The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)(70)

Minnie’s stomach was still fluttering. But his arms were around her—and he knew. He knew, and he wasn’t throwing things at her. He waited patiently for her to be ready.

Safe was the last thing she felt when she had to think of those dark times—but at least for the moment, she didn’t feel like vomiting.

She took a deep breath. “My father was actually a baronet’s fifth son. High standing—although not by your standards—but utterly impoverished. He made his way in the world by trading on his skill at chess. He was gregarious, open, and everyone liked him. His personal fortune was almost nonexistent, but he was so likable that it never mattered. He always had an invitation to stay somewhere.”

Sometimes they had been invitations in England, other times offers to visit Europe, to spend months with men who wanted to study chess with a bright, taking young man. Once, on one of those sea voyages she’d taken with him, a sailor had told her to look at the coast when she felt seasick, and the nausea would go away. Now, she watched the bookcase and was surprised to find that her world steadied.

“My parents were married only a few years before my mother died in childbirth. I don’t remember much before the age of five, except for my father’s visits. My first memories are of him teaching me to play chess. I knew how pieces moved before I knew the alphabet. I looked forward to his visits above all else. And one day, when I was very, very young, he asked me if I wanted to go with him the next time he went abroad.”

Minnie let out a shaky breath. Robert didn’t say anything. He just pulled her closer.

“Of course, a young girl couldn’t travel the Continent with only her father—not and stay with the sorts of people we were staying with. I would have needed a nurse, a governess, and by that time finances were too tight to allow such a thing. It was a very simple thing, my father said. He would introduce me as Maximilian Lane, his son. He asked me if I would mind.” She shut her eyes. “I was five. I didn’t know what to think. He said it would be great fun, and I agreed.”

The fluttering in her belly had begun to calm.

“I don’t think I understood, in those early years, what a curiosity I was. I remember people posing me chess problems. Sometimes I solved them. Sometimes I didn’t.” She shrugged. “As I grew older, I solved more of them.”

“The one account I read of Maximilian Lane,” Robert put in, “said he was quiet and solemn and quite, quite brilliant. You’d play with adults who had years of experience and beat them handily—and then, when they praised you for it, you’d put the board back fifteen moves and explain, just as earnestly, what they should have done to win.”

“Yes,” Minnie breathed, shutting her eyes. “I remember that. Winning all the time—it had the most extraordinary effect on me. I thought I would always win. I didn’t understand the concept of risk.”

She hadn’t understood the concept of loss, either.

“The rest, I’ve had to guess at after the fact. By the time I was twelve, my father was deeply in debt. He made promises to people, claimed that he had made fabulous investments in Russian industry. To bolster those claims and attract further investors, he paid out results from his own limited funds. Then he paid the next round of investors with funds gleaned from his newest dupes. But there were no investments, and unless he found some money quickly, he would have been found out.”

Minnie looked down. She’d only known back then that he became more erratic—wildly happy one moment, enraged the next.

“I wasn’t invited to the first international chess tournament in London. My father was. A few days before, however, he claimed to have taken suddenly ill and offered me up to take his place. Nobody objected.”

She couldn’t help it. Little tremors were going through her body.

“He needed a great deal of money, and the odds were favoring me. So he had one of his friends bet every penny he owned against me. Then he ordered me to throw the game.”

He hadn’t told her why. They’d shouted at one another that day.

“Lanes can do anything,” she’d thrown in his face. He’d looked at her so strangely when she’d said that. It wasn’t until later that Minnie realized that he had never expected her to use his own words to defy him.

Robert’s arms were warm against her ribs, his chest moving in time with her breath. The silence of the room enfolded them. There was nothing around, nobody near. Just her and the memories.

“As a child, there’s a curious blindness you have to the faults of your parents. My father was my dearest friend. We were always together. He taught me everything I knew. He’d never had a harsh word for me. I absolutely worshipped him. He used to say that if we only believed hard enough, everything would turn out all right. That if you’d just think and wait, you’d find a way. When I refused to throw the game, he found his way.” She took another deep breath. “He told the scandal sheets that I was a girl. In the middle of the tournament.”

She could still see the board in the final round. She’d just kissed her rook and set it on the board. She had been four moves from mate.

“The officials interrupted me. They disqualified me. They tossed me out on my ear, and it was all over the London papers the next few days. Everything I had been, everything—all the people who I thought were my friends, all the things that I’d accomplished—were wiped away. I had masqueraded as a boy, and I’d scandalized everyone.”