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

Then a sharp crack jerked Jeremy’s attention to the craggy bluffs. And he found himself right back in a twenty-year-old nightmare.

“Lucy?” Jeremy did not want to believe that it was his wife, the figure scaling the precipitous outcropping on the other side of the stream. But he would know that russet velvet habit and tangle of chestnut curls anywhere. And really, he admitted with a tortured groan, who else could it possibly be?

“Lucy!” he shouted again, nudging his horse into the stream. If she heard him, she did not acknowledge the call, but continued picking her way up the rocky slope. Dear God. If she fell from there, with those boulders below …

She disappeared around the far side of a pointed outcropping. Jeremy’s heart raced as he spurred his mount to give chase. He rounded the corresponding bend in the river …

And then his heart stopped beating.

She was climbing up to the hermitage.

A centuries-old cottage perched on a rocky ledge, the hermitage had been built by the Abbey’s monks as a place for solitary prayer and reflection. Fashioned from stones and built to hug the sloping terrain, the tiny dwelling looked like a natural part of the bluff itself. A thin chimney leaned mostly heavenward. Two glazed windows were dark with grime. To anyone else, it must present a harmless, even a romantic picture. No doubt Lucy would think it an irresistible invitation to explore. There had been a time Jeremy had thought so, too.

But not anymore.

He slid down from his horse, landing in knee-deep icy water, and began scaling the bluff in pursuit. “Lucy!” he called up at her, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Lucy, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

She heard him this time and looked up sharply. Jeremy cursed his idiocy. He should never have drawn her attention away from her feet. She stepped on a loose rock and lost her footing, swaying perilously above him. Dread hollowed out his chest. Arms flailing, Lucy caught herself on a jutting lip of rock.

“Stay right there!” Jeremy ordered.Good God, let her listen , he half-cursed, half-prayed as he resumed his own climb. For once in what seemed fated to be an abbreviated life, give Lucy the sense to follow a simple command.

At last he reached her side, huffing for breath and weak with fear. And his wife had the audacity to look cool and calm and unjustly beautiful, flashing him the sweetest smile he’d seen in three days. “Hullo, Jeremy. Isn’t it a lovely day?” She tilted her head up at the hermitage. “Let’s explore it together, shall we?”

“No.”

Lucy blinked, obviously surprised by the vehemence of his reply. Jeremy swore. He took a breath and tried again. “It’s in disrepair,” he offered lamely. “It may be unsafe.”

“Oh, I’m certain it’s fine. All fashioned of stone like that? It looks like it’s been there for ages already. I doubt we could topple it if we tried.”

Jeremy summoned his sternest voice and The Look to match. “I said,no.” This time, she frowned. Good. At least the message was sinking in. “There’s nothing of interest up there, I promise you. But if you must see it for yourself, you’ll have to wait for another day. I’ll have Andrews see to its condition first. No one’s been up there in years.”

Twenty-one years, to be exact. Not since he and Thomas had played there as children. Not since the small cottage had been the staging ground for fishing expeditions and military campaigns and the occasional Arthurian quest. Not since the night two boys stole out of the Abbey to retrieve a forgotten treasure from the hermitage, but only one returned.

A sharp whinny drew Jeremy’s attention to the stream bank below. He watched that devil of a black colt go charging off through the woods, dragging the reins behind him. Never to be seen again, no doubt. He turned to his wife. “You rode …that horse … here?”

“Well, I would have ridden Thistle,” she replied hotly. “But it appears she’s been declared unsuitable for a countess.”

“Fiend is eminently unsuitable, and you know it. It’s a wonder you weren’t thrown.” He glared at his wife. Her riding habit gaped in the center, and he could glimpse the smooth globe of one breast overflowing her bodice with each angry breath. The exact sort of observation he ought to avoid. Averting his eyes, he took Lucy by the hand, guiding her back down the slope. “Where are your escorts?” he demanded.

“You mean those two grooms you employed to trail ten feet behind me and drive me absolutely mad? I bribed them to leave me alone.” She gave him a smug look. “I used my pin money.”

“Well, I hope you gave them enough to buy bread all winter,” he replied, helping his wife ease her way around a boulder. “Because you’ve just cost them their posts. Lucy, you willnot go riding—or walking, or driving, or anything else—unescorted. You willnot saddle horses other than those I’ve approved. Or you will not go out at all.”