Goddess of the Hunt (10 page)

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 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 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 crown 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 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.

She bit her lip and blinked hard. “I don’t cry.”

But even as she spoke, her chin began to quiver. And somewhere deep and low inside him, panic began to build. He’d been here too many times before—watching a woman shed tears for a man he could never replace.
Look away
, he told himself.
Better yet, just
leave
. He wasn’t a boy any longer; he didn’t have to suffer this scene again. But he couldn’t look away, and he couldn’t leave. He was down and defenseless, and she was so damned beautiful, reclined against that tree. If she cried … He couldn’t let her cry.

“Stop being so dramatic, Lucy.” She winced. Jeremy squared his shoulders. He tried again. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”

It worked. In an instant the sorrow in her eyes gave over to fury. She straightened her spine and took two paces toward him. Jeremy breathed a small sigh of relief. He knew how to deal with an angry Lucy.

“Did I call you cold?” she asked. “You’re worse than cold; you’re cruel. And what’s more, you’re afraid. I’ll be a fool, again and again, but I would never be like you. Not for a thousand Tobys.”

“Afraid? Me? You’re the one who’s hiding from the truth.”

“Hiding from the—” Fury made her grow an inch. “I don’t hide. From anything.”

He snorted. “You don’t hide. You didn’t hide when you let the cows into the oatfield, then? You didn’t hide when you lost Henry’s signet in the coal grate?”

“This is completely different. I was a girl then. I’m not a girl any longer.”

“You’re still hiding, Lucy. Hiding behind silks and jewels and sidesaddles and outrageous behavior. All because you’re afraid.

You’re afraid to drop these ridiculous games and simply tell Toby how you feel.”

“I was on my way to do that on the night you arrived,” she said.

“Somebody
stopped me.”

“You weren’t on your way to tell him the truth. You were on your way to trick him into marrying you.”

Lucy’s mouth fell open, but she said nothing. Jeremy took another step toward her. He knew he ought to turn away, but his feet wouldn’t move in any other direction. He’d stopped the tears. The danger had passed. But it wasn’t enough. There were things she needed to know. If she wanted to call him cold and cruel, then he would acquaint her with the cold, cruel truth.

“I’ll tell you why you haven’t told him,” he said, inching closer to her, backing her up against the trunk of the tree. “Because you know

—deep down, Lucy, you
know
—he doesn’t feel the same. He doesn’t love you. And if you had an honest conversation with him, you would have to face that fact. So long as you keep up your games and your schemes, you can imagine he cares for you. That’s why you won’t tell him the truth.
You’re
afraid.”

“You’re wrong,” she seethed. “Wrong in every possible way. I’m not afraid. I’m in love. You wouldn’t know love if it struck you in the face.

And I’m mightily tempted to strike you, just to prove the point.”

Jeremy leaned closer, bracing his arm against the tree behind her, caging her between the tree and his body. “Go ahead,” he taunted, offering her his cheek. “Strike me. It won’t work.”

He lowered his voice to a secret. “You know why it won’t work?

Because you’re not in love with him, either. You’re afraid of that truth, too. You don’t love Toby.” She opened her mouth to reply, but he cut her short. “Oh, you
want
him—like a girl wants a sweet or a shiny new toy. But you said it yourself, Lucy. You’re not a girl any longer.”

Her eyes widened. The daylight was fading, mellowing to an amber glow. The air was heavy with the scent of pears. Her face was scant inches beneath his; her lips, scant inches beneath his. Lucy’s cheeks flushed red beneath the gold. She tilted her face to his, and her eyelids fluttered closed. An invitation he knew well.

He tucked a curl behind her ear—so she could hear him and believe every word. “If you really loved Toby,” he said, “you wouldn’t be standing here under a tree, waiting for another man to kiss you.”

Her eyes flew open, but she didn’t pull away.

“I’m right, Lucy,” he whispered hoarsely. “You know I’m right.”