Goddess of the Hunt (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #1)(49)

When he finally looked back toward Lucy, she had her back to him. She was shrugging back into her chemise and dress, drawing the sleeves up over her shoulders. Jeremy longed to rip them back down. But instead he pulled her laces tight and tied them in silence. He placed his hands on her waist and kissed the back of her neck. “Lucy,” he whispered.

She pulled away.

“He remembered,” she said softly. “He remembered after all.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lucy lay flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She lay atop the brocade counterpane, her hair spreading across the pillows like a fan. If she turned her neck slightly, she could see the untouched dinner tray sitting on her writing table. Surely the food had long gone cold.

She was still wearing the same green dress she’d put on that morning. Her bath had been drawn, her hair unbound—but when Mary had reached to untie her laces, Lucy had practically slapped her hand away. Ridiculous, she now chided herself. Utterly absurd—the idea that without those thin layers of muslin and lawn, her maid would somehowknow .

Oh, but how could she not? How could anyone notknow just by looking at her? That was why she had fled—hurried straight from the wardrobe up to her bedchamber and never returned to the drawing room. She hadn’t gone down to dinner, sending Mary instead to relay some excuse about her injured ankle. She might never show her face in public again—because everyone wouldknow . Surely it was stamped across her forehead in big, red letters that spelled out …

What, exactly? She’d sat at her dressing table for a long hour, studying her reflection by candlelight, trying to discern that word.

Wanton?Kissing a man was one thing. A very pleasant thing. Tempting a man to kiss you was another thing, and equally grand. But this … this went beyond anything. She’d hauled a man into an enclosed space, made short work of her clothing, and thrown herself at him so hard she would stick. Lucy had never claimed to be an authority on the definition of ladylike behavior, but she knew the difference between good breeding and … well, just plainbreeding .

Fool?Perhaps that was the word. Because the letters to spell out “great bloody imbecile” probably wouldn’t fit. If Toby married Sophia Hathaway, Lucy would have no one to blame but herself. She could have spoken with him as they walked back from the woods, but she hadn’t. She should have sent Jeremy away when he burst into her wardrobe, but she didn’t. She hadn’t and she didn’t, and she couldn’t understand for the life of her why.

Ruined?Lucy knew most people would think so. But she wasn’t concerned about what most people thought. At the moment, she cared only for the opinion of two particular people. Well, perhaps three. She herself was foremost among them. And Lucy didn’t feel “ruined” in the slightest. She felt distinctly, deliciouslyimproved .

The other word picked at the frayed edge of her mind. She tried to push it away. But it always came back, that word. The simplest label of all, and the most unthinkable yet.

His.

Just thinking the word set her to thrumming like a plucked bowstring. Her whole body vibrated with the awful, unbearable truth of it.

She’d been branded. She was his. Wasn’t that what she truly feared the world would read on her face? Hadn’t his lips written it over her body and his touch burned it into her skin? Even now, she felt his mark, raw and itching under the fabric of her dress. Scored over and over across her flesh.

His.

Hiswanton.His fool.His alone, and ruined for anyone else.

Lucy blinked at the ceiling. Then she pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and blotted out the world.

Damn.

Damn him. Damn her. Damn, damn, damn.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. She wasn’t a thing to be claimed. A quarry to be bagged. She’d never wanted the indignity of a Season in London. The miserable ordeal of being preened and plumed and paraded about theton . The humiliation of waiting for some strutting peacock to cross the ballroom, shove a ring on her finger, paste his name over her own, and stamp “His” on her forehead for the world to read. The abject shame of it if no man even tried.

She was Diana. She was the goddess of the hunt. She wanted to choose. Shehad chosen, Lucy reminded herself. She had chosen Toby. Familiar features floated up into the darkness behind her eyelids. Golden-brown hair. Chiseled cheekbones and a dimpled chin. Laughing eyes and a generous, smiling mouth.Hers , she willed. All of it,hers . She wanted him with every ounce of her will and every inch of her body.

Every inch … except the little tingling patch of flesh beneath her left earlobe. That bit of her wanted someone else. Someone else’s lips. Not that generous, smiling mouth, but stern, stony-set lips that melted to fire against her skin. Against that tiny, traitorous inch of her flesh that declared itselfhis . She put her fingers to the soft hollow of her neck, and her pulse quickened under her touch.

Another piece of her rebelled. A random ridge of collarbone seceded from her will. She ran her fingers along that razor-thin republic that now lived for the weight of a heavy brow and the bracing chill of damp hair, cool and dark as ebony. Not hers any longer, buthis .

And then her br**sts were rising up against the oppression of her bodice. Yearning to be liberated into his hands. She flattened her own palms over them, and her ni**les peaked in protest.His, his , they insisted in tandem. Lucy was outnumbered. Her resolve was falling apart, and her body dissolving with it. Her mind was swirling with shadows and shards of latticed light, and she felt the dark secret of his caress burning on her skin. Rekindling that hot ache between her legs. The place where his tender assault had laid waste to her will. The place that so easily, so readily might have beenhis , yearned to behis even now.