“I told them to get out, and they wouldn’t go.” That single sentence covered an exchange that couldn’t have lasted much more than a minute, but in which time had seemed as slow as treacle. She still dreamed of it, very occasionally. “They laughed at me, and one of them made some rather unpleasant threats. So I shot him.”

“You—”

“In the shoulder,” Pat clarified. “And then Father wheeled himself out in his bath chair with the shotgun across his lap, and they left in a hurry. But you may imagine that I was glad to have the means to defend myself.”

Fen’s mouth was an O. “Good heavens. Is that the sort of adventure one might expect in an isolated house? Daddy has taken a place in King’s Norton now, outside Birmingham, but I’ve always lived in Birmingham or London.”

“Oh, goodness, no.” Pat felt a stab of guilt for raising the prospect. “I shouldn’t think you’d have any trouble up here. It’s as well to know how to defend oneself, all the same. Better to have the ability and not need it than need it and not have it.”

“Yes, I suppose so. Do you know, nobody has ever before suggested that I might defend myself, rather than having someone do it for me.”

“I dare say it depends a great deal on your upbringing,” Pat said. “My father found it easiest to behave as though he had five sons. I think he sometimes forgot he didn’t.”

“Mine does try to remember he has a daughter.” Miss Carruth gave a bright smile. “Very well, then, a revolver it shall be. They do ones for ladies, don’t they?”

“They do.” Pat opened the small walnut-wood case and showed Miss Carruth. “This is a Harrington top-break revolver.”

Miss Carruth took the proffered weapon with extreme reluctance. “Will it go off?”

“It’s not loaded. We never leave guns loaded. Nothing bad will happen.”

“The handle is very pretty.” Miss Carruth turned the gun cautiously. “Mother of pearl. Ooh, it says PM. That’s you. How nice.”

“My brothers had it done for my twenty-first birthday.”

“That’s very... I suppose that was what you wanted? A monogrammed gun?”

“I’d given up hoping for ear-rings by then.” It was a joke, but Miss Carruth’s brows twitched as though she wasn’t happy with what she’d heard. “It’s a lovely piece,” Pat added, feeling as though she should defend the gift. “Handles beautifully, light, with a nice sensitive trigger. Let me show you.”

She loaded the gun under Miss Carruth’s alarmed eye, took a few steps away—she was merely demonstrating the operation, certainly not trying to impress anyone with her skills—and fired. Miss Carruth, inevitably, jumped and shrieked as the tin span off the post.