Goddess of the Hunt: A Novel Page 7

  Lucy didn’t like Sophia speculating on Jeremy’s “dark, thrilling” secrets. Mostly because she knew there were none. Lucy had known him for eight years now. She knew everything there was to know about Jeremy Trescott, and none of it was the tiniest bit thrilling.

  Except his kiss. Lucy grudgingly admitted that his kiss was, indeed, just the tiniest bit thrilling. Days later, she still felt that kiss in her toes. And that Look of his—the same glare that had always bounced right off her glib indifference—now penetrated her poise, setting off a queer humming deep inside her.

  “Rich, handsome, titled …” Sophia ticked off the attributes on her fingers. “He’s a magnificent catch, by any standard.”

  “Who, Jemmy? If he’s such a magnificent catch, why don’t you want to marry him?” Now that would solve matters nicely.

  “If he looked at me the way he keeps looking at you,” Sophia whispered, “I might.”

  Lucy clapped her book shut in one hand. She turned her gaze back to Jeremy, only to find that he was indeed giving her that Look again. And this time he did not look away. Their gazes held, locked, deepened. She tried to imagine seeing him for the very first time—viewing him as Sophia did, just a fortune and a title and dark, imaginary secrets. She nearly laughed aloud with the absurdity of it.

  But then Jeremy’s gaze shifted, scanning down her body in an unhurried fashion, almost as though his mind didn’t know his eyes had gone wandering. And Lucy realized he was not looking at her as though seeing her for the first time. He was, she fancied, looking at her as though he’d seen her many times before—in various states of undress. A potent awareness coursed through her veins, and with it spread a most curious sensation.

  Lucy felt as though she were seeing herself for the very first time.

  “Cousins,” Sophia blurted out, tugging Lucy from her reverie. “Surely you have cousins to write.”

  “None on my mother’s side. On my father’s side, there’s Aunt Matilda—” She nodded toward the corner, where her aunt was opening a silver box encrusted with lapis lazuli to gather a generous pinch of snuff. “But she never married. My grandfather farmed indigo in Tortola. I suppose I do have cousins there, but we’ve never met. At any rate, they would be far older than I.”

  “Tortola!” Sophia’s eyes widened. She propped her chin on one hand and stared unfocused toward the bank of mullioned windows. “How romantic. If I had cousins in Tortola, I would write them a letter every week, if only for the pleasure of imagining its voyage across the sea. My little missive—my tedious scribbles of everyday life—tossed about on the ocean, washing up on a distant, sandy shore.” She sat up abruptly, her hand dropping to the table with a dull thud. “Or pirates!” she exclaimed, giving a tiny shiver. “Imagine—my letter falling into the hands of pirates.”

  Lucy eyed Sophia with amusement. “What a vivid imagination you possess.”

  “Yes.” Sophia’s face grew wistful, and she tapped her quill against the inkpot. “I rather wish I hadn’t. It’s a curse, to imagine so many wonderful things and never see them come true.”

  An uncomfortable silence followed, during which Miss Hathaway’s demeanor made a swift progression from pensive to morose. And a strange sensation filled Lucy’s breast. Something uncomfortably close to sympathy.

  Impossible. Sophia was the enemy. One didn’t sympathize with the enemy.

  But then the enemy sniffed and bit her lip, and the horrifying truth became inescapable. It was sympathy. How vexing.

  “I don’t expect the pirates would know how to read it,” Lucy said, obeying the strange compulsion to cheer her companion. “But if you’re so enamored of the notion, you’re welcome to write my cousins for me.”

  “May I?” Sophia perked immediately. She drew out a fresh sheet of paper and dipped her quill. “What are their names?”

  Lucy paused. “I don’t remember.”

  “What was your father’s brother’s name?”

  Lucy thought for a moment. “George, I believe. After my grandfather.”

  “Then his son must be George as well.” Sophia put her quill to paper. “Dearest Cousin George,” she read aloud, pausing briefly before beginning to scribble again. “We are enjoying fine weather.” She paused again. “My brother’s annual hunting party is underway. This year Waltham Manor is enlivened by the company of Mrs. Crowley-Cumberbatch and her sister, Miss Hathaway.” Sophia gave Lucy a sidelong glance as she dipped her quill.

