Ransom My Heart (11 page)

“Perhaps if Brother Robert had minded Sister Mellana a little more, she wouldn't be in the position she's in now.”

Finnula looked up at him appraisingly, as if he were a deaf-mute who had suddenly begun to speak. “Aye,” she said. “That might well be true.” Then she sighed, lifting a wave of rain-heavy hair from her eyes. “But be that as it may, I've still got to get at least as far as Dorchester today, so I can make it to Stephensgate by tomorrow. I'd best be off.”

“
I?
” he echoed. “
I'd
best be off? Aren't you forgetting someone?”

She cocked her head to one side as she regarded him sarcastically. “No, I'm not. You're not coming with me.”

“What do you mean?” Hugo felt cut to the quick. “I'm still your prisoner, am I not?”

“You're not. I released you last night, remember?”

He felt absurdly disappointed. He'd hoped she'd forgotten about last night. “But what of Mellana?” he asked quickly. “How will she scrape together enough money for hops and malt without my ransom?”

Finnula glared at him, then bent and, to Hugo's surprise, took the empty pot from his hands. The argument appeared to be over, but he wasn't certain who had won. Without another word, she turned and traipsed down to the stream. He supposed
she considered it an even labor exchange—he made the stew, and she washed the pot. The domesticity of the gesture moved him, however, because Finnula was not someone he could picture performing household chores like a goodwife. What was going to happen to her? he wondered. She was of marriageable age, after all. She could not possibly hope to find a husband who would approve of her hunting and her leather braies and her extended trips across the countryside. Not unless, he supposed, she married someone who was wealthy enough not to require his wife to perform housekeeping.

Someone like himself, for instance.

Shaking his head, sending a fine spray of rainwater droplets flying, Hugo berated himself. What was he thinking? He could not,
would
not marry Finnula Crais. Marry the miller's daughter? His father would turn over in his grave. No, Hugo was going to marry a wealthy widow and add to the Fitzstephen fortune and estate. The only thing Finnula Crais could provide him was children—who'd inevitably be carrot-topped—and game for dinner every night.

Upon her return from the stream, however, Hugo couldn't help offering to allow her to tie his hands again, in the hope that she'd take him prisoner once more, an offer at which Finnula turned up her nose. She further dismissed his suggestion that they both ride on his steed, as they'd done the day before, to better ward off the cold and rain from each other. She pointed out, with no little sarcasm, that he was no longer her prisoner, and therefore she didn't need to keep him from escaping. In fact, he was free to ride away whenever he chose, and she'd wish him well.

Hugo knew it was absurd, but he was chagrined. He'd looked forward to once again sharing a saddle with her. She was a pleasant companion, when she wasn't whacking him in the head with the heel of her hand. She never bored him. Her contrariness was
a relief from the fawning attentions he normally received from women of his acquaintance.

“What I don't understand,” Hugo said, when they'd finished cleaning up their campsite and were mounted and moving away from the hayrack, “is how you're going to provide your sister with the financial assistance she requires now that you've released me.”

Finnula was hunched beneath the fur trim of her cloak, blinking against the drizzle. She seemed to be pointedly ignoring him, except when he thrust himself directly into her line of vision. “God's teeth,” she swore, though whether at him, the rain, or his reminder, he wasn't certain. “I don't know. I suppose I'll have to find someone else.”

“Someone else?” Hugo guided Skinner closer to her mare's flank, not certain he'd heard her correctly. “Did you say you're going to have to find someone else?”

“Aye.” Her profile, what he could see of it above the cloak's fur collar, was grim. “Though I don't know where I'll find another as promising as you. Isabella Laroche has apparently already held every man in the vicinity hostage at least once. I'm afraid their families won't pay a second time. Not handsomely, anyway.”

Hugo nosed his destrier closer to Violet's head. “Who are you considering? Because I'd like to make a suggestion.”

“Oh?” She looked at him, her slender eyebrows raised questioningly. “This ought to be interesting. And what might your suggestion be?”

