Chapter 91

She held out her hand-difficult when she thought of the times he'd touched it-but the last thing she wanted was him coming down here from the gallery afterward, especially if Gabe was here. "I want to thank you for all you've done for me. I want to thank you especially for not giving me away."
He drew his brows down as if her hand was going to leap off her wrist and snap his nose off. Gentlemen shook hands, didn't they?
He huffed out a breath. "I ...But you still have to win this damned thing."
Win this? Why wouldn't she? So much cheek. So little time left to say it in. She grasped his hand. "With your tuition, how can I possibly fail?"
"That's as may be."
As may be? And so was Gabe, floating into her vision. Only he wasn't "as may be," he was real, standing up there in the gallery, haloed by beige light. A place she didn't want him to be. Not if Stillmore was bent on joining him, which was why she shook his hand harder.
"I'm sure it is, Your Grace. Just as I am sure I will win this."
"So long as that is confidence, not pride."
"Confidence, not pride? As in, before a fall?" She shouldn't have said so, but Stillmore wouldn't let go of her hand. Was he so sorry to see her go he worked it up and down like a pump handle? Or furious the charade was over so he couldn't annoy Babs with her? Right under Gabe's nose too, when Gabe hadn't come here in days. When she still hadn't spoken to him about the wedding.
"I mean ... I'm not going to fight about this, Your Grace. Please ...Not today."
"Of ... of course."
"But please, give me back my hand."
"You ... you will win, you know that?"
"My hand ... "
"Whatever I might have said. Do you understand?" His eyes gleamed like liquid black silver. "Your talent is wild and profound. It is also prodigious. And ... and ... well, it, I mean, you, are deserving."
When he'd accused her of cheating and challenged her to a duel? What was happening here? Her mind both stuttered and clasped. And came up empty. Her body felt ridiculously drawn, which was all the more reason to keep this civil and on an even footing.
"Thank you, Your Grace. Such words of kindness from you are most, if not highly, unexpected. Now if you don't mind, I think the tournament is about to start. You did say the gallery?"
"Ah!" the Duke of Brampton interrupted. ThankGod. And for Stillmore's even crisper releasing of her hand. "There you are, my boy. Isn't this a special day for you? Especially after that bumpy beginning? Well, this way, this way. I'm about to make the announcement, but you may as well get on the dais, the duke is about somewhere. Then we can begin."
She curved her lips. "Of course, Your Grace. I'll just ... I'll just step up here and well ... take my seat."
It was unfortunate that in doing so, she nearly fell up the step she failed to see. Frankly, the spectacles had never been anything less than a hindrance, but she'd kept wearing them to make herself seem more manly. So she couldn't very well remove them now.
She gripped the rope to keep from falling, even if the rope all but catapulted her headfirst into the dais. It was, after all, merely a question of pulling herself up, even if the next problem struck her. How did she get over the blasted rope? She could. Just not with these nervous currents running through her body, maiming her ability to move and think.
"Let me, my boy." The rope slithered to the floor as the duke unhooked it from the post. "We don't have our competitors vaulting into the ring. Here's His Grace, the Duke of Baxby, now. We'll start on the hour."
She eased into the ornate spindle chair. Dear God, this was like the duel, but worse.
Baxby now strode through the crowd. She'd seen him often enough to know it was him, just never up close. Her first thought was bland, certainly compared to the earl. Blue eyes, ginger-blond hair, a hint of arrogance about the lips, but nothing to really engender Stillmore's loathing of him. Or to explain that woman's attraction to him. Perhaps he had the temperament of an angel. It would not be hard to compete that way, especially when compared to Stillmore. And then there was no previous wife. No child he'd as good as disowned.
Brampton's voice boomed like cannon fire through the introductions and silence fell. At least it might have fallen were it not for Baxby's immediate moving of his knight before she'd caught her breath, setting off murmurs that rippled like wildfire around those closest to the dais. An illegal move, in that the game had not been officially declared. Still, it was nothing she could not deal with, despite Baxby's self-satisfied beat that smirk. What had she thought about him possibly being nice? Were all these chess playing men swines?
"Hang it all," the earl might as well have been at her elbow, hissing "no, no, no, you stupid ass," as she shoved her own knight forward. She'd promised herself that within the first five minutes she would win first blood. She had it in three. She set the piece to the side, then eased her prickling palm down over the corded fabric of Gabe's breeches.
Second blood was hers too. Baxby would know she could be formidable. Ten thousand pounds. All the carrot she needed. The future beckoned.
She only wished she wasn't so aware of the earl's dark presence looming suddenly over the gallery rail like a cloud, just when every piece in her camp should be defended too.
Still, she was miles from losing this. The grandfather clock ticking in its long walnut case, there in the corner, said ten thirty. Baxby was good. But so was she. Of course, she didn't want to be too confident, but she reckoned the way this was already going, that by noon, one o'clock at the latest, the ten thousand would be hers. It was all a question of one thing. Focus. Focus.
She offered her queen. Eleven o'clock? She might as well. It was the strategy she'd planned on adopting, no doubt leading to tutting and blowing on Stillmore's part because it wasn't a move he'd taught her. Baxby fell for it though.
Stillmore. There he was in her head again. But that was all right. She meant Baxby to have the queen because when this was done, she'd have every one of his pieces surrounded. When Stillmore saw that, he'd button his parrot beak. That sensuous mouth he'd kissed her with. That ...Damn it all to hell, Baxby had just taken her bishop while she thought of it. Focus.
Her gaze drifted upward. What the blazes was it doing that for? Clinging to his dark tousled hair, to his cerise cravat, to his eyes like stars in the gallery above. Like stars? Was she gallopingly insane? Her hands trembled. She fought to stop them, fought not to make some stupid move, not to think she would never see him again. This was the end. Unless ... unless, of course, she offered to continue accompanying him?
Accompanying him? Gabe would love that. She dragged her gaze back.
Starkadder and his bloody awful smoking jacket he always went crazy about when she singed it with the hot iron, what the blazes was Baxby's knight doing on that square? Had it somehow grown legs and galloped over the board? Or, he'd cheated. With all these people about? My God. Had some people no shame?
No wonder Stillmore knitted his brow. Knitted it so that she swore thunder clapped. She really must concentrate and save this. She had the board. She had the game right there in her hand. In fact, surprise surged like a wave at how right there it all was. So right there, she had to refrain from leaping up and shrieking yes. It just required one more move. As she darted her gaze across the board, her throat dried as if her veins had burned away. The sheer perfection of knowing every square was covered, that nothing could go wrong-no matter which way she looked at it-was almost too much for one woman to bear. And she was just a woman. A humble little woman, here in a world inhabited by men, whose disposal she had long been at, except for dear Papa's. Well, no more. Oh, her star was bright, wasn't it? That shiny one she'd been born beneath she'd not allowed to twinkle lately.
She reached across the board, grasped her knight, felt the ivory cool against her fingertips.
Ten thousand pounds.
There was just no doubt about it.
She parted her lips, firmed them in a smile, and said, "Checkmate."
Baxby reached across the board, his own lips creasing. "No, I think you'll find this is."
He couldn't.
He couldn't have the game. But neither did she.
What she had-all she had-was one thing. The clawing knowledge cinching her scalp, forcing tears from her pores, braying, killing, eating at the aura around her, making ash of all her dreams, that this was something she couldn't save. For perhaps the first time in her life, with the exception of the day Papa died.
She had just lost ten thousand pounds.