Read Online Ransom My Heart by Meg Cabot - Free Book Online

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 boldlyannounced 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.
    â€œSo 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?”
    â€œDo 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.
    â€œHere, 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 education. 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.
    â€œWell,” 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?”
    â€œCertainly 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?”
    â€œI 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—”
    â€œSix of