Ransom My Heart (8 page)

“I see,” her prisoner said, his deep voice inflectionless. “But all the man would need is a single shaft—”

“I don't leave my arrows lying about,” Finnula said matter-of-factly.

“But surely you've missed from time to time—”

Finnula sniffed. “I don't miss.”

“You can't
always
hit your mark, not every time—”

That stung. “I do,” she snapped. “You think that because I'm a woman, there is something lacking in my skills as a hunter? I'll have you know that I'm the best shot in all of Shropshire. I have a golden arrowhead at home that I won at the Dorchester Fair to prove it—”

“I'm just saying that everyone misses now and again—”

“I never miss. I strike to kill, not maim.” Finnula glared at him resentfully, forgetting to rotate the skewered meat. “There aren't any does roaming about the earl's lands with my arrows in their flanks. What I aim for, I kill.”

It seemed to her that Sir Hugh took an intense interest in his soup all of a sudden. He dashed in a few pinches of the same herbs that Finnula had rubbed into her hare.

“And this earl, the one whose game you're poaching—”

Too late, Finnula realized her mistake, and she quickly bit down on her lower lip.
When
was she going to learn to keep her mouth shut? Verily, this knight was able to draw her out with the ease of the slyest village gossip.

“I didn't say I was poaching,” Finnula grumbled.

“Didn't you?” Hugo's deep voice rumbled with amusement. “I believe you mentioned that that was the root of your troubles with Sheriff de Brissac.”

Scowling, Finnula turned the skewer. She realized, as the aromas from the soup and the meat began to fill the air, that she was hungry. She hadn't had a bite to eat since the inn in Leesbury.

“It's not poaching, exactly,” she explained reluctantly. “The game I kill never actually leaves the earl's demesnes—”

“What do you mean?” The look he shot her was uncomfortably sharp. In the firelight, his changeable eyes had gone yellow as amber. “What in God's name do you do with it?”

The intensity of his gaze was unnerving, and Finnula lowered her eyes, her throat suddenly dry. Using her free hand, she fumbled with the water flask that hung from her side, but Hugo passed her a flask of his own.

“Try this,” he said shortly.

Finnula lifted the skin to her lips, only to pull it away a second later, feeling as if her lips were on fire. Gagging, she turned accusing eyes up at her prisoner.

“Are you trying to poison me?” she demanded, when she could find her voice.

Hugo had the grace to look sheepish. “I apologize. 'Tis only ale, though I admit it's a bit on the strong side. I would have thought that the sister of a beer maker would be accustomed to the vagaries of brewing—”

“Aye, but I thought 'twas water you were offering to me. Besides, this isn't ale. 'Tis dragon's milk. You bought it in London, I wager?”

Hugo inclined his head. “Guilty as charged.”

“I thought as much. Whoever sold you this stuff let it sit too long, and now it's strong enough to turn the hair of the dog.”

Annoyed that he had seen her sputtering reaction to the ale, Finnula took a long drink of the offensive stuff, just to prove that she was no lily-livered maid. Though her eyes watered, she managed to swallow several mouthfuls, then delivered a watery smile to her companion as she returned the flask.

“My thanks,” she said hoarsely.

Hugo took the flask and said, “The earl's game. What do you do with it, if you don't remove it from his demesnes?”

Provoking man. Finnula winced to herself. He could not be swayed from this topic, no matter what she tried. There was no hope for it. She was going to have to tell him. She had only herself to blame for arousing his suspicions.

“You have to understand that the earl—the late earl, Lord Geoffrey—passed away over a year ago, leaving the estate in the hands of his bailiff—”

“This Lord Geoffrey didn't have an heir?” Hugo did not dare to look at her. He kept his gaze on the roasting meat on her skewer.

“Oh, aye, there's an heir.” Finnula snorted disgustedly. “Only he's nowhere to be found. Got himself captured gallivanting about the Holy Land, not unlike yourself—”

“Gallivanting!” Hugo echoed beneath his breath, but Finnula heard him, just the same.