  “Miss Hathaway is a delightful and charming lady,” she went on. Her lips slowly shaped each word as her quill danced frantically across the page. “We are already the best of friends. In fact, she has recently implored me to address her by her Christian name, Sophia.”

  She cast Lucy a wide smile, which Lucy repaid in a rather bewildered fashion. Sophia’s eyes sparked with sudden inspiration, and she dipped her quill yet again. “I write you to invite you, dearest cousin, to my upcoming wedding. While the engagement is not yet formalized, it cannot be long. By the time this letter reaches you, I will very likely be Lady Lucy Trescott, the Countess of Kendall.”

  “No!” Lucy glanced about the room to see if anyone had heard. Fortunately, Marianne had reached a rather lively section of her sonata.

  “No?”

  Lucy swallowed her objection in a great, bitter lump. When had pretending to flirt with Jeremy become pretending to marry him? “My full name is Lucinda,” she said. “Lady Lucinda Trescott sounds much nicer, don’t you think?” She could barely pronounce the name without cringing.

  “Lady Lucinda Trescott, the Countess of Kendall,” Sophia corrected. “I hereby invite you to my wedding. But since this letter will not reach you for an age, I also hereby accept your regrets and express my fondest wish that you might have been in attendance. I am certain it will have been a lovely occasion.”

  Lucy laughed despite herself. Still, she was eager to change the subject. “But what about the pirates?”

  Sophia dipped her quill again and furrowed her brow. “A warning to pirates,” she said sternly. “Although my new husband is one of the richest men in all England, he is also among the most fearsome. If you have any ideas of kidnapping the author of this letter to hold her for ransom, I advise you to abandon them. Blackbeard himself quakes in his boots—”

  She stopped writing and looked to Lucy. “Is it boots, or boot? Did Blackbeard have one leg, or two?”

  “I believe he had two.”

  “Blackbeard himself quakes in his boots,” she continued, “at the merest mention of Evil-Eye Jem, the Plundering Earl.”

  Lucy clapped both hands over her mouth to keep from laughing aloud. “The Plundering Earl? People don’t really call him that?”

  “No, I made it up just now. But he does have the most scandalous reputation. My mother forbade me to waltz with him. Not that he ever asked.” Sophia glanced toward Jeremy and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Has he tried to plunder you?”

  Actually, Lucy longed to confide, it was rather the other way around.

  Marianne beckoned Sophia to the pianoforte. Toby approached with an outstretched hand, and Sophia reached to accept it. As she stood, she leaned over and whispered in Lucy’s ear—

  “If I were you, I’d let him.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “All Englishmen salute the hound,” Henry belted out in a mocking baritone, nudging his bay into a trot. Felix matched his pace, adding his tenor to the song.

  “Who, when his lady runs to ground, gives dogged chase o’er dell and knolllll …” They pulled their horses to a stop and drew out the note in a two-part harmony that strained the meaning of the word. “To burrow in his vixen’s hole!” they bellowed at last.

  An airborne pinecone knocked the triumphant grin off Henry’s face.

  “Watch yourself, Waltham!” Toby called. “We’ve ladies among us.”

  Henry looked over his shoulder with an expression of feigned innocence. “Ladies?” His glance fell on Sophia. “So we have.” He tipped his hat, archin
g an eyebrow in Lucy’s direction. “My apologies, ladies,” he said sardonically, weighing heavily on the dubious plural. Then he touched his crop to the gelding’s flank, heading into the woods. The pups raced ahead of him, ears flopping in the wind.

  Jeremy saw Lucy wince, and he beat down the surge of sympathy that rose in his chest. Really, what could she expect? For eight years, she’d wheedled her way into the company of gentlemen and demanded equal treatment. On any previous autumn day, she would have paced Henry across the fields, riding astride in borrowed breeches and gilding the profane verses with her clear soprano.

  Now Lucy wished to be a lady. She’d donned a russet velvet riding habit and brown leather gloves, piled her curls on top of her head, and somewhere, somehow conjured up a sidesaddle. It was, he owned, a vast improvement over her jewels-and-silk folly a few days previous. But she couldn’t expect the men to change their behavior as quickly as she changed her clothes. She certainly had no business feeling affronted if they didn’t.

