Goddess of the Hunt (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #1)(7)

“Oh, now that sounded suspiciously like a dare.” She rolled him onto his back and straddled him, sinking onto him with a sigh. “Who’s outriding you now, hmm?” She straightened her spine and tossed her hair over her back. His gaze fell to her jutting br**sts. With a fierce growl, he grabbed her hips and thrust upward.

She gasped. “That’s it!”

He thrust into her again. “You like that, do you?”

“No. I mean, yes.” He thrust again. “Oh, yes,” she sighed. She put her hands flat on his chest and leaned over him, her hair cascading around them like a tent. “I mean, that’s it. That’s why you married me. Because I won’t break.”

He stared up at her in puzzlement.

She countered his bewildered frown with a defiant smile. “You told Henry, you told yourself—you wanted to keep me safe. And thatwas a lie. Because deep down, you knew I wouldn’t need saving at all. Not from this place, not from these people—and certainly not from you.” She planted her index finger in the center of his chest. “I can take you. All of you. Everything you have inside, everything you are. You can do your worst, and you can give me your best. And I won’t break.”

“You won’t break.”

“I won’t. And you knew it the first time we kissed.”

He laughed. Laughed so deep in his chest, she felt his joy rumble through her whole body. It felt heavenly.

“Not the first time,” he said. “Definitely not the first time.” He slid his hands up her arms, pulling her down for a kiss. “Perhaps the third.”

It was a long, muddy walk back up to the Abbey. Lucy’s slippers only made it halfway. After that, Jeremy carried her.

As the prospect of the Abbey loomed closer, Lucy looked on it with new eyes. The façade of the rambling stone building caught the morning sun and came alive with brilliance. For the first time, she thought it resembled a structure built to praise God.

For the first time, it looked like home.

“Jeremy, stop.”

His arms tightened around her. “What is it? Are you uncomfortable? Don’t demand to be put down. I’ll not allow you to walk barefoot through the—”

She silenced him with a smile. “I don’t want you to put me down.” She looked around her slowly, taking in the sunlit Abbey and craggy bluffs, then craning her neck to survey the frost-tinged woods behind them. “It’s just so beautiful.”

She looked up to meet Jeremy’s puzzled gaze. “I’ll go to London with you if that’s what you want. You’re my husband, and if you want to reside in Town—or Scotland or Egypt, for that matter—I’ll follow you.” She paused, allowing the silence to underscore the import of her words. It wasn’t an everyday occurrence, for Lucy, pledging to follow a man’s lead to the ends of the earth. Or to Scotland. “But I hope our home will always be here. I love this place.”

“Thisplace? Lucy, we could live anywhere you wish. Travel the world, if you like. Of all the homes I could give you, you tell me this is the home you want?”

She nodded.

“For God’s sake, why?”

“Because this is the home you need.” She smoothed a lock of hair from his brow. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t love it, too. Lord knows, you could have left it in the care of a steward and never looked back. Jeremy, we can make Corbinsdale a home again … fill it with light and laughter.” She dropped her gaze, then snuck a glance at him through lowered lashes. “And children.”

He winced. “Children? Here?” He looked over his shoulder toward the woods. “Lucy, how can I even think it? This is a horrible place for children.”

“It’s not a horrible place at all. It’s a good place.” She put her hand on his cheek and waited for his eyes to meet hers. “It’s a good place,” she repeated. “It’s also rough and wild and intractable, but that’s why I love it. It’sus.”

“Us.”He blinked away a glimmer of emotion. “Do you know, I love hearing you say that word.”

He bent his head to hers, and for several moments Lucy could not have said anything. Even when he broke the kiss, all words had vacated her mind, save one. “Jeremy,” she sighed.

“And that—” he dropped another light kiss on her lips—“is the word I adore hearing most of all.” He shifted her weight in his arms and resumed walking toward the manor. “Thank God you stopped calling me by that infernal nickname.”

“I did stop calling you ‘Jemmy,’ didn’t I? How curious. I don’t even recall when that happened.”

“Don’t you? I do.”

The dark note in his voice reverberated through her body, and desire echoed back. Lucy formed an immediate suspicion of which occasion that might have been. But then she realized something else. She gasped. “Thomas called you Jemmy, didn’t he? That’s why you could never abide it.”

His silence—and a brief hitch in his stride—served as confirmation.

Lucy laid her head against his shoulder. “Oh, dear. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Again, he said nothing. But she needed no response. Of course, hehad told her, scores of times, not to call him that. He scarcely could have explained why. She shut her eyes and burrowed into his shoulder, feeling acutely every example of her insolence over eight years.