Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
The Shooting Lesson
Idressed for the heat.
June had turned ruthless overnight. By six o’clock, the air in my bedchamber was thick and still, and the prospect of spending the day outdoors in full stays and three petticoats was enough to make me reconsider the entire enterprise.
But I had told Steele I would come, and I did not break my word—even when my word had been given before the thermometer climbed to eighty-five degrees.
I chose a lightweight cotton dress in pale blue, with loose sleeves, and a modest neckline.
Beneath it, I wore my summer corset—a shorter, lighter garment than the heavily boned affair I wore to evening functions.
It fastened in the front with a busk closure, a row of metal hooks and eyes that I could manage myself without calling for a maid.
I had purchased it for exactly this reason.
On occasion, a woman needed to dress and undress without assistance.
A day spent shooting in the countryside seemed likely to become one of them.
One petticoat instead of three. A small bustle. Sensible boots. I looked, I suspected, rather less polished than society expected of Lady Rosalynd Rosehaven, but society was not invited to this particular event.
The carriage arrived at quarter past seven, as Steele had promised.
The footman handed me up the step. It would not do for the Duke of Steele to be seen handing a woman into a carriage outside Rosehaven House at this hour. As I ducked into the dim interior, a gloved hand reached out of the shadow to steady mine.
"Lady Rosalynd."
"Your Grace."
I settled across from him on the seat. He folded the letter he had been reading, slipped it into his coat, and rapped on the roof. The carriage pulled away.
"It will be a hot day," he said.
"Which is why I chose a light dress."
The corner of his mouth moved. "We will take the train from Waterloo. It is quicker than the road and considerably cooler. My carriage will meet us at Richmond station."
I settled against the cushions and let the silence return. Steele was not a man one filled silences for. He preferred them. He did things inside them—observed, calculated, drew conclusions—that other men required conversation to accomplish.
Waterloo was loud, crowded, and entirely uninterested in our presence. Steele had reserved a first-class compartment to ourselves. Of course, he had. When the door closed behind us, and the train shuddered into motion, I felt the city begin to release me.
London receded behind us, the close-packed streets giving way to open fields, hedgerows in full leaf, and a sky so wide and blue that it seemed to belong to a different country entirely.
I watched the countryside pass and felt something loosen in my chest. I had not realized how tightly wound I had become.
The pressure of the past weeks had settled into my body without my permission, coiling there, waiting.
Richmond station arrived with a hiss of steam and the particular bustle of a country platform on a warm morning.
As promised, Steele's carriage was waiting for us—a smaller equipage than the one we had left in London, drawn by a pair of well-matched bays.
The road wound through lanes thick with cow parsley and the smell of cut hay.
I watched the hedgerows pass with the dazed attention of a woman who had crossed two worlds.
The estate gates appeared sooner than I expected.
They were handsome, wrought iron, and well maintained, set between stone pillars topped with urns of trailing ivy.
The drive beyond was lined with mature oaks that cast welcome shade across the gravel.
The house itself came into view around a gentle curve—a Georgian manor of honey-colored stone, symmetrical and restrained, with tall windows that caught the morning light.
The gardens were exquisite—not in the formal, regimented style of a great house, but with the kind of careful, loving design that suggested someone had planted each bed with thought and pleasure.
Roses climbed the south-facing wall. A wisteria, ancient and magnificent, draped the entrance portico in cascades of pale purple.
Whoever had made this garden had known what they were doing and had cared about the result.
The manor was larger than Steele House, as country houses tend to be.
But there was more to the property than that.
Where the London residence announced the rank of its occupant in every line of its facade, this place felt warmer, more personal.
It was the type of house a family would live in and cherish.
“The manor is exquisite and whoever made these gardens took great care with them,” I said, careful to keep my tone idle. “They’re quite beautiful.”
A shadow crossed his face. It was there and gone again so quickly that a less attentive observer might have missed it entirely. I did not miss it. I knew at once that I had stepped onto ground I had not known was there.
"It was part of my late wife's dowry." His voice was even. "She loved it here."
"I can see why."
He offered nothing further, and I did not press. But in the brief tightening at the corner of his mouth, in the way he had spoken of her without quite saying her name, I had my answer to the question I had not asked—and several more besides.
I knew the broad facts—Steele had married young, and his wife and child had died in childbirth.
He did not speak of it. The few times the subject had surfaced between us, he had acknowledged the facts with the controlled brevity of a man who had placed his grief in a locked room and saw no reason to open the door.
I had not pressed. Some doors were not mine to open.
As the carriage drew to a halt at the front of the house, a footman opened the door and let down the step. Steele descended first and turned to offer me his hand. I took it and stepped down onto the gravel.
He looked different here. Less guarded. Less the duke and more the man. Whether that was the effect of the countryside or the absence of London's scrutiny, I could not say.
"The range is this way," he said. "I have had targets set up at the bottom of the south meadow. There is shade at the firing point, which you will appreciate."
I followed him along a path that wound past the formal garden and through a gate into open parkland.
Behind us, at a discreet distance, came two footmen carrying a wicker picnic basket between them by its leather handles—the sort of basket that suggested its contents were both substantial and chilled.
Steele had thought of everything, which did not surprise me.
The meadow sloped gently downward toward a line of trees, beyond which I could hear the faint sound of water. At the near end, a canvas awning had been erected over a wooden table. On the table lay a pistol, a box of ammunition, and a pair of leather gloves.
A second table stood a short distance away, beneath the same awning but set apart from the shooting station. The footmen carried the basket to it and set it down with the care of men who had been instructed precisely how the morning was to unfold.
"Leave it as it is for now," Steele said.
