Jameson eyed the space between the staircase and the bell again. I can make it. The seventy-foot drop barely registered, but even he wasn’t reckless enough to attempt the jump holding a solid silver chest.
“Jameson.” Branford practically growled his name. In response, Jameson took a calculated risk.
“Hold this for me.” He thrust the chest at Branford, and the second the man had a hold on it, Jameson leapt.
CHAPTER 84
JAMESON
He hit the bell and held on with his entire body as it swung.
“Thanks for that,” Zella called down.
As the bell steadied, Jameson edged around its side. Then he began scanning the closest keys. He knew what he was looking for. A key made of shining gold. A head like a maze.
“You asked me earlier if I read your secret,” Zella said, her tone conversational, as she made her own search above. “Why don’t you ask me again?”
She was trying to distract him, trying to get to him. Jameson didn’t let himself think about his secret—or anything else. He stayed focused on his task, but that didn’t keep him from turning the tables on his opponent.
“I’d rather ask about you,” he said, moving farther around the bell, checking another key and another. Two up there. One up farther. One hanging down low. “And Rohan.” Jameson didn’t hesitate, didn’t question whether he’d chosen the correct method of getting under the duchess’s skin. “There’s history there. You learned not to expect anything from him at some point. But what kind of history, I wonder? You’re, what, seven or eight years older? And married…”
Jameson was guessing the history between them wasn’t that kind of history. But he was also pretty sure the duchess didn’t want anyone to realize there was history there at all.
That’s seven more keys—and none of them the key.
Up above, Zella shifted, and the movement sent the bell swaying again.
“Appreciate that,” Jameson told her.
“You so desperately wanted to prove yourself.” There was nothing cruel in Zella’s tone, but clearly, the gloves were off. “To Ian. To the old man.”
The old man. That was the way Jameson and his brothers had always referred to their grandfather. How had she known that? Had he used the phrase around her?
He wasn’t certain he had.
Zella slid down the side of the bell. She moved with incredible, gravity-defying grace, like there wasn’t a single muscle in her body over which she had anything less than perfect control.
“I told you before,” she murmured. “The benefit to choosing one’s competition is knowing one’s competition.”
Jameson forced himself to move faster. He’d ruled out maybe twenty keys, twenty-five at most. There were another two dozen up where Zella had been before. That left, what? Around twenty keys that neither of them had inspected yet?
“You’re playing to win, Duchess.” Jameson kept the conversation going because he’d scored at least one point off her already. Because he would find a way to score more.
“The world is kinder to winners.” Zella brought the bottoms of her feet up to rest on the bell. Jameson wasn’t sure why, until she pushed off, somehow managing to hold on, even as she sent the bell swinging.
Every muscle in Jameson’s body went tight. But he didn’t stop looking. He couldn’t.
Do great things.
What are you without the Hawthorne name?
“The world is kindest, of course,” Zella continued, her voice steely now, “to rich white boys, regardless of whether or not they deserve to win.”
Jameson shouldn’t have been able to hear her over the ringing of the bell, but he did—and that wasn’t the only thing he heard. The jarring, rumbling clang of the bell that threatened to shake off his grip—that wasn’t the only sound the bell was making.
There was also a lighter, softer, unmistakable ting.
The sound of a key, Jameson thought, suspended inside the bell. He wondered if Rohan had lost his mind, wondered if the Devil’s Mercy’s infamous Game had cost any players their lives before—and, if so, how many.
But mostly, Jameson wondered how he was going to get to the key without Zella realizing what he was doing. They were on opposite sides of the bell now, and as it steadied, he slid his body down, letting his feet lodge at the bell’s rim. He bent sideways, latching his left hand around the rim as well.
Down below, on the ground, a white-clad form entered the bell tower. Katharine. Jameson wondered idly if Rohan was somewhere, watching. He moved his right hand down. He was crouching at the bottom of the bell now, holding on with gravity-defying force.