We avoided speaking of Alexander, and even though it soothed me to pretend he didn’t exist, it was impossible to remove him from my thoughts completely.
He was an apparition in my peripheral vision. A ghost’s cool breath at my back. He haunted me as he had since the moment I’d saved him in the alleyway in Milano, and I couldn’t imagine a time, even years after this half-decade of servitude, that I wouldn’t feel him in my thoughts or harbor him like a cancer in my cells.
“That concludes our tour, I’m afraid,” Noel said as we descended the grand marble staircase into the pale blue great hall.
“We could go outside?” I said flippantly, as if my heart wasn’t pounding in my throat at the idea.
Noel’s smile thinned. “I think not; it’s late and the damp doesn’t agree with my old bones.”
“You’re hardly old,” I teased.
Something darkened his pale grey eyes and then vanished too quickly to study. He stopped at the foot of the stairs and took both my hands in his to give them a gentle squeeze.
“You are too kind to me, my dear. I know you are probably bored of my company, but would you by chance join me before the fire for a game of chess?”
I wanted to say yes because I was sick and tired of being so alone. I was used to a matchbox house full of passionate Italians, not castles filled with dead air.
But I didn’t know how to play chess.
I’d never even seen a chess set.
And I didn’t want to tell Noel, a British fucking Lord who had probably attended the best schools in the country, that I hadn’t even finished high school because I’d missed too many classes for modelling gigs.
He sensed my hesitation and bent his knees slightly to lower his great height in order to look in my eyes. “What’s your name again, dear?”
“Cosima,” I murmured, looking anywhere but in those eyes so like his son’s only I’d never seen Alexander’s warm with kindness.
His mouth twisted. “That’s a difficult name to pronounce for an old Brit. Do you have any other given names?”
“Ruth,” I told him with a cringe because each of my siblings had an English name from our Irish father, but mine was by far the ugliest. “Cosima Ruth.”
“Ruthie,” Noel said with a smile. “A new name for a new British woman.”
A frown buckled my brow before I could help it. I wasn’t British, and I didn’t want to be called ‘Ruthie’. It was an ugly name for a plain faced, meek girl.
I wanted to remain Cosima. Unique and beautiful, loving and vain. I didn’t want to lose an iota of my personality, not even to the only man who’d ever shown me any kindness outside of my own family and an oddly watchful mafia boss back home.
Before I could open my mouth to protest, he was laughing lightly and turning away toward the second salon.
“Come,” he said in a way that felt like a command even though his tone was light. “Come and I’ll teach you.”
I followed him through to the intimate den where a raging fire crackled in a fireplace big enough to comfortably fit a group of standing men. There was a small table set before the flames, the beautiful mahogany of the chessboard on top glowing in the warm light.
A servant appeared out of the shadows to pull the antique chair out for me, so I took a seat as Noel poured two fingers of scotch and sat himself.
“Now, there are many theories and philosophies about chess, dear girl,” Noel began, running his fingers over the pieces on the board and straightening them with obsessive compulsion until they were perfectly aligned. “But one thing is simple, this is a game of survival, an example of mental Darwinism at its finest. The goal is not to be the smartest person on the board but the craftiest.”
“That’s good. I’m not particularly smart,” I muttered, staring at the board in dread.
Noel stared at me, his eyes narrowed and his fingers stroking over his chin like a modern-day philosopher observing his subject. “Perhaps not, though, that’s yet to be determined. Now, sit back and listen.”
He explained for only a few moments, a quick rundown on the way each piece moved, that I had to go first because my pieces were white and his black, and that the winner of the game would receive a boon.
I had no idea what Noel could possibly want from me, but there were endless possibilities if I were to receive such a gift.
First and foremost, a phone call to my family.
I listened so hard to his instructions my ears strained and buzzed. My knee bounced with excess anxiety as I made my first move, pushing a pawn into the middle of the board. As we progressed through the game and Noel captured each and every one of my pawns, I felt a certain kinship to those limited, easily sacrificed pieces.