Goddess of the Hunt (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #1)

Her hands clenched in frustration. What would it take to get through to this boy? She wasn’t just trying to be superior. Shecared about him, the stubborn ingrate. “I will tell you what you need,” she said, her voice clipped. “You need to put your sister’s welfare before your own pride. You need to stop running about the woods at night, where who knows what peril could befall you. And you need to learn some propriety. In private, you can curse me however you wish, but to my face, you will address me asmy lady !”


There was a shocked silence. And the majority of the shock was on Lucy’s side. Albert might have been wondering where that rant had come from, but she knew its precise source. She was echoing Jeremy, of all people. Was this how he felt, too? Concerned for her safety, desperate to help, but frustrated beyond measure when she refused to let him?

And how many times had she refused him?

Lucy’s heart squeezed. He truly cared for her. He always had. And all this time,she had been the stubborn ingrate.

Albert was still looming over her, his hands balled into fists at his sides, looking rather uncertain as to what came next. She tried to make her tone soft and soothing. Motherly. “Albert, listen …”

But what they heard next was anything but soft or soothing.

“Lucy, don’t move.” Jeremy’s voice thundered from somewhere unseen.

Followed by the unmistakable click of a gun being cocked.

“Get down!” Lucy cried, lunging forward.

A shot cracked through the dark.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Lucy tackled Albert about the knees. He fell to the ground, and in the same instant a shot whistled overhead.

She released his legs. “Run!” she whispered. “Run all the way home, and don’t stop for anything!”

Albert scrambled to his feet and dashed off into the trees. A few seconds later, Jeremy thundered by in breathless pursuit.

“Stop!” Lucy struggled to her feet and grabbed her husband by the arm. “He’s gone. You’ll never catch him.”

Jeremy pulled his arm away and swung his gun over his shoulder. “Oh, I’ll catch him all right.” He moved in the direction Albert had fled, and she grabbed his arm again.

“Wait! You can’t just leave me here alone.” She could play the helpless lady, if necessary. She hugged herself and shivered, only partly for effect.

Jeremy pulled to a halt, staring off into the woods with frustration. Then he turned back to her reluctantly. “No, I won’t leave you.” He fixed her with a fierce look. “Damn it, Lucy. What the devil were you thinking?”

“I saw him from a distance. I thought he was Aunt Matilda, so I—” she gasped. “Aunt Matilda!”

“She’s fine,” Jeremy said impatiently. “I found her in the entrance hall. She may be old and senile, but at leastshe knows better than to go wandering out in the woods at midnight, dressed in …” His eyes swept over her silk-clad curves with a possessive gaze that mingled anger and desire. “You have to stop behaving in such an imbecilic fashion. I can’t always be around to save you.”

Lucy felt pride, hot and rebellious, surging within her.He cares for me , she reminded herself. She just needed to calm him down, let him know she was all right. “Jeremy, I’m sorry I alarmed you. But I didn’t need saving.” She wrapped her dressing gown tight across her chest. Bloody hell, it was cold. “It wasn’t how it looked. I had the situation in hand.”

“In hand.”Jeremy let the gun slide from his shoulder and flung it to the ground. He stalked toward her with a strange expression, his eyes black as midnight. His breath came uneven and ragged, breaking up his words. “You had the situation in hand. Alone in the woods. In the dead of night. With a violent criminal.”

She swallowed. “He wasn’t a criminal. Not a violent one, at least.”

It was as though he didn’t hear her. He approached her slowly, step by deliberate step, until his chest grazed hers. She could taste desire on his breath. The blue of his eyes was swallowed by black, and a wild intensity radiated from him. A fierceness she’d only glimpsed before, he kept it so deeply buried. Now it seethed to the surface, exuded from him in potent waves, sweeping over her body. And her body roused to it. Craved it. Her skin came alive with exquisite awareness, every hair standing on end.

Lucy didn’t know how to calm him down.

She didn’t want to.

“Dressed in a few scraps of silk and lace.” He hooked a finger under the collar of her dressing gown and pulled, exposing one shoulder to the night. She felt his finger graze along her collarbone, press against the hollow of her throat, then trace the column of her neck to her chin, lifting her face to his. “But you didn’t need saving. You had the situation … in hand.”

“Yes,” she breathed. He moved forward again, his chest pushing against hers. Her back collided with the trunk of a tree.

He grabbed her wrist and wrenched her hand from its grip on her dressing gown. “In hand,” he repeated, interlacing his fingers with hers. He tightened his grip until the bones in her wrist ached. In one swift motion, he pulled her arm up over her head and pinned it to the tree with his own. Her dressing gown fell open to the waist. She gasped at the rush of cold night air that assailed her throat and drew her ni**les to hard peaks against her nightgown.