As a Dare, They Sat the Poor Companion at the Duke's Chessboard — Then She Took His Queen
Chapter 2
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"Since before I could read, Your Grace.""And who taught you to throw away pawns?""My father's officers.""Then your father's officers were fools."A few people laughed. Miss Farquhar laughed loudest.Thomasina moved her queen one square softly and did not answer. Her fingers left the piece, and she saw what he saw: there was ink on them—dark violet ink dried into the creases of her first and second fingers, the kind that never quite scrubbed out. She had written a letter three nights ago by a stub of candle to a man she had never met.She curled her fingers into her palm. In the pocket of her gown, against her hip, lay the small folding chessboard that had been her father's. It was worn smooth at the corners, and the little pegged pieces rattled when she walked. She could feel its edge through the gray stuff of her skirt. It steadied her, the way a hand on the shoulder steadies a person in a crowd.Behind the Duke's chair, against the wall, stood a broad, grizzled man in a plain dark coat. He was not a guest. He held the Duke's cane and gloves, and his face was brick-red and battered, and one of his ears had lost its top. He had been a sergeant once in the same war as his master. Everyone called him Gallagher, and nobody at the party had spoken a word to him all night.Gallagher had been watching the game from the start because he had nothing else to watch. At her sixth move, he stopped chewing the inside of his cheek. At her seventh, he leaned down over the Duke's shoulder and said very low, in a Dublin voice rough as gravel, "Mind yourself, sir.""Stand back, Sergeant.""She's laid something for you on the queen's side. I can't see what it is, but I can smell it.""I said stand back."Gallagher straightened, but he did not stand back very far, and his eyes stayed on the companion's hands.Thomasina heard every word. Her heart gave one hard knock against her ribs. So, there was one person in this room who could see.Miss Farquhar came and stood at the corner of the table, close enough that her silk brushed Thomasina's arm. She was twenty-four, golden-haired, the prettiest woman in the house, and she knew it. She opened her fan of painted ivory and let the edge of it rest on the table right against the squares, so that its shadow fell across the white pieces."Do hurry, Miss Carew," she said. "The clock is so patient, and we are not."Thomasina reached around the fan and moved her bishop."Oh," said Miss Farquhar. "She moves them about so bravely, like a little girl playing house.""Take your fan off the board, madam," said a deep, accented voice.Miss Farquhar turned. Count Belsky had left his table. He stood behind the companion's chair—sixty years old and straight as a pike, his white hair brushed back from a hard-lined face, a silver star on his breast.