  She sniffed. “I knew I ought to have worn breeches. Do I look so ridiculous, then?” She glanced at Jeremy. “You’ve been staring at me all afternoon.”

  Staring? He hadn’t been staring. Had he? Damn.

  “Not ridiculous,” he said, accepting the invitation to appraise her form openly. “You look …” Soft. Lovely. Strangely delicate and quite frankly, bewildering. “Different.”

  She gave him a rueful look. “And those are the words of a besotted man. No wonder Henry’s mocking me.”

  Jeremy sighed. He wished he could ride ahead with Henry and Felix and leave that pained expression behind. But a besotted suitor, as Lucy decreed, would ride alongside his lady. For once, her notions of courtship proved correct. Toby had not strayed from Sophia’s side since the party departed the stables. The four of them skirted the edge of the woods, the gentlemen flanking the ladies as they rode through the fringe of a mowed barley field.

  With reluctance, Jeremy nudged his mount closer to hers. “Henry is an ass.” Not the most conciliatory phrase he might have uttered, but it was sincere.

  Shrugging, she tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear. “Henry is Henry. And he may be an ass, but he’s also my brother.”

  “Precisely.” He lowered his voice. “He should treat your feelings with more care.”

  “He does care,” she muttered. “He just … isn’t good at it.” Her chin lifted. “And who are you to talk about tender feelings?”

  Jeremy meant to reward her cold remark with an equally cold silence, but Miss Hathaway spoke, ruining the effect. “That song the men were singing,” Sophia said. “I don’t believe I’ve heard it before.”

  “Miss Hathaway, allow me to apologize for Mr. Waltham’s crass behavior,” Toby said in a buttery tone. “We are unused to the company of ladies on these excursions.”

  Lucy’s nose twitched, and she tossed her head.

  Jeremy trained his gaze on the horizon. He’d learned his lesson. It was useless to offer her soothing words. Lucy always took as she pleased, even when it came to offense.

  “There is no need for apology,” Sophia replied. “I should like to learn the words, that’s all.” She arranged the folds of her emerald-green skirt over her mount’s dappled flank. Her face brightened as she turned her horse into the woods. “Oh, look! Have they found one?”

  None of Tuppence’s whelps had succeeded as yet in sniffing out a fox, but it appeared one brindled pup had managed to surprise a squirrel. Both hound and quarry scuttled underfoot, causing Lucy’s mare to rear and buck.

  Jeremy lunged to grab the reins, but Lucy didn’t need his assistance. With a quick jerk on the bit and a soothing word, she had the horse calmed within seconds. She repositioned herself in the saddle. Her velvet riding habit slipped easily across the leather, making a little shushing noise that Jeremy found anything but calming.

  Lucy turned and caught him staring. She arched an eyebrow.

  He cleared his throat. “Since when do you ride sidesaddle?”

  “Since this morning.”

  “This morning? No wonder your horse is skittish.”

  “Thistle is not skittish. I’ve ridden her astride, bareback, and standing up. I expect I can ride her sidesaddle.” Lucy patted the mare’s neck and ruffled her gray mane.

  “Standing up?”

  Jeremy supposed he must appear sufficiently shocked, because she smiled for the first time all day. “Only once,” she said, her green eyes teasing. “On a dare. And it was years ago. The steward’s son—”

  Her voice trailed off as her eyes fixed on something behind him. Jeremy turned to follow her gaze. He saw instantly what had captured Lucy’s attention. Toby and Sophia had dismounted in a small clearing some paces away. A shaft of sunlight pierced the trees, bathing the couple in luminous gold. Toby was working something between his hands, and Sophia sat on a fallen tree, looking up at him with a radiant expression. They exchanged smiling words that Jeremy could not hear, and then Toby held his creation aloft for a moment before placing it gently atop Sophia’s head.

  A crown, woven of ivy.

  Toby took Sophia’s hand and kissed it. Jeremy swore under his breath.

  “Lucy—” he began, turning back to her.

  Or to where she had been. He caught only the cracks of snapped twigs and a glimpse of russet velvet and gray mare disappearing through the trees. Jeremy turned his horse in pursuit, leaning over the stallion’s neck to duck a low-hanging branch.

