Midnight Eyes by Brophy, Sarah (well read books .TXT) 📕

When the first messenger arrived weeks later, Imogen hadn’t even realized that she had been waiting for it, waiting for Roger to stop biding his time and start playing the game in earnest. He timed his little drop of poison well, filling her with it just when she had started to forget how much pain he could inflict. Not that it wasn’t easy enough to forget his darkness when she was surrounded by Robert’s gentle, cleansing light. It seemed that in no time at all, he had changed her world.

Under his care the Keep had slowly settled into a comfortable rhythm, everyone easily picking up the strands of their new lives. Imogen found herself intoxicated by the simple new life that now enclosed her.

Tonight she could hear the murmur of women sewing and gossiping by the main hearth, hear the men cleaning their weapons or leathers, their deeper voices a bass note in the gentle, soothing hum that now filled the Keep. To Imogen there was no sweeter sound. She absorbed it as she sat opposite Robert at the main table; a chessboard set up between them and the lamb dozing peacefully at their feet.

She smiled contentedly as she waited for Robert to make his next move.

“You’re going to beat me, aren’t you?” he asked incredulously.

“Of course,” she murmured, her serenity tinged with more than a little satisfaction.

He looked up and grinned. “No ‘of course’ about it, Little One. Until I decided to teach you this accursed game, I rarely lost.” His brows dropped suspiciously. “But I didn’t teach you the game at all, did I? You already knew how to play before I stumbled on the idea, didn’t you?”

Her face dimpled. “As much as I’d like to deny it and let you believe that you have been repeatedly beaten by a complete novice I have to confess that my father and I used to play.” She reached out a hand and consolingly patted his. “It has been a while between games, though.”

She grinned at his loud grunt of disgust and couldn’t help adding smugly, “Pity, really, as I seem to still be good at it.”

Robert ignored her gloating, turning his attention back to the board. “It’s not the losing I really mind,” he muttered, “so much as the fact that I have only to tell you my move once and you remember it. You seem to hold the whole game in your head and I don’t care what you say, that can’t be natural.”

She shrugged her shoulders delicately. “Maybe it isn’t natural, but you have to admit that it’s very effective.”

“Witch!” he growled, and her delighted laughter brought more than one masculine head up. Even the lamb lifted his own head for a moment. Curious, he eyed his humans with a mild interest before returning to the more important business of sleeping on his mistress’s foot.

Robert continued to scowl as he made the only move she had effectively left him and read out the coordinates for her grudgingly. He leaned back in the great chair and watched as her brilliant little brain analyzed the move, her thoughts scarcely discernible on her face. It took a depressingly few seconds for her to come up with her countermove, Robert thought dourly, as she rattled off the coordinates with all the confidence of a woman who knew she had won, and won decisively. Her “Checkmate, I believe,” was almost endearingly smug.

Almost.

Robert moved the piece as ordered and knocked over his king in surrender.

He narrowed his eyes and looked intensely at the game, trying to understand his abject defeat, trying to work out where exactly the game had gotten away from him. He didn’t lift his eyes from the board when one of the men from the first watch whispered in his ear but his face darkened ominously. He noisily dragged back his chair, disturbing the lamb once more, who let out a small bleat of protest and slowly stood.

“Excuse me for a moment, Little One,” he said as he stood, “but I must attend to a small matter.”

“Running from your defeat, Sir Husband?” she asked, smiling up at him with deliberately sweet innocence.

“No, that would be far too cowardly for a brave warrior such as I. Think of it more as a strategic retreat. Set up the pieces while I’m gone but, beware, this time I won’t let you win.”

“Let!” she spluttered and her delighted laughter followed him from the hall. He knew she was laughing at the feebleness of his game compared to hers, but strangely he didn’t mind. He didn’t even really mind, all that much, being so soundly trounced, just as long as she was laughing. The sound had become the food of his heart and he’d willingly be her fool if that was what she required.

She smiled broadly as she listened to the sound of his footsteps disappearing into the general hum of the hall. Her hands automatically began returning all of the pieces to their correct position, leaving her mind free to luxuriate in the strange new world Robert had somehow brought into being all around her.

It was a world that was filled with so many unexpected and addictive joys. Who would have thought that a simple game of chess could create within her such wonderful feelings of contentment and well-being? Imogen smiled as her hand gently righted Robert’s king, remembering his endearingly comical surprise at his defeat.

She wasn’t quite sure why she hadn’t told Robert, when he had first suggested the game, that she already knew how to play. It might have had something to do with the charmed warmth she had felt when she thought of spending time with him while he explained to her the intricacies of the game. She did feel slightly bad about her dishonesty, but she also didn’t regret it for a moment. How could she, when her small fraud had opened up for her a world she had never expected existed, showed her a man that she had thought