Unclaimed (Turner, #2)

And she flinched when men laid hands on her. Of course she did. The most important man in her life had made her small.

“I chose to lose.” That hint of wariness had crept back into her face. “Perhaps you cannot understand what it is like, to be dependent on—on someone else. If I had not lost, there would have been endless rounds of sulking, culminating in…”

But she sighed and shook her head, before she could explain what the result of her competence would have been. And now he felt a flush himself—anger, perhaps, that she thought he might want such a thing from her. Fury, that she supposed he needed to win by artifice. Or maybe it was just desire, plain and simple.

The pair shooting in front of them—the hapless Tolliver and Miss Lewis—finished their round and marched on to the next target, and he and Mrs. Farleigh were left alone on the green. She started for the line where they were to shoot from.

“Mrs. Farleigh,” Mark called. She stopped and gave him her shoulder, not quite meeting his eyes. Still wary, and that made him angrier yet. “I want you to trounce me.”

Her head snapped up. “Pardon?”

“It is down to you and me. We are battling it out, to see who will be the king of the indifferent shots in this competition. Only one of us can prevail. I shall be shooting to win.” He really was angry, he realized—furious to imagine her spending her autumns deliberately hiding what she could do, hiding the extent of her ability from the man who should most have treasured it. It was as if she’d left a vast swath of her ability unclaimed, hidden behind a swirl of feminine smiles. He didn’t like the idea. He didn’t like it at all.

He raised his firearm and sighted at the target. He hated shooting. There were always too many things to remember—to compensate for the slight breeze, the distance, the kick of the weapon in his hand. Still, he juggled all those considerations in his mind and then fired; even twenty yards away, he could barely spot the single hole burnt in the paper. It was level with the bull’s eye, in that first ring. It was the best shot he’d made all day.

“Of course you’ll outdo me,” he told her.

She didn’t respond. Instead, she lifted her arm, steadily. Without seeming to make any calculations or even to take aim at all, she fired.

They strode forward as one, to mark their positions on the target. Mark had been inches from the bull’s eye. Mrs. Farleigh, however, struck it. Her bullet was not quite dead center; instead, the dark circle of her shot was at the very edge. If Mark had been angry before, he was furious now.

“Do you think you need to hold back because you’ll anger me?” His throat felt tight. “Do you think me so small and pitiful a creature that the sign of the slightest competence on your part will send me into a spiral of depression? You have it quite wrong. I know you can do better. I expect it of you.”

Her eyes widened.

“I meant it. I don’t just want you to win. I don’t want you to put on a showing barely more respectable than mine, to leave the outcome in doubt, and assuage my pride. My pride doesn’t need your cosseting. I want you to win.”

“I am winning.”

His memory matched up the precision of her shooting earlier in the day, and he gave her one scorching glance. “You can do better.”

Her lips thinned, and she turned from him, her shoulders rigid, and marched to the next target. He followed after her. She didn’t say a word in response, just lifted her chin, loaded her rifle and then fired in one smooth motion. He couldn’t see where her shot landed, but it must have been dead in the center, because she gave him a smoky, self-satisfied glance.

Mark fumbled with his weapon and then raised it. He wasn’t sure what precisely he was supposed to call this emotion that raged in him. He wasn’t calm; he could scarcely string one logical thought after another. He wasn’t sure how much higher to aim, how to judge the distance. Was the target on lower ground? He thought it might be. He felt like a pot of water, on the verge of a boil. He shook his head and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet barely winged the edge of the target.

Beside him, Mrs. Farleigh said nothing. Instead, they walked forward together, to examine her shot.

She’d placed hers dead in the center. Mark groped for words. Congratulations, under the circumstances, would have been a little too condescending. But to leave the accomplishment unacknowledged? That he couldn’t do.

She took the decision from him. She turned to him and raised one quizzical eyebrow. “You,” she said without a trace of emotion in her voice, “can do better.”

And on that pronouncement, she marched away from him, leaving him on the verge of spouting blasphemy.