It was a bloody shooting competition.
Clio yanked on Phoebe’s arm, pulling her back a few paces behind the duke as he took in the scene before them. There were perhaps half a dozen competitors stretched out over a series of targets. Perhaps a dozen more people were watching and offering commentary. Most were gentlemen, though one or two had wives or sisters on their arms.
“Seriously?” she demanded to Phoebe, who was looking insufferably pleased with herself. “You thought that what this situation needed was an audience? Andguns?”
Phoebe shrugged with far more nonchalance than the situation warranted.
“Sometimes men just need to—” She waved an absent hand. “—do man things.”
Clio gaped at her.
Phoebe remained unbothered.
“Also,” she admitted, “I just wanted to see what would happen.”
If Clio thought they were embroiled in a scandal now, she couldn’t wait to see what people said about her after shemurdered Phoebe.
The duke—either to his credit or as an irrefutable sign that he was touched in the head—paid no mind to the loaded and primed weapon in Aaron’s hand and approached the competition with as much assurance of his welcome as if he’d received an engraved invitation.
Several gentlemen gawped. Aaron just gave him a very dry look.
The duke arched an eyebrow.
“Men,” Phoebe sighed.
Clio approached before someone got shot.
There was no movement on anyone’s part toward the guns, however, merely some irksome masculine posturing.
Eventually, though, Aaron seemed to grow tired of this foolishness, not that he said anything to the duke. Instead, he turned to Clio—because, she thought privately, men were ridiculous and dramatic.
“It has been only a few days since the … incident,” he said, and she had to clench her hands into fists to stop herself from rolling her eyes at the meaningful pause in his words. It was a fair sign of how fearsome Aaron’s reputation as a soldier remained thatany uninvolved gentlemen hastily removed themselves from earshot. “And I have already noticed a notable decrease in the number of invitations we would normally receive at this point in the Season.”
If they had been in private, Clio would have made a quip about Aaron keeping his own social schedule. For now, she tried to convey her mockery with a look, not that her family had proven particularly susceptible to that.
“I’m sure that any talk will pass,” she said with an airiness that she didn’t feel.
“You can’t know that, Clio,” Aaron said forbiddingly.
Clio was unimpressed by her brother’s irritation; she knew him well enough to know that, when it came to Phoebe and her, any bluster was nothing more than noise.
But the duke did not seem to know that. And it was this that made him speak.
“Don’t talk to her that way,” he gritted out. He set his walking stick neatly aside against the table holding the weapons, then reached for one of the nearby guns and pointed it at a target. Clio supposed she ought to be pleased that he hadn’t aimed the thing at her brother.
Aaron raised his eyebrows. It was combative, but there was also a glint in his eye that said that he relished the buddingargument. You could take the man out of the war, but you couldn’t take the soldier out of the man.
And now there weregunsinvolved. God help them all.
“You presume to tell me,” he said, challenge thick in his tone, “how to speak to my own sister? On what grounds?”
The duke’s eyes narrowed. He weighed the pistol in his grip.
“You know what I’ve come to discuss, Redcliff,” he said, the words sharp as steel.
He pulled the trigger with a deafeningbang. In the distance, a hole appeared on the target. It wasn’t quite in the center, but it was impressively close for his first try with a new weapon.
Aaron inclined his head. An invitation for more.
