CHAPTER 39 JAMESON
JAMESON
No.” Simon Johnstone-Jameson, Viscount Branford, seemed to feel absolutely no need to elaborate on that.
“What I’m hearing,” Jameson said into the phone, “is that you want me to try my luck climbing down the elevator shaft.”
“What elevator shaft?” Branford was very pointedly not amused, but as far as Jameson had been able to tell in the year-and-a-half in which he’d been acquainted with the man, his paternal uncle was never amused. “What elevator shaft, Jameson?”
“It’s a long way down,” Jameson replied coyly.
“Have I ever given you the impression that I respond well to threats?” Branford said with a chilling kind of calm.
“Do you remember the bell?” Jameson asked.
“The one at Vantage.” During a high-stakes Game with a capital G, Jameson had launched himself off a staircase, over a drop, and onto a massive bell, knowing that if he slipped or lost his grip, he’d die.
The reference was his way of reminding his uncle: Jameson wasn’t afraid of heights—or taking risks.
“What is this about, Jameson?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.”
“Is it?” Branford’s tone shifted in a way that told Jameson his uncle had registered his intended meaning.
Once upon a time, they’d each had to put up a secret to buy their way into a game of highest stakes.
“I asked you once before to tell me what I needed to know to protect you,” Branford said. “You declined to do so.”
Jameson’s secret in that game had been that Alice was alive.
Looking back, that had been almost unforgivably reckless, but he’d been in a reckless place at the time.
Yes, he telegraphed silently to Branford.
This is related to that secret, and no, I can’t tell you—any more than I could tell you then.
“The best way to protect me right now,” Jameson said, “is to get me an invitation to the tables at the Mercy. Tonight.”
“Deals with the Devil’s Mercy are deals with the devil—always, Jameson. And in the end, the house always wins.”
Jameson had heard that before, in the form of a warning from Rohan: Where angels fear to tread, have your fun instead. But be warned: The house always wins.
“I’m not playing against the Mercy,” Jameson told his uncle. “I just need a way in.”
And what then? Avery asked in Jameson’s mind. Do you even have a plan, Hawthorne?
I have a thousand plans, Heiress. There was just no way for Jameson to know which way the wind would blow until he was standing at the eye of the storm.
“Branford.” Jameson swallowed his pride. “Please.”
“Now I am officially concerned.”
Jameson set the phone to speaker and turned to Xander. “He’s concerned.”
“Don’t be!” Xander said cheerfully. “I wouldn’t let one of my top three favorite brothers climb down an elevator shaft in an attempt to break into a high-powered secret society without personally attempting to hack that elevator first.”
Branford let out a pained sigh. “Xander Hawthorne, I presume?”
“Indeed, milord,” Xander replied with a faux British accent. “And I can also assure you, for your peace of mind, that I am very good with complex systems and explosives.”
Branford clearly did not find that comforting. “Jameson, why are you and your brother in London—and do not tell me that you cannot tell me.”
“I wouldn’t have called,” Jameson said instead, “if it wasn’t important.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. A very long one. “Stay where you are,” Branford ordered—and then he hung up.
“I think that went well,” Xander said optimistically.
“If we stay here, he’ll find us,” Jameson told his brother. “We might be able to talk him around, or he might pull a Nash.” In other words, they might well find themselves hog-tied—or the British, aristocratic version thereof.
“So,” Xander said, “got any other uncles?”