by Meg Cabot
Finnula sighed. He was very heavy, and now that their desire had been sated, and she was no longer buoyed by passion, her weight could no longer support his. She pressed a thumb to his bare hip.
“Move,” she said, and he obligingly rolled from her, but, wrapping a brawny arm around her waist, brought her with him, until her body lay in the curve of his, her back to his chest, his arm beneath her cheek. He let out a satisfied grunt that she didn’t understand until she saw the faintest of pink stains upon the mattress.
“Oh, no!” she cried with dismay, rising up one elbow. “Mistress Pitt won’t like that at all.”
Hugo pulled her down again, and studied the stain over her shoulder with some surprise. That had not, apparently, been the source of his good humor.
“Explain to me again,” he queried, one tawny eyebrow lifted, “how it is that a widow should be a virgin?”
“I told you,” she said sleepily. “I was only married for one day. My husband died before—well, before.”
“Unfortunate man,” Hugo murmured, pressing his lips to the spot beneath her ear that made her toes curl pleasantly. “Fear not for Mistress Pitt and her bedclothes. I will leave her coin as recompense.”
Finnula smiled again, her eyes drifting closed. Her last conscious thought, before sleep overcame her, was that it was strange how well their bodies fit together, her and Sir Hugh’s. It was almost as if they’d been made for each other.
Chapter Nine
Hugo was amused the next morning when Finnula, waking slowly next to him, stiffened and tried to roll away from him, as if nothing had changed between them. Catching hold of her arm, he pulled her back into bed, and found her giggling and compliant once he’d reminded her of the pleasure his body was capable of giving hers.
Never, Hugo knew, had he met a woman more passionate in bed, both giving and demanding in equal portions, than Finnula Crais. She was as bold as the bawdiest prostitute, yet gentle as the untried virgin she’d been before Hugo had robbed her of her innocence. She did not seem to regret the hours they’d passed together, however. Indeed, when she looked up at him now with those mist-gray eyes, they seemed filled with self-satisfaction, as if she’d learned the joke of a lifetime.
Seeing her translucently pale skin in the bright morning sunshine that slanted through their room’s single window, Hugo could think of nothing but making love to her again. It was exactly the way he’d felt upon waking yesterday morn, the only difference being that today, he could act upon his desire. He did so, promptly, vowing to himself that it was a pleasure he was going to experience every morning, for as long as possible.
Sliding a hand between her slim thighs, Hugo lowered his head to capture Finnula’s lips with his. She stiffened against the pressure of his fingers, as he’d known she would, then melted against them a minute later, when his other hand moved to caress her small breasts. Guiding her with his hands, Hugo urged her to straddle him, and when her slick tightness encompassed him, sheathing him in her warmth, it was his turn to writhe.
The braid in which Peggy had tied her hair the night before had come undone during their loving, and now all those glorious auburn curls cascaded around her face and shoulders, forming a sweet-smelling curtain around them as they moved together. Hugo watched Finnula’s beautiful face as she experienced yet another climax, holding on to her slim hips and plunging himself deeper and deeper into her, until at last he followed her into mindless pleasure.
This time it was she who collapsed against him, and he wrapped his arms around her, marveling at her fine-boned beauty and wondering at how such a petite maid was capable of arousing this raging lust within him. He felt that he would never be sated of his need for her, and this thought was a sobering one.
After all, he was not Hugh Fitzwilliam, simple knight of Caterbury. He was Hugo, Earl of Stephensgate, and this girl was the daughter of his miller. Finnula Crais, though she wasn’t aware of it, was his vassal, and he had a feudal duty to protect and nurture his vassals. Granted, his father had abused those very people he’d been sworn to protect, but Hugo was not his father, and would right all of Lord Geoffrey’s wrongs as soon as he reached Stephensgate.
That didn’t change the fact, however, that he had deflowered this girl, an act which rendered her unmarriageable to any other man.
Not that Hugo would ever now allow such a marriage to occur.
