“I am, too.”
“Anyone could have hidden these things in that chest.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to return them to the chest. I don’t want the person who is behind
this reign of terror to know that you found them.”
I didn’t want to go back there. I told him how they were layered with the other
clothes. Then I went back to my bedchamber. Belinda was there laying out a gown,
a rich dark blue velvet, for the evening. So normal. Everything seemed so
completely normal. Even to the velvet matching ribbons she planned to thread
through my hair.
I took a very long bath, singing to George as I rubbed the soapy sponge over
myself. He was playing with Belinda by the fireplace, tugging on a belt she was
holding, shaking his head wildly about, growling all the while. He’d managed to
make Belinda a devoted slave within twenty-four hours of his arrival in The Blue
Room.
And that evening, over the course of vermicelli soup and fried eels and savory
rissoles, Lawrence said, “My dear, I must leave for London early tomorrow
morning. There is business I must see to. I promise I will be back before
Christmas. Is there anything you would like me to purchase for you?”
“How can you possibly be back in time for Christmas?” John said. His spoon was
halted in midair, and he had become very quiet. “Christmas is only eight days
from tomorrow.”
“My business won’t require all that much time,” Lawrence said. “I trust all of
you will rub along well together in my absence.”
I said not a thing. What I was thinking was that while he was gone, I would
search his study and his bedchamber. I looked down the length of the table at
him, and smiled. “There is nothing I need you to bring to me, thank you. Do you
like the soup, sir?”
“Indeed, it is delicious.”
And that was that.
That evening Lawrence asked if I would enjoy playing a game of chess with him.
We had never played before. I was pleased he assumed that I knew how to play. I
did indeed. My grandfather called me a killer. I beat him nearly half our games
by the age of fifteen.
Lawrence must have seen my eyes glitter, because he laughed. “So you are good at
it, are you?”
I lowered my eyes modestly. “I know all the moves.”
He lightly touched his fingertips to my cheek. I didn’t move. We settled down in
front of the fireplace, the chessboard on a marquetry table between us. He
offered me white. I insisted that I put a black and a white piece behind my back
and that he pick the hand he wanted. He got the black pieces anyway.
I always played the Ruy Lopez as white. I knew the first dozen best moves better
than any other opening and could counter most defenses played against me. I
moved my pawn to king four. Lawrence answered with the standard move, his own
pawn to king four, and I was pleased. I quickly played my knight to king bishop
three, and he answered with knight to queen bishop three. And so it continued,
classic plays and classic responses, and that gave me the edge.
He was a good player. He knew what he was doing. He played some moves I hadn’t
seen before, which set me to thinking hard. This was our first game. Regardless
of the outcome, I wanted to prove to him that I was a good player. I wasn’t
about to be swept under the carpet. On the eighteenth move, he tried to fork my
queen and my rook with his king’s knight, but I caught the trap easily, and
pulled him short before he could ever make the move. Ten moves later I knew I
would checkmate him soon, six moves, perhaps, no more. And as I looked over the
small table at him in the soft firelight, concentrating, his chin on his hand, I
wondered yet again if he was the one who was terrorizing me. And always I came
back to the conclusion that he had no reason. No reason at all. It was driving