CHAPTER 48 ROHAN
ROHAN
The kitten slept deeply and well on Rohan’s lap. Savannah, on the other hand, was wide awake, as she had been the entire flight. Same for the scholar.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for having a softness for strays.” Brady eyed the crook of Rohan’s arm, into which the kitten had burrowed.
“I’m terribly soft,” Rohan deadpanned.
“You are a stray.” Savannah had opted for a seat on Rohan’s side of the aisle, a table between them—so close and yet so far.
She wasn’t wrong about him being a stray.
Children did not come into the custody of the Devil’s Mercy for good reasons.
Rohan had told Savannah as much—on Hawthorne Island and again in the bayou.
He’d told her far more than he should have.
Again. And again. And again.
“It’s been hours.” Brady Daniels had chosen a seat across the aisle, his back to the pilot—and not to either of them. “I’m still waiting on the details of your plan, Rohan.”
“Congratulations, Mr. Daniels. Fourteen was indeed the lucky number, so now that you have asked me to elucidate things for the fourteenth time on this transatlantic flight, I will be happy to comply.” Rohan smirked. “My brain is yours for the picking.”
Brady didn’t bat an eye, completely immune to Rohan’s sarcasm. “You’re sending Savannah in.” Brady curled the fingers on his right hand one by one toward his palm, then straightened them out again, the movement rhythmic and contemplative. “But not me. You’ll keep me close. I’m your leverage.”
Brady stilled his fingers and turned his wrist, exposing his forearm—and his tattoo. Letters ringed a black spiral. Decoded, the message read ROHAN MUST LOSE.
“You were not instructed to do that.” Rohan was not in the mood to bother with questions, so he met Brady’s inferences with one of his own.
“The duchess gave you the symbol and told you to memorize it, but the tattoo was, I suspect, entirely your own during. Were you afraid you would forget the sequence when it mattered most?”
“I was afraid,” Brady said in that calm, quiet way of his, “that I would forget her.” Rohan knew Brady wasn’t talking about the duchess. He was talking about Calla Thorp. “It’s easy to lose track of what matters in the heat of a game.”
“You were never in danger of forgetting.” Rohan was as sure of that as he was of the exact shade of Savannah’s pale, pale eyes.
“Maybe I wanted it to hurt,” Brady said. “Maybe I wanted proof that I hadn’t imagined what I’d been offered. Maybe I wanted a tangible reminder that the answers I wanted were close, that I could win them.”
Rohan wondered if Zella truly had any further information to give Brady, other than the fact that Calla was alive—and no longer Calla Thorp.
One way or another, Nora had said, there is no Calla Thorp anymore, and when pushed for answers, she’d disclaimed that she did not know, that she was not the right person to ask.
It remained to be seen if the duchess was, but it was clear enough to Rohan that Zella was entangled with all of this somehow, with this group somehow.
And he could use that.
Across from Rohan, Savannah seemed to reach her fill of allowing Rohan and Brady to go back and forth on their own.
“If I’m going in,” she told Rohan, “you’re going to want to elucidate the particulars for me.”
There were a great many things Rohan would have liked to elucidate for her. He turned to look out the window at the ocean below, an exercise in restraint. It had been a full year since Rohan had last crossed the Atlantic. This trip was a homecoming of sorts.
Brady had asked Rohan about his plan fourteen times on this flight, but Savannah hadn’t asked at all until now.
Rohan found himself inclined to answer. “There is a street in London where cars drive on the wrong side of the road. There you will find a certain hotel, built—originally—in eighteen eighty-nine.” Built for a reason.
Built in a strategic location. Rohan did not elucidate either of those things for Savannah out loud.
“Inside the hotel, there is a place sometimes called the winter garden. If a person were to find their way there and make their way under the glass dome, that person would be able to see quite a bit.”
Brady had relatively few tells, but Rohan was well aware the scholar was committing to memory each and every piece of information Rohan parted with.
“See quite a bit,” Savannah repeated. “Like what?”
Like Jameson Hawthorne. Rohan did not say that out loud. “A gazebo, for starters.”
