Page 58 of Love Is A Draw
No one wrote it down. He said it anyway.
A whisper pressed the back of his teeth. He didn’t plan to give it air; it escaped all the same as he left. “Play,” he said, too quiet for anyone who didn’t already listen to him. “Win. I will find you at the end of it.”
Once he was outside, Victor closed the carriage door himself before any man could pretend to do him that favor. Inside, hechose the inward-facing bench and fixed his hands on his knees so they wouldn’t show how much they wanted to clench.
Two steps away from check mate. The small, clean inevitability that made boys fall in love with games before they knew what love cost.
The wheels took up their work. The lane bent toward the river. Wind pushed the smell of coal and wet rope through the window seam.
They ended a game, he told himself, and felt the truth settle in, heavy and bright. Not me. Not us.
He went. Not because they owned the path. Because he refused to let them write his absence as shame. Because he feared, just then, that more than the game had ended—and because fear did not get to choose the next move.
The boardbefore her gleamed with patient silence, but Gail’s blood was a storm. They had stolen Victor’s moment. Stolen his chance. No draw. No stalemate. No mate. Yet the arbiter had closed his ledger as if the game were a finished tale.
Her voice broke the hush. “Then the rule still stands?”
The arbiter blinked, already half turned toward List’s retreating coat. “Which rule?”
“That the winner of this board”—her hand hovered over the pawns between her and the baroness—“faces the Black Knight.”
He shifted, discomfort pinching his brow. “Yes. If… if there’s no result in the men’s.”
“There was no result.”Gail’s fury sharpened into ice. “You cannot name a winner where none exists.”
Greg broke the silence, “The rule stands.”
Then the arbiter nodded once. “Yes. This board decides it.”
The baroness let out a laugh too sweet, too brittle. “Oh, how quaint. A governess stepping into the men’s shoes.” Her fingers caressed her knight as though she held a leash. “Do be careful. Ambition is unbecoming.”
But Gail wasn’t listening. She was counting. Pawns aligned in her mind, columns of numbers against the heat in her chest. Victor’s face, as he’d looked across the board, hovered at the edge of thought. Calm. Steady. Refusing to be erased.
She would not let them erase him. Not here. Not now.
Sofia pressed her pawns with clipped efficiency, the kind of moves drilled in salon games where losing was never dangerous, where pieces were toys and the board a stage. Gail matched her—conservative, patient—yet every move was driven by fury she dared not show.
Three moves. Seven. Ten. Their queens skirted tension, knights prowled. Sofia tilted her head with mockery every time she leaned forward. Gail shut her out. She breathed through each trade. Bishop for bishop. A pawn advance feigned, retreated, then pressed when the baroness overextended.
The room shifted. Eyes, at first dismissive, began to linger. Whispers ran up the hall beyond the open door to the chamber. “She’s holding her own,” a voice.
But she wasn’t holding, she was sharpening.
Her grandfather’s lessons whispered in the seams of her mind. Strategy is not in the pieces. It’s in the patience to see further. She saw the opening now—a bishop pinned, an escape square smothered. All she needed was the queen’s glide into place.
She waited. Sofia played quickly, too quickly, like a woman certain no governess could best her. Confidence dulled her vision.
Gail’s hand steadied above the queen. Her pulse slowed. This was the sword in the stone, the moment she had to seize or watch slip away forever.
She moved.
Check.
Sofia’s painted lips parted, her eyes narrowing as she reached to parry. But in her haste, she chose wrong. Her rook slid—too far, too eager.
Gail struck again.
Check.
