Had the Duke of Valkirk learned words like “bewitched” and “beautiful” and used them to seduce women? It seemed nearly impossible to imagine him in the throes of anything other than self-importance.
If she were being more truthful, it was also impossible to imagine him needing to try to seduce women. He was possessed of unfair charisma and the kind of body that, when considered apart from his odious personality, might tempt a woman to slide right underneath.
It shouldn’t matter to her, given all of her current concerns. But his instant judgment felt like an injustice layered upon an injustice, which was somehow, finally, an injustice too far.
But it was revelatory, too. It was useful to know that it took only one person to make her feel small, when she had tried so hard for so long to be seen. This would never do.
She would make him see her. And the best way to do that was to somehow best him in a way he couldn’t possibly ignore.
Chapter Four
“Brrr. Oh, goodness. Does anyone else feel a chill?” Miss Wylde murmured, with a little shudder, as the duke entered the sitting room after dinner the following day. “I aver the temperature just dropped five degrees.”
As barbs went, it was unsurprisingly unoriginal. Miss Mariana Wylde was no doubt accustomed to ceaseless doses of attention and would try any number of things to get it. He’d felt it, a very little. But she’d no hope of leaving a mark.
He settled in at the table just behind where Dot and Miss Wylde sat at the chessboard and laid out the things he’d brought down from his suite—a newspaper and foolscap, ink and pen. The room was unpretentious and comfortable, which also described his suite in the Annex, with its surprisingly excellent bed and the little flower in a vase on the mantel and another next to his bed.
The duke had no objection, really, to the boardinghouse rules requiring “familial gathering” in the sitting room. There were worse things than being surrounded by handsome, chattering, contented women who were unlikely to bother him overmuch; it was a bit like having a view of a garden out of the corner of his eye.
He liked having people about, even if he didn’t necessarily want to talk to them. Strangers were often too deferential or too fawning or too mutely rapt. His own tendency to abbreviation—some might call it abruptness—born of being accustomed to barking orders, and a sense that time and life were so precious one ought not spend them listening to nattering—didn’t help. He often felt a bit like his own statue in Hyde Park, at the center of everything and yet entirely removed, as though he existed now only to awe. The sort of thing parents would bring young children to gaze upon for educational purposes.
Dot glanced quizzically at the fire, which was leaping healthily, then back at Miss Wylde.
The room in fact was quite adequately warm and cozily lit with lamps and candles. “Would you like another shawl, Miss Wylde?”
“Oh, no, thank you. The chill seems to have passed us by for now,” she said easily.
He cast what was meant to be a swift, baleful look across at her, only to intercept her cool one. She demonstrated that he was not the only one who could lift a single brow. Hers were a shade darker than her hair, feathery mahogany arcs. The shape was echoed in the full curve of her lower lip. Hers was a symmetrical, unexceptional sort of prettiness.
He suspected her previous popularity was all due to trying very, very hard.
He wrote,
Dear Arthur,
He didn’t know what he wanted to say to his son yet. He’d genuinely thought starting the letter would help him understand how he wanted to finish it. He ought to have learned his lesson about that by now. He stared at it.
Dot liked to make little clopping sounds with her mouth when she moved the knight, as though he were galloping across the board. Also, because she claimed it helped her think.
A lot of clopping was going on now.
It seemed to be quite a long journey across the board.
He could and had slept through nearly everything, gunfire, drunken fistfights, lashing storms . . . but it seemed the clopping was the thing that would finally twang his nerves. Something about the utter pointlessness of it.
Hardy and Bolt had been spending the evenings attending to arrangements for a new warehouse as they expected their ship to reach port in little over a fortnight. Delacorte was engaged in a game on the other side of the room. Valkirk could not retreat to smoke just yet, per the rules.
“Why, good evening, sir!”
The knight had apparently finally arrived at its destination and was now being greeted by a pawn.
“Chess is typically a rather quiet game, isn’t it?” the duke said with the deceptive mildness that usually reduced ensigns to stammers.
“It was. It was a quiet game,” Delacorte concurred over his shoulder, somewhat sadly. It had ceased to be the game he recognized once he’d taught it to Dot, who had made what could only be described as embellishments.
He had joined Mrs. Pariseau, Mrs. Hardy, and Mrs. Durand in a game of Whist while Dot explained the intricacies of chess, as she understood them, because the strain of teaching Dot chess had finally shown Mr. Delacorte the boundaries of his goodwill.
Although he fully expected she would one day win a game.
“Oh look, Dot! What is the bishop getting up to with the queen?” Miss Wylde said. “The scandal of it all!”
They both giggled.
“What if the knight catches them at it? Oh ho!” Miss Wylde continued.
“I expect there will be a duel,” the duke drawled beneath his breath.
Mariana fixed him with a stare that he could feel.
He did not look up from his foolscap.
Dot propped her chin in her hand as she perused the chessboard. “Knights, queen, king, bishops . . . why are no pieces named for dukes?”
“It does seem an oversight,” Mariana mused. “I think because dukes would ruin the fun for all the other pieces. You see, dukes could only go in very straight, narrow lines, so they would disapprove greatly of the bishop for having the nerve to do anything so original as move diagonally.”
Dot laughed. “What else?”
“And then . . . the duke would be able to tell all the pieces on the board what to do, because only the duke would know, of course. And no one would ever win a game. Let alone enjoy one.”
“Cor! It’s a good thing dukes aren’t included with chess sets,” Dot said in all innocence.
“A good thing, indeed,” Mariana concurred.
“Oh my, it suddenly got colder in here, didn’t it, Dot? Did you feel a chill?”
Did his jaw set a little as he made his way to the table? Unless it was a trick of the light, she thought it had. Mariana allowed herself the tiniest surge of triumph.
The duke had settled in at the table with the same kit he’d brought down last night. This time, he’d snapped open the newspaper and begun to read. Perhaps looking for a fresh batch of people to judge.
Today Lord Bolt had received a message in response to the one he’d sent to Madame LeCroix, and it seemed she was amenable to saying a kind thing or two about Mariana, which could then be printed in the newspaper. Then Mariana had sung for fifteen minutes today in the ballroom and thought she was in fine voice, all in all, though she dearly missed a quartet or a good pianist to accompany her. Every time she sang on a stage, she was entirely in the world of the song, and it was a welcome escape from everything else.