Ann Lethbridge - The Gamekeeper's Lady

She stopped to catch her breath and looked around. Bare rocks littered the plateau as if tossed there by some long-ago giant. Among the blanket of brown pine needles she found what she sought: a narrow tunnel dug in soft earth partially hidden by a fallen tree limb. Where should she sit for the best view?

She had read about the habits of the foxes in one of Uncle Mortimer’s books on hunting. Her best chance of seeing one was at daybreak near the den. Hopefully she wasn’t too late.

A spot off the animal’s beaten track seemed the best idea for watching. A broom bush, one of the few patches of green at this time of year, offered what looked like the best cover. From there, the light wind would carry her scent away from the den.

She pushed into the greenery and sank down cross-legged. Carefully, she drew out a sheet of parchment and one of her precious lead pencils. Pencils were expensive and she eked them out the way a starving man rationed crusts of bread, but knowing this might be her only chance to observe the creature from life, she’d chosen it over charcoal, which tended to smudge.

As the minutes passed, she settled into perfect stillness, gradually absorbing the sounds of the awakening morning, cows lowing for the milkmaid on a nearby farm, the call of rooks above Bluebell Woods.

Someone whistling and stomping up the hill.

Oh, no! She looked over her shoulder…at Mr Deveril striding over the brow of the hill, a gun on his shoulder, traps dangling from one hand. He was making straight for the fox’s den with long, lithe strides. Blast. He’d scare off the fox. She put down her paper and rose to her feet, gesturing to him to leave.

He stopped, stock still, and stared.

Go away, she mouthed.

He dropped the traps and started to run. Towards her. The idiot.

She shooed him back with her arms.

He ran faster, his boots scattering pine needles.

She felt like screaming. He’d ruined everything. Any self-respecting fox would be long gone by now and no doubt Mr Deveril would have him shot long before her next opportunity to come up here. Drat. She would need to find another den and right when she didn’t need a delay.

She bent to pack up her stuff.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, stopping short of the shrubbery. His massive shoulders in a brown fustian jacket blocked her view of the sky as his chest rose and fell from exertion. Lovely, beautiful man. She had the sudden desire to snatch up her pencil and draw. Him.

A dangerous notion. ‘I would have been perfectly all right had you stayed away,’ she muttered, pushing through the scratchy branches.

He frowned. ‘You waved me over. I thought you must have had an accident. Fallen from your horse.’

‘I walked.’ As if it mattered how she got here.

‘All the way up here?’

‘An early morning stroll. For my health.’

His expression of disbelief said it all and his gaze dropped to the portfolio beneath her arm. ‘You came up here to draw the fox?’ He sounded disapproving, dismissive, just like everyone else.

‘Not possible since you decided to gallop over here like a runaway carthorse.’

A muscle in his jaw flickered. His lips twitched. Amber danced in his eyes. Was he laughing? It certainly looked like it. She found herself wanting to smile, despite her disappointment.

‘You looked as if you were trying to get my attention. I didn’t realise you were here on a drawing expedition.’

‘What else would I be doing up here? I had hoped to draw it, b-before you k-killed it.’ She marched past him and headed downhill.

‘Wait,’ he commanded, deep and resonant.

How dare he order her about? She forged on.

‘Miss Bracewell,’ he called out. ‘There is a better place from which to watch.’

She twisted to look back at him.

He stared at her silently, challenging her to return, looking like a dark angel with the grey sky behind and the dark pines above. A tempting dark angel. Her heart speeded up. She hunched deeper into her cloak. ‘W-Where?’ Now she sounded like a sulky child. What was it about this man that made her behave so badly? Apart from his physical beauty, that was, which would affect any warm-blooded woman.

‘You would have missed him from there.’

‘Oh?’

‘I can show you, if you wish?’

‘You said him? Is it a male?’

He smiled and her knees almost gave out as he transformed into a Greek god with a simple curve of his mouth. ‘The dog fox. Aye. This tunnel is his escape route. The front door is yonder.’ He nodded toward the blasted oak. ‘I’ve seen him go in three times this week.’

The country accent missing from his earlier speech returned. She hesitated, her mind clamouring a warning even as her eyes worshipped the fierce beauty of his carved features. She longed to draw the character and darkness in his face and the athletic grace of his body. Not a clumsy attempt from memory, but from the flesh. Heat crawled up her face.

His smile disappeared. ‘As you wish, miss,’ he said, clearly taking her silence as refusal.

‘I will.’

A brow winged up and he tilted his head. ‘You mean, yes?’

She nodded, her head bobbing as if her neck had turned into a spring.

‘This way, then, miss, if you please.’

She followed him to a knobby protrusion of rocks beside the blackened tree.

‘There,’ he murmured, pointing at the ground a few feet away.

Nothing. Then the darker black of a hole took shape among the shadows. ‘I see it.’ She tore off the portfolio’s ribbon.

‘Sit here,’ he said, a large, warm hand catching her elbow, steering her to another pile of rocks. Sparks seemed to shoot up her arm, as if he’d touched a lightning bolt and transmitted its energy to her through his fingers.

Her mouth dried. A man of his ilk shouldn’t be touching her at all.

Was this how her mother had felt with the lower orders? Entranced. Breathless. Hot all over. She could quite see why one might want to experience it again. And more.

Somehow she sank down in the place he suggested and saw with amazement that the rock on which she perched formed a comfortable backrest and screened her from the opening to the fox’s den, except for a narrow slit between two rocks.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘This is perfect.’

‘I aim to please,’ he replied with a flash of a grin.

The breath in her chest left her mouth in a besotted rush. The man should not smile. It was fatal. And, from the broadening smile, he knew it.

He sank to his haunches beside her, his back against the rock on which she sat, his shoulder touching her skirts. He sat and stretched out legs which seemed to go on for ever and terminated in sturdy brown boots covered in mud. The rough fabric of his trousers clung to his thighs in a most revealing manner, suggestive of hard muscle and power.

In the confined space between the boulders, his shoulders hemmed her in. Trapped her. His steady, even breathing filled her ears, warmth radiated from him and the smell of bay drifted on the still air, instilling a strong desire to inhale his manly scent. From the corner of her eye she admired the black curl of hair on the bronzed skin of his strong column of a neck and the way it skimmed the collar of his coarse linen shirt. Once more her pulse galloped out of control.

Oh, yes, he would make an excellent subject. She had never drawn a man from life, but this one had an air of natural nobility for all his lowly station. Intangible to the eye, it radiated off him like an aura. No other man of her acquaintance had such elegant male beauty. Particularly not Simon.

But would she have the skill to do him justice? It would mean spending hours in his company—his naked company—if she was to work in the classical style she longed to emulate. Any decent art school in Italy would want to see more than drawings of birds and wildlife to accept her as a serious artist. If her portfolio presented a study of him, and if it was any good…