Ford was about to say well of course you'll know if he likes to play chess, but stopped himself. Who was he to offer reassurances? Verity had married someone who had dropped out of the sky, a deus ex machina that no one could afford to scrutinize too hard because they couldn't afford for her not to marry after she'd been missing a week and no one knew what had happened to her. Ford was getting married to someone he hardly knew. What assurances could he really give her in good faith that her situation, when it came around, would be any different? And that was if Grace ever married. At the present juncture it was a very big if indeed. Neither she nor Clementine had very serious prospects before the coatroom incident, and now they had the reputation sting of association with an allegedly rakish brother and soon an allegedly whoreish sister-in-law, which was hardly illustrious. And he still couldn't afford a dowry for either of them, which hurt their chances further — not that either of them knew that.

So it was really less of a question of whether Grace would be able to know or like her fiance before she married him and more of a question of whether that fiance would ever exist in the first place. But either side of this issue was something he'd rather die than bring up in conversation with Grace, so instead he stuck his hands in his pockets. "I'll teach you to play chess," he offered. "When we're back from the honeymoon."

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