“Congratulations, Mr. Daniels.Fourteenwas indeed the luckynumber, so now that you have asked me to elucidate things for the fourteenth time on this transatlantic flight, I will be happy to comply.” Rohan smirked. “My brain is yours for the picking.”
Brady didn’t bat an eye, completely immune to Rohan’s sarcasm. “You’re sending Savannah in.” Brady curled the fingers on his right hand one by one toward his palm, then straightened them out again, the movement rhythmic and contemplative. “But not me. You’ll keep me close. I’m your leverage.”
Brady stilled his fingers and turned his wrist, exposing his forearm—and his tattoo. Letters ringed a black spiral. Decoded, the message readROHAN MUST LOSE.
“You were not instructed to do that.” Rohan was not in the mood to bother with questions, so he met Brady’s inferences with one of his own. “The duchess gave you the symbol and told you to memorize it, but the tattoo was, I suspect, entirely your own during. Were you afraid you would forget the sequence when it mattered most?”
“I was afraid,” Brady said in that calm, quiet way of his, “that I would forget her.” Rohan knew Brady wasn’t talking about the duchess. He was talking about Calla Thorp. “It’s easy to lose track of what matters in the heat of a game.”
“You were never in danger of forgetting.” Rohan was as sure of that as he was of the exact shade of Savannah’s pale, pale eyes.
“Maybe I wanted it to hurt,” Brady said. “Maybe I wanted proof that I hadn’t imagined what I’d been offered. Maybe I wanted a tangible reminder that the answers I wanted were close, that I could win them.”
Rohan wondered if Zella truly had any further information to give Brady, other than the fact that Calla was alive—and no longerCalla Thorp.
One way or another, Nora had said,there is no Calla Thorp anymore, and when pushed for answers, she’d disclaimed that she did not know, thatshewas not the right person to ask. It remained to be seen if the duchesswas, but it was clear enough to Rohan that Zella was entangled with all of this somehow, with this group somehow.
And he could use that.
Across from Rohan, Savannah seemed to reach her fill of allowing Rohan and Brady to go back and forth on their own.
“If I’m going in,” she told Rohan, “you’re going to want to elucidate the particulars for me.”
There were a great many things Rohan would have liked toelucidatefor her. He turned to look out the window at the ocean below, an exercise in restraint. It had been a full year since Rohan had last crossed the Atlantic. This trip was a homecoming of sorts.
Brady had asked Rohan about his plan fourteen times on this flight, but Savannah hadn’t asked at all until now.
Rohan found himself inclined to answer. “There is a street in London where cars drive on the wrong side of the road. There you will find a certain hotel, built—originally—in eighteen eighty-nine.”Built for a reason. Built in a strategic location.Rohan did notelucidateeither of those things for Savannah out loud. “Inside the hotel, there is a place sometimes called the winter garden. If a person were to find their way there and make their way under the glass dome, that person would be able to see quite a bit.”
Brady had relatively few tells, but Rohan was well aware the scholar was committing to memory each and every piece of information Rohan parted with.
“See quite a bit,” Savannah repeated. “Like what?”
Like Jameson Hawthorne.Rohan did not say that out loud. “A gazebo, for starters.”
The location of the Mercy had remained a closely guarded secret for more than two centuries, in part because it had many entrances and many exits, any one of which could be closed off—temporarily or permanently—at a moment’s notice, and only a small subset of which any given member was aware of. If Rohan was correct about Jameson Hawthorne’s likely method of trying to gain access to the Devil’s Mercy, if he was correct about whom Jameson had approached to make said invitation happen, then the winter garden was doubtlessly where the Hawthorne in question would end up.
At midnight.
“There will be a gown waiting for you when we land,” Rohan told Savannah. “Nothing too ostentatious. Fittedhere.” He nodded his head toward her torso and then trailed his gaze up her body to her chest and neck. “A bit of lacethereto cover what needs covering.”
“White?” Savannah guessed.
“A dark and smoky gray.” Rohan could picture the way the gown would look on her, her pale skin and platinum hair standing out like snow against the smoke. “The duchess wore just such a dress,” he informed Savannah, “the night she became the first and only person to ever succeed at breaking into the Mercy.”
If sending Savannah clad in an identical gown didn’t get Zella’s attention—and the Proprietor’s—nothing would.
“You know more than you’re saying.” Brady Daniels was an astute individual.
“I am in the business of knowingeverything, Mr. Daniels.” Rohan met Savannah’s gaze across the table. “And I can tell you no more than I already have.”
Rohan could notgiveSavannah a single one of the Mercy’s secrets. He could not tell her where to go once she made her way to the winter garden or even that Jameson Hawthorne was the person she was looking for.
He trusted she would figure it out.
“You’re taunting the duchess.” Savannah did not seem to find that any more objectionable than she’d found Rohan the night before—which is to say, not at all. “That gown—you’re using me as bait.”
“And what lovely bait you’ll be.” Rohan’s thoughts went—rather inexplicably—to alchemy, to immortality and gold and the transmutation of one thing into another. And then he thought about what Savannah had said to him beneath the dock during the Grandest Game.