  Lucy urged her mare on, riding hell-for-leather across the barley field. Bent low over the mare’s neck, her chestnut curls blown loose and streaming behind her, she burned a path across the field toward a gap in the hedgerow. Jeremy was tempted to let her go. Let her ride out all the hurt and come back calmer.

  But then he remembered that little shush of velvet slipping over leather. The sound echoed in his ears and crawled down his neck, setting every hair on end. It wasn’t called a breakneck pace for nothing. One misstep—one stone in a barley field—could send her flying.

  Jeremy nudged his horse into a gallop. In a flat-out race over open country, her mare was no match for his mount, and the gap between them narrowed.

  Then he saw the stile.

  A low wooden fence bridged the gap in the hedgerow. Beyond it, a steep slope led down to the orchards. It would be a difficult jump for any rider, under the best conditions. For a rider in a holy fury, on a skittish horse, riding sidesaddle for the first time in her life, it was certain disaster.

  Jeremy hauled on the reins, pulling his horse to a halt in the middle of the field. “Lucy! Stop, damn it!”

  He groped for a more impressive threat to hurtle in her direction, but it was too late. She pushed the mare into a jump. Jeremy heard the hollow clatter of hooves clipping wood. Then horse and rider disappeared from view completely.

  His stomach gave a sick lurch. Panic twisted in his chest, squeezing the air from his lungs. For one black, unending moment, his heart refused to beat. Then it roared back to life at a thundering gallop, and he dug his knees into the horse’s sides until his stallion matched the pace.

  The top rail of the stile had been knocked from place. Jeremy’s mount easily cleared what remained of the fence, landing with a dull thud on the other side and careening instantly into a headlong skid down the rocky slope. The moment his horse found solid footing, he dismounted. Lucy was nowhere to be seen.

  The orchard was laid out in neat rows of trees that formed a crosshatch of leaf-paved avenues. He plunged into the grove, searching through empty branch-framed corridors until he glimpsed Thistle, grazing riderless beneath a distant pear tree. He strode toward the mare, expecting at any moment to trip over a lifeless heap of russet velvet. It seemed an age since he’d drawn a breath. His brain felt woolly. The edges of his vision grayed.

  Then he saw her.

  She stood with her back to him, resting one shoulder against the trunk of a tree. Just relaxing in the orchard, perfectly serene, as if she hadn’t just watched Toby c
rown Sophia his goddess. As if she hadn’t just nearly broken her neck. As if Jeremy weren’t about to vomit his breakfast on his boots.

  “Oh, Jemmy,” she said, “how do you do it?”

  He hadn’t the faintest notion what she meant. How did he do what? At the moment, he was not entirely certain how he managed to stay upright. The leaden weight of anxiety that had been crushing his chest had sunk through his gut, churning the contents of his stomach. Now it seemed to hang somewhere in the vicinity of his knees, making his legs weak, unsteady. He picked a tree near hers and sagged against it.

  “How do you do it?” Lucy turned and pressed her back against the tree, staring up into the canopy of orange leaves. “How do you go through life and just—not care?”

  That did it. He was going to throttle her. Fist his hands in that russet velvet, crush her close, wrap his hands around the delicate, golden skin of her throat—and throttle her. Right after he leaned against this pear tree for a while.

  He stared blankly down a row of trees, his breath heaving in his chest. How did he do it? How, indeed. However it was that he managed to go through life and just, as Lucy so kindly put it, not care—Jeremy couldn’t seem to remember. He’d utterly forgotten. Damn.

  “I never thought I’d envy you,” she said. “Never in a million years. You’re so composed, so serious. So cold.”

  His hands balled into fists. How dare she? How dare she burst into his room and kiss him and dive into a river and invade his dreams and make him go shopping and throw herself headlong into danger and lean back against a pear tree in a dress the exact color of her hair kissed by fading sunlight? How dare she make him forget? Damn it all. Damn her for making him care.

  “I want to go cold,” she said. “All these feelings—they’re like flames inside me. I’m tired of getting burnt. I don’t want them anymore. I want to put out the fire and just go cold. I never imagined I’d envy you, but today …” Her voice wavered. “Today, I do.”

  He barely heard what she was saying, but he couldn’t turn away. Her green eyes were clouded with hurt, threatening to burst into a storm of tears. Don’t cry, he willed her silently. “Don’t cry,” he said aloud.