LAVENDER BLUE (historical romance) by Parris Afton Bonds Page B

let the Frenchman inebriate her.
    The game continued. Black and white pieces began to vanish from the board. She drummed her fingers. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. She sacrificed two pawn s for his knight; he yielded three pawns for her bishop. She wished the bandanna didn’t conceal his face so well. If she could only see his expression; perhaps the droop of his mouth to give her some clue as to his intentions. As it was, the relentless gaze of his brown eyes told her nothing.
    Piece after piece was vanquished in the fierce mental combat. Her nerves were as taut as one of Trinidad ’s violin strings; her palms were damp with perspiration. Her opponent was as good as or better than Armand and Cristobal!
    Nervously her fingers played with her remaining fortress-like rook. With it, and her queen, she might just possibly corner his king in checkmate. But if she did not succeed with the next move, it was the beginning of the end.
    Then, before she realized the position he had maneuvered her into, he swiftly moved his bishop diagonally across the board. His gaze sought hers across the table.
    “ Echec , ’ ’ he said evenly.
    She closed her eyes and opened them again, hoping the board would look different. It d idn’t. Her king was forced to move and sacrifice her queen to his bishop. She watched with a shuddering breath as his strong fingers plucked her queen, her strongest piece, from the field of battle. Bitterly her lips curled at the crippling blow. Her lungs expelled air heavily, and her hand lifted the glass. In one breath she swallowed nearly a quarter of its contents. Her esophagus went into paralysis. Every taste bud screamed in agony. Her pupils dilated like kaleidoscopes.
    Immediately he was at her side, his huge hand pounding her back. His husky chuckle was muted by the bandanna. “ Avez-vous abandonné ?”
    “ No!” she gritted, when air had returned to her seared throat. She understood the question only too well. “I don’t wish to concede!”
    He reseated himself, sprawling in the chair, and refilled her glass. Wildly her gaze swept over the board, searching for an escape for her king—and for herself. The damned Frenchman had to be a chessmaster! She knew now how the paltry number of defenders must have felt at the Alamo with Santa Ana’s legions moving in for the slaughter—except with her queen captured she held no musket for her defense. And the Frenchman’s ravishment of her would be, in a way, much worse than the final death before the firing squad. It would be a betrayal of her memory of Armand and their love. For her it would be tantamount to adultery.
    She positioned her rook, her fortress, between her king and his dangerous queen, only to realize immediately his knight now had her cornered. The rook slipped from her grasp to clatter on the board. She shrugged her shoulders dispassionately. “I yield,” she said in Spanish and reached for the glass. Avoiding the triumphant glint in the dark eyes across from her, she swallowed the entire contents this time.
    The effect was devastating. The sausage curls before her ears seemed to spring out and roll back like sprung window shades. Her deflated lungs gasped like bellows. She struggled to her feet. Her chair overturned behind her, shattering her eardrums with the noise.
    Sh e was only half aware that the candlelight was pinched out. A hand took her elbow as she toppled onto the bed like a statue. Behind her lids the room whirled dangerously. Surely it would stop soon. In a moment it did, and she opened her eyes. She still felt strange, and her hands discovered why. Her clothes! They were gone! “Oh, sweet Mary in Heaven!” she groaned.
    That damned low laughter! Mocking her, challenging her!
    She tried to sit up, and two hands pressed her shoulders back down into the comfort of the mattress. “ Ma chérie, j'attends pour toujours pour ceci .”
    Whatever was he saying?
    She gave herself over to the large capable hands that stroked her