Chapter Four
Later that afternoon, Pearl had expected to find her daughters in the nursery, but what she found surprised her.
A sound came down the hallway, a muffled laugh, then the cadence of low voices.
Pearl followed it, her pace quickening, and at the door she paused, the scene inside completely unexpected.
The nursery was bright, the light doubled by a drift of fresh snow clinging to the sash.
Every surface was littered with the clutter of childhood—wooden animals, a battered checkerboard, the scattered bricks of an unfinished tower.
In the corner stood the Abbey’s infamous dollhouse. Alice was nowhere to be seen.
But at the low chess table, Susie sat in perfect profile, her chin resting on her fist. Across from her, far too large for the spindle-legged chair, his knees bracketing the table’s edge, sat the duke himself.
He had dragged his hand through his hair at least once, leaving it in disarray as if the game required all his concentration.
Pearl hovered, invisible, at the door. Victor spoke softly, the words too low for her to make out, but the intent unmistakable. He moved a rook, then leaned back, waiting. Susie studied the board with the concentration of a field marshal and, after a moment’s hesitation, advanced her pawn.
“Bold,” Victor said, approving. “But not reckless.” His mouth twisted into what, on another man, would have been a smile. “Your father never sacrificed a pawn if he could help it.”
Susie looked up, startled. “Did you play with him?”
“Many times. Before you were born, and after at the club in London. He was—” The duke paused, as if weighing the worth of old griefs. “He played to win, but never to humiliate. That is rare in a man.”
Susie’s attention flicked between the board and Victor’s face. “Is that why you let me win last time?”
The duke snorted. “If I had, you would not be asking.” His hand moved, deft and spare, and in two turns he had the advantage. “You have your mother’s cleverness, I see.”
Susie considered this, then said, “Mama hates chess.”
“She hates to lose,” Victor corrected, and Pearl, stung by the accuracy, nearly betrayed her presence with a laugh.
The game continued, a dance of pieces and silences.
Victor’s gentleness with her daughter was almost shocking.
He touched each chessman with a precision that was, somehow, never delicate, but always exact.
Susie matched him, move for move, her confidence growing with every exchange.
The child she had been, the anxious, eager-to-please girl, was replaced here by something altogether more formidable.
Pearl watched, unable to move, as if by stepping into the room she might shatter the fragile truce that existed between her past and this improbable present.
She remembered Percy in fragments, the way he used to lift Alice and spin her in the old nursery at Graveley, the way his voice, warm and diffident, never seemed to belong entirely to the room he was in.
He had loved his daughters, no one could dispute it.
But he had never played with them this way.
Not for lack of affection, but for lack of something else—an ease, perhaps, or the conviction that children could be worthy adversaries.
And she remembered with a pang how he had longed for a son.
He never spoke of it, not in so many words, but she had seen it in the way his gaze lingered on the sons of other men, the way he pressed a little too hard when teaching Susie to ride, or Alice to recite her Latin.
Pearl had failed him in this, and though he would have denied it to the end, she carried the guilt.
Now she watched her daughter and her former almost-lover and felt a complicated mix of pride and regret, of longing and relief.
Susie’s next move was disastrous. She saw it at once, the second her hand left the piece. “Oh,” she said, and her shoulders sagged. “I have lost.”
Victor shook his head. “Not yet.” He rearranged the pieces slightly, then gestured for her to try again. “There is always a way out if you are willing to sacrifice.”
Susie stared at the board, chewing her lower lip. “I suppose I must lose my knight.”
“It is only a game,” said Victor. “But if it were war, what would you do?”
Susie looked up, surprised by the question. “Try to make peace, I think.”
Victor laughed—a surprising sound, rough and rich. “That is the hardest move of all.”
Pearl’s chest tightened. She recognized the lesson being offered, and she knew her daughter did too.
She let the moment stretch, unwilling to interrupt the current of warmth that ran, improbably, between her daughter and this man she hadn’t allowed herself to think of as family.
At last, Susie made her move. Victor nodded, then, without fanfare, tipped his own king. “Well done. A proper duchess’s game.”
Susie’s face bloomed with pleasure. She stood, gave a careful curtsy, and said, “Thank you, Your Grace.”
