Jameson had grown up playing his grandfather’s games. Every Saturday morning, a challenge had been laid out in front of them. One lesson that it had taken years for him to learn was that sometimes, the best opening move was to take a step back.
To watch. To see.
“I should have known he would send you.” Branford walked to stand next to Katharine. His tone was polite, his expression austere.
“Perhaps I’m here on my own behalf,” Katharine replied archly. “After all, Ainsley has a secret in play, and you know I’d love to see him unseated.”
“So you’re saying that you’re not here for Vantage?” Branford arched a brow. “That he has no interest in it?”
“I find it quite interesting,” Katharine said evenly, “how much you want to know the answer to that question.”
Jameson would have snuck a glance at Avery to see what she was making of all of this, but Zella chose that moment to step between them.
“Checking out the competition?” she murmured.
“Who is she?” Jameson asked, well aware that Zella was also the competition.
“Katharine Payne.” Zella had a way of pitching her voice that made him strain to hear it. “She’s been an MP longer than you’ve been alive.”
MP. Jameson’s brain came at the abbreviation like a code. The answer fell immediately into place. Member of Parliament.
“Who’s he?” Avery asked quietly.
“And is he playing for Vantage?” Jameson murmured.
“I doubt it,” Zella said. “I know who she works for, and let’s just say that Bowen Johnstone-Jameson isn’t exactly the sentimental type.”
Jameson remembered Ian claiming that the King’s Gate Terrace flat didn’t belong to Branford. I have two brothers, he’d said, days before that. Both older, both horribly irrelevant to this story. Except, apparently, they weren’t. There were five players in the Game. One was Ian’s oldest brother; another was potentially working on behalf of the second-born.
If Katharine is a powerful political figure, what does that make the man she works for?
Jameson thought about the flat, about the way the security guard had emphasized the word he in referring to the owner, the same way that Branford had just now, like Bowen Johnstone-Jameson wasn’t a name that one just spoke.
Unless, Jameson thought, you’re Zella.
“Are you?” Jameson asked the woman beside him. “Sentimental?” Zella gave a little shrug. “In my own way.”
“You broke into the Devil’s Mercy,” Jameson commented. “And ended up with membership,” Avery added.
A delicate, closed-lipped smile adorned Zella’s face. “I’m That Duchess.
There’s nothing I won’t do.”
Or at least, that’s what people say, Jameson inferred, and then he amended that thought. Racist people. How many Black women were there, total, in Zella’s position? In the aristocracy? At the Mercy?
“What are you playing for?” Jameson asked her. Zella tilted her head. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” “Her situation is more precarious than she lets on.”
Jameson looked past Zella and Avery to see Katharine walking toward them. Her stride was neither long nor quick, her posture perfectly erect.
“Your husband,” Katharine said, meeting Zella’s gaze. “The Duke. I hear he’s not well.”
As excellent as Zella’s poker face was, that got a response—just for a fraction of a second, just a slight narrowing of her eyes, but Jameson caught it. An instant later, the polished, slightly amused look was back in place. “Wherever would you hear a thing like that?”
“From my brother, I wager.” Branford didn’t come any closer to the four of them. He aimed a piercing glare at Katharine. “What does Bowen want with her?” Simon Johnstone-Jameson, Viscount Branford, did not mince words.
In response, Katharine gave an indelicate snort. Given her posture, mannerisms, and that immaculate suit, Jameson was fairly certain that, for Katharine, indelicate was a choice.
“I spanked you once when you were a child,” Katharine told Branford. “Do you remember that?”
The red-haired man responded with a snort of his own. “Really, Katharine, is that your best attempt to put me in my place?”
“You know me better than that.” Katharine’s expression seemed mild, but her eyes—they were blue green and very hard. “You know your brother better than that.”
It fully hit Jameson then that the Proprietor might have chosen the players of this game for reasons of his own, reasons that went far beyond who had or had not impressed him or whose secrets he was most curious to hear.
Me. Avery. One Johnstone-Jameson brother and a powerful woman working on behalf of another. If there was one thing that those Saturday morning games had taught Jameson, it was how to look for a pattern.
How to read code.
So how does the duchess fit?
“The boy is Ian’s son.” Branford didn’t even look at Jameson as he imparted that bit of knowledge to Katharine. “Don’t try to pretend that Bowen ferreted that secret out long ago. If he’d been aware of a Hawthorne connection, he would have made a play when the old man was alive.”
Hearing Branford refer to his grandfather as the old man hit Jameson harder than it should have.
“Are you so sure he didn’t?” Katharine parried. Then she spared a glance for Jameson himself—which was more than his uncle gave him. “You’re playing for Vantage, then, Mr. Hawthorne, not just out of some sophomoric love of novelty.”
You’re playing for Ian. That was what this woman was saying. You’re just a stooge.
Jameson turned, rather than trying to keep his face blank. “I’m playing
for myself.” That would have been true, back at the start, but now? Unwilling to dwell on the thought, Jameson returned his attention to the room.
The table. The fireplace. The logs. The design on the ceiling. The book on the window. It was the last of these that caught his attention and held it. Let the rest of the players think I’m dealing with daddy issues. Hawthornes have granddaddy issues instead.
Issues like the fact that part of Jameson’s brain would always look at the world in layers, would always question the purpose behind any action that seemed, on the surface, to have none.
Actions like Rohan bringing a book into this room—and leaving it here.
Allowing himself to look angry, maybe even hurt, Jameson faced the window… and subtly picked up the book.
The Smugglers’ Caves and Other Stories. It took nothing more than looking at the cover to determine that what he held in his hands was a collection of children’s stories—old ones. Now why, Jameson thought, not bothering to mask the smile on his face now that his back was to the room, would Rohan be reading this?
Immediately, his brain started going back through everything the Factotum had said about the Game. It would hardly be sporting, he’d told Zella, if I hadn’t given you everything you needed to win.
Jameson’s adrenaline surged. The Game? It wasn’t hide-and-seek. It’s Saturday morning. Not exactly—but Rohan had left a clue. Maybe more than one. Jameson’s brain latched on to something else that Rohan had said, when delivering the rules. Leave no stone unturned but smuggle nothing out.
The bastard had used the word smuggle. He’d left this book here. Jameson looked out the window—for real, this time, and let his eyes take in the grand scope of what he saw. Vantage wasn’t just built on a hill. It was built on a cliff, overlooking a large body of water.
The kind of body of water on which smugglers sailed, Jameson thought. He looked back down at the book in his hands. What are the chances that if we scale down the cliff, we’ll find caves?
Knowing better than to cast his lot on a single interpretation, Jameson subtly examined the book. Avery came to stand behind him. She wrapped her arms around his torso, in what likely passed for a gesture of comfort,
and looked around him, to the book.
He hadn’t fooled her.
Jameson thumbed through the pages of the book, and when something fell out, he caught it before it could fall far. A pressed flower. Jameson turned that over in his mind. A poppy.
“Keep going,” Avery murmured behind him, soft words, charged ones, for only his ears.
Jameson kept going. On the back inside cover of the book, he found two words, scripted in familiar dark purple ink.
Ladies first.
