Ann Lethbridge - The Gamekeeper's Lady

Devastatingly lovely.

What the deuce? Was he so pathetically lonely that a smile from a slip of a girl brought a ray of light to his dreary day? And she wasn’t as young as he’d thought the first time he saw her. She was one of those females who retained an aura of youth, like Caro Lamb. It was something in the way they observed the world with a child-like joy, he’d always thought, as if everything was new and wonderful.

It made them seem terribly young. And vulnerable.

Another reason for her to stay away from a man jaded by life.

He glanced up at the pink-streaked sky between the black branches overhead. ‘I’ll be but a moment and we’ll be on our way.’ Shielding her view of the carcasses with his body, he dived inside his hut. He hung the hares from a nail by the hearth and stowed his shotgun under his cot out of sight. Swiftly, he stripped off his boots and soiled clothing, grabbing for his cleanest shirt and trousers. He had the sense that if he lingered a moment too long she’d be off like a startled fawn. Then he’d be forced to follow her home. She might not take kindly to being stalked.

To his relief when he got outside, she was still standing where he left her, staring into the distance as if lost in some distant world, the battered portfolio still clutched to her chest.

He picked up the box of charcoal from the stump. ‘Are you ready?’

She jumped.

Damn it. What made her so nervous?

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘After you, miss.’

Then suddenly she turned and walked in front of him. The hem of her brown cloak rustled the dry brown leaves alongside the track. For the niece of a nobleman, her clothes were sadly lacking. Perhaps she chose them to blend with her surroundings when drawing from nature.

She spun around to face him, walking backwards with cheeks pink and eyes bright. ‘There was something I wanted to ask you.’

Of course there was. No female would arrive at his door without an ulterior motive. In the past it usually involved hot nights and cool sheets. But not this one. She was far too innocent for such games. He waited for her to speak.

‘Do you hunt a great d-d—’ Her colour deepened. ‘A lot?’ she finished.

She stumbled over a root. He reached out to catch her arm. She righted herself, flinching from his touch with a noise in her throat that sounded like a cross between a sob and a laugh. Her eyes weren’t laughing. Unless he mistook her reaction, she looked thoroughly mortified.

He resisted the urge to offer comfort.

Damn it. Why did he even care? She was one of his employer’s family members. Even walking with her could be misconstrued. But he didn’t want her to trip again. He didn’t want her hurt.

God help him.

He caught her up, and she turned to walk forwards at his side.

‘Do you?’ She peered at him from beneath the brim of her plain brown bonnet with the expression of a mischievous elf. His hackles went up. Instincts honed by years of pleasing women. She definitely wanted something. He felt it in his gut. Curiosity rose in his breast. He forced himself to tamp it down. ‘It is all according to Mr Weatherby’s orders and what Cook requests for his lordship’s table. Most of my work relates to keeping down vermin.’

‘You hunt foxes?’

‘Gentlemen hunt foxes.’ He couldn’t prevent the bitter edge to his tone. ‘I trap them and keep track of their dens so the hunt can have a good day of sport.’ There, that last sounded more pragmatic.

‘Is there a den nearby?’

They left the woods and followed the river bank, the same path he’d walked earlier. ‘There are a couple. One up on Gallows Hill. Another in the five-acre field down yonder.’ He pointed toward the village of Swanlea.

Her eyes glistened with excitement. An overwhelming urge to ask why stuck in his throat. He had no right questioning his betters.

‘Badgers?’

Great God, this girl was a strange one. ‘Stay away from them, miss. They’re dangerous and mean. We hunt them with dogs.’

The light went out of her face a moment before she dropped her gaze. He felt as if he’d crushed a delicate plant beneath his boot heel. Good thing, too, if it kept her away from the sett not far from his dwelling.

‘I’ve never seen one,’ she murmured.

‘They come out only in the evening. Usually after dark.’

Once more he had the sense he had disappointed her, but why the strange urge to make amends? If she disliked him, so much the better. He held his tongue.

The path joined the rutted lane that led to the village in one direction, and over the bridge to the back entrance of Wynchwood Place in the other. The way to the mansion used by such as he. The lower orders.

He scowled at the encroaching thought.

Off in the distance, on a natural rise in the land, the solid shape of the mansion looked over green lawns and formal gardens. A house of plain red brick with a red-tile roof adorned by tall chimneypots. Nothing like the grandeur of the ducal estates, but a pleasant enough English gentleman’s country house.

Their footsteps clattered with hollow echoes on the slats of the wooden bridge. At the midpoint she halted and looked over the handrail into the murky depths of the River Wynch. ‘When I was young, my cousin, Mr Bracewell, told me a troll lived under this bridge. I was terrified.’

She glanced over her shoulder at him, a tentative smile on her lips. A vision of his sister Lizzie, her eyes full of teasing, her dark curls clustered around her heart-shaped face, flowed into his mind. A river of memories, each one etched in the acid of bitterness. Mother. The children. And Charlie before he got too serious to make good company. The acid burned up from his gut and into his throat. He clenched his jaw against the wave of longing. He bunched his fists to hold it at bay.

Slowly he became aware of her shocked stare, of the fear lurking in the depths of strange turquoise eyes. ‘L-listen to me ch-chattering. You want to get h-home to your d-d—meal.’

Fear of him had turned her speech into a nightmare of difficulty. He saw it in her face and in the tremble of her overlarge mouth. He was such a dolt.

Before he could utter a word, she snatched the box from his hand and fled like a rabbit seeking the safety of a burrow.

Hades. The past had a tendency to intrude at the most inopportune moments. He thought he had it under control and then the floodgates of regret for his dissolute past released a torrent emotion. Silently he cursed. Now he’d spend more hours wondering whether she’d report him to her uncle or Weatherby. The girl was a menace. Whatever else he did, he needed to avoid her as if she had a case of the measles.

For all his misgivings, he followed her discreetly, making sure she arrived at the door safely. As any right-thinking man would, he told himself. Especially with so fragile a creature wandering around as if no one cared what she did or where she went.

While she didn’t look back, he knew she was aware of his presence from the way she maintained her awkward half-run, half-trot. Her ugly brown skirts caught at her ankles and her bonnet ribbons fluttered. A little brown sparrow with broken wings.

The thought hurt.

Perhaps she now thought him a rabid dog? A good thing, surely. Hopefully she thought him terrifying enough to keep away from his cottage. He ought to be glad instead of wanting to apologise. Again.

At the entrance to the courtyard, she cut across the lawn. He frowned. What the devil was she up to now? Instead of entering through the front door, she was creeping through the shrubbery toward a side door. Well, well, Miss Bracewell was apparently playing truant. The little minx was nothing but trouble.

She slipped inside the house and he continued around the back of the house to the kitchen door, passing through the neat rows of root vegetables and assorted herbs in the kitchen garden. Mrs Doncaster knew her stuff and Robert had been doing his best to pick her brains, with the idea of planting his own garden in the spring.