“Aye, well, you can't call it much more than that, can you? A sorrier display of masculine stupidity I never did see.” She shot him a sly glance from beneath her eyelashes. “Did you know
him, perhaps? Lord Geoffrey's son, I mean. Geoffrey, Earl of Stephensgate—”

Hugo pointed to the meat. “You'd better turn that. It's burning.” After Finnula rotated the skewer, he said, “And so since Lord Geoffrey's son can't be located, the estate has lain lordless for a year?”

“And a little more. And the bailiff, one Reginald Laroche, Lord Geoffrey's cousin, he and his precious daughter live in the manor house—” Finnula was about to add,
And a finer pair of selfish pigs you never saw
, but restrained herself, remembering that her prisoner was not a stranger to Shropshire, and might very well know Reginald Laroche.

But apparently his acquaintance with the bailiff was either nonexistent or passing, because he asked, curiously, “This Laroche isn't performing his duties to your satisfaction, I take it?”

Finnula turned the meat, hunching her shoulders uncomfortably. She knew she should not complain about her betters, but somehow, though she herself was just a miller's daughter, she could not help thinking that she could do a better job of managing Lord Hugo's estate than that wet hen Reginald Laroche.

She felt her prisoner's elbow in her side. It nudged her tender rib, and Finnula let out an involuntary cry that caused the knight to look down at her, his shaggy blond eyebrows raised in surprise.

“I only meant to offer you another swallow,” he said, holding up the flask of ale. “I'd forgotten about your rib. I'm very sorry. Is it still sore?”

Finnula eyed the leather flask. “Aye. But nothing that a drop or two more of that dragon's milk won't cure.”

Chuckling, Hugo passed her the sack, and Finnula choked down a few more mouthfuls before handing it back to him and wiping her lips with the back of her hand. The ale was terrible,
true, but it warmed her insides as much as the cheerful fire was warming her outsides.

In fact, despite her bruised side, Finnula was feeling quite nice, with the quiet night settling all around them like a blanket, and the stars twinkling coldly overhead, and their dinner cooking so aromatically before them. Her companion wasn't even annoying her that much anymore. He seemed to have adopted a less abrasive demeanor, and hadn't smirked at her in over half an hour. Perhaps she would actually begin to enjoy his company before the end of this trip…

“So this Laroche,” Hugo prompted her, as if their previous conversation hadn't been interrupted.

“Oh.” Finnula sighed. She supposed it didn't matter if she bad-mouthed the earl's relative to this man. Though there was a slight chance that Isabella, who had an uncanny ability to sniff out an eligible bachelor from leagues away, might find a way to wrangle herself an introduction to the knight, it was unlikely Sir Hugh would ever meet her father.

“Reginald Laroche seems to feel that the dues owed to Stephensgate Manor ought to be nearly twice what they were when Lord Geoffrey was alive,” Finnula explained. “So instead of working three days in His Lordship's fields and four in their own, the peasants are forced to labor six days for Laroche, leaving only one for themselves. But that's nothing to compare with the tallages Laroche has instituted. I think it's done, don't you?”

Hugo had been staring at her intently, his hazel eyes yellow again in the firelight. She had to wave the skewered meat over the flames to get his attention.

“Does this look done to you?”

He tore his gaze from her face and glanced at the roasted rabbit. “Yes, it's done,” he said, and, taking the stick from Finnula's hands, Hugo began to blow on the sizzling meat. “The tallages,”
he said, between breaths, his eyes, in his thickly bearded face, bright as the stars above. “He's raised the tallages, has he?”

Finnula wasn't certain she liked her meat blown on by anyone excepting herself, but she shrugged with good grace and contented herself with another swallow from her prisoner's flask. She really was feeling much better.

“Aye, raised the tallages by a third, and that, coupled with the extra three days' labor, well, it's caused a bit of bad feeling amongst the serfs.” She accepted the hunk of rabbit Hugo passed to her, and, holding it in both hands, took a ravenous bite. “Hmmm,” she said, though the meat was still too hot to eat comfortably. “That's good.”

“Haven't the serfs complained to anyone?” Hugo demanded, his own mouth full of roast rabbit.

“Oh, aye, to Sheriff de Brissac. He's a good man,” she admitted grudgingly, “for all he wants to imprison me, but there's naught he can do. Reginald Laroche had Lord Geoffrey in his pocket even before the old man died. He'll inherit, if Lord Hugo never returns from the Holy Land, and may God help us then.”

