Page 29 of Love Is A Draw (Check Mates #2)

If he moved it to the only square that had been mapped out in the ledgers, Victor knew how to mate in two moves. But he’d never written it down, so List didn’t know.

He doesn’t have the depth to calculate the discovered checkmate on the next move.

List simply wouldn’t see it coming.

So he paused.

And waited.

The clock ran until time almost ran out.

Patience , Victor reprimanded himself. Waiting was part of the game.

Bootfalls announced themselves the way privilege always did—brisk, coordinated, expecting the path to part.

A clerk in Parliament livery bent to the arbiter; paper whispered, a conspirator’s sound.

The arbiter’s gaze slid toward the officers posted at the rear—the same men as the previous day, officers who bowed to List’s power rather than justice—and then returned to the parchment as if paper could bless what conscience would not.

No, Victor looked at the piece under his hand. Not yet.

But soon, he’d checkmate List.

The arbiter rose a fraction. “Gentlemen, there are concerns—irregularities in notation, disturbances among the players. For the order of the tour?—”

“For the order,” List finished, pleasant as carved ivory.

A choreographed spectacle.

The word moved through the chamber like a draft through an old house. Victor drew his hand away from the bishop before he crushed the grain into his skin.

“No adjournments anymore,” Victor said. “Those are the rules on the last day.”

The arbiter’s careful mouth thinned. His eyes found the officers again. One—square jaw, boots polished to a black river—then List gave the smallest, laziest nod.

“The game is suspended,” the arbiter announced. The hammer struck air. “Position recorded.”

“The game is almost finished,” Victor protested.

“Review to follow,” the arbiter said, immediately seeking List’s approving grin.

Victor heard Greg and Fave groan in the back, and Rachel Pearler left the room.

List’s chair eased back with less sound than a breath. He rose just enough to bring his face near, as if giving counsel. “You should have burned those notebooks when you fled,” he murmured.

“You should have learned to play without them,” Victor answered, and knew he had found his own calm again when the words came without heat.

The baron’s gaze traveled past him to the gallery, where women in pale silks stood in a line like weather. “A pity your friends intend to make a spectacle of the ladies,” he said lightly. “A draw is a poor shield for a bad player.”

“I’ve seen you use poorer.”

The cold-eyed smugness didn’t move. “You dislike stalemate; I find it useful. One may draw a match. One may draw a life indefinitely until a man learns to accept what is given. Lose, Mr. Romanov. Or leave.” He let the last phrase breathe. “Otherwise—accidents happen.”

He straightened before the threat could stain the air where those uniforms might pretend to hear.

A gloved hand found his sleeve. Bracelets chimed once, then stilled. Sofia’s chin was lifted just enough to catch the light. “That’s enough,” she said, tone bright as cut glass. “Allow me, darling. You’ve done your part. This—I’ll finish.”

She turned toward the arbiters with a modest incline that somehow suggested command. “I will finish my match now,” she said. “And I will ensure that no Jew lays claim to the Black Knight.”

The sentence fell like a handkerchief—soft, and suffocating. The officers didn’t blink. A few gentlemen discovered their boots; a few did not. Above, a little hush traveled along the rail like a chill.

Greg and Fave were mumbling in the hall out of Victor’s earshot.

Victor kept his hands flat on the table. One move ago he had held a road to mate as clean as morning; now the position sat trapped in amber by cowardice perfumed as civility.

Greg’s black coat cut the aisle between the officers. The earl’s attention moved to the clock, the frozen pieces, the faces that had decided to look away. “On what ground have you interrupted the game?” he asked, voice low, the kind of low that carried.

“Order,” the arbiter tried.

“Order without fairness or rules is not order.” Greg’s glance slid over the board, and Victor watched him see—really see—the net that had been about to close. “Resume play.”

Victor remained seated, looking at the pieces. Two moves to check mate.

But List remained standing.

The officer with the river-dark boots stepped from the rear. “Mr. Romanov, we require your presence at the port offices— questions concerning foreign notation and ledgers potentially containing?—”

“Chess,” Greg said. “We discussed that yesterday.”

