J,Q,K,A.
“Add ten at the start,” Lyra said, “and you’ve got a straight.”
Ten, jack, queen, king, ace.
“That’s right, beaches.” Max victory-punched the air. “Who wants to distract themselves from a sense of impending doom by helping me ransack Hawthorne House for any and all decks of cards?”
Chapter 76
JAMESON
There’s an establishment in London whose name is never spoken, Jameson had once been told.Speak it and you may find yourself on the end of some very bad luck courtesy of this country’s most powerful men.
The Devil’s Mercy was an old boys’ club—by design. As in, it had apparently beendesignedto ensnare powerful men, to obtain their secrets and, depending on their luck at the tables, sometimes their fortunes. For more than two centuries, scions of business and society had partaken of every indulgence on offer at the Mercy, reaping the benefits of access to a nexus of wealth and power, clueless to the true power behind it all.
Proprietor after Proprietor had been given near-total control over their domain, with the key word beingnear. Rohan had not been forthcoming onhowthe Ascendants of the Gilded Blade had kept his predecessors on a leash. He’d only made it clear that he had no way of contacting his keepers.
If and when the Gilded Blade needed something, someone would contact him.
Barring that, Rohan had suggested that their best bet of trackingthe Blade was through financials—property deeds, information on the Mercy’s shell corporations and holdings, which weren’t reallythe Mercy’sat all. Rohan had also shared with them a trove of ledgers, full of secrets, none less than fifty years old. The current membership of the Mercy, he’d made clear, was off limits, but those older secrets…
Well,history told the tale.
As Jameson, Grayson, Xander, and Toby had weeded through it all, Rohan had focused on a box of letters he’d unearthed in the gathering of the property deeds—love letters written to the first Proprietor of the Devil’s Mercy by an Ascendant of the Gilded Blade.
The charter of the Devil’s Mercy had told part of their story. Rohan hadn’t allowed any of them to read the rest of it, consigning them to more tedious work.
Fortunately, Hawthornes were nothing if not efficient en masse. Within an hour, they had lists, plural: property locations, persons of interest,familiesof interest. There was no cell reception this far underground, so Grayson took it upon himself to go back up and report their progress to the team at home, and Xander, in typical Xander fashion, took it upon himself to look after Grayson.
Once they were gone, Toby spoke. “I want the letters next.” Toby had barely said a word since the stables, and the way his deep, ragged voice said the wordlettersmade Jameson think about all those postcards his uncle had once written to Avery’s mother.
Love letters, Jameson couldn’t help thinking,may take many forms.
“Suit yourself,” Rohan told Toby, done with the letters at long last, and then Rohan turned to Jameson. “And you? What do you want?”
“The remaining ledger.” Jameson met Rohan’s eyes. “The one with the secrets of the current membership.”
“Even I have my limits, Hawthorne.”
“As do I,” Jameson replied, wondering if Rohan could see a dangerous glint in his eyes. “You came very close to finding that out before—with Grayson.” Rohan had done some damage, but probably not as much as he could have. “At least tell me how many women, besides Zella, are currently members of the Mercy.”
The Devil’s Mercy was primarily, though notexclusively, male. The duchess was a member of both the wider web of the Gilded Blade and the Mercy.
She might not be the only one.
“You know at least one such member,” Rohan commented.
“Katharine Payne.” Jameson had only met the woman once, during a Game, capitalG, of Rohan’s design. “She’s the right age to have gone through the Crucible alongside Alice in nineteen sixty-seven. What can you tell me about her?”
“She’s a member of Parliament and a close associate of your uncle Bowen.”
“You know more about Katharine than that, Rohan. She was a player in your Game.”
The Game was a yearly tradition at the Devil’s Mercy. Competing in it was part of what had inspired Avery and Jameson to create the Grandest Game.
“Katharine Payne.” Rohan lingered on the name for a moment. “Widow of more than three decades. Her husband belonged to the Mercy, and when he died, Katharine showed up unannounced for that year’s Game to play in his stead. Suffice to say that she won and negotiated a membership for herself.” Rohan looked to Toby, who said not a word as he read the first Proprietor’s letters. “The first Proprietor andhisAscendant, they came up with it, you know—the Game. They saw it as a way to keep order with minimal bloodshed. Dare to cross the Proprietor and suddenly, the most powerful men in the country might find themselves playing foryourdeepest, darkest secret.”
To play the Mercy’s Game, Jameson had been forced to give up a secret as levy. He’d taken a metal quill, dipped it in purple ink, and recklessly written down:Alice Hawthorne is alive.Looking back, he couldn’t believe he’d done it, that he’d been that desperate for his father’s approval. Knowing what he knew now, Jameson had to wonder if the former Proprietor had immediately recognized what Jameson’s secret meant, if the man had done the math and realized that Alice was the Judge, if he’d reported Jameson’s lack of discretion back to herand she’d hidden it from the others or if Alastair had kept that card in reserve.
