Page 67 of Baron in Check
“I’ll pay for that,” Greg said.
“No, no.” Hermy raised her hand. “Don’t. I hate that room. It was my brother’s study.”
Hannah chuckled but Izaac tore away from Hermy and started kicking pebbles, too. None of them flew as wide as Greg’s.
Greg read from the will. "My sister has two weeks to wed and claim her position as the Countess, or else she’ll forfeit all that’s due in her name and revert our ancestral fortunes to the Crown.I have no choice but to play David and lose.”
“And give him the title?” Arnold asked.
“He wants to be the Black Knight.” Greg avoided Hermy’s gaze.
A knot of dread tightened in the pit of her stomach, whispering fears of a future unraveling, thread by precious thread. The sparkle in his eye, that flicker of desire once meant for her alone, now seemed extinguished, leaving her adrift in a sea of uncertainty, mourning the unspoken loss.
Everything had started with her brother’s will. That stupid, stupid decree to make Greg her guardian and the abeyance.
If Greg hadn’t lost the chess game to David, none of this would have happened.
She recalled the will.
Upon my passing, my sister’s betrothal to Lord David Chanteroy II. shall continue to be delayed until his victory against my successor, adhering to the rules and conditions established and respected from the initial agreement to postpone their union, shall the path to their matrimony be deemed clear and unobstructed.
Greg and Arnold were speaking but Hermy was too angry to follow their voices. Her fury was like a scream in her head, overpowering her usually calm mind. She didn’t want to calculate the best move, she just wanted to attack. Capture.
Attack and capture.
Then mate.
Unobstructed.
The same bloody word Steven had used when he’d brought her here and locked her up.
Duh! Of course, a path had to be unobstructed for a capture; that’s why she’d been locked up. She was the damsel kept in a tower.
The image of Sofia’s wooden chess set came to her mind, in which the rook looked like a tower with a crenellated top, mimicking the battlements of a medieval castle, and carved bricks. Hermy looked at Willowby Park. It was a fortress andthe medieval elements, even though they’d been renovated and repaired, were still present.
She paused and picked a light grey pebble and put it in a row with two twigs. The white queen on the first rank was often protected by two rooks. She moved the pebble forward. If the queen moved into the next rank, the rooks saw each other. They were no longer protecting the queen.
Victory against my successor.
He’d shamed her, ripped her from the love of her life, from her home, and locked her up with no access to the funds. For five years she’d stood between two rooks: her brother and the Ton. One kept her locked up, and the other prevented her from moving. She wasn’t protected, she was immobilized.
Until she left the rank and the rooks saw each other.
While Hermy had been in London, her brother’s successor, David, had come to Willowby Parkand been captured.
Time to take back.
“Greg!” Hermy rushed to him.
“Hermy.” Greg turned his side to Arnold, who didn’t look as upset with Hermy as she’d expected. “I am so sorry, I ruined everything.”
Undeterred, Hermy held out the pebble and the two twigs. “Look at this.”
She set them up on her hand and showed the moves, pretending her palm was a chessboard.
Arnold leaned forward and followed her explanation while Greg inhaled sharply. They truly were the best people; nobody else would have tolerated a pebble-twig-chess analogy in the middle of a crisis.
“So how does the queen mate in the back rank if she hasn’t been developed yet?” Greg asked, which translated to: how could Hermy check mate List in society if she hadn’t even made her debut and was shunned from the center of the Ton’s attention?