No, Finnula Crais and her fate was his responsibility, and his only concern was how he was going to get her to give up the leather braies. They looked very charming on her, but he certainly wasn’t going to allow his wife to traipse about, dressed like a boy, for any man to leer at. No, she was going to have to start wearing gowns, like the one she’d worn the night before, the one that had clung to her curves so tantalizingly.
On top of him, Finnula stretched, catlike, and said, “If we’re going to get to Stephensgate by nightfall, we should leave here soon.”
Hugo grinned at her, and gave her bare bottom a smack. “Still your prisoner, am I?”
“Don’t get the idea that anything’s changed.” She slid down from him, resting her head upon his bare chest, and stared down at the source of their pleasure, now lying limp against Hugo’s thigh.
“I think I understand Mellana a little better now,” Finnula said, thoughtfully.
Hugo looked down at her long eyelashes and small, expressive mouth. “You mean how she came to be pregnant?”
“Aye. I couldn’t understand how she could do such a thing before, but now I see how it might happen. If Jack Mallory pleasured her half as much as you pleasure me, that is.”
For a moment, Hugo was tempted to tell her the truth about his identity. After all, Finnula could be as pregnant as her sister now, and Hugo wanted to assure her that if that was the case, she needn’t concern herself over the fate of the child. But somehow, he thought the revelation that he was the Earl of Stephensgate might spoil what would otherwise be one of the finest mornings in his memory.
And so he remained silent, watching with pleasure as Finnula rose and began to pad about the room, as unconcerned by her nakedness as she’d been at the spring.
They washed and dressed, Finnula donning her wifely disguise once more, hampered this time by Hugo’s frequent caresses. The sight of her in a gown rendered him positively mad again with lust, and what should have taken them a few minutes took them more than an hour. By the time they left Dorchester, Finnula riding sidesaddle out of deference to her kirtle, the sun was high in the southeast, all of the previous day’s clouds blown away, the sky a vast canopy of blue overhead.
Finnula chattered amiably about their luck that no one had recognized her or her mount, since apparently Violet was as well-known in the community as she herself was, and Hugo only half listened, admiring instead the way the sunlight brought out the gold highlights in her curls. Hugo found himself envying the emerald between her breasts, winking in the sunbeams, nestled so comfortably where he only an hour before had lain his head.
Such thoughts, he told himself, were maudlin and nauseating, and he couldn’t understand why he was mooning over this girl, when he’d already bedded her. He was usually cured of any admiration for a woman the minute he was through making love to her, but his regard for this girl seemed to increase with every passing hour. Making love to her had only added fuel to his feelings for her. He was in a sorry state indeed, and he knew, with a sinking heart, that there was only one cure for it.
They had ridden for some time before Finnula complained of a cramp in her leg, and insisted upon stopping so that she could change back into her braies. Hugo rolled his eyes, wishing he’d burned the leather garment back at the inn while she’d slept, but the sight of Finnula’s bare bottom in the sunlight caused him to forget his disapproval of her, and he dismounted and joined her in the little copse in which she’d hidden to change clothes.
Making love out of doors had never been very satisfying for Hugo, since in the past his partners had invariably complained of dirty hems and
the hardness of the ground, but Finnula didn’t seem concerned about either, once he’d managed to arouse her to a point where it didn’t matter what lay beneath them. She was reluctant at first—until he touched her between the thighs, and then she seemed to melt against him, becoming as pliant as a kitten. It was an interesting trait, and one that Hugo intended to remember for future occasions. It would be a handy tool to use, he thought, to cool her ire when he revealed his true identity.
After that brief bout of lovemaking in the woods, Finnula, suddenly affectionate, agreed to his suggestion that she ride in the saddle before him, and they were seated thus together upon entering Stephensgate at last, a few hours later.
Finnula had taken to pointing out landmarks to him, proudly showing off her village and the demesnes surrounding it, and Hugo, who hadn’t seen his home in over ten years, enjoyed the tour. The village seemed smaller than when he’d left it, instead of bigger, which he knew to be the case. As at the spring, the trees seemed larger, but the cottages smaller and the people older—much older. He’d been shocked to learn from Finnula’s not-very-respectful description of the parish priest the fact that Fat Maude, from whom Hugo had learned all that he knew of the art of pleasuring a woman, was still conducting business from her cottage on the far side of the village.