“You may call me Uncle Victor, if you wish,” said Victor. He reached to ruffle her hair, then thought better of it, settling for an approving pat on the shoulder.
Susie hesitated, then asked, “May I go find Alice?”
“Yes, but beware the dragon in the kitchens.”
She gave him a suspicious glance, then hurried out, nearly colliding with her mother, who had slipped into the room in the commotion.
“Hello, Mama,” Susie said, breathless. “Did you see me win?”
“I did,” Pearl replied, her voice steady. She squeezed Susie’s arm, then watched as her daughter vanished down the hall.
Victor was already resetting the chessboard. He didn’t look up at her, but she felt the awareness radiating off him, as palpable as a winter fire.
“I hope you don’t mind that I appropriated your daughter for my amusement.”
Pearl crossed to the table, her steps soundless on the carpet. She regarded the board and, for the first time in years, it looked less like a puzzle to be solved and more like something she could learn. “I mind only that you let her win.”
He looked at her then, with the briefest flash of warmth in his eyes. “I have never let anyone win anything in my life.”
Pearl smiled, and for the first time since Percy’s death, the smile felt unforced, natural. She sat opposite him, her hands folded in her lap.
“She has your courage,” Victor said.
Pearl’s hands tightened involuntarily, then relaxed. “And my stubbornness.”
He considered this, then shrugged. “A dangerous combination.”
They sat in silence, the cold pressing against the windows, the light growing sharper with the approach of midday.
Pearl wanted to ask him, Did you ever wish for children of your own? Did you ever resent that I married Percy instead of you? Did you ever, even for a moment, regret the way our paths diverged?
But she said nothing. Instead, she studied the chessboard, the pattern of black and white, and tried to imagine all the futures that might have played out if only she had moved her pieces differently.
She looked at his hands—broad, capable, a little battered from years of riding and fencing. She wondered for a wild second what it would feel like to have them close over hers.
She pushed the thought away, as she had a thousand times before. There was no room in her life for such things. Not now. Perhaps not ever.
Unable to think of anything to say, she rose. “I should find my children.” She left without looking back.
***
The girls ate their supper early in the nursery. Pearl had become used to eating with them at home, but here she ate with the duke and dowager duchess, then joined the duke in the drawing room after. The duchess retired to her bedchamber.
Pearl hovered by the window, hands folded at her waist, unsure if she should stay or retreat. Was he entertaining her as a host must, or did he desire her company?
Victor stood by the fireplace, one hand on the mantel, his body outlined by the restless play of the flames. “Will you join me?” he asked, gesturing to a pair of low chairs drawn close to the hearth.
Pearl hesitated, then moved with what felt oddly like surrender. She crossed to the chair he indicated and sat, arranging her skirts with more care than was strictly necessary.
Victor poured two glasses of brandy from a cut-crystal decanter, then offered her one.
She took it, the weight and heat of the glass unfamiliar in her palm.
She hadn’t drunk spirits since before Percy died.
The taste now seemed both alien and intimate, like a language she had once spoken fluently but had since forgotten.
“Thank you,” she said, and heard the stiffness in her own voice.
Victor lowered himself into the chair opposite, legs sprawled, one foot angled toward the fire.
For a long moment, neither spoke. The silence wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t comfortable either.
It was the silence of people who once knew each other’s secrets, but now found themselves strangers to their own impulses.
At last, Victor broke the spell. “You look well, Pearl. I hope you don’t mind the observation.”
She shook her head, unsure how to respond.
She hadn’t looked at herself in a mirror for longer than was necessary in months.
She still wore her mourning, but the gray and black no longer felt like armor.
More like skin. “And you,” she said, searching for the appropriate compliment, “seem… content here.”
He snorted, a sound that might have been laughter. “Content is not my natural state. I’m told it makes me appear dull.”
Pearl sipped the brandy, surprised by its sudden, medicinal burn. “I don’t think anyone would accuse you of dullness, Victor.”
He looked at her then—really looked—and the force of it made her inhale, sharp and involuntary. His eyes, brown and gold in the shifting firelight, seemed almost liquid.
“I am not what I was,” he said. “That’s all.”