“Don't use the same lure you used with me. You have a reputation to think of, you know. You can't go around allowing the entire male population of Shropshire see you in your altogether. It will make it difficult to find a husband, when the time comes for you to marry.”

The smile she quickly suppressed was not lost on him. “Oh? That's your advice, is it?”

“It is. And I suggest a younger man than myself.”

“Ah,” she said knowingly. “You found the role of hostage too rigorous for a man of your advanced years, did you?”

“I most certainly did not,” Hugo snapped, stung. “I meant only that a younger man might be more manageable, and less apt to make trouble for you.”

“Less apt to make advances, you mean.”

“I didn't say that—”

“You didn't have to. Your concern for me is touching, Sir Hugh, it truly is, but I believe I am capable of making my own selection as far as future hostages go—”

“If I might be of assistance, you needn't hesitate to ask.”

“Thank you, but I believe that this undertaking is traditionally a purely female concern. Your assistance will not be required.”

Hugo was not put off by her dismissive tone. “If you would allow it, I'd gladly offer my squire, Peter, for your next hostage.”

She looked at him, wide-eyed, before she burst out laughing. Hugo glared at her, failing to see anything humorous in the offer.

“What's wrong with Peter?” he demanded. “He's my charge. I'll gladly pay whatever ransom you ask for him—”

“I can hardly be assured of that,” snickered Finnula. “Why, your squire is even more tiresome than you are! I'd have to keep him bound and gagged, just to keep from killing him myself, and I sincerely doubt that anyone, including you, sir, would ever pay money to get him back—”

Hugo didn't much appreciate being called tiresome.

“Besides,” Finnula went on, oblivious to his ire. “Your Peter's the one who wounded me. I'd hardly be likely to take him hostage.
He might murder me next time. Chivalry is one thing you've yet to teach your squire, sir.”

“Who will you kidnap next, then?” Hugo demanded hotly. “Some brawny-armed smithy, who'll be so smitten with you that he'll probably follow you about like a puppy even after he's ransomed?”

Hugo was relieved when she didn't point out that that, in fact, was what he himself was doing. “And what would be so wrong with that?” Finnula inquired.

“If that's how you see yourself, nothing's wrong with it, I suppose. I can't picture you as the wife of some thick-chested blacksmith, but if that's the future you've chosen for yourself, I shan't try to stop you.”

Finnula laughed, the bell-like sound sending ripples up and down Hugo's spine.

“I'm looking for a hostage, not a husband,” she reminded him with an infuriatingly condescending smile. Giving Violet a gentle kick in the sides with her heels, she trotted a few yards ahead of Hugo and his mount, her horse's footing amazingly steady on the mud-slicked track. “Besides,” she called gaily over her shoulder, “you oughtn't speak so contemptuously of blacksmiths. They perform many vital functions in the community. I'd be honored to be married to a smithy.”

Hugo rolled his eyes derisively, mimicking her. “‘I'd be honored to be married to a smithy,'” he murmured, loud enough for her to hear. “We'll see how honored you feel when you're fat with your thirteenth brat and your husband the smithy is just rolling in from the local tavern, stinking of beer and ordering you to make him supper. Oh, yes, we'll just see how honored the Fair Finn feels then.”

When she didn't turn her head, he could not help adding, “But then, the stink of beer oughtn't offend your sensitive nostrils,
since it's probably a smell you're uncommonly accustomed to, what with your sister the brewmistress—or should I say, brew-matron?”

Finnula gave Violet another kick, and suddenly, she was cantering away at a pace that, in the mud and rain, probably wasn't wise. Hugo urged his destrier to follow, the bigger horse less sure of his footing in the foul weather. It was some minutes later that Finnula, glancing over her shoulder and seeing that he still followed, allowed her mount to slow. When Hugo caught up, he was winded and resentful.

“That was a damned fool thing to do,” he accused her, between breaths. “What were you thinking, putting your horse in jeopardy like that? She could have slipped and broken a leg.”

Finnula didn't say anything. She had pulled her hood up over her head to shield her hair from the rain, and he could see only the tip of her pointed nose.

