by KJ Charles
“My brothers had it done for my twenty-first birthday.”
“That’s very... I suppose that was what you wanted? A monogrammed gun?”
“I’d given up hoping for ear-rings by then.” It was a joke, but Miss Carruth’s brows twitched as though she wasn’t happy with what she’d heard. “It’s a lovely piece,” Pat added, feeling as though she should defend the gift. “Handles beautifully, light, with a nice sensitive trigger. Let me show you.”
She loaded the gun under Miss Carruth’s alarmed eye, took a few steps away—she was merely demonstrating the operation, certainly not trying to impress anyone with her skills—and fired. Miss Carruth, inevitably, jumped and shrieked as the tin span off the post.
“You’ll need to stop that,” Pat informed her, going to retrieve the target. “The squealing, I mean. Here, you have a try.”
She handed the gun over. Miss Carruth took it in a cautious fashion that suggested she thought it might explode. Pat sighed. “Hold it firmly. No, like this.” She wrapped Miss Carruth’s fingers around the inlaid handle. “Don’t put your finger on the trigger yet. Just feel the weight and get used to it.”
“It’s awfully heavy.”
“Not really. Extend your arm and sight down the barrel. No, straighter.” She took hold of Miss Carruth’s plump arm, feeling a slight tremor—that would be the unaccustomed muscular effort, nothing else—and adjusted her stance. If that meant a certain amount of standing very close to Miss Carruth’s warmth, inhaling her scent, it couldn’t be helped.
She did her best to focus on explaining aim and warning her pupil about recoil, and stepped away when she could. “All right. Eyes on the tin and squeeze the trigger gently.”
Miss Carruth’s finger moved, her whole arm jerked, and she let out another piercing squeal as the gun went off. The tin stood unmoved, which was no surprise; Pat almost expected a bird to fall from the sky.
“You can’t make a fuss like that. Try again. Properly.”
“Oh, but it was such a shock! The way it jumped in my hands—and so loud!”
“Guns make a loud noise,” Pat said. “You knew that would happen. Screaming about guns going off is like saying you want to drive a motor-car and shrieking when it moves. It’s what the machine does, it’s quite predictable, and it’s silly to pull the trigger and then be shocked that it fires.”
Miss Carruth’s eyes were wide. “Are you telling me off?”
“I wouldn’t say—” Pat began, and then, “Yes, I am. If you want to acquire a skill you need to set your mind to do it. You won’t learn anything if you’re busy being helpless and—and cherishable.”
“And what?”
“You know. Having other people look after you. Being too silly and frivolous to do anything. It may be what men want of you, but you’re not going to learn that way.”
Miss Carruth’s mouth was open, not in the pretty O of mannered surprise, but actually slack. She looked genuinely shocked. Pat went over her own words in her head again and realised they had been somewhat rude. She fought down the urge to apologise. She’d been asked to teach, not to pander to a display of winsome uselessness; Miss Carruth would have dozens of people to do that for her.
Miss Carruth’s lips moved slightly and Pat realised that there was a sheen in her eyes again. Oh God, was the girl going to cry? Had Pat made her cry? She wanted to walk away in exasperation just slightly less than she wanted to comfort her until the sunny smile returned to Miss Carruth’s face, and she was damned if she’d do either.
“I,” Miss Carruth began, and swallowed. “I dare say I’m very silly.”
“You’re not silly. Screaming when you pull a trigger is silly, and more importantly it’s dangerous because you aren’t controlling the gun. Stop doing that and I expect you’ll do very well. But you can’t hit a target when you jump and shriek. It’s like trying to shoot from a trampoline.”
That got a gurgle of laughter, as Pat had hoped. Miss Carruth loved her absurdities.
“Yes, of course. I didn’t mean— May I try again?”
“Of course. As many times as you like. Anticipate the noise, and watch for the recoil this time—that is, the gun jumping in your hands when you fire. You need to be firm in your grip, but not frantic. You’re in control.”
“Control.” Miss Carruth took a deep breath and set her very pretty chin at an obstinate tilt, which Pat would have been delighted to observe at any other time.
