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

“He’s coming,” she whispered, wriggling out of his embrace. She flattened herself against the back of the wardrobe and hugged her arms over her naked br**sts.

The footsteps came to a halt directly outside the wardrobe.

“And Lucy must be here.” Toby’s voice was muffled by thick panels of ebony, but unmistakable. As was Sophia’s voice asking,

“How do you know?”

“She always hides here,” came the reply. “Come out, Lucy,” Toby called.

Lucy looked to Jeremy, her expression panicked. “Do something!”

Do something. How Jeremy longed to do something. Many things. The first thing was to send his fist crashing through the ebony door, grab Toby by the throat, and strangle him. The second thing was to gather Lucy into his arms and find the hot, slick place where he’d left off. And then the third thing … oh dear Lord, the third thing.

The ebony doors began to swing apart, and a thin crease of light shone through. Jeremy grabbed the bolts that held the door handles in place and yanked the doors shut. He held the bolts in white-knuckled grasps while unseen hands tried again, rattling the doors in their frame.

“That’s odd,” Toby said. “It must be locked.”

The doors stilled, and Jeremy’s grip on the bolts relaxed. Then the crease of light rent the darkness again, and he clutched at the bolts once more. This time, he didn’t dare let go. Not until the footfalls resumed and the voices faded. Not for several moments after that.

When he finally looked back toward Lucy, she had her back to him. She was shrugging back into her chemise and dress, drawing the sleeves up over her shoulders. Jeremy longed to rip them back down. But instead he pulled her laces tight and tied them in silence. He placed his hands on her waist and kissed the back of her neck. “Lucy,” he whispered.

She pulled away.

“He remembered,” she said softly. “He remembered after all.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lucy lay flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She lay atop the brocade counterpane, her hair spreading across the pillows like a fan. If she turned her neck slightly, she could see the untouched dinner tray sitting on her writing table. Surely the food had long gone cold.

She was still wearing the same green dress she’d put on that morning. Her bath had been drawn, her hair unbound—but when Mary had reached to untie her laces, Lucy had practically slapped her hand away. Ridiculous, she now chided herself. Utterly absurd—the idea that without those thin layers of muslin and lawn, her maid would somehowknow .

Oh, but how could she not? How could anyone notknow just by looking at her? That was why she had fled—hurried straight from the wardrobe up to her bedchamber and never returned to the drawing room. She hadn’t gone down to dinner, sending Mary instead to relay some excuse about her injured ankle. She might never show her face in public again—because everyone wouldknow . Surely it was stamped across her forehead in big, red letters that spelled out …

What, exactly? She’d sat at her dressing table for a long hour, studying her reflection by candlelight, trying to discern that word.

Wanton?Kissing a man was one thing. A very pleasant thing. Tempting a man to kiss you was another thing, and equally grand. But this … this went beyond anything. She’d hauled a man into an enclosed space, made short work of her clothing, and thrown herself at him so hard she would stick. Lucy had never claimed to be an authority on the definition of ladylike behavior, but she knew the difference between good breeding and … well, just plainbreeding .

Fool?Perhaps that was the word. Because the letters to spell out “great bloody imbecile” probably wouldn’t fit. If Toby married Sophia Hathaway, Lucy would have no one to blame but herself. She could have spoken with him as they walked back from the woods, but she hadn’t. She should have sent Jeremy away when he burst into her wardrobe, but she didn’t. She hadn’t and she didn’t, and she couldn’t understand for the life of her why.

Ruined?Lucy knew most people would think so. But she wasn’t concerned about what most people thought. At the moment, she cared only for the opinion of two particular people. Well, perhaps three. She herself was foremost among them. And Lucy didn’t feel “ruined” in the slightest. She felt distinctly, deliciouslyimproved .

The other word picked at the frayed edge of her mind. She tried to push it away. But it always came back, that word. The simplest label of all, and the most unthinkable yet.

His.

Just thinking the word set her to thrumming like a plucked bowstring. Her whole body vibrated with the awful, unbearable truth of it.

She’d been branded. She was his. Wasn’t that what she truly feared the world would read on her face? Hadn’t his lips written it over her body and his touch burned it into her skin? Even now, she felt his mark, raw and itching under the fabric of her dress. Scored over and over across her flesh.

His.

Hiswanton.His fool.His alone, and ruined for anyone else.

Lucy blinked at the ceiling. Then she pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and blotted out the world.