Goddess of the Hunt (30 page)

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 will
not
go riding—or walking, or driving, or anything else—unescorted. You will
not
saddle horses other than those I’ve approved. Or you will not go out at all.”

She made an indignant gasp as he lowered her to the riverbank.

“You can’t just keep me locked up in that Abbey, like the villain in some melodrama!”

“Oh, can’t I?” He whistled through his teeth, and his horse splashed through the river to his side. “I’ll stop playing the villain, Lucy, when you stop playing the fool.” She winced, the fire in her eyes doused with dismay. A small stab of guilt caught him between the ribs, but he wasn’t about to stop now. Not when he was finally getting through to her. Lucy needed to understand that he was not jesting, and he was not going to chase her down from cliffs every day of their marriage. His heart just couldn’t take it.

He grabbed his mount’s reins and looped them over the pommel.

“Can’t you do something … something
feminine
for once? You’ve unlimited funds, a whole staff of servants. Plan the dinner menus.

Redecorate the house. Embroider a cushion or two. Take the carriage into the village and buy something you don’t need. Learn to be a lady, for God’s sake!”

Silence.

Those green eyes trained on him like two flintlock rifles. Twin patches of crimson blazed on her cheeks. Her lips parted—no doubt to deliver a scathing retort—and in the instant before he lost himself completely and silenced those lips with his own, Jeremy wrapped his hands about his wife’s waist and heaved her up on his horse. Then he swung himself into the saddle behind her, took the reins in one hand and his wife in the other, and dug his heels into his horse’s flanks.

“I’m taking you home.
Now.”

Lucy was numb with shock.

Well, not completely numb. She would have liked to have been completely numb—and then she might have conserved all her concentration for anger, instead of being so annoyingly distracted by the sensation of Jeremy’s arm lashed about her waist, or his chest pressing warm and strong against her back.

She hadn’t realized how much she’d been craving his touch.

Lucy couldn’t even decide whether she was more angry with him, or with herself. He hadn’t said anything new or surprising—he’d only said it all a bit louder than he had in Henry’s study. He wanted her to change, to become a genteel lady. It angered her, even saddened her, but this much she already knew.

No, she was definitely more angry with herself. Because she couldn’t help but lean against him. Closing her eyes, she melted into his strength, breathing in his masculine scent and cursing her body for the traitor it was. Each rolling equine stride stoked her desire, and when the horse’s sudden change in gait caused her to slip, he gathered her to him roughly. Now wedged firmly between his thighs, Lucy could not mistake the hard ridge of his arousal pressing against her bottom.

Well. Evidently
that
part of him found her sufficiently feminine.

She wiggled against him and heard his breath catch in his chest.

Heat swirled through her body. One word, one touch—even a suggestive glance thrown over her shoulder, and Lucy knew she could take the reins in this struggle, alter their destination entirely.

And it was powerfully tempting to just give in, to satisfy the hot, liquid wanting that coursed through her veins.

But it would be a hollow victory. She’d learned that much, at least.

Because beneath her wanting lay a deep, uncharted reservoir of emotion—and beneath his, only regret. Perhaps a deep, abiding wish for his wife to take up embroidery, or order new wallpaper. Lucy felt the futility of it keenly, and still the temptation grew. She yearned to feel his body stretched out over hers and imagine, if only for a to feel his body stretched out over hers and imagine, if only for a few minutes, that the connection went deeper than skin against skin. This wanting began to feel perilously like a need.

She sat up, pulling away from him. She squeezed her eyes shut and searched within her until she found the blade-sharp edge of her anger, and she clenched her fists around it tight. He’d taken her from her home, her family, her circle of comfort. All she had left was her independence, and she’d be damned if she’d surrender that.

She hadn’t pledged to abandon all pride on their wedding day, and neither did she recall any vows regarding needlework. He might be able to restrict her movements, but he couldn’t change her, just by keeping her indoors.

No, Lucy smiled to herself. She could wreak plenty of havoc from within four stone walls.

When they reunited for dinner that night, Lucy watched Jeremy’s face. He scanned the platters of food covering the table. Roast venison, duck confit, sauced vegetables, braised lamb, sautéed trout. Exactly the same dishes served the night before, down to the small saucer of clotted cream.

“Lucy, didn’t the housekeeper consult you about the dinner menu?”

“She did.”

“And didn’t you have any suggestions? Any different dishes to request?”

“No,” Lucy said, sitting down. “I couldn’t possibly imagine a finer meal than we had last night. So when the housekeeper asked me what dishes I’d prefer, I just asked for all the same things again.”

And she intended to order the same the next day, and the day after that, and every day in the foreseeable future. That would teach him to demand she plan menus. Tomorrow, she would see about to demand she plan menus. Tomorrow, she would see about embroidery.

“
All
the same dishes?” A strange look crossed his face. More apprehension, she thought, than displeasure. “Including dessert?”

“Oh, especially dessert.” The footman snapped open a napkin and draped it over her lap. Lucy smiled. “Shall we begin?”

She meant to kill him. Jeremy felt certain of it.

His wife intended to eviscerate him daily by flirting with bodily injury right before his eyes. Then by evening, she meant to devour his self-control, one dainty bite at a time. And she would do it with a smile.

