The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)

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.”

“Amazing it lasted as long as it did,” he said.

“I was twelve. Had it been one more year… Then I would have grown my bosom, and there would have been no hiding the truth at all.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what would have happened in the ordinary course of events. But now that the truth had come out, people began to ask questions of my father. There were thousands of pounds at stake in his business, and his stories didn’t stand up to inquiry. His trial was a very public affair. I attended—twelve years old, wearing skirts for the first time in years, awkward and uncertain. It was there I first heard my father’s defense. He claimed he was driven to do it. By me. He said that I told him to dress me as a boy and take me with him. I came up with the scheme involving faked Russian industry. I caused his ruin. I did it all.”

Robert put his arm around her. “You were five when it started.”

“I was an unnatural child. That’s what he said—over and over. I was an unnatural child. And who could disagree? I was demonstrably odd. Able to beat grown men at chess, some of the best in the world. I was so quiet, always watching. It didn’t help that everyone could see me at the trial, could see how strange I was. I had no idea how to move like a girl. My hair was short. I’d spent the years of my childhood with dissolute men. I didn’t know the first thing about proper behavior.

“My father always said if you believed a thing hard enough, reality would have no choice but to make it true. When he testified on the stand, he’d convinced himself. He called me devil’s spawn in front of all of London.”