But he was in for an even bigger shock when they rounded a bend and approached the millhouse, situated on the gently flowing river and looking very much as it had ten years previously, when Hugo had passed it without a thought to its inhabitants, one of whom he now had perched rather intimately in the saddle before him. Gathered in the yard before the neat, two-story house was a multitude of men and their mounts, including, he learned when Finnula stiffened before him and whispered it, the shire reeve.
“Oh, no,” Finnula groaned, burying her face in her hands. “And all my brothers-in-law. What can they think I’ve done now?”
Hugo kept a firm grip on her narrow waist, guiding Skinner steadily toward the house and the group of men clustered outside it. A rowdy band they looked, too, each one larger than the next, and all of them pointing and glowering at them.
“Whatever it is, I know you’re innocent,” he said, trying to keep his voice from revealing the amusement he really felt. “You’ve been with me the past three days. Unless it’s something you did before you left—”
But Hugo’s assurance was broken off by a thunderous shout. One man tore free from the group and came hurrying toward them. Hugo recognized him by his bright red hair and furious expression. Brother Robert. There was no doubt about it.
“Finnula!”
The man was surprisingly tall, nearly as tall, Hugo judged calmly, as himself. He was strong, too, his shoulders thick from years of hauling wheat and flour sacks. As Hugo pulled Skinner to a halt in front of the millhouse’s watering trough, Brother Robert and about a half-dozen other men approached at no mean pace, their faces masks of anger.
Hugo felt Finnula panicking against him, and as if she were a nervous pony, he shushed her.
“You don’t understand,” she fretted. “He’s like to kill me!”
“He won’t lay a hand on you,” Hugo assured her.
Brother Robert halted about a foot from the trough, and, glaring up at Hugo with narrowed gray eyes that were an echo of his sister’s, he growled, “Is this the bastard, Fairchild?”
From out of the crowd of brothers-in-law stepped Matthew Fairchild, nervously holding a weather-beaten hat in his hands.
“Aye, Robert,” he stammered. “’Tis the one I told you of.”
“Unhand my sister, sirrah,” Robert snarled, “and dismount. I’ve a score to settle with you—”
“Robert!” Finnula cried, all her fear forgotten as she rushed to Hugo’s defense. “How dare you speak that way to Sir Hugh! Apologize at once!”
“I’ll apologize and be damned,” Robert declared, his massive hands curled into fists at his sides. “His name isn’t Hugh, and there’s no sir about it. Will you unhand my sister, man, or must I drag her down myself?”
Hugo wasn’t amused anymore. The presence of Matthew Fairchild could mean only one thing: that the serf Evan had told what he’d seen in the Fairchilds’ barn…only Hugo’s stolen kiss had been interpreted by Finnula’s protectors as something considerably more serious. He realized that Robert had every right to be furious with him, however misconstrued the provocation.
“What do you mean, his name isn’t Hugh?” Finnula’s voice was rich with scorn. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. His name is Hugh Fitzwilliam, and he’s a knight just back from the Crusades. He lives in Caterbury—”
“He isn’t, Finnula,” rumbled a man almost as large as Brother Robert, only portly, besides. From the richness of his garments, this man Hugo judged to be Sheriff de Brissac, the one Finnula feared. He seemed to have a certain regard for the girl, however, as he looked up at her, his mouth set grimly within a thick—though neatly trimmed—black beard. “Why don’t you come down from there, Finn, and let your sisters take you inside?”
Hugo saw Finnula lift her head. Crowded in the doorway to the millhouse were five women, each crowned with a head of flame-red hair, except for one, who wore braids of pale gold. This one he judged to be Mellana, for she was weeping energetically and crying, “’Tis all my fault! Oh, Finn, will you ever forgive me?”
“No one’s taking me anywhere,” Finnula announced stubbornly, digging her hands into Skinner’s mane, “until someone tells me what this is all about.”
Hugo bent to speak into her ear. “Finnula, you’d best do as the sheriff says. This is a matter for men to settle. Go inside with your sisters.”
