As a Dare, They Sat the Poor Companion at the Duke's Chessboard — Then She Took His Queen
Chapter 20
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Her eyes filled. She pressed her inky fingers against them the way she had in the cold room under the slates. "You will be very tired of losing," she said."Never. I have had ten years of winning; it was the loneliest thing I ever did.""Then yes," said Thomasina. "Yes, Archibald."He leaned across the little table, past the black queen, took her face in his rough hands, and kissed her. She kissed him back, and tasted snow, and bread, and brandy—and for the first time since her father died, she was warm all the way through.By the spring, the story of the dare had gone all round London, the way such stories do. In every telling, the joke was on Miss Farquhar—the lady who had wagered her pearls that a companion would cry, and had to hand the bracelet over to a gentleman who kept it on his watch chain for years. She was not asked to Strickland Park again.Mrs. Strickland found that season that no lady of her acquaintance would sit down at her card tables, and that the Russian ambassador was never at home when she called. Her next three companions each left her before the quarter was out.Count Belsky got his game: he came to Eisgarth the next winter on purpose through the snow. He played the new Duchess for three nights running in the library, with the fire roaring and the Duke sitting by, pretending to read. She beat him twice."Madame," said the old Count on the second night, laying down his king. "You are a thief. You have robbed an old man of his sleep.""Then you must stay another night, Count, and win it back."On the third night, he beat her, and was so delighted that he danced a few steps of a Russian dance on the hearthrug—sixty years old, in his green coat and his silver star."You let him win," said the Duke when the old man had gone up to bed."I never throw a game," said his wife. "Not for money, and not for kindness. He beat me fairly." She smiled. "You may check the position if you like."Gallagher kept the white pawn she had given away that night: he had picked it up from the card room floor the morning after, and nobody ever got it back from him.And every winter evening at Eisgarth, there was a chessboard by the library fire, with a companion's chair at one corner and a duke's chair at the other. He would sit down across from her and say, "Twelve moves. Somebody time it."And the Duchess would laugh, give away a pawn on her fourth move, reach across the board past his rough, scarred hands, and take his queen.