Chapter Thirteen
I was two games in when the door to the study opened, but I didn’t care to look up and greet Kitty, so I stared determinedly at the board.
“What are you doing in here?”
The unexpected voice startled me into decorum, and I uncurled my spine, pressing it against the back of the chair as I rubbed at my cheek. There was probably a red mark from where I’d been slumped, but that couldn’t be helped.
It was Mary Bennet at the door. She had a book in her hand and kept her eyes fixed on me as she took several steps into the room and slid it onto a shelf, swapping it for the next volume in the set without even looking.
“I saw the chessboard and I—” I began, ready to launch into an apology.
“This is Father’s study.”
My mortification was instant and overwhelming. Mr. Bennet lay ill in bed, and I’d been curled up in his chair like it was my own. Even with his permission to borrow from the shelves, I was taking far too many liberties.
“My apologies,” I mumbled, my entire face crimson. “Forgive me, I will—”
I climbed clumsily to my feet, knocking over half the chess pieces in my attempt to clear the board away and return it to its home.
Mary rushed forwards to the other side of the desk, carefully helping me gather them up.
She checked each one for any sign of damage, glaring at me even when she seemed to find them all unharmed.
“You ought not to treat them like toys,” she chastised me. “It is a game of skill, if you know how to play.”
“I know. I play a little,” I admitted, stopping shy of the truth that I played so little because there were few people left I had not so frequently bested they’d lost their patience to play against me.
Mary’s disapproval gave way almost instantly to intrigue.
“Can I interest you in a game?” she asked, feigning far more casualness than I could see in her eyes.
I answered with a nod, quickly helping her to reset the pieces.
She dragged another chair over from the corner so she could sit on the far side of the desk from me, leaning forwards to rest on her elbows and get a better view of the board.
It was a more relaxed demeanour than I’d seen from her so far.
I didn’t take every opportunity she left me to attack, nor did I play so purposefully poorly as I had when I’d first played Kitty.
There was something fun about the challenge of engineering the perfect game.
A white lie of a conclusion was harder to manipulate than an immediate win, but eventually Mary called a checkmate and I conceded the victory.
When I looked up from the board, she was smiling.
It was a look of genuine contentment I wasn’t sure I’d seen from her before.
“Where did you learn?” she asked.
“My brother taught me when I was six. Anything he knew how to do, I wanted to copy.”
Mary nodded, listening but distant. “Father tried to teach all of us a few years ago, but Kitty and Lydia couldn’t be persuaded to take interest. Lizzy was tolerable, but has always preferred books.
Jane liked it best, besides me, but after she married, it was only Father who would sit and play with me, and then only on the rare occasion. ”
“I similarly lack opponents.” I smiled, automatically moving to set up the pieces again. Mary didn’t stop me. “Your sister still prefers her books, and my brother lives in fear of being bested by the one to whom he taught the tricks.”
We began another game without formal declaration. Mary simply reached out and moved the first piece, and the rematch was afoot.
This time, I orchestrated a victory for myself, but a hard-fought one.
A game that could have lasted less than two minutes stretched out to ten, but Mary didn’t grow bored.
She studied each move carefully, with such intent that I could practically see the pieces shifting on the board as she plotted several moves ahead.
Her strategy was not unpractised, and I could see how her sisters might tire of playing with her—they would likely often lose, if they treated the game casually.
“You play well,” Mary observed as she considered how to rescue her king from the check I’d backed him into. It could be done. She could even end the game with a win if she was clever about it, but probably not against me.
There was a knock at the door before Mary could make her next move, and we looked up at each other in surprise.
No one else but Mr. Bennet seemed to use the room, and he would not knock to enter his own study.
Likely presuming, as I did, that it was the maid hoping to dust the shelves, Mary called out for them to enter.
Kitty pushed the door open tentatively before stepping into the room and standing with her hands tucked behind her back, her head bowed slightly in at least mock contrition.
“May I speak with you?” Kitty asked. Her eyes fell briefly on Mary, before returning to me, heavy with intention. “Somewhere quiet?”
“I’m afraid you’ve found me busy,” I said, still not making eye contact.
