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

Her slippers brushed lightly over timeworn wood as she descended the stairs in surefooted silence. With a nimble hop, she bypassed the third step from the bottom. It creaked, she knew—and even louder than usual in damp weather.

She paused at the bottom of the staircase. The rain had slowed as the night wore on, but the wind howled fierce as ever. An icy draft swirled over her neck. She clenched the letter between her teeth for a moment, pulling her shawl tight around her shoulders. Sometimes Waltham Manor seemed constructed of lace, rather than stone and mortar.

She ducked into Henry’s study. The fire had banked to ashy coals that blanketed the room in a faint red glow. Lucy placed the candlestick on the burled walnut desktop. She stood still for a few moments, blinking and waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. An oval, gilt-edged tray came into focus before her, as well as the handful of sealed envelopes that awaited tomorrow’s post.

Lucy pulled open the top right drawer of the desk and began to rummage through it. The drawer brimmed with quills and ledgers and rumpled correspondence. Finally her fingers closed around the bit of sealing wax she sought. She held it over the candle until the red wax softened and oozed, and then she dripped a large red seal over the paper’s flap.

She held the letter flat in the palm of her hand and blew lightly over the cooling wax. This was it. Her future. Lying right there in the palm of her hand, disguised as an innocent scrap of paper and a few scrawls of ink. She leaned over to place it on the salver with the rest of the post, but something made her pause.

What if Gervais didn’t come?

Lucy straightened and clasped the letter to her chest.

Perhaps his noble instincts would win out. Perhaps he didn’t love Sophia any longer. Perhaps he had moved to another address. Once the letter was posted, the letter was gone. Her future would be in the hands of a French painter with a penchant for cabbage. To hear Sophia tell it, those hands were rather capable—but still.

She needn’t post it, Lucy realized. Simple misdirection would serve her purpose far better. She had only to show the letter to Toby, and his plan to marry Sophia would be banished instantly. Her twenty thousand pounds would have all the allure of twenty thousand sharp sticks in the eye. No painted tea tray could alter that fact.

But Sophia would be heartbroken. And ruined.

The room was cold and drafty, but Lucy began to flush. Her brain felt warm and muddled. Something was wrong with her. She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. Perhaps she was ill. She must be taken with brain fever, because she couldn’t think at all. She couldn’t think what to do, and this was a situation that definitely required her to dosomething . Didn’t it?

Lucy felt herself falling into halves, her will divided. The sensation was wholly unfamiliar and greatly alarming. This was worse than brain fever. This was indecision. Indecision was not in her makeup. She had always known what she wanted, and she had always known how to get it. She didn’t stand waffling in drafty rooms in the middle of the night when she could be warm and snug in her bed, dreaming sweet dreams that would soon become realities.

But then again, she’d never held her future in the palm of her hand. If she felt indecision for the first time now, it could be because this was the first real decision she had ever faced. And wasn’t this what she had always desired? To choose?

Lucy considered her options. She thought about posting the letter. She thought about shoving it under Toby’s door. She thought about throwing it into the fire and watching it curl into ash. She mentally walked through each alternative, hoping one would simply feel right.

But none of them felt right, or even simple.

A week ago, she would have known what to do. A week ago, doubt was as foreign to Lucy as friendship, or a kiss. Before, every piece of her—heart, mind, body, soul—lived for one purpose. For one person. But then she’d stolen into another man’s bedchamber, and then Sophia had flounced into hers—and in between, a hundred terrible, wonderful things had happened. Suddenly, every piece of her—heart, mind, body, soul—had grown bigger, stronger, with needs and wants and demands of its own.

And that one purpose—that one person—was no longer enough to hold all the pieces together.

She let herself think the unthinkable words. Let them bubble up from deep inside her and seep quietly through the cracks in her resolve. Only here, in the dark, where she could change her mind and take them all back with no one the wiser.

I’m not in love with Toby.

Her heart kept beating. The candle kept burning. The earth did not open and swallow her whole. She tried the words again, aloud this time, but softly. Just a whisper, swirling through the air like candle smoke.

“I’m not in love with Toby.”

It was so easy. Too easy. She nearly laughed aloud with the absurdity of it. The relief of it. Lucy felt as though she’d spent years clinging to a rope for dear life, dangling and twisting in the air with each fickle breeze—only to finally let go and fall all of two inches to land on solid ground.