“Ah, yes. Lady Plymton.” She moved her queen forward one space. “Check.”
The king moved diagonally backward. “Lady Plymton,” he agreed, his voice flat.
She moved her queen. “Check.”
He sat there, looking at the board, his king facing her queen as if more things were at stake than their twelfth chess match.
Mercy had to ask. “Did you love her?”
He laughed and dragged a hand through his hair. He would need to fix it before the ball began. Perhaps this time he would let her help him. “I did think I was in love, I suppose. But she wasnotin love with me.”
“How do you know that?” His eyes went heavenward and then she remembered. The woman had been engaged. “She was engaged...”
“Yes.”
“And you knew? The whole time, you knew?”
“Yes.”
“But then . . . why?”
He moved his king to the left again. There were only a few more squares to the left of his king now. Soon their strategy would play out, and Mercy would either win or move her queen back to her side of the board, giving up the cat-and-mouse game.
His fingers dropped away from the king. “Do you think it is an accident that I follow every rule of propriety? I learned the hard way that there are reasons things are done the way they are. I learned that you don’t get involved with an engaged woman—not because Society will scorn you, but because if she is engaged to someone else, her heart will probably never fully be yours. But not only that, I learned how many people you can hurt when you ignore Society’s rules.” He looked up at her, and the greens and browns in his eyes had become a forest under the onslaught ofa thunderstorm. “My father never looked at me the same after that. My mother didn’t either, although I think she understood me better than my father did. I’m fairly certain my father had never made a mistake in his life.”
She moved her queen right next to his king once again. He was in check, but she didn’t bother announcing it. “That can’t be true.”
“You didn’t know him. He single-handedly returned honor to our line. His father had been a philanderer and, at times, a cheat. My great-grandfather had been the same. There is something soul-destroying about having power with no consequences. For generations, the men and women in my family took to heart the idea that they were above reproach, but my father put an end to all of that. He lived each day completely aware of the power and influence he had, but he used that power to help others, never for personal gain. He was faithful to his wife and was an upstanding man before marriage. When he saw me following in my grandfather’s footsteps, it nearly broke him. He hadn’t lived his whole life following every rule of propriety only to have his son destroy everything he had worked for.”
“Are you absolutely certain she didn’t love you?” Mercy needed to know. She and Penelope had planned for the two of them to meet alone somewhere at the ball. If there was any chance he still longed for the woman who had scorned him in his youth, then she wanted to help him. Wanted him to have a passionate, loving relationship with a womanhechose. Not one he felt like Society would choose for him. “I see the way you look at her, and it’s not the way you look at me. Perhaps what you feel for me is not as strong as—”
The Duke of Harrington’s king rushed forward with force and knocked her queen off the board and onto the floor. He held his king in a death grip, fingers straining. “I was seventeen years old, Mercy.Seventeen. She didn’t love me. She saw me for what Iwas. A child with a title, ripe for the taking. All she needed to do was scorn her fiancé and entrap me to the point where my father, who was just the type of man who would make me be honorable to a woman who had no thoughts of being honorable with me, would feel obligated to force us to wed. When my father bought my commission and outwitted her, she pulled the wool over her fiancé’s eyes and married him anyway.” He shrugged. “He had a title too, after all.”
Mercy held his burning gaze as long as she could, then bent down to pick up her queen.Seventeen.The thought of that sleek, harsh beauty she’d seen at the Bensons’ ball, pursuing an impressionable seventeen-year-old turned her stomach. She took a moment while her head was down to take a deep breath and close her eyes hard against the tears that threatened to form there.
She’d never seen the man in front of her as anything but powerful. She’d never seen him lose control, but before he’d had any power at all, a woman had invaded his life and manipulated and controlled him. If she’d had any doubt that she might love this man, it evaporated, replaced by a sudden need to gut Lady Plymton.
She took one more steadying breath, then sat up, placed her queen on the table, and took the duke’s hand in her own. Rage must have still been seething inside him, for he didn’t flinch or pull away at her touch. Instead, he dropped his king and rested his free hand on the table. His eyes met hers, steady and unmovable. “If I don’t look at you the way I look at her, it is because I don’t hate you for ruining my relationship with my father, disappointing my mother, and nearly bringing a viper into the life of my innocent sister. The last few years of my father’s life, I tried to prove myself to him, but I’m not certain he ever trusted me again.”
Mercy wanted to fold him into her arms. She’d been a fool.How had she never thought to ask him about how long ago his relationship with Lady Plymton had been?
She squeezed his hand. “So you are still trying to prove yourself to him.”
“And to everyone else.” He blinked slowly. “His shoes are impossible to fill.”
She did not let go of his hand, but with her free hand, she pushed his hair back into place. As she pulled back her hand, he grasped it, held her gaze steady with his own, and pulled her palm with aching slowness to his lips. The contact of his mouth on the delicate skin just above her wrist was like fire. His eyes didn’t leave hers, and he slid his mouth to the tip of her thumb, kissing that as well. “If I have not shown you the passion that you deserve, I am sorry. I’m lost at how to go about this in a way that both my father and Society would approve of. But it is not because I don’t long for you in the way a man should long for his wife. On the contrary, you, Lady Mercy, terrify me. You make me feel like I have learned nothing from that seventeen-year-old boy who had his world ripped out from underneath him by acting on his feelings. If I have been more careful with you than anyone in my acquaintance, it is because Ihaveto be.”
Mercy’s hand was burning. She had toyed with him moments ago, putting that flower in his jacket, wondering if she could illicit the kind of response she had spent a long night imagining Miss Morgan had had in the Zoological Garden. Her attempt was pathetic compared to what the Duke of Harrington was doing to her now. She’d asked for passion. She’d thought he would perhaps answer her request by kissing her on her mouth. She’d had no idea he could prove his desire for her with only her hand and a gaze that promised so much more... over a chessboard. The dullest game known to man.
“Youdon’thave to be careful with me.” Her voice was shaky. Why wasn’t she prepared for this? She’d never felt naive untilthis moment. How did the slightest motion of his bottom lip dragging from her palm to her index finger make it hard to speak?’
“Oh, I plan to be very”—he kissed her index finger—“very”—he turned her hand and grazed the knuckles of her next two fingers with his lips—“careful with you.”
When she next inhaled, it was a gasp.
He winked and placed her hand gently back on the table. For all his blasted confidence, his hand shook ever so slightly when he released her. But he straightened his spine and pulled his face back into the mask of propriety he typically wore. That careful facade of a passionless man stood where a man who burned with desire had just been. He gave her a short bow and walked toward the door. “Tell your parents I was sorry to miss them. But know that I don’t mean it. I suppose I will wait until we have time to get to know each other a little better before I broach the subject of engagement again.” He stopped and turned back to look at her. What must she look like? Stunned, craning around on the chair to see him, most likely with her mouth agape. Her breath was still coming in short little gasps as if she were a fish that had been tossed out of its bowl. A slow smile tugged at his lips. “That is, unless you have changed your mind already.”
Changed her mind? Because he kissed her fingers? She snapped her jaw shut and stood, throwing her shoulders back with pride. She would not let him leave the room with his last view being her gaping at him. “Why? Do you think you have done something worthy of changing my mind?”
