Goddess of the Hunt (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #1)(30)

“Oh, he is quite taken with me,” she answered Sophia in a matter-of-fact tone. “He’s thoroughly besotted.”

At last,someone had noticed, even if it was the wrong person entirely. Lucy had put Jeremy through the paces of a besotted suitor for three days now, but Toby remained oblivious. For that matter, so did Henry, Marianne, Felix, and Kitty. It was unspeakably maddening. She might have eloped with a gardener ages ago, and no one would have noticed.

“You call him by his Christian name?” Sophia raised an eyebrow. “So very brave. Perhaps even a bit wicked.” Her mouth twitched in a strange smile.

Wicked?Lucy had forgotten. She was speaking with an angel. Why, in heaven’s name, had she chosen to sit near the escritoire? She ought to have known Sophia Hathaway would be seized with the urge to write letters. Lucy yearned to be truly wicked and escape with her book to the window seat, shutting out Sophia and society with one yank on the plum-colored drapes.

“I’ve known him for ages,” Lucy said. “Since I was a girl. He wasn’t even the Earl of Kendall then. He was Viscount Something-or-other.”

“Warrington,” Sophia said, putting quill to paper with a delicate touch. Lucy watched as sweeping strokes and precise loops flowed from Sophia’s quill. Even her penmanship was perfect. Lucy hated her with a wicked, inky-black passion.

“Hmm?”

“Viscount Warrington.”

“Oh.”

Sophia laid her quill down on the table and stretched her hand. “Correspondence can be so tedious,” she said. “Nothing drains the joy from a happy memory like the act of committing it to paper ten times over. Don’t you agree?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Lucy answered, returning her attention to her book. “I don’t write letters.”

“None at all? Whyever not?”

Lucy shrugged. “I’ve no correspondents.”

“Surely you must have,” Sophia said. “What about your friends from school?”

“I never went to school. I always had governesses.”

“Do you not still write to them?”

The suggestion brought a smirk to Lucy’s face. “No,” she replied. “We weren’t especially close.”

“Well, you shall have at least one correspondent soon.”

“Oh, really? Who?”

“Me,” Sophia said, glancing up from the letter. “I shall be inconsolable if you do not writeme after we leave.”

“Yes, of course,” Lucy muttered. She turned a page of her book and inched her chair in the opposite direction, as if insincerity might be catching. The very idea of writing letters to Sophia Hathaway was absurd. As if they were friends!

“And you may not forget me,” Sophia warned with a sly smile, “no matter how many new friends you will make, once you’re a countess.”

The word gave Lucy a jolt. “Acountess?”

“Come next season, you’ll be the darling of theton . Everyone will be desperate to meet the woman who captured the elusive Earl of Kendall.”

“No, they won’t,” Lucy clipped. “Because he willnot be marrying me.”

“Why not?” Sophia looked disbelieving. “You said yourself he’s thoroughly besotted. He’s an earl. He’s wealthy. He’s your brother’s friend.”

“He’s cold. He’s stern. He’s forbidding.”

Sophia lowered her voice. “Yes, but isn’t that what makes him so attractive? In that strong, silent way, of course. Just to look at him, I’d imagine he has all sorts of dark, thrilling secrets.”

Lucy didn’t like Sophia speculating on Jeremy’s “dark, thrilling” secrets. Mostly because she knew there were none. Lucy had known him for eight years now. She knew everything there was to know about Jeremy Trescott, and none of it was the tiniest bit thrilling.

Except his kiss. Lucy grudgingly admitted that his kiss was, indeed, just the tiniest bit thrilling. Days later, she still felt that kiss in her toes. And that Look of his—the same glare that had always bounced right off her glib indifference—now penetrated her poise, setting off a queer humming deep inside her.

“Rich, handsome, titled …” Sophia ticked off the attributes on her fingers. “He’s a magnificent catch, by any standard.”

“Who, Jemmy? If he’s such a magnificent catch, why don’t you want to marry him?” Nowthat would solve matters nicely.

“If he looked at me the way he keeps looking at you,” Sophia whispered, “I might.”

Lucy clapped her book shut in one hand. She turned her gaze back to Jeremy, only to find that he was indeed giving her that Look again. And this time he did not look away. Their gazes held, locked, deepened. She tried to imagine seeing him for the very first time—viewing him as Sophia did, just a fortune and a title and dark, imaginary secrets. She nearly laughed aloud with the absurdity of it.

But then Jeremy’s gaze shifted, scanning down her body in an unhurried fashion, almost as though his mind didn’t know his eyes had gone wandering. And Lucy realized he was not looking at her as though seeing her for the first time. He was, she fancied, looking at her as though he’d seen her many times before—in various states of undress. A potent awareness coursed through her veins, and with it spread a most curious sensation.