On the bright side, unused rooms meant she wasn’t invading anyone’s privacy. Pat settled at the desk, spread out a cloth from the case, took out her tools and bottle of oil, and set to work. The smell of gun oil was a pungent comfort.

She wasn’t even sure why she wanted comfort. It had been a delightful morning, with a perfectly pleasant companion. No, it was more than that: Pat had made a new friend. Fen was a thoroughly nice girl, with reserves of character under the frivolous exterior, and it was marvellous that there was more to Jimmy’s future wife than had first met the eye. It was also marvellous that Fen had enjoyed their lesson. It bade well for her new life as a countryman’s wife, and perhaps Pat could come and visit them in future years when Fenella’s obvious love of colour and comfort, and her father’s money, had turned the great bare house into a fashionable destination, and she and Jimmy were terribly happy and probably had a brood of children—

Pat jammed the cleaning rod down the barrel slightly too hard, and swore under her breath at the impact.

That would be a happy outcome indeed, and she would not begrudge Jimmy his stroke of luck in securing himself such a wife. Her old friend deserved to be happy. He surely would be, if he appreciated his own good fortune and didn’t, for example, stay silent when his obnoxious brother-in-law abused his fiancée, or casually assume she must be as foolish or prettily helpless as she chose to seem.

Why did she choose to seem so?

Pat had no idea what was going on with whatever games they were all playing. She’d never been very good at allusive conversations; couldn’t really see the point, since it was a great deal easier if one said what one wanted, rather than expecting other people to guess. She hadn’t grown up in that sort of milieu: her brothers had been barely capable of hearing the plainest demands, let alone delicate hints. And she didn’t like the idea of suggesting and requesting and laying inviting openings for others to generously offer things, instead of just asking. It seemed a waste of time and, worse, supplicant, as though one were playing the beggar maid to King Cophetua.

Why would Fen wheedle her future husband with coy words and self-deprecation? Surely that couldn’t be what Jimmy wanted? Then again, Fen had been proposed to on at least three occasions, whereas Pat had never once walked out with a young man, or even held hands with a boy. She had received a proposal, technically—a request relayed by a hysterically laughing Jonty from a fifty-year-old widowed neighbour who admired her housekeeping—but she was fairly sure that didn’t qualify her to judge. Perhaps Fen knew what men liked, although Jimmy hardly seemed enthusiastic.