“Put your head down a little. Relax your shoulders. You’re in charge of the gun, not the other way around. It’s your tool to use. Deep breath now, and exhale as you squeeze the trigger.”
Miss Carruth fired again. She missed, but she kept her arm level this time, and there was no squeal.
“Better,” Pat said. “Try again.”
On the fifth shot, the tin span into the air with a clang, and Miss Carruth let out a shriek that had absolutely nothing coquettish about it. “I did it!”
“Yes, you did,” Pat said, with equal pleasure. “A damn fine shot— Sorry. I’m used to shooting with men.”
“Please don’t apologise. It was a damn fine shot.” She spoke with delightful relish. “Oh, that was satisfying. Do you think I can do it again?”
“I don’t see any reason why not.”
Miss Carruth proceeded to pepper away at the tin for the next ten minutes, until Pat’s ears were ringing, she’d added ten yards to her distance, and she was hitting the target four times out of six. Pat stood back and watched, offering the odd comment about breathing, stance, or technique, mostly observing the way Miss Carruth’s eyes narrowed and the set of her jaw.
She wanted this, it was abundantly clear. She wanted to master the skill and she wasn’t backing down. Miss Carruth clearly had reserves of determination she didn’t show. Maybe she wouldn’t be the ornament Jimmy seemed to expect.
She stopped only when they ran out of ammunition, and looked up at Pat with a laugh in her sparking eyes and a comical expression of embarrassment. “Oh, goodness. I have shot you out of house and home.”
“That’s all right,” Pat said. “You did tremendously. Next time we’ll use a proper target. Er, if you want a next time, that is.”
“I should love a next time,” Miss Carruth assured her. “I might cry if you denied it to me. I actually think I might be able to do this and I cannot tell you how good that feels. Thank you so much for giving me your kindness and your time, Miss Merton— Oh, but that sounds so formal when you’ve told me off and taught me to use a gun. May I call you Patricia?”
“Nobody is permitted to do that, but please do call me Pat.”
Miss Carruth positively glowed. “And I’m Fenella. Fen. Don’t we sound brusque? Pat and Fen.”
“Efficient, rather than brusque,” Pat suggested, packing away the pistol. “Will you pick up the tins please? Er, I should probably apologise for telling you off.”
“Oh, no you shouldn’t,” Fen said. “You took me seriously. You thought I could do it if I tried, and I could. I’d prefer that to any amount of cherishing.”
She smiled then—not the blinding beam full of merriment, but a smaller, quieter expression. It was a serious smile, if such a thing were possible, and Pat stared at her and found no breath in her lungs and nothing to say. Fen’s smile faded into something else, an intent look with her eyes fixed on Pat’s, and Pat would have—done something, she couldn’t say what, except that her name came to her ears in a masculine cry that was perhaps the last thing she wanted to hear in the world, because the caller was Jimmy.
“Hello there, ladies. Been practising?”
Fen didn’t react at all for a second, and then she turned, the bright laughing look appearing on her face again as though by magic. “Jimmy, darling. How lovely.”
“Lovely. Yes. Lovely weather. Lake looks lovely. Why don’t I take you for a turn? I’m sure Pat’s discharged her duty as a teacher; I heard you blasting away.”
Fen’s eyes flicked to Pat’s and away, so quickly it
was almost impossible to read the expression. “It wasn’t a duty,” Pat said, a little too loudly. “It was a pleasure. Fen’s done enormously well.”
“Oh, really, Pat, you’re too kind.” Fen tilted her head flirtatiously at Jimmy. “I’m an awful duffer, of course, but she’s been terribly patient.”
“Don’t let it worry you,” Jimmy said, extending his arm. “It’s not as though you need to learn, and we can’t all be All-England champions, can we? Thanks, Pat. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”
“It was a pleasure,” Pat repeated. “Shall we have another go—” The shooting started tomorrow. Pat wasn’t going to miss the first day for anyone’s bright eyes, but the day after tomorrow suddenly seemed a dreadfully long way away.
“That would be lovely,” Fen said, apparently not noticing that Pat hadn’t specified when. “Thank you. Won’t you come for a walk with us?”
