The Brothers Hawthorne (The Inheritance Games, #4)(43)

Jameson looked down at his hand, held in hers. “And what exactly is the big one?”

Avery sketched a W on the palm of his hand, and Jameson felt her touch in every square inch of his body.

“According to the Proprietor,” Avery murmured, “Branford is the eldest son and heir of the Earl of Wycliffe.” Another pause, another moment when Jameson’s body registered just how close to hers it was. “And that makes him Simon Johnstone-Jameson,” Avery finished, “Viscount Branford.”





CHAPTER 35





JAMESON


Ian had some explaining to do.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Jameson greeted from the shadows as the man in question ambled into the hotel room, drunk or hungover or possibly both.

Ian’s head whipped up. “Where did you come from?”

It was a reasonable question. After all, this room was on the fourth floor of a very nice, very secure hotel. Jameson glanced meaningfully at the window in response.

“I would have called on you at King’s Gate Terrace, but we both know that flat isn’t yours.” It hadn’t taken Jameson long to figure out that Ian wasn’t in residence—or for the security guard to stiffly suggest he check this hotel. “King’s Gate Terrace belongs to Branford,” Jameson continued. “Or should I say Simon? The viscount?”

“So you’ve met my brother.” Ian took a perch on the edge of the desk. “A real charmer, isn’t he?”

Jameson thought briefly of his own brothers—of traditions and rivalries and history, of what it meant to grow up alongside someone, to be formed in contrast to them. “The charmer beat me at whist.”

Ian took that in. For someone who had obviously been drinking, he’d sobered quickly. Jameson waited for a cutting comment about his loss, a dig, a lecture, judgment.

“I’ve never cared much for whist,” Ian said with a shrug.

The oddest feeling seized Jameson’s chest.

“And the King’s Gate Terrace flat isn’t Simon’s, by the way,” Ian continued flippantly. “If you recall, I have more than one brother.”

Both older, Jameson remembered Ian telling Avery. “And a father who’s an earl,” Jameson added, focusing on that.

“If it helps,” Ian offered lazily, “it’s one of the newer earldoms. Created in eighteen seventy-one.”

“That doesn’t help.” Jameson gave Ian a look. “And neither does sending me into the Devil’s Mercy unprepared for what I’d find there.” For who he’d find there.

“Simon is barely a member.” Ian waved away the objection. “He hasn’t shown his face at the Mercy in years.”

“Until now.”

“Someone must have informed my brother of my loss,” Ian admitted.

“You think he’s trying to procure an invitation to the Game.” Jameson did not phrase that as a question.

“As a general rule,” Ian replied, “my brother does not try to do anything.”

He succeeds. The words went unspoken, but Jameson responded as if they had not. “You’re saying that Simon Johnstone-Jameson, Viscount Branford, gets what he wants.”

“I’m saying,” Ian replied, “that you cannot let him win Vantage.” There was something raw and brutal in that cannot. Jameson didn’t want to hear it—or understand it or recognize it—but he did.

“Growing up the third-born son of an earl,” Ian said after a moment, his voice thick, “was, I’d imagine, a bit like growing up the third-born grandson of an American billionaire.” Ian walked over to the window and looked down at the wall that Jameson had scaled to break in here. “One perfect brother,” he continued, “one brilliant one—and then there was me.”

He wants me to feel that we’re the same. Jameson recognized the move for what it was. He played me before. He doesn’t get to play me again.

But when Ian turned back from the window, he didn’t look like he was playing. “My mother saw something in me,” Ian Johnstone-Jameson said hoarsely. “She left Vantage to me.” He took a step forward. “Win it back,” he told Jameson, “and someday, I’ll leave it to you.”

That promise hit with the force of a punch. Jameson’s ears roared. Nothing matters unless you let it. “Why would you do that?” he shot back.

“Why not?” Ian replied impulsively. “I’m not the settling down type. It’ll have to go to someone, won’t it?” The idea seemed to be growing on him. “And it would drive Simon mad.”

That last sentence, more than anything else, convinced Jameson that Ian’s offer was genuine. If I win him Vantage, he’ll leave it to me. The Hawthorne side of Jameson recognized the obvious: He could win it for himself, cut Ian out.

But then it wouldn’t be a gift from his father.

Jameson didn’t linger on that thought for long. “Tonight, Avery received an invitation to the Game,” he told Ian. “I haven’t. Not yet.”

Ian’s bloodshot eyes focused on Jameson—and only on Jameson. “Did the Proprietor appear at the top of the grand staircase and descend?”

Jameson gave a sharp nod. “With Avery on his arm.”