Goddess of the Hunt (36 page)

Don’t cry.”

He’d do anything, he said. But he’d already done too much. He’d made her love him so completely, the love would not be contained.

He’d breached every last one of her defenses, and now there was nothing left to keep him out. Nothing left to hold back the tears.

nothing left to keep him out. Nothing left to hold back the tears.

And these tears, they were everything Lucy had tried so hard, for so long to avoid. Vulnerability. Helplessness. She couldn’t stop herself from crying any more than she could keep herself from loving him—and what he did, with the tears or the love, was completely beyond her control. She was down on the floor, curled into a ball, sobbing into her hands. Defenseless and weak and utterly at his mercy.

And then he confirmed what she’d always known. Nothing good ever came of tears. Quietly, wordlessly, he rose to his feet and left her.

He left her all alone.

Jeremy had to leave. It was a matter of self-preservation.

He stormed through his antechamber and into the sanctuary of his bedroom, barely managing to slam the door shut before crumpling against it.

A stronger man would have stayed—would have gathered her into his arms and held her tight and kissed the tears away. But he wasn’t a strong man at that moment, in his heart. When Lucy shrank from him and wept, twenty-one years of strength peeled away, leaving only a vulnerable boy. An eight-year-old boy who’d witnessed the sudden, violent death of his brother. A confused, grieving child who needed a mother’s comfort, but found only tears. Tears that poured salt and shame over raw, open wounds.

And it hurt. God, did it hurt.

Jeremy slammed his fist against the door, once. Twice. But the pain splintering through his bloodied knuckles did nothing to dull the agony twisting in his chest.

How many years had it taken, before he could enter a room without his mother weeping? How many times did she turn from him in tears, begging his nursemaid or tutor to take him away? Take him out of her sight, because she couldn’t look at him without seeing Thomas.

Thomas was the fortunate son.

Thomas would never feel this gnawing visceral agony, knowing his very existence caused heartache and pain. Knowing that when she looked at him, she saw only someone he wasn’t. Someone he could never replace. What was a boy to do, when a simple word or a laugh dropped into the air so innocently could land in a deluge of bitter tears?

He spoke softly, trod lightly, stayed out of his mother’s sight. He never laughed or ran or played too loudly, for fear of disturbing her fragile peace. He escaped the house and went riding, hard and fast across the open countryside. He went off to school and surrounded himself with friends, taking comfort from their jollity even when he did not share it. He occupied his mind with books and studies, to keep unpleasant thoughts at bay.

The boy grew into a man. And between Cambridge and London and his friends’ invitations, he rarely came home. He found gratification in the arms of women who would quite willingly shed their clothes, but never shed a tear. Women who gave of their bodies but withheld their hearts. Women he could never love.

Women he could never hurt.

But when Lucy turned from him and wept, she resurrected that boy.

She brought back all the hurt. And that wounded, grieving eight-year-old child—he didn’t know how to protect, or console. He only knew how to survive.

Tread lightly. Speak softly. Stay out of sight.

Leave.

In the following weeks, they were like two spirits haunting the same house. While Lucy went about her daily routine, Jeremy disappeared. Into his study, sometimes. More often to places out of the Abbey. He always returned for dinner, always on time. He made the minimum of conversation courtesy required, speaking in cool, measured tones.

There were no more kisses.

Although she and her husband barely spoke, Lucy found some solace in an entirely novel form of communication.

Letters.

She received weekly letters from Marianne. Chatty, rambling missives filled with all the homely details of life at Waltham Manor.

The latest escapades of the children or the servants or the dogs.

Even in the Abbey’s oppressive stillness, Lucy could hear laughter and music in those letters. She read them so many times, the paper wore thin at the creases.

