Page 3 of The Swindler’s Daughter

I pressed my lips, hating these little tests. He claimed it was to measure my progress, but that was a lie.

He stepped up beside me, his own bow in hand. “Ready?”

I nodded.

“Three. Two. One. Draw.”

We both drew, nocked, pulled back, and shot. He was twice as fast as I was. I sighed. “Laws,” I cursed under my breath. Even out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Rowan was grinning.

The reason for these tests was so that he could show off.

“You’re getting faster,” he commented.

“But not fast enough?” I asked, anticipating criticism.

He shrugged. “I grew up with a bow in my hand. If a few months of practice could put you on pace with me, that would be a sad assessment of my skills.”

I frowned. That observation sounded strangely logical and lacked his usual arrogance.

“What do you mean to do with these skills anyway?” he asked as he rolled another arrow between his thumb and fingers.

I shrugged.

“Will you join the competitions like Emeline?”

“I doubt it,” I said as I studied the spot where my arrow had sunk into the target. It was on the very edge, barely hanging on. At this point, I could manage a bit of speed or a bit of accuracy, but not both. “I’m more interested in having the skills than in showing them off.”

“You think Emeline is a show-off?”

I turned to look at him. “That is not what I said,” I corrected, worried that he would go off and start a rumor that I was insulting my brother’s wife behind her back. I loved Emeline.

He smiled. “I was kidding.”

“Well, please don’t. I like Emeline very much and would hate for her to hear otherwise.”

He gave a single nod. “Understood. Precision this time. Ready?”

I fumbled to draw an arrow from my quiver and ended up missing the target entirely.

His cheeky grin made me glower. He truly was arrogant.

Even so, he was a good teacher when he wanted to be. Patient, precise, willing to explain then demonstrate, then explain again if necessary. He seemed genuinely happy to teach me and never appeared annoyed or inconvenienced by my questions.

Plus, he was incredibly skilled. I suppose growing up as the gamekeeper’s son had a hand in that, but it was obvious that not only did he enjoy shooting, he also put a lot of time into honing his skills.

When our time was up, he set his bow aside and held his hand out toward me.

My mind went blank. Did he want me to place my hand in his? A flush rushed to my cheeks.

Then he spoke. “The quiver,” he said, nodding toward my shoulder.

I winced, giving myself a swift internal reprimand for thinking that Rowan would do anything so romantic as wishing to take my hand. Laws, I wished I could control the way I responded to him. I took the quiver from where it hung at my back and handed it over.

When I’d purchased my own bow, I’d only had enough money for a handful of arrows to practice with, and Rowan had been kind enough to offer his own for these practice sessions. He made his own arrows and thus had a plethora of them.

“’Til next time,” he said with a cocky turn of his mouth, then he slung the two quivers over one shoulder and started toward his cottage, cutting through the herb garden that he maintained. Rowan would no doubt take over for his father as Sir James Sutton’s gamekeeper one day, but his principal duties for now were growing and tending to the herbs that were gathered and used for healing at the manor house.

Once I’d pried my eyes away from his swaggering retreat, I took up my own bow and walked in the direction of the manor. The Lockley cottage was in the woods that separated Sutton land from the neighboring estate of Bridgefield.