“Not speaking to me, eh?” Hugo observed, wiping rainwater from his forehead. “Hit a bit close to the mark, did I, calling your sister a brew-matron?”

Finnula turned her furious gray eyes toward him.

“Why won't you leave me alone?” she demanded. “Why do you hang about, insulting and mocking me? I gave you your freedom, I told you to go. Why do you persist in tormenting me?”

“For one thing, you still have my emerald. For another, I wonder why you persist in believing a lie?” he countered.

She turned her attention back to the muddy road before them. “I don't know what you're talking about,” she said.

“This sister of yours, this Mellana. She's using you.”

Finnula flicked a rain-soaked tendril of hair from her eyes. “She is not,” she said loftily. “I can't imagine what you mean.”

“You know exactly what I mean. You're too intelligent, Finnula, not to know. She tricked you into embarking on this ri
diculous mission.
She's
the one who got herself pregnant, and yet
you're
the one who's riding around in the cold and rain with a strange man while she's safe and snug at home. And you say she isn't using you?” He laughed shortly.

Finnula glared at him. “She's my sister,” she said, through teeth that almost, but not quite, were beginning to chatter from the spring cold. “Sisters do things for one another. You wouldn't understand.”

“I think I understand all too well. I had a brother, you know.”

That got her attention. She blinked at him. “Did you?”

“I did. An elder brother. He was my father's heir. Anything he wanted, he got. Me, I was the younger son. I was expected to enter the church—”

Finnula's bark of laughter was so explosive that Hugo's mount laid back his ears and whickered questioningly. When the girl had calmed down sufficiently, Hugo continued. “Yes, amazing as that may sound to you, Finnula, my mother's fondest wish was to see me a monk.”

Finnula, he realized, had been laughing so hard that she was now dashing tears from her eyes. “You!” she giggled. “A monk! Oh, God have mercy!”

“Amusing, isn't it?” His mouth twisted sardonically, Hugo gripped Skinner's reins in one white-knuckled hand. “Nevertheless, that was her intention. I begged her to reconsider, and my father, too, but they wouldn't listen. A monk I was to be, and they wouldn't fund any other endeavor, least of all my ambition to become a soldier.”

Finnula said, a little more warmly than she'd ever spoken to him before, Hugo thought, “Well, that's wrong. If you wanted to be a soldier, they ought to have let you. After all, it was your life.”

“My sentiments exactly. So I appealed to my brother, who by that time had come of age, and asked him to take my part, and
explain to our parents that I could not possibly take the vow. And do you know what he did?”

Finnula shook her head, a droplet of rain flying off the end of her nose.

“He hired a couple of footpads to sneak into my chamber late one night and spirit me away to a local monastery.”

Finnula gasped. “Nay, but that isn't so!”

“'Twas so. When I overpowered the cads, they told me. I packed my few belongings and left for London that very night. And I haven't returned home since.”

Finnula's face was grave. “Your brother did you a grievous wrong, but it's well that you leave the past behind and make peace with him now.”

“I'm not making peace with him,” Hugo said. “He's dead.”

“Oh.”

“They're all dead. My mother and brother fell to a fever years ago, and my father died just last year.”

Finnula said quietly, “So now you are alone.”

“Yes. And heir, despite my brother's best efforts. So do not tell me that siblings are incapable of doing one another harm. Your sister is using you, and you are allowing her to do so.”

Finnula was staring down at her hands, upon which she'd pulled a pair of close-fitting leather gloves. She looked so miserable, so unhappy and cold, that Hugo felt sorry for having spoken to her so harshly.

“What happened to your sister's dowry?” he asked, in what he hoped was a kindlier voice.

“She spent it,” Finnula said sorrowfully. “On gowns and trinkets. I suppose 'tis true that Robert does not watch her as closely as he ought.”

Brother Robert
, Hugo thought,
is a fool who might just join Reginald Laroche in the stockade when I return to the manor house.

“But,” Finnula said, looking up at him with eyes that were as large as the emerald she still wore between her breasts. “But whether or not she is using me, Mellana is my sister, and I've got to help her, if I can.” A simple shrug. “And I can. So I will.”