Page 61 of The Brothers Hawthorne

“What did Ian say to you?” Avery asked him as soon as they were alone. “When you went to see him—what the hell did he say?”

Jameson didn’t make her callTahiti. “He offered to leave me Vantage when he dies, if I win it back for him now.”

Avery stared at—and into—him. “You could win it foryourself.”

That was true. It had always been true. But Jameson couldn’t help thinking about Ian saying that he didn’t care for whist. About the laugh he’d managed to surprise out of the man, so much like his own.

“I can’t win anything for anyone,” Jameson bit out, a ball rising in his throat, “if I don’t get an invitation to the Game.”

Every bruise on his body was a live wire, but the only thing that mattered was what was next.Surprise the Proprietor. Tempt him. Threaten him.“Time to get back out there.”

To Avery’s credit, she didn’t try to talk him out of it—just handed him a quartet of over-the-counter pain pills and a bottle of water. “I’m coming with you.”

Game on.

CHAPTER 43

JAMESON

The food smelled delicious—or so Jameson was informed, since he couldn’t smellanythingat the moment. Eating was also out the question.

“Could I get you some soup, sir?” The bartender looked more like a bouncer. Like the dealers in the gaming room, he wore clothes lifted straight out of another era. No jewels around his neck, but Jameson caught a thick ring on his middle finger.

A triangle embedded inside a circle inside a square.

“Or something a little stronger?” The bartender lifted a crystal goblet onto the bar. The liquid inside was a dark shade of amber, almost gold.

“Soup and spirits,” Avery murmured into the back of Jameson’s head. “Think they offer that to everyone who survives the ring?”

Jameson’s body drank in the closeness of hers, allowing it to fuel his resolve, and then he cut to the chase with the bartender. “I’m after the book.”

The bartender looked Jameson up and down. The man appeared to be in his forties, but Jameson thought suddenly of the boy in the boat that first night and wondered exactly how long this gentleman had worked at the Devil’s Mercy.

Exactly how loyal to the Proprietor he was.

“Ah.” The bartender reached below again, and this time, he withdrew a leather-bound tome that looked like it weighed too much to be so easily maneuvered with one hand.One very large hand, Jameson noted.

“Are the two of you looking to place any bet in particular?” the bartender asked.

Avery stepped back. “Not me,” she said. “Just him.”

Jameson knew how hard it was for her to sit this one out, just likesheknew that he was the one who needed to impress. Ignoring the pang of the distance Avery had just put between them, Jameson flipped open the book. “May I?”

The bartender laid his massive hands flat on the bar, just behind the book, but said nothing as Jameson began to flip through it. The pages were yellowed with age, the dates beside the earliest bets written in script so formal it was difficult to read.

December 2.Jameson finally made out one date on the first page.1823.

Beneath each date was a single sentence. Each sentence contained two names.

Mr. Edward Sully bets Sir Harold Letts one hundred fifty that the eldest daughter of the Baron Asherton will not be wed before the younger two.

Lord Renner bets Mr. Downey, four hundred to two hundred, that Old Mitch will die in the spring (spring defined as the latter half of March, the whole of April, the whole of May, and the first week of June).

Mr. Fausset bets Lord Harding fifty-five that a man, agreed upon in confidence between the two, will take on a third mistress before his wife begets their second child.

No wonder the book was so large. It contained every random wager ever placed at the Devil’s Mercy—or at least in this room. Political outcomes, social scandals, births and deaths, who would wed who and when and in what weather and with what guests in attendance.

Jameson flipped to more recent bets. “Are there any rules,” he asked the bartender, “on what one may or may not wager?”