The footmen bowed and withdrew toward the house. I watched them go, then turned to Steele with an expression I did not bother to school.
“There is wine and lemonade beneath the cloth—both packed in ice. And food, of course. We will eat after the lesson."
“Very well.” I could use the cold lemonade. Even though I had dressed lightly, I was already roasting.
Steele shrugged out of his coat, folded it once with the unhurried precision he brought to all small acts, and laid it across the back of a wooden chair beside the table.
And then he began to roll up his shirtsleeves.
As the white linen turned back upon itself, his forearms emerged inch by inch—dusted with dark hair, the skin browner than I would have expected of a man who spent his days in ledgers, the muscle moving beneath in a long, lean strength that spoke of use rather than ornament.
I had not been prepared for this. If I had been warm before, I was now considerably warmer. And this heat had nothing to do with the sun.
I dabbed at my temple and looked elsewhere.
Oblivious to my state, Steele picked up the pistol and held it out to me, grip first. "The Webley Bulldog. The same model I showed you at the Caledonian Club during the Trinity Lane murder inquiry. It is loaded. Keep it pointed downrange at all times."
The reminder was unnecessary. I remembered that midnight lesson quite clearly. And the interruption that cut it short.
“Yes, I recall,” I said. "Six-shot. Double-action. Heavier than it looks."
"Good. Then we may proceed directly to the part where you fire it."
I took it. The weight was considerable—heavier than I had remembered, solid and purposeful in my hand.
“Your grip is wrong,” he said, before I had done anything with it. “Right hand higher on the grip. Left hand underneath, supporting. Like this.”
He adjusted my hands with a professional detachment that did not entirely conceal the fact that his fingers were touching mine. I was aware of it. He was aware of it. Neither of us remarked upon it.
“Now. Stance. Feet shoulder-width apart. Weight slightly forward. You want to lean into the recoil, not away from it. The instinct is to pull back. Resist it.”
I adjusted. He studied my position, walked behind me, and placed one hand on my shoulder to correct the angle. His palm was warm through the cotton of my sleeve.
“Better. Now. Sight along the top of the barrel. See the notch at the rear and the post at the front? Align them with the target. When you are ready, squeeze the trigger. Do not pull. Squeeze.”
I sighted. The target—a paper circle pinned to a wooden frame—wavered in the heat haze at thirty yards. I breathed. I squeezed.
The report was tremendous. The recoil drove my arms upward, and the sound cracked across the meadow and echoed off the tree line. Birds scattered from the oaks in a flurry of wings.
“Where did I hit?”
“You didn’t.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You missed the target entirely. You closed your eyes before you fired. That is the flinch we discussed.”
I spun toward him. “I did not close my eyes!”
“You did. Both of them. At the moment of the shot, you were effectively blind.” He said this without judgment, as an observation, not a criticism. “It is the most common error. Your body anticipates the noise and the recoil and tries to protect you from both. You must override it.”
“How?”
“Practice. Again.”
I fired again. And again. And again. By the sixth shot, I was hitting the target, though not its center.
By the twelfth, I was grouping my shots within a hand’s span of the bullseye.
By the eighteenth, my arms ached, my ears rang despite the cotton wadding Steele had provided, and sweat had gathered at the base of my throat and along my spine.
The heat was appalling. The shade of the awning helped, but the air itself was heavy and wet, pressing against my skin until I could feel the moisture gathering in every fold of fabric. My corset, light as it was, had ceased to be bearable. Each breath drew less air than the last.
“You are improving,” Steele said, from his position two paces behind me. “Your grouping has tightened considerably.”
“I am also dying.”
“You are not dying.”
“I am dying slowly and with great dignity, which is the only acceptable way for a Rosehaven to expire.”
He almost smiled. I could tell because the corner of his mouth moved a fraction of an inch—the most Steele ever permitted himself in the way of open amusement.
He set the pistol down on the table, walked to the basket, and lifted the cloth. From within he produced two tall glasses and a stoppered jug, beaded with condensation, filled with something pale yellow and unmistakably cold. He set them on the table beside the pistol box and poured.
"Drink," he said, holding out a glass. "All of it. Slowly."
I took the glass. The cold of it against my palm was almost shocking.
I drank—slowly, as instructed, because the first swallow nearly undid me with its sweetness and chill.
Lemon and sugar and ice and something faintly herbal beneath, mint perhaps.
It was the most exquisite thing I had ever consumed.
"Oh," I said, when I could speak again. "Bless you."
"You looked as though you needed it."
"I needed it ten minutes ago. I simply was not going to say so."
"I know." He poured a second glass for himself and drank it standing, with the unhurried economy he brought to everything. "We can stop, if you wish."
"Not yet." I set the empty glass on the table and picked up the pistol again. I raised it, sighted, and fired. The bullet struck the outer ring of the target. Close, but not close enough. “Again.”
Three more shots. The last one hit the second ring. Respectable. Not excellent.
I set the pistol down on the table and pressed my hands to my face. The heat had settled behind my eyes and in the back of my throat. My dress clung to my shoulders. Every breath felt like drinking warm water.
Steele was watching me with the focused attention he brought to everything—targets, ledgers, suspects, and women who were overheating in his meadow.
“There is a lake,” he said. “Beyond the tree line. Fed by a spring. The water is cold, even in summer.”
I lowered my hands and looked at him.
“Are you suggesting I go for a swim?”
“I am suggesting that the lake is available, should you wish to avail yourself of it.” A pause. “It is private. There is no one for half a mile in any direction.”
The prospect of cold water against my skin was so appealing that I nearly started walking before he finished speaking.
“Show me,” I said.