The officer swallowed; politeness rearranged his jaw. “You’ll have the opportunity to state as much, sir. We require Mr. Romanov’s presence now.”

Victor rose. He did not wait to be asked. He gave no man the theater they craved.

To his right, a ribbon of green shifted—a single, small change that moved through him like air after a too-long dive.

He didn’t search for her face; he didn’t need to.

He knew Gail would watch without blinking.

And she’d have Rachel, Fave, Lady Hermy and even Greg.

She wasn’t alone among the few good people there.

They knew the difference between loss and theft.

The tournament was being stolen from him.

He let his gaze fall once more to the board: king composed on the right square, bishop posted like a sentinel, the outside pawn ready to run. Dmitry’s teaching braided through it—patience without passivity, pressure without cruelty, clarity without apology.

List’s mouth tightened by a hair’s breadth, disappointed not to be offered chains. Good. Let him be deprived of something.

As the officers arranged themselves—not touching, not daring—Sofia swept past with her husband in tow, already measuring the path to the gallery. “Go on, my dear,” she said, as if inviting him to music. “I’ll take it from here.”

A scrape of fabric drew Victor’s eyes left—Gail sitting across from the baroness.

She was pale, her hands braced against the edge of the board exactly as her grandfather once had, fingers splayed as though to anchor herself against panic.

The sight pierced him. Her pupils widened when he gave the smallest nod, and in that instant he saw the shift—fear giving way to steadiness, the courage of a master.

Dmitry’s granddaughter. A force in her own right.

He was proud of her, more than words would ever reach.

He shook his head once, a silent vow: You are not the best. Relief flickered across her face, brief but blazing, enough to make him hold on to the thought as tightly as if it were a lifeline.

He turned from the table. The corridor beyond the doors breathed colder air, clean of perfume, sharp against lungs still thick with the press of smoke and judgment.

Greg matched his stride for three steps, his voice pitched for no one else. “They will not keep you.”

Victor inclined his head. “See that she plays.”

“Nothing will stop her.”

They reached the threshold. He could have looked up then, taken that last slice of her face and carried it like contraband in his heart. He didn’t.

The officers eased ahead to open the doors. Outside, the city moved—carts, hooves, a bell that might have been church or simply a clock that believed in the hour. Life refused to adjourn.

He walked to the edge of the room with the same measure he used for endgames: even, exact.

At the threshold of the chamber, one officer gestured toward the front door with two fingers—a courtesy in shape only.

Victor paused long enough to set his breath where it belonged and said, for the room he had just left and the woman who still stood within it, “Then let the record show—the game ended by interruption, not defeat.”

No one wrote it down. He said it anyway.

A whisper pressed the back of his teeth. He didn’t plan to give it air; it escaped all the same as he left. “Play,” he said, too quiet for anyone who didn’t already listen to him. “Win. I will find you at the end of it.”

Once he was outside, Victor closed the carriage door himself before any man could pretend to do him that favor. Inside, he chose the inward-facing bench and fixed his hands on his knees so they wouldn’t show how much they wanted to clench.

Two steps away from check mate. The small, clean inevitability that made boys fall in love with games before they knew what love cost.

The wheels took up their work. The lane bent toward the river. Wind pushed the smell of coal and wet rope through the window seam.

They ended a game, he told himself, and felt the truth settle in, heavy and bright. Not me. Not us.

He went. Not because they owned the path. Because he refused to let them write his absence as shame. Because he feared, just then, that more than the game had ended—and because fear did not get to choose the next move.

The board before her gleamed with patient silence, but Gail’s blood was a storm. They had stolen Victor’s moment. Stolen his chance. No draw. No stalemate. No mate. Yet the arbiter had closed his ledger as if the game were a finished tale.

Her voice broke the hush. “Then the rule still stands?”

The arbiter blinked, already half turned toward List’s retreating coat. “Which rule?”

“That the winner of this board”—her hand hovered over the pawns between her and the baroness—“faces the Black Knight.”

