AT FIRST SIGHT: A Novella(4)
One-hundred Spanish gold doubloons – when food and lodging was bartered with mere tobacco notes, farm goods, and the inflationary Swedish riksdaler!
“And should I lose?” Not that she would lose. As a young girl at King Charles’s court, she had held her own at chess with the best of his courtiers. “I have nothing to wager.”
“Ahhh, but you do.” He crossed one booted foot over the other on the chair and regarded her gravely. “Your services.”
She stiffened, not thinking she had heard aright. But his sardonic smile told her she had. Her breath nearly hissed from her throat. “And exactly what services would you require – should I lose?”
His intense gaze gripped hers. “Your services for a fortnight.”
Above wide cheekbones, her eyes narrowed. “Those services would be?”
“Whatever I desire – though I hasten to assure you my requirements violate neither our Lord Almighty’s laws nor our Lord Protector’s, Oliver Cromwell.”
Her fingertips stole to the leaping pulse at the base of her throat. Now the identity of her opponent was confirmed. Or, at least, whom he represented.
She swallowed. One-hundred Spanish gold doubloons. It was an extraordinary chance to start over. She could lose herself somewhere within the entirety of the Continent’s polite society. Paris, Vienna, Rome, Venice . . . names that made her mouth water even more than savory food.
No more scrubbing clothes with the corrosive lye soap and scouring the puncheon floors until her hands were raw and bled. No more cooking at all hours, beating rugs, turning mattresses, and cleaning chamber pots.
Could she both win in this chess game -- and maintain her charade?
He chuckled at her distressed uncertainty. “Tis merely a game, Eve. Not an execution.”
A veiled allusion to her past? Still, impulsively, her words choked out, “So done.”
§§ CHAPTER TWO §§
The grip of tension between Adam Sutcliff and Evangeline Bradshaw demanded release.
Gratified by her consent, his smile eased the tension not a whit. “Finish your bread and cake making and skewering those wretched birds,” he said. “I shall set up the chess board.”
In the kitchen, Evangeline’s hands might have been busy with the morrow’s Christmas dinner, but her mind was busy with visions of Paris’s stimulating salons and Warsaw’s schools of enlightenment.
To study astronomy, painting, and literature again. To hold books in her hands once more. To peruse Van Dyck and Rubens paintings and listen to operas or attend plays, all which Cromwell’s England had banned. These images stung her eyes with unexpected tears that she quickly blinked away. She had rigorously lectured herself about fantasizing over such worldly pleasures, now and forever beyond her reach.
Pouring two stout copper mugs of toddy, she inhaled its intoxicating spices, took a deep swig from her own to fortify herself for the night ahead, then turned resolute steps toward the main room – and her opponent.
He was arranging the final pieces on the chess board, and she noticed the forefinger of his left hand was missing. Not only that, but the backs of his hands were crisscrossed by scars. And yet, those hands moved with an elegant grace. A bolder look than other men, he might mistakenly have been considered a fop by Cromwell’s puritan Parliamentarians.
This should have reassured her, as well.
His thoughtful gaze raised to hers, lifted higher to the blue velvet ribbon carelessly binding her wildly curling, barley-brown hair that was bleached silver at the ends by the sun, next drifted down to her lips, the bottom one which she was gnawing, then returned to hold her eyes. “Black or white?” he said, at last.
“White, of course.” She sat his mug down, but, as she went to sit, he stood automatically – as a courtier would show deference for a lady of the royal court. She faltered midway, then recovered and, with a sidewise swish of her skirt, slid onto her chair.
Which court had he attended? Could he have known her from King Charles’s court? More than a few ex-Royalists had shifted allegiances and could be found at Cromwell’s court. It was gossiped to be as imperial as Charles’s had been – liveried servants at state occasions like the openings of Parliament and the accreditation of ambassadors.
“Interesting chess pieces,” he said.
She glanced down at the board, and was aghast at her oversight. At her request, Bonnie Charlie had carved it and its pieces. Crudely, yes, but the black pieces all had round heads, save the knight and tower, whereas the white ones had all been sculpted with long hair.
“Aye, are they not. I – I stained the pine pieces black with vinegar and pine pitch and the white ones I coated with clay from the riverbank.” She had even added mica flakes to make the white pieces sparkle.
By habit, her first move was to nudge her king’s pawn forward two spaces.
At once, Sutcliff moved his knight, which precluded her hope for a quick check on his king. She studied the board.
“From where do you hail?” he asked, his voice as lazily diverting as that of watching drifting snowflakes.
“Hmmm?” She glanced up. “What?”
“I doubt you were born here in the colonies.”
She stiffened again. “Why is that?”
“Your mannerisms. Your obvious education. They bespeak of imagination and versatility, of one who mixes with the cream of society.”