Mary moved a knight, and I quickly countered her attempted escape with my queen.
Before Mary could move again, Kitty cleared her throat.
When Mary turned to glare, they had the kind of conversation only two siblings could engineer.
It was entirely silent and deployed the language of a number of fierce glares, pointed looks, and exasperated sighs.
Eventually Mary climbed to her feet with a huff.
“We will need to have a rematch, Miss Darcy,” she said with a nod to me, before leaving without paying Kitty any mind.
I ignored Kitty for a few moments further while I reset the chessboard, watching out of the corner of my eye as she perched on the edge of the chair Mary had vacated. Once the final pawn was back in position, I looked up and made sure she saw my scowl.
“That was rude,” I chastised her. “We were in the middle of a game.”
“The chess pieces aren’t going to go anywhere without you,” she tried to joke, but my raised eyebrow made it clear I wasn’t in the mood to entertain her comedy. “George, please, let me apologise.”
“I don’t believe I am stopping you.”
“You know I don’t think you dull because you read. I love all the things you have packed inside your head,” she insisted.
“Yet you mock me with your closest confidant,” I challenged.
I did not care if she kept the true nature of our relationship a secret. Indeed it was the only way for both of us to be safe. But I doubted the notion that she couldn’t hide from Lydia the fact she kissed me each night without cruelly mocking me behind my back.
Kitty reached across the desk to take my hand. I put up a pitiful show of pulling away, but surrendered the pretence as soon as she started tracing her fingertips over the inside of my wrist.
“You are my closest confidant. You cannot believe I tell Lydia anything of the way you make me feel?” she said, her voice low to prevent eavesdropping, but with the side effect of making me shiver.
“I trust but one person in this world with the true depths of my heart, and she is standing before me, understandably grumpy but on the brink of forgiveness,” she said, pushing hopefully.
“She sits before you. Disappointed, tired, and a little hungry.”
Kitty retrieved a small parcel from behind her on the chair and set it on the desk in front of me.
It was wrapped in wax paper and tied with string, but I knew it contained gingerbread.
It was an admirable attempt at a peace offering, and I was putting an embarrassing amount of restraint into not opening it immediately, but I was still angry with her and to take it felt like conceding.
“Or would it make her feel better to trounce me at several rounds of chess?” she suggested.
“Kitty, stop,” I said with a sigh, not in the mood to play games of any kind, linguistic or with thirty-two carved pieces.
“I truly am sorry,” Kitty said. Her eyes were watery and fearful, like she was on the brink of losing something precious.
It hurt to see her so upset. “I was overcompensating. Sometimes I get so scared that what we’re doing is obvious, and I panic.
I forget we can be—we are—friends. It doesn’t help that when I am around Lydia, I am… ”
“Not your best?” I suggested.
“Demonstrably my worst,” she said with a laugh.
“But it is good to know they teach tact so efficiently in London.” She kissed my hand, the only part of me she could reach from across the desk.
“There is nothing dull or tedious about you, Miss Darcy. You are an endless enigma I wish to dedicate my life to solving, and I don’t anticipate I’ll be bored for even one moment. ”
Her words stunned me. I couldn’t even tell if she’d realised what she was insinuating.
We were both taking risks each day, but we’d never sworn any part of the future to each other.
It seemed entirely too impossible, but she’d laid the concept out with such casualness it almost seemed a foregone conclusion.
“You are lucky I love you,” I managed, only just keeping my breathlessness out of my voice.
“Yes,” she agreed. “I rather think I am.”
She reached out and moved a chess piece, challenging me with one raised eyebrow.
Laughing, I took the bait. We played three games in quick succession, holding hands beside the board.
Kitty didn’t complain for even a moment when I beat her in all of them, the entire process taking less than five minutes.
We left the library only because I was keen to unwrap my gingerbread and I knew better than to risk getting crumbs all over someone else’s books.
I did not much feel like joining the rest of the household downstairs while I was still hurt by Lydia’s words, so I persuaded Kitty to walk with me in the garden.
She had not changed out of the spencer she’d worn into town, so I sent her downstairs to wait while I collected something warmer from our room.