“Aye,” Captain Ross added. “’Tis how Balfour and I learned to shoot, too.”
“Truly?” Miss Crowley turned to Captain Balfour, her expression eager.
Honestly.
Isla barely suppressed a sigh.
Captain Balfour nodded. “My elder brother, Lord Cairnfell, is a wee bit of a crack shot himself. He and I would attempt to outshoot one another as lads. It’s why I was asked to join the 95th regiment so quickly. I already had years of experience shooting at targets.”
The sparse flash of information landed with a whip-likethwackacross Isla’s psyche.
Callum? Her Tavish had learned to shoot because of Callum? And more to the point, Tavish had been a crack shot back then . . . even as she married him. Why hadn’t he ever mentioned it?
It seemed like a fairly critical bit of information for a wife to know about her own husband. Not something she learned seven years on:Oh, by the way, darling, I am actually one of the most celebrated sharpshooters inHis Majesty’s army. My marksmanship is talked about in hushed tones and circulated through admirers as if I am a demigod.
A terrible sort of tremor swept through her.
Here she was, upset that her Tavish had died in every real sense; but instead, she was quickly realizing that she had perhaps never known him. That even the boy she had loved had been a figment of her imagination. Or, at the very least, an incomplete picture.
The longer she was here—observing him around people and friends, in settings they had never experienced together—the more she realized how narrow her vision of him had been. How much of himself he had kept from her.
Was he thinking the same—that he had only known the smallest part of her?
Of a surety, her years at Malton Hill had changed her, just as the military had changed Captain Balfour. They had both lived nearly a full tenth of a lifetime without the other.
No wonder he felt like a stranger.
“Come along then.” Colonel Archer rallied the gentlemen. “Let us bring this to a close and permit Balfour to impress us all.”
Captain Balfour chuckled and walked on.
Gray scowled.
Colonel Archer noticed.
“Cheer up, Grayburn.” He clapped Gray on the back as they strolled up the field, words carrying back to Isla. “You are not the first man to assume Balfour’s self-deprecating manner means he doesn’t know his way around a rifle. Your families may not be particularly friendly, but even you must admit Balfour is a damn fine shot.”
Isla couldn’t hear her brother’s reply, but she supposed it was some variation of the clichéd, “Over my dead body.”
The ladies turned back to the bridge, hurrying up the stairs.
Shooting from the two-hundred-yard point went as Colonel Archer predicted.
Both Gray and Lord Milmouth missed the target entirely.
Colonel Archer landed his bullet inside the black, to much jubilation from the ladies.
Captain Ross hit the edge of the black.
Captain Balfour did his signature lift-aim-fire and . . .
. . . hit the target dead center.
They moved to the final marker, two hundred and fifty yards.
The last scenario played out similarly—Gray and Lord Milmouth missed the target. Colonel Archer and Captain Ross both landed shots outside the black circle.
Only Captain Balfour remained steady. Lift, aim, fire—and a hole bloomed dead center.