Sophia sent rapturous, effusive reports of her engagement and wedding plans, penned in perfectly looping script. On first reading, Lucy scanned the lines with a broad grin. The second time through, her smile would inevitably fade. Sophia’s accounts of her betrothal and betrothed were unflaggingly cheerful.
Too
cheerful. Lucy suffered the niggling sensation that something must be wrong. After all, experience had shown Sophia to have a rather vivid imagination where letter-writing was concerned. One need only ask Gervais.

The identity of Lucy’s most faithful correspondent came as a great surprise. Henry wrote to her two or three times a week. He had little to say in these missives—a few random remarks on the weather, or an update on the winter wheat crop. Perhaps a few words about the hounds. But the message beneath those few hastily scrawled phrases was clear. Lucy responded to each letter with her own assortment of off-hand observations, always the same answer writ between the lines.

Yes, Henry. I miss you, too
.

She was learning to measure her happiness by small sources of comfort. Any day that brought a letter was a good day, in relative terms. The particular day that brought two letters, both brimming with exciting news, stood out as a banner occasion.

“We’ve received our invitation to Toby and Sophia’s wedding,” she told Jeremy at dinner that evening. “It’s to be in December.”

“That soon?” He did not appear to share her excitement. “Did you wish to attend?”

“Why, yes. Of course.”

He took a slow sip of wine. “Very well, then.”

Lucy pushed a bit of potato around her plate. “I was thinking …

perhaps we could stop at Waltham Manor for a visit, after the wedding.”

Silence.

She fortified her resolve with a sip of claret. “It’s just that, I also had a letter from Marianne today. She’s increasing again. I’ve always been there to help during her other confinements, and I’m a bit anxious for her. The first few months are always the hardest. And we anxious for her. The first few months are always the hardest. And we will be passing through the neighborhood.”

Jeremy shook his head slightly. “Your brother and I did not part well.

I think a visit would be ill-advised.” He cleared his throat and picked up his fork again. “Besides, I can’t be absent overlong. Estate business, you realize.”

Lucy let her fork clatter to the table. “Estate business. Yes, of course.” She could taste the acid in her voice, and she knew he had to hear it. “Well, it was only an idea.”

Jeremy sat back in his chair and regarded her. The cool detachment in his gaze froze Lucy’s heart. “Perhaps,” he said calmly, “you would prefer to visit on your own. I can deposit you at Waltham Manor after the wedding. The carriages will be available to retrieve you whenever you wish.”

Deposit
her?
Retrieve
her? What was she to him? Just some bothersome parcel to be shuttled about from place to place?

She stared at her husband. There he sat, His Lordship, positively monolithic at his end of the table. Ever calm and composed.

Suggesting their indefinite separation over the fish course, in the same tone of voice he might speak of the weather. Lucy wanted to pick up the plate before her, hurl it against the wall, and watch it smash into as many pieces as her heart.

Instead, she curled her fingers around the stem of her wineglass and bit her lip until she tasted the coppery tang of blood. “If that’s what you prefer,” she finally managed. “I’ll write to Henry tomorrow.”

She looked into those ice-blue eyes, scanning his gaze for any flicker of hurt or disappointment. Even a flash of annoyance would be welcome. “Perhaps,”—she swallowed slowly—“perhaps I should just stay until the babe is born.”

just stay until the babe is born.”

Nothing.

“If you wish,” he answered, returning his gaze to his plate. Lucy stared at him in disbelief as he casually forked a bite of salmon into his mouth. “I’m going to London tomorrow.”

“To London? Tomorrow?”

“I have some business there with my solicitor, regarding another of the family properties. I’m riding instead of taking the carriage, so I shan’t be gone long. I’ll return on Thursday.”

“I see.” He was leaving for London,
tomorrow
, to be gone for the better part of a week, and he’d tossed that bit of information at her like one throws a crust to a dog. Lucy supposed she should feel fortunate he’d bothered to inform her at all. Her eyes burned. The dishes swam before her in a miasma of welling tears. She blinked furiously. She would
not
cry.

She laid her napkin down on the table. “I expect you’ll want to retire, then. You’ll need an early start.”

He drained his wine slowly before responding. “Indeed.”

