Goddess of the Hunt (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #1)(33)

“Standing up?”

Jeremy supposed he must appear sufficiently shocked, because she smiled for the first time all day. “Only once,” she said, her green eyes teasing. “On a dare. And it was years ago. The steward’s son—”

Her voice trailed off as her eyes fixed on something behind him. Jeremy turned to follow her gaze. He saw instantly what had captured Lucy’s attention. Toby and Sophia had dismounted in a small clearing some paces away. A shaft of sunlight pierced the trees, bathing the couple in luminous gold. Toby was working something between his hands, and Sophia sat on a fallen tree, looking up at him with a radiant expression. They exchanged smiling words that Jeremy could not hear, and then Toby held his creation aloft for a moment before placing it gently atop Sophia’s head.

A crown, woven of ivy.

Toby took Sophia’s hand and kissed it. Jeremy swore under his breath.

“Lucy—” he began, turning back to her.

Or to where she hadbeen . He caught only the cracks of snapped twigs and a glimpse of russet velvet and gray mare disappearing through the trees. Jeremy turned his horse in pursuit, leaning over the stallion’s neck to duck a low-hanging branch.

Lucy urged her mare on, riding hell-for-leather across the barley field. Bent low over the mare’s neck, her chestnut curls blown loose and streaming behind her, she burned a path across the field toward a gap in the hedgerow. Jeremy was tempted to let her go. Let her ride out all the hurt and come back calmer.

But then he remembered that little shush of velvet slipping over leather. The sound echoed in his ears and crawled down his neck, setting every hair on end. It wasn’t called a breakneck pace for nothing. One misstep—one stone in a barley field—could send her flying.

Jeremy nudged his horse into a gallop. In a flat-out race over open country, her mare was no match for his mount, and the gap between them narrowed.

Then he saw the stile.

A low wooden fence bridged the gap in the hedgerow. Beyond it, a steep slope led down to the orchards. It would be a difficult jump for any rider, under the best conditions. For a rider in a holy fury, on a skittish horse, riding sidesaddle for the first time in her life, it was certain disaster.

Jeremy hauled on the reins, pulling his horse to a halt in the middle of the field. “Lucy! Stop, damn it!”

He groped for a more impressive threat to hurtle in her direction, but it was too late. She pushed the mare into a jump. Jeremy heard the hollow clatter of hooves clipping wood. Then horse and rider disappeared from view completely.

His stomach gave a sick lurch. Panic twisted in his chest, squeezing the air from his lungs. For one black, unending moment, his heart refused to beat. Then it roared back to life at a thundering gallop, and he dug his knees into the horse’s sides until his stallion matched the pace.

The top rail of the stile had been knocked from place. Jeremy’s mount easily cleared what remained of the fence, landing with a dull thud on the other side and careening instantly into a headlong skid down the rocky slope. The moment his horse found solid footing, he dismounted. Lucy was nowhere to be seen.

The orchard was laid out in neat rows of trees that formed a crosshatch of leaf-paved avenues. He plunged into the grove, searching through empty branch-framed corridors until he glimpsed Thistle, grazing riderless beneath a distant pear tree. He strode toward the mare, expecting at any moment to trip over a lifeless heap of russet velvet. It seemed an age since he’d drawn a breath. His brain felt woolly. The edges of his vision grayed.

Then he saw her.

She stood with her back to him, resting one shoulder against the trunk of a tree. Just relaxing in the orchard, perfectly serene, as if she hadn’t just watched Toby crown Sophia his goddess. As if she hadn’t just nearly broken her neck. As if Jeremy weren’t about to vomit his breakfast on his boots.

“Oh, Jemmy,” she said, “how do you do it?”

He hadn’t the faintest notion what she meant. How did he dowhat? At the moment, he was not entirely certain how he managed to stay upright. The leaden weight of anxiety that had been crushing his chest had sunk through his gut, churning the contents of his stomach. Now it seemed to hang somewhere in the vicinity of his knees, making his legs weak, unsteady. He picked a tree near hers and sagged against it.

“How do you do it?” Lucy turned and pressed her back against the tree, staring up into the canopy of orange leaves. “How do you go through life and just—notcare?”

That did it. He was going to throttle her. Fist his hands in that russet velvet, crush her close, wrap his hands around the delicate, golden skin of her throat—and throttle her. Right after he leaned against this pear tree for a while.

He stared blankly down a row of trees, his breath heaving in his chest. How did he do it? How, indeed. However it was that he managed to go through life and just, as Lucy so kindly put it, notcare —Jeremy couldn’t seem to remember. He’d utterly forgotten. Damn.

“I never thought I’d envy you,” she said. “Never in a million years. You’re so composed, so serious. So cold.”

His hands balled into fists. How dare she? How dare she burst into his room and kiss him and dive into a river and invade his dreams and make him go shopping and throw herself headlong into danger and lean back against a pear tree in a dress the exact color of her hair kissed by fading sunlight? How dare she make him forget? Damn it all. Damn her for making him care.