The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)

They let Minnie go back to her room to get her things ready. But instead of packing, she found herself drawn to the chess set that had been left to molder in the trunk in her room. Twelve years since she’d last looked at it, and still she approached it with a grim wariness. She knelt before the wooden trunk, folded back the cloth that covered it, and undid the buckles. The metal resisted moving; she had to jam her palm against it and shove.

The chess set was at the bottom, hidden under old clothing and a smattering of brittle newspaper clippings. There. The pieces were ebony and ivory, both oddly familiar and curiously strange. Her first memories were of this board—lifting pieces that had seemed large and heavy. Now, she could curl her hands around the pawns and hide them entirely.

She took out the board and removed the pieces from their velvet bag. She set them atop her writing desk. Even after all these years, she didn’t have to think about what went where. Queen, king, and a host of pawns all fell into place. If she were a piece in a chess game, she’d be… No, she wouldn’t even be a pawn. She had become too small even for that.

Setting up the pieces had once given her spirits a lift. The beginning of every game was awash in possibility. Anything could happen. Every choice was open. Today, she felt nothing at all. She stared at the pieces and realized that she wasn’t at the beginning of this game, but near the end. Now there were entire swathes of the board that were unreachable, pieces that had been stolen away, moves she could never make.

There was almost nothing left on her board. Still, she drew out her spectacles, donned them, and studied it.

“There is a point in almost every game,” her father had once said, “when a win is inevitable. When your every move forces your opponent to react, and by reacting, to dig his own grave.”

How strange. She could no longer recall what he looked like, but she could see the board precisely as it had been laid out at that moment. She brushed pieces off her board, leaving only the ones that had been there at the time. Her bishop and knight, holding down his rook; her queen arrayed against two pawns that served as his only fragile protection against her offense.

“Have we reached that point yet?” he asked her. “Plan it out. Always know the path ahead.”

She’d stared at the board, squinting—and then she’d seen it for the first time. She could force those protecting pawns away. They’d be picked off by knight and queen until her rook swept in and hammered the king against the anvil of her bishop.

“Yes,” she’d said in wonder. “We’re there.”

“Then on the next move, when you pick up your piece—give it a kiss. Like that, love.”

She reached for her bishop. In her memory, the piece was large, her hands chubby. She couldn’t have been much older than six at the time.

“Why?” she’d asked.

“Lane family tradition.” Her father smiled. “When you’ve backed the other fellow into a corner, you give him a kiss to show there’s no hard feelings.”

After that, whenever they’d played—when one of them came close to a checkmate—he’d laughed and said there was a kiss just around the corner. She wanted to remember her father like that—warm and smiling, instructing her in everything he knew. Laughing, saying that she was the center of his existence. She had to remember her father like that, because the alternative was to think of him as he’d been at the end.

Look up? Her father hadn’t just told her to look up. He’d taught her to fly. And then, when she’d reached the top of the world, he’d ripped her from the sky.

Chapter Eight

IN THE END, IT TOOK DAYS for Robert to bring Sebastian in—in large part because Violet, the newly widowed Countess of Cambury, insisted on coming along.

“First,” Violet had said, spearing Robert with her gaze, “I am tired of sitting on an estate in Cambridgeshire with nothing to do. Second, you’ll need someone to keep Sebastian on a leash.” She’d nodded at Sebastian, who had attempted to look innocent.

There had been some truth to that. Violet could get Sebastian to behave—nominally—when she wished. Violet was two years older than Robert and Sebastian. She’d grown up on the estate next door to Sebastian’s, and until Violet had been deemed too old to play with boys, she’d accompanied them during the summers.

But Robert had far more memories of Violet tweaking Sebastian and sending him climbing trees for hawks’ eggs in a fit of rage, than he did of Violet getting Sebastian to behave.

“Finally,” Violet said, “your mother actually likes me, and if we wish to distract her, a two-pronged approach will work best. Sebastian can drive her off, and I’ll lure her away from you.”

But it had been Sebastian who provided the final impetus, after Violet had disappeared that first evening. “Look,” he’d told Robert, “she’s in mourning for a man she hated. Give her a chance to get out.”