Lucy let him go.

The next morning, she woke with the dawn. Even so, she stayed abed late and kept to her chambers until she was certain he must be gone. There was no sense in bidding him farewell. After dinner yesterday, any goodbyes they might exchange would feel redundant.

The Abbey did not seem quieter in his absence—it could scarcely become more silent than before. But for once, it wasn’t the outward become more silent than before. But for once, it wasn’t the outward silence that oppressed her. It was the stillness inside her that ached. A strange, quiet void that she might have described as hollow, except that nothing echoed there. Each beat of her heart, each word, each breath was instantly dampened, smothered by this weightless burden of silence in her chest.

And she couldn’t escape it. Couldn’t crawl out from under it or break free of its spell, because she carried it within her. Out on long, rambling walks. Through dark, foggy dreams. Around the vast stone confines of the Abbey, which she took to haunting during the day, wandering through the ancient chambers in aimless fashion.

One afternoon, while drifting through the music room, she wandered into Aunt Matilda.

“Aunt Matilda!” Lucy wrapped an arm about her aunt’s indigo-draped shoulders. “Where is your nursemaid?” Familiar scents

—spice and chocolate and snuff—opened a cache of fond memories. She felt a sharp pang of homesickness for Waltham Manor. “Never mind,” she said, hugging the old lady close. “I’m glad to see you.”

Aunt Matilda wandered over to the pianoforte and opened the instrument. The housekeeper had insisted on having it tuned Lucy’s first week at the Abbey, no matter how much Lucy insisted she didn’t play. Aunt Matilda sat down, touched her fingers to the ivory keys, and launched into a lively reel. Her blue turban bobbed in time with the music, and a helpless giggle burst from Lucy’s throat.

Music. Laughter. For the first time in weeks.

The last strains of the reel stretched out into silence, and Aunt Matilda’s hands dropped to her lap. Lucy went to sit beside her on the bench.

the bench.

“Thank you, Aunt Matilda. That was lovely.” The old lady smiled up at her with the same benign expression she’d worn every day in Lucy’s memory. If only Lucy could borrow that unflagging optimism.

Lucy grasped her aunt’s papery hand in hers. “What’s to become of me, Aunt Matilda? I’ve changed somehow. And I can’t go back home, I just can’t. I miss the Manor desperately, but I would miss him more.” She gently laid her head on her aunt’s shoulder. “I miss him now.”

A turbaned head settled heavily against hers, and Lucy squeezed her aunt’s fingers. The bony hand lay limp and cold in Lucy’s grasp.

“Aunt Matilda?” Lucy straightened, and her aunt’s frail body slumped against her own. Lucy lifted the old lady’s head, pressing a hand against her clammy cheek. “Aunt Matilda?”

“She’ll be all right, won’t she?” Lucy paced the Persian carpet of Aunt Matilda’s suite, endlessly circling the blue-and-gold pattern.

“She has to be all right.”

Hetta squeezed each of Aunt Matilda’s hands in turn. “Lucy, your aunt is eighty if she’s a day,” she replied from the bedside. “She won’t live forever, you know.”

“I know, but—”

“Shhh.” Hetta laid her ear to Aunt Matilda’s chest. Lucy ceased her pacing and held her breath until Hetta straightened. “You must face pacing and held her breath until Hetta straightened. “You must face facts, Lucy. Your aunt cannot be expected to live much longer.”

Lucy shut her eyes and whimpered softly.

“But,” Hetta continued, “she isn’t going to die today. So far as I can tell, at least.” She helped the old lady into a sitting position and plumped the pillows behind her. “In fact, she seems to have suffered no lasting effects from her little spell.” She began repacking her black valise. “Just make certain that she rests. Give her some beef tea; solid food, if she’ll eat it. She’ll be wandering around again in no time.”

“All right.” Lucy sniffed and swiped at her nose with the heel of her hand. “Thank you for coming. Shall I see you out?”