The Duchess War

She shook her head.

“Besides, if my mother had paid you to stop me, you would have used my letter right away. You wouldn’t have waited. And how would she have even known what I was doing? That you were the one person who might find out about it? The story doesn’t hold together, Minnie.” He glanced over at her. “I have never been so thankful to realize that I have been lied to.”

Her throat hurt. All that effort to try to push him away—and still he wouldn’t go.

“I didn’t listen to what you were telling me.” He looked at her. “I didn’t listen to what you weren’t telling me. Everything I heard was all about me. I heard that you didn’t want me. That you couldn’t care for me. I heard that you were anxious about attention, but I didn’t listen.” He steepled his fingers. “So let me tell you what I should have heard. Your father was one of the world’s foremost chess—”

Minnie jumped out of her seat. “You know.” Her heart was pounding in great, unforgiving thumps. Her breath came in ever-smaller gasps of air. The air around her seemed to shimmer. But of course he knew. She’d told him her name. Everything beyond that was a matter of research. She took one wild step backward and tripped on her chair.

But before she could fall in a bruising heap against the bookcase, Robert stepped forward and caught her. His arms were solid and warm about her. “Shh,” he breathed. “It’s just me. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m never going to hurt you, Minnie.”

She looked up into his eyes. Her pulse was racing, but there was no crowd nearby, no shouting.

It was just him.

This time, when he sat, he pulled her on top of him. They fit against one another like two pieces of a puzzle, her head falling automatically to his shoulder, his hand going to her hair. She shouldn’t be leaning against him. This shouldn’t be happening. It had broken her heart to push him away once; how could she do it again?

“Let’s try this again,” he said softly, clasping his hands around her. “I’ve found out only the bare details. Your father was one of the world’s foremost chess players. What happened then?”

Minnie’s stomach was still fluttering. But his arms were around her—and he knew. He knew, and he wasn’t throwing things at her. He waited patiently for her to be ready.

Safe was the last thing she felt when she had to think of those dark times—but at least for the moment, she didn’t feel like vomiting.

She took a deep breath. “My father was actually a baronet’s fifth son. High standing—although not by your standards—but utterly impoverished. He made his way in the world by trading on his skill at chess. He was gregarious, open, and everyone liked him. His personal fortune was almost nonexistent, but he was so likable that it never mattered. He always had an invitation to stay somewhere.”

Sometimes they had been invitations in England, other times offers to visit Europe, to spend months with men who wanted to study chess with a bright, taking young man. Once, on one of those sea voyages she’d taken with him, a sailor had told her to look at the coast when she felt seasick, and the nausea would go away. Now, she watched the bookcase and was surprised to find that her world steadied.

“My parents were married only a few years before my mother died in childbirth. I don’t remember much before the age of five, except for my father’s visits. My first memories are of him teaching me to play chess. I knew how pieces moved before I knew the alphabet. I looked forward to his visits above all else. And one day, when I was very, very young, he asked me if I wanted to go with him the next time he went abroad.”

Minnie let out a shaky breath. Robert didn’t say anything. He just pulled her closer.

“Of course, a young girl couldn’t travel the Continent with only her father—not and stay with the sorts of people we were staying with. I would have needed a nurse, a governess, and by that time finances were too tight to allow such a thing. It was a very simple thing, my father said. He would introduce me as Maximilian Lane, his son. He asked me if I would mind.” She shut her eyes. “I was five. I didn’t know what to think. He said it would be great fun, and I agreed.”

The fluttering in her belly had begun to calm.

“I don’t think I understood, in those early years, what a curiosity I was. I remember people posing me chess problems. Sometimes I solved them. Sometimes I didn’t.” She shrugged. “As I grew older, I solved more of them.”

“The one account I read of Maximilian Lane,” Robert put in, “said he was quiet and solemn and quite, quite brilliant. You’d play with adults who had years of experience and beat them handily—and then, when they praised you for it, you’d put the board back fifteen moves and explain, just as earnestly, what they should have done to win.”

“Yes,” Minnie breathed, shutting her eyes. “I remember that. Winning all the time—it had the most extraordinary effect on me. I thought I would always win. I didn’t understand the concept of risk.”

She hadn’t understood the concept of loss, either.

“The rest, I’ve had to guess at after the fact. By the time I was twelve, my father was deeply in debt. He made promises to people, claimed that he had made fabulous investments in Russian industry. To bolster those claims and attract further investors, he paid out results from his own limited funds. Then he paid the next round of investors with funds gleaned from his newest dupes. But there were no investments, and unless he found some money quickly, he would have been found out.”

Minnie looked down. She’d only known back then that he became more erratic—wildly happy one moment, enraged the next.

“I wasn’t invited to the first international chess tournament in London. My father was. A few days before, however, he claimed to have taken suddenly ill and offered me up to take his place. Nobody objected.”

She couldn’t help it. Little tremors were going through her body.

“He needed a great deal of money, and the odds were favoring me. So he had one of his friends bet every penny he owned against me. Then he ordered me to throw the game.”

He hadn’t told her why. They’d shouted at one another that day.

“Lanes can do anything,” she’d thrown in his face. He’d looked at her so strangely when she’d said that. It wasn’t until later that Minnie realized that he had never expected her to use his own words to defy him.