“There is no matter to settle,” Finnula declared hotly. Her gray gaze swept the group of men until it landed upon the one she sought. “Matthew Fairchild, what tales have you been spreading about me?”
“None but the truth, m’lady,” the nervous farmer insisted. “My boy Evan saw it all—”
“Your boy Evan saw nothing,” she said scornfully—and rather boldly, considering she was telling an outright lie.
“Nothing! He said he saw that man kissing you,” Robert declared, jabbing a furious finger at Hugo, “and that afterward you hit him, trying to escape his embrace. But when Evan brought Matthew out a few seconds later, you had gone already, taken against your will by that bastard—”
“That is the most ridiculous pack of lies I ever heard,” Finnula scoffed. “’Tis true we kissed, but ’twasn’t against my will, and as for being taken—”
“Finnula,” the sheriff said calmly. “I’ve been to Caterbury this morning. There never was any Sir Hugh Fitzwilliam hailing from there. There isn’t any Fitzwilliam family for miles around.”
Hugo felt, rather than heard, Finnula’s gasp. She’d gone still as a statue in the saddle before him. This, he knew, was bad. Very, very bad.
For him.
“Now be a good girl,” the sheriff went on, “and get down from there, so I can speak to this man in private.”
Hugo prodded Finnula gently. “Do as he says, love. I’ll explain it all to you later, but for now, go to your sisters.”
Finnula’s face was a mask of such misery that Hugo longed to snatch her to his chest and comfort her.
But he wasn’t at all certain that at that particular moment, such a gesture would be welcome. Finnula’s hand had drifted to her knife hilt at her hip. Torn between loyalties, she hesitated, glancing first at her brother, then at Hugo.
“Go on,” he urged. “All will be set right, I promise you.”
With a roll of her eyes, Finnula swung her leg around Skinner’s neck and jumped lightly to the ground. She hadn’t even straightened before Robert Crais was upon her, his fury driving him to seize her roughly by the shoulders.
“What madness is this?” he demanded, shaking the slight girl in his hold. “What could you have been thinking, you stupid, stupid maid?”
They were very nearly the last words Robert Crais ever uttered. The n
ext thing the miller knew, Finnula had been pulled from his grasp, and there was a two-foot blade pressed to his throat. Hugo had drawn his sword and dismounted before anyone else could move, his reactions second nature, honed from a decade of warfare. Thrusting Finnula behind him, he stood between brother and sister, the sword loose in his grasp, but the grin upon his face dangerous.
“You may heap all the blame you like upon me, Brother Robert,” Hugo said, his voice chilling in its deadly calm. “But touch not the girl. She’s innocent of any wrongdoing, and the only man who lays a hand upon her is me.”
“The hell you say,” exploded Robert, with admirable spirit for a man at whom a blade was pointing. “She’s my sister!”
“She’s going to be my wife,” Hugo informed him.
Behind him, he heard Finnula inhale a sharp protest at this, but the only person he had eyes for at that moment was the miller. He saw the younger man’s gray eyes go flat with rage, and almost felt sorry for him. It was a terrible thing, he supposed, to lose a sister to a complete stranger. But Hugo could not see that the man had done much to deserve better treatment. After all, he’d been the one who’d allowed Finnula to wear those blasted braies, courting all sorts of disaster. It was lucky for Brother Robert that more serious danger had never befallen her.
“Well, well, well,” chuckled Sheriff de Brissac, bringing his large hands together in resounding smacks. “That is quite a different matter altogether. Rape, after all, is a crime. But marriage is cause for celebration. Put away your sword, young man. Robert won’t lay a finger on the girl…Will you, Robert?”
Robert looked as if the only person he wanted to lay a hand upon was Hugo. “I won’t touch her,” he said. “But he’ll marry her over my dead body.”
“That can be arranged, you know, Crais.” Hugo said, sheathing his sword.
“I—” began Finnula, but Sheriff de Brissac intervened, coming between the two men and laying a hand upon each of their shoulders. “Harsh words, harsh words indeed between two men who might one day be brothers. There is a simple enough way to handle this situation, I believe.”
