Page 40 of Better Off Wed

Jeremy resumed looking at the bookshelves, running his fingertips along a row of spines, here and there sliding a volume from the shelf, thumbing through its pages, and then returning it to its spot. “Remarkable.”

From the way he spoke that single word, she almost wished he were looking at her, not the books. “What is?” she asked

“How…well, unremarkable it all is,” he replied, looking up at the shelf before which he stood. “That is, it’s an extraordinary collection, the work of generations. Which means, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Why, any one of these books might be—”

Valuable.

When he broke off his sentence before that expected word—stopped it, in fact, by snapping his jaw together with such force she heard the click of his teeth—she jerked her eyes to his profile.

What exactly was it he had thought to find?

Not something merely old. Even she, with an untutored eye and a cursory glance, had seen volumes that would have piqued the interest of an antiquarian.

“A good many of these books are common, and not exactly on the subjects one might expect of Thornton, looking around at all the rest.” He waved an arm, taking in the room and its various contents in that sweeping gesture. “Take, for example, this one,” he said, pulling a thin volume from the shelf in front of him and holding it out so that she could see the cover.

“The Noble Game of Chess,” she read, squinting to make out the embossing in the dim light.

“Yes. Written over fifty years ago by a Syrian in Aleppo, and then translated from French. My father taught me, using this very book. I still have his copy.” The ache of nostalgia in his voice made a lump rise in her own throat. “It’s rather odd to me to think that Thornton’s father might have done the same.”

“Or that he’s used that book to teach his own sons.”

“Doubtful, and not only because Thornton doesn’t strike me as a particularly paternal man. You see, Stamma’s notation method has fallen out of favor,” he explained, approaching her with the book held open to a random page.

Columns of numbers and letters greeted her eye. “It looks like a code.”

Jeremy’s smile was strange. “Yes, I suppose it does. He uses algebraic notation to lay out series of moves—”

She caught his boyish excitement and gestured toward a small game table a few feet away, its marquetry top designed in the pattern of a chessboard and the pieces sitting nearby. “Show me?”

He helped her rise and hobble a half-dozen steps to the nearer chair, then seated himself opposite. “Each number refers to a specific column on the board,” he explained, showing her the page, itself divided into columns labeled White and Black. “One, two, three, and so on.” He pointed as he spoke. “And each letter,” he said, nodding toward the book, “indicates a piece. A for the queen’s rook, B for her knight.” He placed each piece in its appointed square, across the board. “Then starting over in the opposite direction for black.”

“P for pawn?” she guessed.

“Exactly. And the crosses,” he said, underlining a small symbol with his thumbnail, “show when a play puts the king into check. An elegant system that leaves little room for confusion.”

There Laura could not quite agree, for knowing next to nothing of the game, every page seemed to her nothing more than a jumble of letters and numbers. Jeremy’s ease in disentangling their meaning showed a side of him she had not previously suspected.

Now the board sat filled between them. “Shall we play?”

“I shall surely lose,” she insisted with an embarrassed laugh.

He did not deny it. “This first game, almost certainly. But you have the sort of mind that could do well at chess. It requires looking ahead, anticipating the moves of one’s opponent, knowing how to disguise one’s own motives until it is too late for your opponent to recover.”

Not a bad description of her work as Lady Sterling.

He knew her surprisingly well, and most surprising of all, he seemed to like what he knew.

He handed the open book to her. “Start here. Stamma shall be your aide de camp in this battle, while I must muddle through alone. Though, to be fair, I once had those pages committed to memory.” He grinned at his own enthusiasm, and that lopsided smile made her heart flutter.

Dutifully, she followed each notation, thankful for his patience as she counted squares with her fingertip and murmured the letters and names of the pieces under her breath. Every turn required twice as long as it ought.

Several moves in, when she was about to lift her fingers from her queen, he shook his head. “That cannot be right,” he said, curling gentle fingers around hers to return the piece to where it had been. Despite the chill of the room, his hand was warm. “Try again.”

Thoroughly distracted, first by the sensation of his touch and then by its absence, she could hardly focus on the correct line in the chart. Finally, with a sigh of exasperation, she showed him the page. “If that is not the proper move, then I cannot make heads nor tails of it.”

He reached for the book with easy confidence, and she held it out so that they could share it, maneuvering only slightly so that their fingertips would brush. “It does take some getting used to. Remember, you must count from left to ri—” He broke off with a frown and took the book entirely into his own grasp. “That’s wrong. It should be c, not e. The queen’s bishop, not the queen herself.”

“Perhaps there’s a blemish on the page,” she suggested, peering, “and it only looks like an e.”