Page 113 of The Brothers Hawthorne
If Avery had the green box, Branford couldn’t use his key to unlock it. Jameson expelled a breath when Avery got to the portrait first, when she held the chest in her hands.
Held his secret in her hands.
And that was when Jameson realized: Zella and Branford hadn’t moved from the doorway. Neither one of them had so much as glanced at Avery or the green box.
Branford reached into his suit jacket.
Jameson knew then, before Branford even pulled out the scroll.He’s already been here. He already found the green box. He already unlocked it with his green key.
He already has my secret.
“I understand you found the other two keys.” Branford’s path was straight, his stride long as he made his way toward Jameson like a missile zeroing in on its target. “I believe I have something of yours. I haven’t read it yet. This secret—whatever it is—will stay secret if you’re willing to make a trade.”
Jameson plucked Branford’s scroll—hissecret—from his waistband. “I’m open to the idea.”
Branford’s shrewd eyes missed nothing. “You’ve already read it.”
Jameson wished he hadn’t. “I’ll give it to you and never breathe a word of it to anyone else.”Your secret son can stay a secret. What’s it to me?
“It’s not a bad offer, Branford,” Zella said. “Maybe you should take it.” There was something in the way she delivered that statement, a twist to her tone that made Jameson think her real goal was to push the viscount into doing the opposite.
What are you up to, Duchess?
“The trade you’ve proposed,” Branford told Jameson evenly, “would only be an even trade if I read your secret before returning it to you.”
The room suddenly seemed small. Jameson could hear his heart beating in his ears, could feel it in the pit of his stomach.There are ways, Jameson Hawthorne, he’d been warned,to take care of problems.He thought about the bead he’d offered up to the Proprietor as proof of his secret.Poison, he’d been told in Prague,undetectable and quite deadly.
That had been a warning.
He’d known that he was taking a risk, but he’d told himself it was a calculated one.A miscalculation.Sweat trickling down his jaw, his neck, Jameson took a step toward Branford. “You don’t want to know my secret,” he told his uncle. “People who know that secret tend to meet unfortunate ends.”
“This is about Prague, isn’t it?” Avery said, making her way slowly toward him, the green box still in her hands.
“Don’t,” Jameson told her, the word coming out with almost violent force. “Just leave it, Heiress. Stay back.”
Away from Branford. Away from that scroll. Away from me.
“There is another trade I would accept.” Branford didn’t have Jameson’s height, but he somehow managed to look down at him nonetheless. “Your secret for the remaining key.”
The key. The one that opened the final box, the box they hadn’t even located yet.
We’re so close.Jameson looked up, the way he always did when he was thinking through something, playing it out as a web of possibility laid out across a ceiling or a sky. And when he looked up, he saw the long chain connecting the low-hanging chandelier to the ceiling.
At the top of that chain, he saw a box. Unlike the other two, this one wasn’t shining or gleaming. It bore no jewels. From a distance, it looked silver, possibly tarnished.
Jameson brought his gaze back down—to Avery.Shehad the last key. As she finished closing the space between them, he traced an arrow onto her palm.Up.
He saw the spark of realization in Avery’s eyes. She didn’t look up, not immediately, not in a way that Branford or Zella would notice.But she knows.
Jameson stepped away from Avery and made a move to draw his opponents’ attention back to himself. “Counter proposal,” he said, walking toward Branford and Zella—and away from Avery. “You set my secret on fire, Branford, and I do the same for yours. You leave this room. I win the Game, and once I’ve won the prize that we’re both after, I’ll give you Vantage.”
Jameson had Branford’s full attention now—and Zella’s.Good.He kept walking.
“What’s the difference,” Branford said tersely, “between giving me Vantage and giving me the key right now? If you’re hoping to double-cross me—”
“I’m not,” Jameson said. To his own ears, his voice sounded raw, like he’d been in this room screaming into the void for hours. “Vantage belonged to your mother. It means something to you—more than it means to either of your brothers, apparently.”
Jameson didn’t let himself think about Ian.
