"Who taught you to shoot?" he asked when she was standing beside him. "Our coachman." "Better the coachman than your brother," Ian mocked, handing her the loaded gun. "The target's that bare twig over there--the one with the leaf hanging off the middle of it." Elizabeth flinched at his sarcastic reference to his duel with Robert. "I'm truly sorry about that duel," she said, then she concentrated all her attention for the moment on the small twig. Propping his shoulder against the tree trunk, Ian watched with amusement as she grasped the heavy gun in both her hands and raised it, biting her lip in concentration. "Your brother was a very poor shot," he remarked. She fired, nicking the leaf at its stem. "I'm not," she said with a jaunty sidewise smile. And then, because the duel was finally out in the open and he seemed to want to joke about it, she tried to follow suit: "If I'd been there, I daresay I would have--" His brows lifted. "Waited for the call to fire, I hope?"