She stared at him for a long time. Then she lifted her free hand, seemed not to know quite how to explain, and finally formed it into the unmistakable shape of a pistol and pointed it at the window opposite.
“Zounds,” Luke said.
“Someoneshotat you?” Ashley felt suddenly as if all the blood had drained out of his head. “Yousawhim, Emmy?”
No. She shook her head.
She would not have heard a shot. How could she know, then? Ashley wondered. But cuts like that did not simply appear from nowhere. “How do you know?” he asked her. Anna, he could see, had looked up from her task, her face as white as her sister’s.
There had been something behind her. Something big.
“A tree?” he asked.
Yes, a tree. And something small and round—she formed it with her forefinger curled into the base of her thumb—against the tree.
“A bullet,” Luke said quietly. She was not looking at him.
“A bullet?” Ashley asked.
Yes, a bullet. Lodged in the trunk of the tree behind her. It had cut a swath across the back of her hand. No more than a few inches from her body. From her heart—it was her left hand that had been hurt. Someone had shot at Emmy and had missed killing her by only a few inches.
“But you saw no one?” he asked her. “Either before or after it happened?”
No, no one. She winced again. Anna was crying and dabbing at the cut. Luke squeezed her shoulder and reached for the jar of ointment.
“Move aside, my dear,” he said. “I will finish this and bind up her hand. Some laudanum would not be amiss, I believe.”
“Emmy,” Ashley said, “we are going to need to know what happened to frighten you two mornings ago. We need to know who wishes you harm.”
Who could want to harm Emmy? Ashley asked himself. Verney? But why? Had Verney shot Gregory Kersey after all? In the same hills? With the same gun? But why Emmy?
Her eyes closed and her teeth bit into her lower lip as Luke applied a liberal dose of ointment to her hand and began to bandage it.
“I believe a physician’s services will be unnecessary,” he said, “unless the shock has still not worn off after she has slept. But the questions will have to wait, Ash.”
“I need to know,” Ashley said. “I am going to kill him, whoever he is.”
“I shall help you,” Anna said fiercely.
“You will stay close to your sister while she has need of you, madam,” Luke said quietly and gently, “and to our children, who have a right to your attentions.”
“And leave the serious business of guarding our safety to the men in the family,” she said sharply, her eyes flashing. “’Tis always the way of the world. And what if the men fail?”
Ashley watched in some astonishment as his brother and his brother’s wife, the models of marital love and affection, proceeded to quarrel. Luke, his task completed, looked coolly at Anna.
“To my knowledge I have not failed you yet, madam,” he said.
“But once you needed my help,” she said. “Once I helped you kill a man who needed to be killed.”
Luke raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. “And so you did, madam,” he said.
“Then do not tell me that I have no further use in life than to comfort my sister and play with my children,” she said.
Luke had killed Anna’s kidnapper years ago, after Ashley went to India. He had not heard before now of Anna’s having had any part in that killing.
“I ask your pardon,” Luke said. “If you wish to continue this difference of opinion, Anna, I shall be at your service later in the privacy of our own rooms.”
She flushed, opened her mouth, and closed it again.