He shifted, discomfort pinching his brow. “Yes. If… if there’s no result in the men’s.”

“There was no result.” Gail’s fury sharpened into ice. “You cannot name a winner where none exists.”

Greg broke the silence, “The rule stands.”

Then the arbiter nodded once. “Yes. This board decides it.”

The baroness let out a laugh too sweet, too brittle. “Oh, how quaint. A governess stepping into the men’s shoes.” Her fingers caressed her knight as though she held a leash. “Do be careful. Ambition is unbecoming.”

But Gail wasn’t listening. She was counting. Pawns aligned in her mind, columns of numbers against the heat in her chest. Victor’s face, as he’d looked across the board, hovered at the edge of thought. Calm. Steady. Refusing to be erased.

She would not let them erase him. Not here. Not now.

Sofia pressed her pawns with clipped efficiency, the kind of moves drilled in salon games where losing was never dangerous, where pieces were toys and the board a stage. Gail matched her—conservative, patient—yet every move was driven by fury she dared not show.

Three moves. Seven. Ten. Their queens skirted tension, knights prowled. Sofia tilted her head with mockery every time she leaned forward. Gail shut her out. She breathed through each trade. Bishop for bishop. A pawn advance feigned, retreated, then pressed when the baroness overextended.

The room shifted. Eyes, at first dismissive, began to linger. Whispers ran up the hall beyond the open door to the chamber. “She’s holding her own,” a voice.

But she wasn’t holding, she was sharpening.

Her grandfather’s lessons whispered in the seams of her mind. Strategy is not in the pieces. It’s in the patience to see further. She saw the opening now—a bishop pinned, an escape square smothered. All she needed was the queen’s glide into place.

She waited. Sofia played quickly, too quickly, like a woman certain no governess could best her. Confidence dulled her vision.

Gail’s hand steadied above the queen. Her pulse slowed. This was the sword in the stone, the moment she had to seize or watch slip away forever.

She moved.

Check.

Sofia’s painted lips parted, her eyes narrowing as she reached to parry. But in her haste, she chose wrong. Her rook slid—too far, too eager.

Gail struck again.

Check.

A ripple ran through the hall beyond. Even the arbiter straightened, his hand frozen on his pen.

Sofia leaned in, disbelief shadowing her face. She hunted for the out that wasn’t there. Her hand hovered, faltered.

Gail placed her final piece with quiet certainty.

“Checkmate.”

The word rang louder than a shout.

Sofia stared at the board as though the pieces had betrayed her. “No—no, that isn’t—” She pushed back from the table, skirts swishing violently. “I hadn’t finished. The game—there were?—”

“The game is complete,” the arbiter said, his voice rough with something like awe. “The winner is… well, her.” No name. No title. But winner nonetheless.

The baronesse shrieked. Truly shrieked, the sound slicing through the chamber like glass underfoot. The gallery rustled with movement, fans snapping open to mask laughter, whispers carrying her humiliation through the crowd.

But Gail barely heard. She rose, spine straight, the board gleaming between them like proof. She didn’t even look at Sofia again. There was no time for her theatrics.

Greg inclined his head from across the hall. A simple gesture, but it carried the weight of invitation, of acknowledgment. Come. Play me.

Gail’s heart pounded. Yes. This was the title she had to earn. Not handed, not hidden. And when it was done, then she would find Victor.

The scrape of skirts turned her head. Rachel Pearler pushed through the gallery, a folded paper in her hand, waving it high as if it were a flag. Her face was alight, eyes shining.

“Gail!” she called, breathless. “He’s here. He’s in England. Your grandfather—he’s here!”

The words struck like a bell inside Gail’s chest. Her grandfather? Dmitry—alive, arrived? She clutched the table’s edge to steady herself.

But Greg’s voice cut across the swell of astonishment. Calm. Firm. “Remember List’s rules.”

She looked at him, still uncomprehending.

Greg’s tone did not waver. “The Black Knight is allowed one companion at his side. One shield against the politics of this title. But not two.” His gaze steadied her, weight as firm as an oath. “So you must choose who stands with you.”