As a Dare, They Sat the Poor Companion at the Duke's Chessboard — Then She Took His Queen
Chapter 19
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The Duke reached out and took the little black king from its hole between his big, scarred finger and thumb. He held it for a moment. Then he laid it down on its side in the middle of her pocket board. And he said it aloud, in front of the clerk and the soldier's wife, the merchant, the coachman, and the old lady in the purple bonnet:"I resign. T. Carew has beaten me in the post, and at the table, and on the heath in the snow. And I called it luck in front of a room full of fools. And I let you be put out into this. I was wrong. I was a coward, and I was wrong. And I am more sorry than I know how to say."The inside of the coach was perfectly silent."I did not ride out here to be forgiven," said the Duke. "I rode out because you are the only person alive who knows me, and I sent you away. I will not do it twice."The old lady sniffed loudly. "Well," she said, "I should hope not."The wagon came an hour before dawn with Gallagher on the box, two grown farmhands with shovels and lanterns, and a great heap of straw and sacking in the back. They got the coachman in first, and then the old lady, and then everyone else.Thomasina went last. The Duke lifted her down from the coach himself, set her in the straw, got in beside her, and put his greatcoat over both of them.Gallagher looked back from the box once, grinned, and said nothing at all.The inn beyond the heath was small, smoky, and full of steam. The landlady put the passengers by the kitchen fire and the coachman in the best bed, and gave everyone hot bread and milk. Nobody asked a single question about a duke sitting on a settle in the corner with the companion from the mail.The snow stopped at sunrise. The light came in pale and pink through the little window across the table where they sat.The Duke put his hand in his pocket, took something out, and set it on the scrubbed wood between them: it was the black queen from the card room."You took her from me once," he said. "I should like you to keep her. I should like you to keep the rest of the set, and the board, and the card room it stands in, and the house the card room stands in, and the man who lost to you in it."Thomasina looked at the queen. Then she looked at him. "Your Grace—""My name is Archibald. Nobody has used it in twenty years. Will you?""Archibald," she said. It sounded strange; it sounded right."I am asking you to marry me, Thomasina. Not because you saved my pride, which you did not, and not because you saved those people on the heath, which you did. I am asking because, for three winters, you were the only one I could talk to, and I want to go on talking to you for the rest of my life. I want to lose to you every winter by the fire. I want you to be my wife, and my duchess, and the best player at Eisgarth."