize that the maid had paddled out of view. Where the waterfall cascaded, the pool below was out of his line of vision, being blocked off by the rock outcropping on which he lay. He assumed that the girl had ducked beneath the waterfall, perhaps to rinse her hair, which he noticed she'd kept well above the water. Such a heavy mane would take hours to dry, and perhaps she preferred to cleanse it in the fresh water from the spring rather than in the slightly staler pool.

Hugo waited, pleasantly anticipating the girl's reappearance. He wondered to himself whether the chivalrous thing to do was to creep away now, without drawing attention to himself, then meet up with her again upon the road, as if by accident, and offer her escort home to the Stephensgate.

It was as he was deciding that he would do so, but not without a last glance at her slim beauty, that he heard a soft sound behind him, and then suddenly something very sharp was at his throat, and someone very light was astride his back.

It was with an effort that Hugo controlled his instinctive defensive reactions. Having been employed as a soldier for the past ten years, his senses were honed into pure fighting mechanisms, and whether he was partaking in a barroom brawl or rooting out Saracens, his instinct was to strike first, and question later.

But he had never before felt so slim an arm circle his neck, or such slight thighs straddle his back. Nor had his head ever been jerked back against such a temptingly soft cushion. When
the curtain of auburn hair fell about him, caressing his face and filling his senses with the light fragrance of rose, he was glad he hadn't reached back and hurled his fair adversary over his head and down the gorge, where she would undoubtedly have split open her skull on the rocky banks below.

“Stay perfectly still,” advised his captor, and Hugo, enjoying the warmth from her thighs and, more particularly, the softness of the hollow between her breasts, where she kept the back of his head firmly anchored, was happy to oblige her.

“I've a knife at your throat,” the maid informed him in her boyish voice, “but I won't use it unless I have to. If you do as I say, you shan't be harmed. Do you understand?”

Hugo felt that a token of resistance must be made, though above all else, he did not want to injure the girl. So he attempted to lift his arms from where they hung, still holding the flask beneath the waterfall. But the diminutive fireball astride his back would have none of it, and stamped a pretty bare foot down upon his forearm, surprising him so that he dropped the flask into the pool below.

“Leave it!” she commanded, in an imperious voice. “I told you not to move!”

Hugo, admiring the slim arch of the foot, the only part of her that he could actually see, with the exception of the cloud of hair that enveloped them both, decided he ought to apologize now. Surely the girl had a right to be angry; in all innocence, she had come to the spring to bathe, not to be spied upon. And while he was greatly enjoying the feel of her nubile body against him, he was not enjoying her wrath. Better that he calm the spirited wench, and see her back on the road to Stephensgate, where he could make sure that she was kept from straddling other men's backs, and thereby getting herself into mischief.

“I earnestly beg your pardon, demoiselle,” he began, in what
he hoped was a contrite tone, though it was difficult for him to speak without laughing. “I stumbled upon you in your most private hour, and for that, I must ask your forgiveness—”

“I took you for simple, but not completely stupid,” was the girl's surprising reply. Hugo was amazed to hear that her own voice was as rich with amusement as his own.

“I
meant
for you to stumble upon me, of course,” she elaborated. Quick as lightning, the knife left his throat, and the maid seized both of his wrists and had them trussed behind him before he was even aware of what was happening.

“You're my prisoner now,” Finnula Crais said, with evident satisfaction at a job well-done. “To gain your freedom, you'll have to pay for it. Handsomely.”

H
ugo 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 educa
tion. 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 de
clared, 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.