CHAPTER 40 JAMESON
JAMESON
Nine King’s Gate Terrace looked exactly as Jameson remembered it.
He handed the guard out front a card, a facsimile of one his father had once given to him, though this was not Ian Johnstone-Jameson’s residence.
Nine King’s Gate Terrace belonged to Bowen Johnstone-Jameson, a man Jameson knew only by reputation, the kind of man who had powerful political figures working for him, the kind whose name was almost always spoken in a hushed tone.
Except by Zella, Jameson remembered, as the guard handed his card back to him. The duchess—or That Duchess, as she was known in London—had spoken Bowen’s name casually enough.
“You may go up,” the guard told Jameson. “He stays here.”
Xander took absolutely no offense to that. “I’m sure I can find a way to entertain myself.” The guard didn’t seem to find that concerning, but he probably should have.
Jameson pulled Xander aside. “If a tall, red-haired man with a thousand-yard-glare and a solid gold stick up his ass shows up—that’s Branford. Do your best to stall him.”
“My best,” Xander vowed, “is also my worst.”
Jameson deeply suspected Branford was going to kill them.
The viscount had made it clear on multiple occasions that his middle brother was not a man to be trifled with, but Jameson knew for a fact that his mysterious—and possibly nefarious—uncle Bowen was a man in the habit of collecting cards, leverage to be held in reserve and played at the exact right time.
So let’s play.
Bowen Johnstone-Jameson looked very little like his brothers.
He’d already started balding, a fact he masked by keeping his remaining hair shaved close to his scalp, matched in length to the stubble that artfully covered his jaw.
The effect made Jameson’s uncle look at once highly groomed and just a little rough.
“So you’re Ian’s son.” Bowen looked Jameson halfway up and down, like he reserved full assessments for those he did not already know a great deal about, which Jameson suspected left pretty much no one.
“And you’re the guy who had a giant, glistening B laid into this white marble floor,” Jameson replied, gesturing to the foyer. “I love a man who loves his first initial that much.”
“Oh, that wasn’t me,” Bowen said in a voice neither rough nor smooth.
“The prior owner of this place was, shall we say… less than discreet.” Green eyes that were an exact copy of Jameson’s own glinted with just a hint of a challenge, and Jameson wondered if he’d imagined the emphasis his uncle had put on the word discreet.
“I’m here to make a deal,” Jameson said.
“And what would make you think that you have anything I want?”
Jameson kept his answer brief. “Vantage.” That was the name of the ancestral home Jameson had won during that capital-G Game, a home that had been in his father’s mother’s family for centuries.
Bowen’s family—and Jameson’s.
Truthfully, Vantage was the only thing Jameson possessed that had ever truly felt like it was really his. Not billionaire Tobias Hawthorne’s. Not Avery’s. His.
“What is it I can do for you, Mr. Hawthorne?” Bowen’s use of Jameson’s last name was obviously intentional, a reminder that the two of them were not family in any way that mattered.
Fine by me, Jameson thought. “I’d like an invitation to the Devil’s Mercy. Tonight.”
“That’s it?” Bowen said, his tone mild and all the more chilling for it.
Jameson knew the sound of a gauntlet being thrown when he heard it.
“That,” he said, “and there’s a piece of artwork I would like you to acquire for me.
An Alchemist with Angel’s Wings.” Jameson abbreviated the title.
“And while I’m at it, I want someone to fetch me every crucible in every museum in London. ”
Bowen Johnstone-Jameson smiled slightly—very slightly. “Now you have my attention.”