“She Can’t Understand Us,” They Laughed — Then the Duke’s Bride Silenced Them in Fluent Italian
Chapter 6
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Thomasina reached across the board, past his hands, and picked up his queen. She lifted it between two fingers—the tall, black ivory piece with its little crown—and she held it there in the candlelight. She did not smile. She did not say a word. She only held it up so that the whole room could see what was in her hand.Behind her, Count Belsky leaned down over her shoulder, his hands on the back of her chair, his white head bent close, his old eyes wide with astonishment. At the corner of the table, Miss Farquhar pressed her fan against her mouth; above the painted ivory, her blue eyes had gone perfectly round.Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. Somewhere in the house, a door closed, and every person in the card room heard it.The Duke sat back in his chair. His jaw was tight, and he was not looking at her; he was looking at the board, at the place where his queen had stood, as though he could not understand how the square had come to be empty.Thomasina set the black queen down beside the board, next to the pawn he had taken from her at the start."Your move, Your Grace," she said.He played on. That was the one thing everyone would say for him afterward, even the people who had lost money on the bet: he did not resign, and he did not sulk. He fought on with his castles and his last knight—grim, and stubborn, and very quick—for what felt to her like an hour, and was not a quarter of one.It did not matter. She had his queen, and she had the board, and she walked him down it square by square. Her castles came together along his back rank; her bishop closed the long diagonal—the same diagonal his queen had used to come for her."Check," said Thomasina quietly.He moved his king."Check."He moved it again, into the corner behind his own pawns.She slid her castle to the end of the row, set it down, and took her hand away."Checkmate, Your Grace."The clock on the mantel ticked. The candles hissed. The Duke looked at his king, boxed in the corner by his own pawns and her castle, with nowhere in the world to go. Then he reached out with one big, scarred hand and laid the king down on its side.The room broke open. Everyone turned to everyone else. A gentleman on a chair at the back shouted, "By God, she's done it!" before he remembered where he was. The ladies whispered behind their gloves. The whist players who had bet against her began to argue with the whist players who had not.Count Belsky came around the side of the table. In front of everyone, he took Thomasina's inky hand in both of his, and he bowed over it low—the deep bow of a man at court, the way he might have bowed to an empress.