Ransom My Heart Read Online Free Page A

don’t.”
    â€œTrust me. Promise?”
    â€œI promise. Now let’s join the others, Mel. They’re calling for us. We don’t want them to suspect anything—”
    â€œOh, thank you, Finn!”
    Suddenly joyous, Mellana pulled her younger sister into an exuberant hug. “I knew you’d help me if I asked. You have always been good to me. I don’t care what people say about you, I don’t think you’re a bit odd. And with your skills as a huntress, I’m sure you’ll capture the richest man in Shropshire!”
    Finnula looked up at her sister curiously. “Whatever are you talking about, Mel?”
    Surprised that Finnula didn’t understand, Mellana told her. And it took considerably more tears on Mellana’s part before Finnula would even consider honoring the promise she’d made in a moment of distraction.

Chapter Two
    H ugo Fitzstephen might have spent the past decade in the Holy Land fighting for possession of Jerusalem, but that didn’t mean that he himself was holy. Far from it. As ought to have been amply illustrated by the fact that he had bedded that innkeeper’s wife, then refused to pay her husband recompense, as custom dictated, when the man “happened” to walk in upon the two of them.
    Hugo had fled to the Crusades as the only recourse for the second son of an earl. His other option had been the monastery, which he steadfastly refused to enter, though it was his mother’s fondest wish that he should seek oneness with the Lord. Hugo preferred seeking oneness with women, however, and he’d found plenty of them in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The women of Acre, across the Jordan from Damascus, where Hugo had spent most ofthe decade he’d been away from England, had a curious habit of shaving their most private areas, and that alone had been incentive enough for Hugo to stay on.
    Of course, being captured in Acre by the Muslim army hadn’t been part of the plan, and by the time his ransom had been paid by the Crown, Hugo was particularly disgusted with the so-called Holy Land, and with crusading in general. By then, he’d learned of the death of his elder brother, followed by the extremely strange death of their father, making Hugo the seventh Earl of Stephensgate. He decided that he might as well go home to enjoy his new title.
    But so far, he hadn’t had much of a chance. He’d not yet so much as glimpsed the green pastures of Shropshire, and already he was in trouble again. This time it wasn’t Saracens that were pursuing him, but the husband of that particularly well-endowed blonde with whom he’d dallied in London. “Dallied” wasn’t the husband’s word for it, however, and he was demanding a small fortune for his “humiliation.” Hugo suspected this husband and wife worked as a team, she luring in wealthy knights, then her husband “discovering” them together and demanding recompense for his injured feelings. Well, Hugo was damned if he would give the man the satisfaction.
    Now Hugo and his squire were being forced to take back roads and sheep trails to Stephensgate, avoiding the main roads for fear of being set upon by the innkeeper and his cronies. It wasn’t that Hugo was afraid to fight; it was just that he’d had enough fighting in the past ten years to last him a lifetime, and wanted only to retire to his manor house and enjoy what he considered, in his twenty-fifth year, to be his old age.
    Shunning inns and villages where the traitorous husband might happen upon them, Hugo and his squire slept out in the open air. Fortunately, except for the occasional thunderstorm, it was a mildspring, and sleeping outdoors was preferable to Hugo than what most country hostelries had to offer, anyway. The cramped, dark quarters that one shared with one’s mount, the stale brown bread and dank ale served for breakfast, the lice-infested bedding—no, give