Their feet crunched on the path, with its coating of ancient brown needles. The bracken rustled in the breeze. Woods were noisy places, Will thought, noisy enough that you might think someone else was making their way through it behind them.

The thought wasn’t welcome, and he wasn’t sure where it had come from, except he’d been thinking too much about the damn war over the last few days. It was stupid: they were in the Marquess of Flitby’s private grounds, not a Flanders forest that hadn’t yet been turned into a charred graveyard. He looked around all the same. There was nobody in sight.

“All right?”

“Thought I heard something.”

Kim glanced around and shrugged. He was doubtless right to: they could see a fair way back along the path. It was conceivable some nosey parker was lurking behind a tree and Will had a sudden urge to retrace his steps, but he also didn’t want to ruin the mood of the morning. He’d just keep an ear out.

“My imagination,” he said.

“I’m sure you have better things to do with that.”

Will definitely did. “Here, listen. About last night. Is it uncomfortable and you just get used to that, or does it get better?”

“I think that depends,” Kim said. “If you’re asking whether you’d have had a better time if you hadn’t weighted the experience with wholly unnecessary emotional significance, the answer is: probably.”

Will made an offensive gesture, mostly for form’s sake. “Could we try again sometime? Give it a fair go?”

“We can do exactly as you’d like, my love, whenever you please. I’m at your service.”

He said it so casually. No complaining how Will had come close to ruining the night; no giving him a hard time for timidity or indecision. For someone who’d made Will’s life so difficult on so many occasions, he had a hell of a way of making things easy.

“He’s not so good in a crowd, but when you get him alone,” Will sang quietly.

“Well, I’ve got you alone,” Kim said, and a gunshot rang out from the trees.

Will’s body hit the earth without intervention from his brain. Kim was still on his damn fool feet. “Get down!” Will snarled.

“It was a stick—”

There was another shot. Kim jolted, made an odd noise, and put his hand to his arm. Will came up from the ground with all the speed and strength he had while keeping low, and shoved him sideways, off the path and into the trees. Another bullet zipped by them and there was a puff of splinters. He pushed Kim forward and down, hard, and rolled the other way to scramble behind a fallen trunk.

No more shots. He edged his way on his elbows to the end of the tree trunk and cautiously peered out.