Finnula wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and looked at her companion, then regretted it. The knight had bits of rabbit meat in his beard. She supposed he couldn't help it, his beard being so bushy, but it was really quite unattractive, and she couldn't understand why he hadn't shaved upon reaching England. Perhaps, she thought, her overactive imagination working furiously, he had a weak chin, and needed the beard to even things out.

Her prisoner seemed oblivious to the state of his facial hair, however. “So what you're telling me,” he began, stabbing a finger at her for emphasis, “is that this Laroche is slowly starving the people of Stephensgate?”

“Well, the serfs, anyway,” Finnula amended. “My brother,
and the other free folk in the village, aren't hurting too badly. It's the peasants who farm for His Lordship who are suffering the most—”

Hugo had quit chewing, and was staring at her so intently that Finnula began to feel uncomfortable again. There was something so familiar about his eyes, but for the life of her, Finnula could not say what it was. She rarely visited Caterbury, but she supposed it was possible she had met one of his kinsmen there. Or perhaps his uncles or cousins had stopped in Stephensgate to sample Mellana's brew. It really was quite famous, and on Tap-Up Sunday each October, the only day she could sell it legally without a license, the mill was crowded with men who'd traveled miles just for a taste of Mellana's beer.

“So you are killing the earl's game,” Hugo said slowly, his deep voice a rumble, like distant thunder, “and giving it to his serfs, so that they don't starve.”

Finnula's eyes widened, and she nearly choked on the piece of rabbit she'd just swallowed. “What?” she cried, giving herself a thump on the chest, then regretting it when she jolted her rib. “What did you say?”

“Don't act the innocent with me, little miss.” The thunder in Hugo's voice was not so distant now. “That's how you can truthfully say the game isn't leaving the earl's demesnes. It's all lining the stomachs of the peasants who work the land—”

Finnula took another sip of ale, just to ease the digestion of the slightly stringy hare. She wasn't certain, but it appeared that Sir Hugh was upset about something. Since it did not seem wise to have such a very large man angry with her, she tried fluttering her eyelashes, which she'd seen Isabella Laroche do any number of times when caught in the glare of her father's disapproval.

“Had I not,” Finnula said meekly, “they would have starved this winter. It was very cold—”

“Hell and damnation!”

Hugo's abrupt exclamation so startled Finnula that she nearly dropped her gnawed half of the rabbit carcass back into the fire. She watched in amazement as her prisoner did exactly that, flinging the meat to the ground and then climbing to his feet. He took several strides into the dark meadow, only to return a few seconds later, his large hands balled into fists at his sides.

She could not understand why a man who was a stranger to Stephensgate should be so disturbed by the mistreatment of its serfs, and so assumed that his anger was directed at her, for her flagrant disregard of poaching laws. The penalties for poaching were quite severe; those caught illegally hunting a lord's game could forfeit a hand or a foot for it, and it was not unusual for a poacher to pay for his crimes with his life.

Finnula instantly began to regret that she had ever opened her mouth about her hunting practices to this stranger. For all she knew, he could be some agent sent by the king to investigate the mysterious disappearance of game in Fitzstephen Forest. Why the king should take any interest whatsoever in Fitzstephen Forest, she could not imagine, but clearly, that was the only explanation for Sir Hugh's strange behavior. If Sir Hugh was even his name.

Finnula wasn't certain how to proceed. She supposed a girl like Isabella would have started to cry, using tears as a weapon against this large man's wrath, and had she been able to, Finnula would have feigned repentance. But she was
not
sorry for what she'd done, and she'd be damned before she acted as if she was.

So she merely slid what was left of her dinner into the pot hanging over the fire, since her appetite had abruptly left her, and waited quietly for the large man to vent his anger, bowing her head against the inevitable, but muttering rebelliously beneath her breath.

But when the barrage of accusations did not come, Finnula grew restless, and glanced up at Hugo just once before swiftly lowering her gaze. He was standing some feet away, his arms folded across his broad chest, his tawny gaze inscrutable, but most definitely fastened upon her. Finnula thought it might be wise to provide as small a target as possible for his rage, and so despite the discomfort it caused her side, she brought her legs up to her chest and circled them with her arms, resting her chin on her knees and gazing mutinously into the flames.