Free Ransom My Heart by Meg Cabot

she knew it.”
    â€œI still don’t see—”
    â€œNo, 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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œI 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 angelicface 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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œYou are Sir Hugh’s squire?” she demanded, and Peter, though confused by the title and name change, nodded.
    â€œGood. 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?”
    â€œYou know where it is, boy,” Hugo said, to hurry things along. “Go there, now—”
    â€œAnd 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?
    â€œYes, madam,” Peter was saying, backing away with no little haste. “I’ll see to it that no one contacts the sheriff, never you fear.”
    â€œGet gone, then,” Finnula said, with a wave of