Free The Revenge of Lord Eberlin by Julia London Page B

alarmed.
    “Can you shoot?”
    “Shoot?” He seemed puzzled by the question, but nodded. “Aye, mu’um.”
    “Splendid. You and Louis shall meet me at the stables with guns and any men who can be spared,” she said as she strode from the room. “We are going to put and end to some poaching!”
    A quarter of an hour later she marched across the lawn to the stables, dressed in a riding habit. Preston, Louis, and a stable boy were present, busily saddling horses. It was not precisely the army Lily had hoped for, but it would have to do. She was not going to allow Tobin to poach her grouse.
    She picked up a flintlock pistol from a table where the guns had been laid and held it up, giving it a look.
    “Beg your pardon, mu’um, but do you know how to shoot?” Louis asked her.
    “No.”
    “May I?” he asked, holding his hand out for the gun. Lily obliged him, and Louis emptied the gun of any lead. At Lily’s look of surprise, he said, “Most times, showing is enough. Any shooting needs to be done, I’ll do it, milady.” He handed her the gun.
    Armed with a useless gun, Lily and her little army rode west into the forest, following the sound of the shots they’d heard fired. When they reached the top of the path where the forest broke, they paused to listen. The distant sound of voices reached them. “To the right,” Preston said.
    They picked their way through a thick copse oftrees, and as they approached a clearing, they could see the men gathered in the center, one of them holding up a dead grouse.
    And there, sitting high on a big gray horse, was Tobin.
    Lily’s anger soared. She took her empty pistol in hand and spurred her horse hard, sending it careening down the path into the clearing.
    Hearing the commotion as Lily broke the tree line, her men behind her, the four poachers wheeled their mounts about. Lily reined up hard and leveled her pistol at Tobin’s chest.
    “Bloody hell,” one of his friends said.
    Tobin looked surprised, but almost amused. His eyes shone with what almost looked like pleasure. And just like that, all of Lily’s bravado began to leak out of her. Pick yourself up, she heard her aunt Lenore say, and she lifted her chin, held her gun in two hands to keep from shaking, and said, “Put your hands in the air.”
    Tobin glanced over his shoulder at his companions, then turned back to Lily with a grin. “Is that gun primed to shoot?”
    “Do you really care to find out? Please put your hands in the air.”
    Tobin chuckled—until Preston cocked his gun and pointed at him. “Kindly do as the lady asks, milord.”
    Still chuckling, Tobin lifted his hands. “Gentlemen,” he said casually, his gaze unflinchingly on Lily’s face, “you have before you the Lady Ashwood.”
    Lily recognized Mr. Sibley and the dark-headed, handsome fellow with the amused smile who had witnessed Tobin’s impossible offer last night. She did not know the large, beefy gentleman, nor did she wish to.
    “A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” the dark-haired man said in a Scots accent and with a smile. Mr. Sibley nodded curtly but eyed her as if he were facing her in mortal combat. The other gentleman looked entirely disinterested.
    “Now that we have dispensed with the niceties, perhaps you might explain why you have brought your guns,” Tobin suggested.
    “Well, sir, I hope you are not very disappointed with your efforts at poaching, as the grouse at Ashwood are rather thin this year.”
    Tobin laughed. “You may put your gun down, madam. We are not poaching your grouse.”
    “Then I suppose that is a fox I see your friend holding?”
    Tobin’s mouth spread into a grin of great amusement, the bloody rooster. “Please do put down your gun, Lady Ashwood, before you harm yourself or someone else. We will leave the grouse to you and ride on.”
    “I, for one, could eat a full grouse, feathers and all,” the large, disinterested man said.
    If Tobin thought he would dismiss her, he was entirely