Goddess of the Hunt (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #1)(45)

“Go away,” she squeaked, raising her hand to her eyes and blinking against the flood of harsh light. “Find your own hiding place. There’s a lovely cupboard under the stairs where they keep the mops. Go drip there.”

“I know what you’re up to, Lucy,” he said, his voice a dark warning. “I thought the time for games was over.”

He came into focus as her eyes adjusted to the light. Black hair hung over his brow in thick, damp locks, making a stark contrast with the pale blue of his eyes. He’d changed into a dry shirt—hastily, it would seem, and without the assistance of his valet. The starched linen hung open at the collar, exposing wisps of dark hair curling around the notch at the base of his throat, and the hard ridge of his collarbone running toward either shoulder. His cuffs were unfastened, upturned, and her gaze followed the corded muscles of his forearm nearly up to the elbow.

Her eyes shot back up to his face. “I didn’t suggest the game, now did I? That would be Marianne and Sophia’s idea. Go harass one of them.” She pushed at his chest with both hands. She might as well have pushed against a boulder.

But boulders weren’t warm. And boulders didn’t smell like rain and leather and pine. And boulders didn’t send jolts of electricity humming through her body, tingling all the way down to the tips of her toes and even the spaces between.

Lucy felt something swift and sudden growing inside her, curling in the pit of her belly. Then the sound of voices down the corridor gave it a name.Panic . Panic it must have been, and no other earthly emotion—because only blind, unthinking desperation could have possessed her to do what she did next.

Her hands, still flat against Jeremy’s immutable chest, gathered into fists. She pulled on his shirt, hauling him into the wardrobe with her, then let go with one hand to pull the ebony doors shut. The temperature inside the space instantly increased.

She backed him into a corner of the wardrobe, still clutching his shirt in one hand. With the other, she jabbed a finger in the center of his chest, just an inch below that indecent, gaping collar and the nest of dark curls it framed.

“Yousaid I should stop playing games.You said I should tell Toby the truth about how I feel. So here I am, waiting for my chance to do exactly that, and nowyou are ruining everything.” Her hand balled into a fist, and she beat on his chest. “You. Are. Ruining. Everything.”

She looked up at his face. A shard of light pierced the latticework to illuminate his eyes. A sunbeam glancing off ice. “Everything,” she repeated, beating on his chest with both fists this time. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink, damn him.

Exasperating man. Lucy was tired of his stony composure. She was tired in general, and muddled with heat and this wicked tingling, and her head felt thick and heavy. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t havebeen thinking clearly at all, for she let her head fall against his chest, the crown of her head resting against that warm patch of skin and hair.

Still he had no answer, spoken or otherwise. They stood there in the wardrobe, cloaked in dark and quiet, for moments that dragged into minutes. The silence chafed on Lucy’s sanity. For one thing, in the absence of speech, there was too much else to hear. His breathing—a slow, husky resonance that teased her ears as his chest rose and fell against her. Her heart—thumping against her ribs so loudly she was sure he heard it, too. The ceaseless hum of electric excitement coursing through her body.

On another count, the silence became increasingly unbearable because of what Lucy didn’t hear. Footsteps in the corridor. Ebony doors creaking open. Toby’s voice. She shuddered to think of being found in this position, but she began to question whether she’d even be found at all.

“How did you know I’d be hiding here?” Her voice was a whisper, but it echoed through the darkness they shared.

She felt him shrug. “You’ve always hidden here. Whenever Henry was on a tear to thrash you. When that mangy hound died. Was it Farthing?”

“Sixpence.”

“Oh.”

Lucy felt something square and hard settle against the top of her head. His chin, she realized.

“He didn’t remember,” she whispered into his chest. “Why didn’t he remember? You did.”

He brought his hands to her shoulders, sending twin bolts of sensation straight to her center, squeezing out all the breath from her lungs. “Perhaps he just didn’t come looking for you.”

“You did.”

She felt his body tense. He hooked his thumbs under the edges of her cap sleeves and pulled her back to face him. Her hands slid off his chest and fell to her sides, still clenched in fists. “I came looking for you, yes. To stop you from doing something foolish.” His cool glare ignited Lucy’s pride.

“Foolish? We’re playing a nursery game. It’s foolish by nature.”

“Something … compromising.”

“Such as being found in a wardrobe with a half-dressed man? Or discovered in an amorous clinch under a tree? Well, thank you for appointing yourself guardian of my reputation.”

“Damn it, Lucy. You pulled me in here. You—”

She cut him off. “Why did you carry me?”

“What?”

“The other day, when I fell in the river. Why did you pick me up and carry me back? Why not Toby? Why not Henry or Felix?”