The location of the Mercy had remained a closely guarded secret for more than two centuries, in part because it had many entrances and many exits, any one of which could be closed off—temporarily or permanently—at a moment’s notice, and only a small subset of which any given member was aware of.
If Rohan was correct about Jameson Hawthorne’s likely method of trying to gain access to the Devil’s Mercy, if he was correct about whom Jameson had approached to make said invitation happen, then the winter garden was doubtlessly where the Hawthorne in question would end up.
At midnight.
“There will be a gown waiting for you when we land,” Rohan told Savannah. “Nothing too ostentatious. Fitted here.” He nodded his head toward her torso and then trailed his gaze up her body to her chest and neck. “A bit of lace there to cover what needs covering.”
“White?” Savannah guessed.
“A dark and smoky gray.” Rohan could picture the way the gown would look on her, her pale skin and platinum hair standing out like snow against the smoke.
“The duchess wore just such a dress,” he informed Savannah, “the night she became the first and only person to ever succeed at breaking into the Mercy.”
If sending Savannah clad in an identical gown didn’t get Zella’s attention—and the Proprietor’s—nothing would.
“You know more than you’re saying.” Brady Daniels was an astute individual.
“I am in the business of knowing everything, Mr. Daniels.” Rohan met Savannah’s gaze across the table. “And I can tell you no more than I already have.”
Rohan could not give Savannah a single one of the Mercy’s secrets. He could not tell her where to go once she made her way to the winter garden or even that Jameson Hawthorne was the person she was looking for.
He trusted she would figure it out.
“You’re taunting the duchess.” Savannah did not seem to find that any more objectionable than she’d found Rohan the night before—which is to say, not at all. “That gown—you’re using me as bait.”
“And what lovely bait you’ll be.” Rohan’s thoughts went—rather inexplicably—to alchemy, to immortality and gold and the transmutation of one thing into another. And then he thought about what Savannah had said to him beneath the dock during the Grandest Game.
You do not get to decide whether or not I betray you. All you get to decide is whether you are really that scared. Of me.
“I trust you to play this appropriately,” Rohan said. Savannah most likely would not make it all the way into the Mercy, but if she made it underground, made it to the emerald path, that would be enough to send the proper message.
“You trust no one,” Savannah replied.
“How right you are,” Rohan murmured. Trust was weakness. It always had been. “But I’m in the mood for one more wager, love, and to make it interesting, I’m not going to tell you the terms this time.”
Rohan was betting that Savannah could handle herself. He was betting that even once she had—once she’d gotten what she was after—she would come back to him.
“I believe I’ve made it perfectly clear what I think of your games,” Savannah said.
You’re here, aren’t you? Rohan thought, and then he produced a pen. He stood, kitten and all, and crossed to Savannah’s side of the table, uncapping the pen without so much as jarring the sleeping stray.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Savannah asked.
“Arming you,” Rohan replied, “as best I can. Now take off your jacket and slip your shirt down, baring your left shoulder.”
Rohan could not tell Savannah what to do once she walked beneath the glass dome in the winter garden and stood beneath the gazebo. He could not tell her what to say if she made it to the caverns below and found herself intercepted.
But he could mark her in a way that would serve as a safeguard and message both—if she let him.
“Heaven forbid I go in unarmed.” Savannah unzipped her jacket. A heartbeat later, her left shoulder was bare.
Rohan brought his pen to her skin. Letter by letter, he crafted his message.
POTENTIAL MUST BE TESTED. That was something Helena Thorp had told Gigi and Savannah. There was a chance that phrase would mean something to the duchess, and even if it did not, it was cryptic enough to pique her interest—and the Proprietor’s.
“Other shoulder,” Rohan told Savannah.
“You are pushing your luck,” she replied, but a moment later, she’d given him his canvas.
Rohan chose a different phrase this time: THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS. Should anyone other than Zella or the Proprietor intercept Savannah, that phrase would give them pause about doing her harm.
Rohan had been the house once. He would be again.
“You realize I’m sitting right here?” Brady leaned forward in his seat. “I can figure out where to go. You’re not the least bit concerned that I’ll follow her to the winter garden?”
Rohan flashed the scholar a smile. “You’re welcome to try me, Brady, but I would not suggest it.”