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

squire. Peter collided against Finnula with stunning force, sending thegirl sprawling beneath his vastly superior weight. Crushing the slender body down into the forest floor, Peter cried, “Run for it, my lord! Now’s your chance!”
    Hugo had never felt such all-consuming fury. Of all the times for his clodpated squire to try to prove himself—and against a helpless girl, no less! Hugo let out a roar that startled birds from the treetops, and sent his own mount’s ears back flat against his noble head. Peter lifted his head from the girl stretched out prone beneath him, eyes closed, and had the grace to look sheepish.
    â€œGet off her!” Hugo bellowed, struggling to his feet—no easy task, he found, with hands bound behind one’s back. “You simpleminded fool, you’ve knocked her senseless!”
    Peter looked down at the pale and limp form beneath him, and bit his lower lip. “I’m sorry, sir,” he began, earnestly. “But I thought you were in real trouble. I stepped into a snare back there, that strung me up from a branch near five feet off the ground, and I only just cut myself free, and I thought—”
    â€œAnd you thought I was in mortal danger from that girl beneath you? Get off her, I said!”
    Peter clambered awkwardly from Finnula’s body, and Hugo fell onto his knees at her side, peering down anxiously at her pale face. He could see no outward signs of injury, and no rocks nearby on which she might have hit her head, and decided that she must have only had the wind knocked from her, and would revive anon.
    â€œGo and fill your flask from yon waterfall,” Hugo instructed his squire curtly, “and dampen her face with it. At your peril she does not waken soon, or you will pay with your own worthless skull.”
    Shaken at the anger in his master’s tone, Peter obeyed his instructions to the letter, filling his flask and lightly moistening thegirl’s lips and face with the cool, fresh water. St. Elias might well have fallen out of favor with the church for not having cured any lepers, but at the touch of his rejuvenating spring water to the fallen maid’s skin, her eyelids fluttered, and color began to return to her high cheekbones.
    â€œBut I do not understand,” Peter worried, kneeling at the girl’s far side. “I saw that your hands were bound, and I stumbled upon your sword and knife, lain upon the ground, I thought those men from the inn had followed us, and that it happened she was one of their gang—”
    â€œNay,” Hugo growled. “She captured me by herself and in all fairness. I will honor her demand for ransom—”
    â€œRansom!” Peter looked down at the fair form lying crumpled beneath him, and shook his head in wonder. “Don’t tell me! I heard it, but I never believed it true…”
    â€œHeard what?” demanded Hugo, his temper short. “Tell me now, you sniveling brat, or I’ll—”
    â€œI heard it said in London,” Peter continued quickly, “that country maids were known to capture men and hold them ransom for monies they used to buy ingredients to brew ale—”
    â€œAle!” Hugo echoed, loudly enough to cause Finnula to groan at the word, as if it provoked an unpleasant memory.
    â€œAye, sir,” Peter said more softly, nodding. “Ale they sell for profit, to pay for their weddings, as a sort of dowry—”
    â€œI never heard of anything so ridiculous,” Hugo declared. Truly, his country was well on the road to ruin if such practices were indeed taking place on a regular basis.
    â€œWell,” Peter said, “I can think of no other reason why this maid would risk her neck capturing strange men and demanding their ransom—”
    â€œShe wasn’t risking her neck until you came along,” Hugo declared, accusingly. “I wouldn’t have laid a hand on her, and I’m sure