Page 26 of Love Is A Draw
When the lastplayer left and Gail and Victor had been listed as victors, moving on to round three, she found Victor standing alone in the corridor outside the dining room, where the footmen had gathered the remaining chess boards and cleaned the table. Victor was half-shadowed beneath the flickering light of a gas sconce. He hadn’t moved since the match ended—he hadn’t shed his coat or unfastened the second button he always tweaked when nerves ran high. Inside, the hall murmured—chairs scraped, discussions lingered—but he stood still. Tense. Withdrawn.
“You won,” she said softly, stating both the obvious and necessary.
His gaze slid toward her, sharp but unreadable. “Yes. You forced a draw with Sofia von List. Again.”
She waited. After a moment, she added, “You played beautifully.”
“Did I?” His words came low, taut. “Or did I play well enough not to be dismissed?”
She knew he knew that was what she’d done. She stepped a measured pace closer, the distance closing as deliberately as a calculated opening. “They saw you.”
“That’s not the same.” His eyes darkened—not with anger, but flat with raw fatigue. “They saw the line. They saw the win.But they didn’t see me.” His laugh was short, hollow. “Only you do.”
“You wanted to be seen?”
“I wanted to matter.” The words escaped like a confession into the silence. “To win in a room that never expected me to be anything more than an oddity.”
Gail closed the final inches between them. “And did you?”
His jaw shifted, but he did not answer.
“Victor, I saw you.” Her eyes held his, unwavering. She listed every detail he tried to hide. “I saw how you trapped the knight before anyone else. The shift in your posture when you chose risk over safety. The tremor in your hand before the final move.”
He swallowed, eyes flickering.
“You didn’t play just to win the game,” she continued. “You played to claim your place.”
He looked away briefly, the raw emotion flickering across his face. “I’m not sure I belong.”
“You do. Not because of what you proved tonight. Because of who you are when no one else is watching.”
Victor closed his eyes. His breath evened. “People like List… they won’t accept us. Even when we win.”
“Then don’t play for men like Baron von List.”
He opened his eyes and took her in as though the world had narrowed to this. “I play for the man who never left the Pale. For the boy with only notebooks instead of a father. And… sometimes, I play because I think you’re watching. And none of it was ever supposed to be tainted by someone like List.”
“Men like List made the Pale, and they are why Grandfather hasn’t come to England yet. They are the reason people watch Jews play and not masters moving pieces. None of this is different, you’re just experiencing it more acutely now.” Gail’s breath caught. She met his eyes without wavering. “I always experienced it acutely. When they killed my parents, when theyforced me out of school as an orphan, and when they sent me to Bassarabia, where I didn’t know anyone. Until Grandfather found you, he saw your talent.”
“If anyone knows how the Pale wasted talent, it ought to be him.” That stung, and Victor sucked his lips in as soon as he’d said it. But sometimes, the truth stings, and it’s not the fault of the person observing it.
“So we’re not in the Pale. If they watch us, let’s show them what we need them to see. That’s why Rachel Pearler asked me to play,” Gail said. “But think about it, it’s a problem for List and all his supporters that the Black Knight is a friend of the Jews. If the title goes to a Jew, it would be worse. But you are strong. Just imagine the absurd trouble it would cause if the title went to a female Jew who is in service.”
Victor pursed his lips. “The title should go to the best player. Anything less would devalue what it stands for.”
How sweet that a man with his history had the idealism to say this. “So what if you don’t win?”
“Then I go back to my notebooks and keep practicing.”
Is that so?
Gail had thought it too good to be true—that she might win openly without consequence. But she knew better. Beating Sofia wouldn’t only weaken Victor’s path through the tournament; it could draw attention she could not afford. A Jew had vanished after defeating List, and everyone knew why, even if no paper dared to print it. Gail would not gamble Victor’s life—or her own—for a single match. She’d keep forcing draws, no matter how it gnawed at her.
She had to tell him how she felt about living for chess, not dying for it. He needed to know.
They stood suspended in the half-lit corridor, between the noise and the hush, between the ambition of the tournament andsomething more enduring: recognition, shared resolve, budding hope.
Victor lifted his hand, his fingers barely touching hers—not with claim, but with invitation, anchoring. Her palm rested against his.