“I’m sure she’d like some time to herself, and I’d like some time with you,” Jimmy said. “I’ve barely seen you, let alone given you a proper tour of the grounds. One day this will be yours, and all that. Thanks, old thing.” He tipped his hat to Pat and steered Fen off without further ado.
Pat stood, watching them in some bafflement. She had no idea why Fen hadn’t trumpeted her achievement, and even less what was wrong with Jimmy, why he sounded so brittle and was speaking with such forced bonhomie.
She got her bits and pieces together, including the tins, and set off back across the lawn alone.
It was still only around twelve when Pat returned to the house. She had no great desire to speak to anyone, so she looked for a convenient place to clean her weapon. It was not a job she left to anyone else, and working with her hands might clear her thoughts.
She headed for the gun room, but heard conversation—it sounded like Preston Keynes and Bill—coming from it and veered off. Mr. Keynes was very pleasant, but she’d had enough of people for the moment. She decided to lurk in the East Wing instead. It was mostly unused, Jimmy had said, so she ought to be able to have a bit of peace.
She crossed the main hall, turned into the East Wing’s ground floor corridor, and tried a door. It opened on a room that didn’t look as though it was particularly used or useful. It had rows of dusty books on the shelves, a plain old table, a couple of chairs that had evidently been sat on by dogs. It seemed like a room with no purpose, which was hardly surprising. Rodington Court had been built to house a far greater number of people than the current family, and that always gave a house a hollow feel. Pat and Jonty had been rattling around Skirmidge House ever since the other brothers had left and Father had died, and that was a far smaller building than this great barrack.
On the bright side, unused rooms meant she wasn’t invading anyone’s privacy. Pat settled at the desk, spread out a cloth from the case, took out her tools and bottle of oil, and set to work. The smell of gun oil was a pungent comfort.
She wasn’t even sure why she wanted comfort. It had been a delightful morning, with a perfectly pleasant companion. No, it was more than that: Pat had made a new friend. Fen was a thoroughly nice girl, with reserves of character under the frivolous exterior, and it was marvellous that there was more to Jimmy’s future wife than had first met the eye. It was also marvellous that Fen had enjoyed their lesson. It bade well for her new life as a countryman’s wife, and perhaps Pat could come and visit them in future years when Fenella’s obvious love of colour and comfort, and her father’s money, had turned the great bare house into a fashionable destination, and she and Jimmy were terribly happy and probably had a brood of children—
Pat jammed the cleaning rod down the barrel slightly too hard, and swore under her breath at the impact.
That would be a happy outcome indeed, and she would not begrudge Jimmy his stroke of luck in securing himself such a wife. Her old friend deserved to be happy. He surely would be, if he appreciated his own good fortune and didn’t, for example, stay silent when his obnoxious brother-in-law abused his fiancée, or casually assume she must be as foolish or prettily helpless as she chose to seem.
Why did she choose to seem so?
Pat had no idea what was going on with whatever games they were all playing. She’d never been very good at allusive conversations; couldn’t really see the point, since it was a great deal easier if one said what one wanted, rather than expecting other people to guess. She hadn’t grown up in that sort of milieu: her brothers had been barely capable of hearing the plainest demands, let alone delicate hints. And she didn’t like the idea of suggesting and requesting and laying inviting openings for others to generously offer things, instead of just asking. It seemed a waste of time and, worse, supplicant, as though one were playing the beggar maid to King Cophetua.
Why would Fen wheedle her future husband with coy words and self-deprecation? Surely that couldn’t be what Jimmy wanted? Then again, Fen had been proposed to on at least three occasions, whereas Pat had never once walked out with a young man, or even held hands with a boy. She had received a proposal, technically—a request relayed by a hysterically laughing Jonty from a fifty-year-old widowed neighbour who admired her housekeeping—but she was fairly sure that didn’t qualify her to judge. Perhaps Fen knew what men liked, although Jimmy hardly seemed enthusiastic.
