It kicked hard, and her hand would have shot upwards if he hadn’t instantly closed his on hers.

He knew it would kick. The recoil could take the sturdiest dragoon by surprise first time, which was why his right hand had guided hers ever so gently into the aim, and his left had hovered ready to grasp her shoulder to steady her.

No man had ever held her so – except of course her father (but that was different) – and she thought she coloured a little with the intimacy. Perhaps it didn’t show; perhaps, anyway, it was just the heat and the pistol’s loud crack that made her redden – if redden she did. She certainly hoped she didn’t; she’d no wish to discomfit Serjeant Acton, so fine a man said her father (said everyone): ‘ein treue husar’. And so he was, she’d decided – all that a serjeant of dragoons should look like (and be).

‘A hit, Serjeant Acton?’

‘A hit, Miss Hervey. High and to the right.’

‘Oh.’

‘It would have stopped the man,’ said Acton encouragingly, if not altogether certain. ‘Not that it’ll ever be necessary, Miss, with a whole regiment of dragoons at your father’s command.’

Georgiana smiled obligingly, for she knew he meant well; but it hadn’t saved her mother. Although then, of course, her father had been a mere captain. Serjeant Armstrong – now the regimental serjeant-major – had been left for dead in his attempt to rescue her, but the Shawanese Indians had their method: they not so much left Henrietta for dead as to die, killing her horse and leaving her to the snow and ice. Georgiana had been in swaddling clothes still, with her wet-nurse, and her father had been with his dragoons and the Americans trying to intercept the migrating tribes; it had gone very ill with him indeed, his not being there when the Shawanese struck – Elizabeth, her aunt, had told her of his sending in his papers and the year and more trying to be a civilian – but it had been an age ago, now, and Kezia was his wife, and her stepmother; and she was come at last to live with them.

The straw round stood at just twelve paces, but Acton said that no dragoon under discipline would ever chance a shot at any greater range.

‘Again, then, Miss.’

Acton gave her a percussion cap. Georgiana cocked the pistol, placed the cap on the nipple and eased the hammer down slowly again. He took a cartridge from his pouch, bit off the ball and gave the case to her. (She’d done it once; there was no need to blacken her lips any more than they were.)

Georgiana took it confidently – they’d practised ‘dry’ for half an hour before Acton would trust her with real cartridge – poured powder down the barrel, let him drop in the ball, pushed in the cartridge paper for wadding and tamped it firm with the swivel rod.