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“You have no intention of telling me, then?”
Richard wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. This time he truly laughs—a short, somewhat disjointed laugh.
“I fear not.”
Nathaniel drinks again.
“I doubt you truly desire it.”
Richard shoots him a sidelong glance, then turns to me.
“Though he does not let it show,” he says, “I can assure you, Evander, that my brother is far from the saint he loves to appear to be.”
Nathaniel runs a hand through his dark hair, pushing it back with a slow gesture. His fingers stop for an instant at the nape of his neck.
“I have never laid claim to such a reputation.”
He brings his hand back to the table and taps with two fingers once, then again. “I merely have greater caution, unlike some.”
Richard huffs. “Stop it”
I observe them both without intervening. The heat of the fireplace still rises to my face, and I feel the blood pounding harder than necessary while, upon the chessboard, no one moves the pawns.
I turn toward Nathaniel.
“If you win this match,” I say, leaving the chalice where it is, “you shall choose the next bottle.”
He inclines his head slightly, weighing an offer whose outcome he already knows.
“And should I lose?”
“You will tell me what that everything of yours entails.”
Richard, with a complicit air, pushes the chessboard toward Nathaniel with one finger.
“I would say that is an invitation difficult to refuse.”
Nathaniel offers a ghost of a smile, more in his eyes than on his lips.
“It seems an acceptable compromise to me.”
He arranges the pieces with orderly gestures and moves first; a pawn advances two squares, decisive, without hesitation.
“Richard told me,” I resume as I slide my own pawn forward, “that besides estate matters, you have held private lectures on literature.”
“Students learn what they desire to learn,” he says. “Those who aspire to a good result achieve it. Those who seek something else, must earn it.”
Richard, sitting beside him, smiles slightly.
“Some youths truly love the ancient words. But most end up repeating them by heart.”
“What do you seek to transmit?”
I ask, lifting my gaze for only an instant.
He moves a bishop, opening a sharp diagonal.
“I do not pretend to teach life,” he says finally. “I teach how to recognize what remains unspoken. The meaning that nests between the lines. The omissions.”
