As a Dare, They Sat the Poor Companion at the Duke's Chessboard — Then She Took His Queen
Chapter 17
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Then the wool merchant, who played badly and loudly, and argued every move—which was exactly what she wanted, because a man who is arguing is not asleep.The coachman watched with his splinted wrist on his knee. The old woman in purple dozed, and Thomasina woke her gently and without mercy every time her chin went down."Tell me about your daughter's wedding," she said. "Tell me what she wore.""You are a tyrant, dear.""Yes. What did she wear?"The lamp burned lower. The cold came in anyway: through the floor that had been a wall, through the cushions in the window, up through the soles of their boots. Thomasina's own eyes kept closing. She dug her nails into her palm under the blanket until it hurt. Her feet had gone from pain to nothing, and she was afraid of the nothing.She thought very clearly that she might die here, and that nobody at Strickland Park would care, and that A would wait a month for his next move and then stop writing.She moved a pawn for the wool merchant and showed him why it was a mistake."Who taught you, miss?" said the clerk through chattering teeth. "To play like that?""My father. And some soldiers. And a man I have never met.""How can you learn from a man you never met?""By post," said Thomasina. "He sends me a move, and I send him one back. It takes a fortnight each way.""Who is he?"Her eyes went to the little pegs heaped in the purple lap. "He signs himself A," she said. "He is lonely, and he was a soldier, and he plays like a man charging a wall. And tonight, in a card room, I found out that he is a duke, and that he does not like to lose.""Then what will you do?""Nothing. I have been dismissed. He will get my last move, and he will wait for the next one, and it will not come."The soldier's wife reached over under the blanket, took her cold hand, and held it.Then, outside through the wind, she heard a man shouting. It was not the guard's voice; it was deeper, and it was shouting a word she did not at first understand, because nobody had called her by it in two years:"Carew! Thomasina Carew!"She was up the wheel and out of the door before any of them could stop her.He was standing in the snow below the coach with a lantern held high: a big, dark shape in a snow-coat, his hat gone, his black hair white with it. Behind him, a gray horse stood with its head down. There was nobody else; he had come alone the last mile."I met the guard on the road," he said. "He told me where you were. Gallagher has gone on with him to the inn for the wagon."She stared down at him. She could not make her mouth work."Are you hurt?" said the Duke.