Goddess of the Hunt (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #1)(88)

Jeremy scraped butter on his toast. “Not including those painted before his death. The actual total is probably above twenty.”

Good Lord, Lucy thought. There were probably fewer portraits of the Prince Regent in St. James. For that matter, St. Paul’s cathedral probably had fewer paintings of Christ. “What did he die of? A fever?”

“No, he was … It was an accident.” Jeremy set down his knife with a dull clatter. His brow furrowed. “It’s a long story.”

“Well, and it will seem longer still if you force me to wring it from you, drop by drop. It would be far easier on us both if you just had out with it.” She walked back to the table and stood over his shoulder. He stared down at the toast in his hand, impassive. “I’ll find out eventually, you know. Don’t make me go asking the servants.”

“You really wish to hear it?” His voice darkened. He dropped the toast onto his plate and flexed his hand.

Lucy rolled her eyes. “No. Please don’t tell me. I’m enjoying the gothic suspense.” She sighed and placed a hand on his elbow. “Yes, Jeremy. I really wish to hear it.”

“Very well, then.” He rose from the table, grabbed her by the hand, and fairly dragged her from the room.

He strode purposefully down the long corridor. His paces were so long, she was forced to take three steps to his one. He pulled her down the corridor, through the entrance hall, down an interminably long passageway, and finally into a narrow, marble-tiled gallery, where a row of massive, gilt-framed portraits seemed to simply fade into the distance rather than end. When Jeremy halted at the gallery’s midpoint, Lucy nearly collided with his back.

“That,” he said, turning her around, “was my father.” He let go of her hand and stepped toward the large, square painting.

Lucy followed his gaze. The portrait must have been painted when his father was near Jeremy’s age, or perhaps a bit older. The same stony features marked his face, edged by faint creases that would deepen with age. The man’s jaunty, cocksure pose contrasted with his serious expression. He wore a black coat emblazoned with gold braid and buttons and held a tricorn hat tucked under one arm. His other hand rested flat on the head of a tiger.

An honest-to-God tiger. A snarling, untamed, orange-striped beast. Lucy knew next to nothing about painting, but she recognized effective artistry when she saw it. When she felt it in her blood. The painting was mesmerizing. She could see the tiger’s striped fur bristling, sense the raw power rippling through its muscles. To stand before this painting was to sense danger and peril and irrational fear. And to feel a surge of resentful gratitude to this arrogant man, whose dominant pose and ice-blue glare seemed the only things keeping her from being devoured whole.

She edged closer to her husband.

“The tiger you see there now resides in the great hall, mounted above the hearth. My father shot it in India and brought it back—it, and a bull elephant’s head. He was an avid hunter, my father. He had the woods around the Abbey stocked with all variety of game. Not just partridge and pheasant, but boar and stag.” He looked over his shoulder out the window. “This is one of the last woods in England where one can still hunt stag.”

He turned back to the portrait. “Hunting was everything to him. Therefore, hunting would mean everything to his sons. He put a rifle in my hand before I could properly hold a spoon. He took me and my brother on daylong shooting trips and drilled us in marksmanship.”

“Marksmanship?” Her shoulders lifted with laughter. “You must have been a grave disappointment, then.”

“I was. In many ways.”

The shift in his expression was subtle, but unmistakable. A slight crease pulled on his brow, and his jaw tightened by an infinitesimal degree. Lucy wanted to bash her head against the wall. She was an idiot. An unfeeling, heedless, mutton-brained ninny. She resolved not to speak another word.

“I’m sorry.” Well, besides those two.

“Don’t be.” His face hardened further. “I took great delight in disappointing my father. I had no great fondness for him, nor for shooting. But Thomas loved both, and I idolized Thomas. The two of us would steal out of the house at all hours to go tramping through the forest.”

He turned around and walked toward a bank of tall windows, his slow footfalls echoing off the polished marble. Lucy followed, looking out on the round, hedged garden and the dense woods beyond. The trees climbed the distant bluffs like spectators in an arena, waving autumnal banners of amber and red.

“We weren’t the only ones tramping through the forest. The well-stocked woods proved irresistible to poachers. Some came in organized gangs, trapping game for market in London or York. And then there were the tenants, who simply desired a bit of meat for their tables. My father resented both groups equally. Any poacher apprehended on Kendall land received the maximum penalty allowed by law—jail, hard labor, even transportation. He ordered his gamekeeper to set mantraps and spring guns.”

Lucy’s stomach knotted. Henry had described to her the cruel methods some landowners employed to deter poaching. Mantraps, like the smaller traps used to catch game, were spiked metal jaws designed to snap around a man’s leg. An encounter with a man-trap could leave a man maimed, if he was lucky. If he was unlucky, the wound would fester and he’d die. Of course, death was the entire object of a spring gun—a loaded rifle rigged up to a tripwire. A poacher, or anyone, who stumbled over the wire would be shot instantly.