If he survived a month of this marriage, it would be a miracle.

She took a slow, seductive sip of soup, and Jeremy felt a hunger growing inside him that was anything but gustatory. With each subsequent course, it only grew. Each little sigh and moan of delight that fell from Lucy’s lips slid straight down the table and landed in his lap. By the time they reached the dessert course—at the conclusion of which, Lucy extended her moist, pink tongue to lick the last bit of chocolate from her spoon—he thought he would spill in his breeches.

When she announced her desire to retire early, he was relieved.

Every hour spent in her company was beginning to feel like torment.

She was less accessible and more tempting now than before they married. Before they married, he hadn’t known what he was missing.

He’d had a fair idea, of course. But now that he truly knew—now that the contours of her body were etched on his memory and the scent of her skin infused in his blood—every minute he spent in her presence was a minute he longed to spend inside her.

He could wait for her, he told himself. Really, he had no choice. After their row this morning, he’d half-expected to find her writing a letter to Henry that afternoon. But no, she seemed resolved to stay. So far. He would do well to acquire a talent for patience, it seemed, along with a taste for lobster bisque. But the waiting was torment.

Pure, sweet, agonizing torment.

And they’d only been married three days.

The torment was only beginning.

After nearly a week of cold shoulders and lobster bisque and the inexplicable proliferation of needles jutting out from every chair and settee, Jeremy awoke one morning to a loud thunk.

Followed by a scream.

Scrambling from bed, he grabbed his dressing gown and shrugged into it as he crossed the bedroom and antechamber in quick strides.

He threw open the door of the sitting room and was greeted by another piercing shriek.

He blinked. Bright sunlight flooded the room, blinding him. It was several moments before his eyes adjusted sufficiently to discern the tableau before him. The source of the shrieking was the chambermaid, who stood wringing her hands in the center of the room. By the window, Lucy lay on the floor, tangled in yards of pewter-gray velvet that had recently served as drapery.

“What the devil is going on here?”

The chambermaid put her hands to her mouth and wailed into them.

Jeremy brushed past her and strode to his wife. “Lucy, are you injured? Are you daft? Are you mad?” She brushed her hair out of her face and glared up at him. Her eyes affected him the same way the sunlight had, a minute earlier.

She was blindingly beautiful.

Jeremy’s curse died in his throat. He’d scarcely seen his wife all week—she’d kept steadfastly to her chambers ever since that first morning, save her nightly performance at dinner. And it was the first time since their wedding that he’d seen her hair unbound, tumbling around her shoulders in those riotous chestnut waves. The first time he’d seen her ears flush pink, as only passion or anger could make them do. And that fiery challenge in her eyes—it was a spark to dry tinder. Desire singed the hairs on his chest as it blazed a path to his groin.

He recovered his breath and held out a hand to her. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

“I’m changing the drapes,” she said, ignoring his hand. She began to disentangle herself from the swaths of heavy fabric. “You did say I should redecorate.”

“Yes, but now? Before breakfast?”

“How can one enjoy breakfast in this … this
tomb?”
She unwrapped a corded tassel from about her wrist. “It’s still the Dark Ages in here.

”

“You needn’t eat breakfast here at all,” Jeremy said. “There is a breakfast room, if you’d ever care to venture out of your suite and locate it.”

She ignored him and yanked on a length of unyielding gray swag.

When it refused to give, he saw that the fabric was caught beneath an overturned chair. He righted the chair and held it up in his hands. “You were standing on a chair?” He tossed the chair aside, and it landed with a clatter. The chambermaid shrieked again. “You were standing on a chair and pulling the draperies down by
hand?”

No answer. Lucy had untangled herself from the voluminous velvet, and now she set to straightening her dressing gown around her seated form. She wore that same crimson robe that plagued him in his dreams. She looked up at him briefly, and then away in an instant.

He stood over her, lowering his voice to a growl. “If you wish the draperies to be taken down, you will ask the servants to do it. You will not stand on the damned chair and fall and break your neck.”

“I haven’t broken my neck. I haven’t broken anything.”

“Then why are you still on the floor?”

She closed her eyes briefly, and then looked up at the ceiling. “I
may
have twisted my ankle.”

Swearing softly, Jeremy crouched down and hiked the layers of dressing gown and shift to her knees. Her left ankle looked red and slightly swollen. “Damn it, Lucy.”

“It’s nothing,” she said. “If you’ll just help me up, I need to go …”

With another muttered oath, he swept her up in his arms and began carrying her toward her bedchamber. “You are not going anywhere.”

“Jeremy! What are you doing? Put me down this instant, you …”

She squirmed in his grasp, wriggling against him. He tightened his grip around her thigh. “You addle-brained brute!”

The chambermaid resumed her wailing, and Jeremy shot her The Look. “Send for the doctor,” he said evenly.

Lucy beat on his shoulder with her fist. “Jeremy, no! Put me down. I am perfectly fine, damn you.”

He ignored her and spoke to the maid.
“Now.”
She scurried from the room, taking her irritating whimpers with her. He carried Lucy through her anteroom and into her bedchamber, depositing her on the edge of her bed.