As a Wager, They Placed the Coal Merchant's Daughter at the Duke's Chessboard—Then She Took His Q...

What would you do if they sat you down to be humiliated — and you had exactly one chance to refuse it? At a grand country party, Miss Edwina Crale — a coal merchant's daughter working as a paid companion — is placed at the Duke of Blackthorn's chessboard as a wager. The room bets she will cry. Her employer threatens to stop her wages if she dares win. The Duke himself calls her lucky when she doesn't lose. But Edwina has been playing chess since before she could read, taught by a Hungarian clockmaker in a mining town — and for two years, she has been corresponding by post with an opponent she has never met, sending moves across the country one fortnight at a time. She did not know, until tonight, that the man on the other side of those letters was the Duke himself. • A coal merchant's daughter refuses to throw a game — even when it costs her everything • A Duke who has won at chess for eleven years meets the one player he cannot dismiss • A coach accident on a snow-covered heath forces two people to face what they owe each other A story about courage, correspondence, and the cost of calling someone lucky when you know perfectly well they are not. If it stayed with you, leave a like — and tell us in the comments what you would have done when they pulled out that chair.