“Ah, now I understand. This is a game of strategy. Is that all there is to it?”
“That’s all. Shall we begin?”
Eden responded by dropping the light-colored round she held into the first chute.
Raven appeared to consider his move thoughtfully before dropping a dark round into the second chute.
“All right,” Eden mused aloud, “I can either place a second round on my first, or choose to block you.”
“Whichever you like.”
Eden dropped one of her rounds into the second chute to keep him from attempting a vertical series.
Raven chose to again ignore her and dropped a dark round into the third slot. Eden then put a light round into the fourth.
“Fiendish,” Raven complained with another sly chuckle as he placed a second dark round in the third slot.
Keeping up her attack, Eden topped it with a light round and smiled prettily. She now had three light rounds on the diagonal across chutes one, two and three.
Undaunted, Raven dropped a round into the fifth slot.
“What good did that do?”
“Maybe none,” he admitted. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
Thinking the man inattentive at best, Eden placed a light round on top of his in chute five.
Raven scooped up a dark round and, going back to the first chute, dropped it in on top of Eden’s.
Eden countered by placing a second round in the fourth slot. Raven quickly topped it with one of his.
With a gleeful shout of triumph, Eden dropped another light round on top of it to complete a diagonal pattern across slots one to four. “There, I won!” she exclaimed excitedly. “This certainly is a simple game. Are you positive Captain Cook was exceptionally fond of it?”
“The story is he and the scientists who traveled with him played it every night.”
“Really?”
“For hours and hours,” Raven insisted with a wicked grin.
Eden’s glance moved from the cleverly designed box to Raven’s broad smile and she quickly arrived at a discouraging conclusion. “You let me win, didn’t you?”
“Are you accusing me of cheating?” Raven asked in mock horror.
“No, of course not,” Eden assured him. “I don’t think what you did can be called cheating. I just think you let me win.”
“Shall we settle the question with another game?”
“Only if you’ll promise to play fair,” Eden replied.
“You have my word on i
t.” Raven gestured toward the game. “This slat that fits across the bottom of the chutes is called the gangplank. You just give it a tug, and it comes out. The rounds then drop back into the box, or locker, and we’re ready to play another game.”
This time Eden was concentrating so hard on blocking Raven’s moves so that he would not be able to align four rounds on the diagonal that he managed to place four in a row horizontally before she realized what he was doing. “You won that game,” she said with obvious admiration. “I didn’t even see it coming.”
“I was lucky.”
“I think clever is a better word. I’ll bet your strategy is always that good.” When Raven broke into a charming grin and actually blushed at her praise, Eden was touched. “You have such a marvelous smile, Raven. If only you’d used it in London, all the women would have fallen in love with you.”