Page 67 of Claimed By Her Forbidden Duke
He could feel her focus on him, but he continued setting up their pieces. Pawns, knights, bishops. Their kings and queens.
“The queen has always been my favorite piece,” Arabella said, running her finger over the curved point of the queen’s crown. “She is powerful.”
“Indeed. My favorite is the bishop. He is powerful, too, but in a much quieter way.” Arabella nodded as Edmund swept his hand towards her. “You may start.”
Arabella’s mind was fiercely sharp, and Edmund had taught her from a young age how to play chess. It seemed that time had only made her sharper. She moved cunningly, her eyes always assessing the board. She took her time but played intelligently.
“You play to distract yourself,” she noted.
He smirked. “And you play to win. To prove a point.”
“I do not,” she insisted, but then knocked one of his pawns down, claiming it for her own.
“You do, for it is how I used to play with our father.”
That had her hand stilling over the board, a smile on her face. “Then perhaps I play to impress you.”
“You already impress me,” he told her. “The years have not been kind to you while I have been away, yet you have still emerged intelligent and lovely and fair. That is the most a brother can hope for.”
“And a sister will hope to still beat her brother,” she said, dancing around the years of loneliness she had gone through.
She rarely spoke of it, but he had seen the red, leather-bound journal that she hastily tucked into her vanity drawer when he entered her room too quickly. He wondered what thoughts she wrote down in it.
“Let us raise the stakes,” he suggested. “If you win, I will allow Lord Graham to pay you a morning call, as he expressed a desire to at last night’s ball.”
His sister’s eyes lit up. “And if you win?”
He thought about it for a moment, but Arabella thought faster.
“IfIwin,” she continued, “I will have my visit but also insist that you finally approach Lady Penelope for a promenade or a rendezvous. And if you win, I will stop asking you about your feelings for her.”
“I have not said I have feelings for her.”
“Which is precisely why I keep asking.”
She grinned at him as she claimed yet another piece, and Edmund winced.
“I cannot ask her for any of those things,” he muttered. “You have heard and seen Lord Langwaite’s behavior.”
“So you do admit you would like to ask her.”
He was silent for a moment, pretending to study the board. She had already taken six of his pawns, plus one of his knights, and he had yet to even take half of her pawns. He could imagine her practicing chess over and over, besting Benjamin.
“No,” he answered. “Focus on the game rather than?—”
“It seems to be you who is not focusing,” Arabella shot back before knocking over his other knight. “You placed that piece terribly as I spoke about Lady Penelope.”
“I did not,” he argued, but she fixed him with a smirk—one he recognized from seeing it in the looking glass.
Ah,my own sister learning my tricks.
Laughing, he answered, “Arabella, you are going to be a force to be reckoned with regarding your suitors.”
“Not that I have many at all—they are all afraid of you.”
“Lord Graham is persistent,” he pointed out.
Her face flushed. “We—we are not talking about me right now.”