Jimmy had never treated Pat in that dismissive way, but perhaps that was because, like most of the friends she had through her brothers, he didn’t really see her as a woman. That seemed a bad omen, and Fen deserved better. She was funny, and brighter than she let on, and she obviously took care to make people around her happy. And she was lovely, too, with those bright eyes and soft, generous curves, which wasn’t relevant to her moral character but undeniably occupied quite a lot of Pat’s attention. She couldn’t help but recall a poem about corsets that had appeared in Tit-Bits a few years ago, and which Frank and Donald had quoted endlessly at her. The author bemoaned the fashion for tight lacing and wasp-waists and felt that the ideal female waist was “strong and solid, plump and sound, and hard to get one arm around.” Pat’s didn’t qualify, being straight and bony; Fenella’s absolutely did.
And she was engaged to Jimmy, for good or ill, so Pat put aside thoughts of what it might feel like to slip an arm around her waist, which meant she finally noticed the talking.
It was coming from a dark panelled door in the dark panelled wall to her left, which presumably led into the next room as part of a connected set. She hadn’t observed the other door when she sat down to clean her gun, and had been lost in thought since. Now she realised that people were speaking in the next room, and possibly had been for some time. Something about their talk had finally snagged her attention. It might have been a raised voice.
Pat had no interest in discovering anyone’s private business, and was, at best, indifferent to most of her fellow guests. But in that moment’s sudden awareness of a sound she’d missed, she did listen consciously, and she heard Maurice Haworth speak just on the other side of the door.
“There’s no point whining. If you want me to keep quiet, you’ll have to make it worth my while. That’s all.”
Pat’s hand stilled on the cleaning cloth. Someone else spoke—a male voice, further away and pitched low—and Haworth gave a sneering laugh. “I know what it’s called. Do you want me to dress it up—ask you for a loan on indefinite terms, while we both pretend to be decent English gentlemen? I know what you did. Pay up, or so will the world.”
The other voice spoke urgently, still very quiet. Haworth laughed again but replied at less volume, moving away from the door. Pat sat, back very straight, staring ahead.
This was not a conversation she wanted to overhear, still less one she wanted to be caught overhearing. It would be impossible to claim one hadn’t heard a word, even if it were true. Haworth would assume she’d been eavesdropping, and for all she knew his conversational partner might believe she’d overheard his secret.
Not conversational partner. Victim. That was the word for someone subjected to ex
tortion, wasn’t it? And that was what Haworth was doing, no two ways about it. She’d overheard blackmail, and she had to...
She had to what?
Well, for one thing she had to ensure she heard nothing else. This was bad enough without knowing which of her fellow guests harboured a shameful secret, let alone what it was. She’d have liked to get up and slip silently away, but she had all her bits and pieces on the desk, including the monogrammed gun and case. If she left it all there, Haworth might see it and realise she’d overheard, and if she tried to pack up she’d make a noise. In fact, she could do nothing. She would just have to sit and concentrate, hope they went out the other way, and deny hearing anything if she was discovered.
So she focussed fiercely on her work as the seconds dragged by and the murmurs from the next room went on, mentally damning Haworth’s culpable carelessness. Really, what sort of extortioner didn’t even choose a suitably private location?
At last the luncheon gong boomed. Pat stiffened in alarm, but it appeared that the next room had another exit, because the men didn’t come through. She sagged with relief in her chair, then carefully packed up her case, giving them plenty of time to mingle with the rest of the party.
She’d assumed she’d be the last for luncheon after that. In fact, Lady Anna didn’t appear at all and nor did the Countess or Miss Singh, leaving Pat and Fen the only two ladies present. The Earl made no excuses; he simply launched into a monologue about what they could expect from the shooting tomorrow, apparently forgetting that Fen might not find this the most scintillating topic of conversation.
Mr. Keynes joined in with some good observations, and Jack Bouvier-Lynes, though cheerfully admitting himself to be a city sort of fellow, asked enough questions to keep the conversation going. Jimmy was notably silent, contributing a few terse remarks when directly addressed by his father. Bill and Mr. Haworth were both content to listen, the last with a nasty little smirk on his lips, as though some unkind remark hovered on the tip of his tongue.
