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

“I was. In many ways.”


The shift in his expression was subtle, but unmistakable. A slight crease pulled on his brow, and his jaw tightened by an infinitesimal degree. Lucy wanted to bash her head against the wall. She was an idiot. An unfeeling, heedless, mutton-brained ninny. She resolved not to speak another word.

“I’m sorry.” Well, besides those two.

“Don’t be.” His face hardened further. “I took great delight in disappointing my father. I had no great fondness for him, nor for shooting. But Thomas loved both, and I idolized Thomas. The two of us would steal out of the house at all hours to go tramping through the forest.”

He turned around and walked toward a bank of tall windows, his slow footfalls echoing off the polished marble. Lucy followed, looking out on the round, hedged garden and the dense woods beyond. The trees climbed the distant bluffs like spectators in an arena, waving autumnal banners of amber and red.

“We weren’t the only ones tramping through the forest. The well-stocked woods proved irresistible to poachers. Some came in organized gangs, trapping game for market in London or York. And then there were the tenants, who simply desired a bit of meat for their tables. My father resented both groups equally. Any poacher apprehended on Kendall land received the maximum penalty allowed by law—jail, hard labor, even transportation. He ordered his gamekeeper to set mantraps and spring guns.”

Lucy’s stomach knotted. Henry had described to her the cruel methods some landowners employed to deter poaching. Mantraps, like the smaller traps used to catch game, were spiked metal jaws designed to snap around a man’s leg. An encounter with a man-trap could leave a man maimed, if he was lucky. If he was unlucky, the wound would fester and he’d die. Of course, death was the entire object of a spring gun—a loaded rifle rigged up to a tripwire. A poacher, or anyone, who stumbled over the wire would be shot instantly.

Lucy had a sick feeling she knew where this story was headed. She might as well spare him the difficulty of saying it. “So which was it, with Thomas?”

“A spring gun.”

“And you were with him?”

He stared out the window, unblinking. “Yes.”

She quickly renewed her vow of silence. Any words she might manage to utter would be most unladylike. She tried to imagine being eight years old and watching her brother shot down like an animal. Then she shook herself, cursing her imagination.

It was as though he heard her thoughts. “I didn’t see it happen.” He cast a sidelong glance at her. His voice grew gentle. “It was dark, and I had fallen behind him. I only heard the shot.”

The words had the ring of a merciful lie. Lucy suspected he said them only to soothe her feelings. Bless him, it worked. A bit. But the very idea still tied her stomach in knots. “And then?”

He turned to her with a blank expression. “And then he died.”

She shook her head. “No, I mean after that. You said it was a long story. There are twenty portraits of Thomas in this house. His death can’t be the end of the story; it’s just the beginning.”

He turned back to the window and exhaled slowly. His broad shoulders shrugged beneath his coat. She was quickly learning to recognize that motion. A shrug, for Jeremy, was not a lazy rise and fall of the shoulders. It was a powerful action—an explosion of brute strength, barely checked. And when his shoulders heaved, she could practically hear the rusty creaking of armor about them. The heavy, plate-metal shell that a child constructed to shield himself from pain. Lucy knew the armor. She carried a fair bit of it herself.

She also knew the armor had chinks. “It’s a long story,” she repeated levelly. “And yes, Jeremy. I really wish to hear it.”

He pierced her with an icy gaze. Lucy refused to blink. If he thought he could scare her off with that Look of his, he was mistaken. “And then …?”

He looked out the window. “And then everything changed. My father had always been stern. Whatever heart he had, it died with Thomas. After my brother’s death, he only doubled the mantraps and authorized his gamekeepers to shoot trespassers on sight.” He shook his head. “I resented him for Thomas’s death. He resented me for being the one who survived. But he could no longer ignore me, once I was the heir. He redoubled his efforts to mold me in his image, and I resisted his every attempt.