Free Goddess of the Hunt by Tessa Dare Page A

gone. His father was dead. The ladies themselves had no complaints, and the matchmaking mamas had all but given him up.
    The only person he was disappointing was himself.
    Besides, he had an estate he needed to learn to run, before neglect ran it into the ground. Jeremy took the desire and penned it safely away. He had considerable experience caging unwanted safely away. He had considerable experience caging unwanted emotions. He reasoned he could keep lust locked up, as well.
    Ha. It had taken one kiss. Well, three kisses. The first was rather bad; the second, a vast improvement. And God in heaven, the third
    … Lust had sprung free of its cage and now roamed his body at will.
    A year’s worth of pent-up desire, unleashed in a heartbeat. And in those dozen times a day that Jeremy longed to call off this ill-conceived plan, it was always the lust that roared no . He tried to believe he had better, nobler reasons for keeping Lucy out of Toby’s bedchamber. Perhaps he did, somewhere, in some forgotten recess of his mind, filed under Gentleman. But a wild, savage, lust-crazed Beast was currently prowling the earth in his skin, and the idea of Lucy in any man’s bedchamber—other than his own—incited the Beast to violence.
    Jeremy raised his gun to his shoulder, took aim at a distant tree stump, and fired. Chips of rotten wood exploded into the air. Henry, Toby, and Felix stopped in their tracks and stared at him as though he had burst into song.
    “There was a pheasant,” he said.
    Three heads swiveled in unison to regard the cratered tree stump, then turned back to face him. Henry opened his mouth to speak, but Jeremy silenced him with a look.
    The Look.
    There were few aspects of his father’s demeanor Jeremy found worth imitating, but The Look was one of those few. Like it or not, he had inherited his father’s ice-blue eyes and heavy brow. With a bit of practice, giving someone The Look came as easily as flexing a muscle.

    The Look meant different things at different times, depending on the recipient and the occasion. It could mean, “Hold your tongue.” It could mean, “Lift your skirts.” On one particularly memorable occasion, it had meant, “Put down the damned candlestick before you embarrass us both.”
    But whatever The Look meant, it conveyed authority. The Look said, without equivocation, I lead, and you follow .
    There was only one person in Jeremy’s acquaintance who remained utterly impervious to The Look. And damn, if she wasn’t leading him around by a satin ribbon.
    “He’s giving you that look again,” Sophia whispered.
    Lucy raised her head from her book. “Who is?”
    “Lord Kendall, of course,” Sophia replied, dipping her quill in a pot of ink. “He’s quite taken with you.”
    “You mean Jemmy?” Lucy looked up to catch Jeremy glaring at her from across the drawing room. She grinned and winked, and he looked away. No doubt he was still smarting about the ribbons. Or the cat hair on his coat. Perhaps the brandy. It couldn’t be that she’d stolen his sherry trifle at dinner. He had never cared for dessert. Whatever was irking him, it must be something truly dreadful. Marianne sat down to the pianoforte, but he scarcely took note.
    “Oh, he is quite taken with me,” she answered Sophia in a matter-of-fact tone. “He’s thoroughly besotted.”
    At last, someone had noticed, even if it was the wrong person entirely. Lucy had put Jeremy through the paces of a besotted suitor for three days now, but Toby remained oblivious. For that matter, so did Henry, Marianne, Felix, and Kitty. It was unspeakably maddening. She might have eloped with a gardener ages ago, and no one would have noticed.
    “You call him by his Christian name?” Sophia raised an eyebrow.
    “So very brave. Perhaps even a bit wicked.” Her mouth twitched in a strange smile.
    Wicked? Lucy had forgotten. She was speaking with an angel. Why, in heaven’s name, had she chosen to sit near the escritoire? She