Secrets In Savannah (Phantom Knights)

by Amalie Vantana

  Running forward with Arnaud, we reached the carriage first. He opened the door, and I leapt in. He hurried to untie the horses as Pierre backed toward the carriage.

  The largest of the guards charged toward him and Pierre squeezed the trigger on his pistol, but nothing happened. The man was nearly upon him.

  Pierre flipped the pistol in his hand and hit the approaching guard with the handle. His attacker was large and thick, with fists that swung like hammers, so that hit did little to stop him.

  Raising my pistol, I aimed it at the man. He and Pierre kept moving, dancing around each other, searching for a weak spot to hit. Blowing out a frustrated breath, my eyes stayed trained on them. When the large man lunged for Pierre, and Pierre ducked out of the way, I fired my pistol. The ball struck his shoulder.

  Pierre jumped up; his eyes ablaze, and I knew why. If he had happened to stand up, I would have hit him instead of the guard. Pierre was always telling me that I took too many risks. This day I agreed with him.

  Arnaud climbed into the carriage as Pierre scrambled onto the box seat and whipped the horses into motion. Arnaud jerked the door closed as the carriage lurched forward and made haste down the dirt road.

  It took only twenty minutes to reach Charleston, and when the carriage finally slowed, we were at the port of Charleston. Seeing it brought on painful memories of Jack that I had been trying to keep at bay; thoughts of the night that we spent together in a warehouse. I did not know that I was crying until I felt the hot tears slide down my cheeks.

  We passed Samuel Mason’s warehouse, but the man was not in sight, nor did I expect to see him. His future brother had been killed only hours earlier. A silent sob shook me. Arnaud said not a word, nor did he look at me, but his hand reached over and tucked a handkerchief into my hand. The men in Arnaud’s family were not much on speaking, but they had always been some of my greatest supporters.

  Seeing General Harvey’s ship anchored and awaiting us, my heart sped forth as my stomach twisted. For a hesitant moment, I thought he might be waiting for me. Then I remembered that he could not be in Charleston with the Phantoms searching for him.

  When Pierre tried to guide me toward the ship, I pulled away from his hand. Standing in the midst of the bustle of sailors and dock workers, my gaze was searching the port. For one weak minute I allowed hope to fill me that Jack was not truly dead, that he would come to rescue me as he had so many times before.

  “I cannot leave him, Pierre. I must go see; I must know for certain that Jack is gone,” I said, ending in a whisper.

  “Ma belle, to stay is to risk your life. Master Jack would not want that.”

  No, Jack would have told me to run, and he would find me as he had done for the past year.

  It took both Pierre and Arnaud to persuade me to board the ship, and when it set sail, my mind raved at me that I was making a mistake. When I saw Bess Martin standing at the water’s edge, I knew it.

  She was with Samuel Mason and Leopold Perry on the dock, watching me as we sailed away. Bess was gesturing wildly at Sam, but he restrained her, pulling her against his chest, his gaze never leaving my ship—me. They blamed me for Jack’s death, as I blamed myself, but in truth there was someone else to blame. Someone else who had been at fault for the last seven years.

  Turning to where Pierre stood behind me, watching me cautiously, I said, “Take me to General Harvey, for he and I have a score to settle.”

  CHAPTER 2

  JACK

  Guinevere’s smiling face was before me, but why was it so unseasonably hot where we were? Tiny beads of perspiration felt as if they were making patterns down my forehead, from my eyes.

  Reaching out to grasp Guinevere’s hand, there was nothing there. As I swung about, searching for her, a bright light cast upon my face, almost as if trying to burn through me. Grimacing at the brilliance, a force of nigh unbearable fire burst in my shoulder, but the only sound that came from me was a slight moan.

  Somewhere around me there was a faint yet annoying scratching sound that teased my ears, and wiped away the haze of sleep surrounding me. For a moment, I lay completely still, unsure of where I was or what had happened to me. When a creak echoed through the otherwise silent chamber, I opened my eyes.

  My heart jolted in my chest bringing on a wall of fire as an unknown man stood over me. The hair on my neck and arms prickled, and my head thundered. The man’s thick head was bent over me. His brown eyes narrowed as his wicked intent twisted his ugly face.

  As his right hand rose, the gleam of his knife sent panic down my body, cutting off my breaths when he plunged the blade toward my chest.

  My hand flew up and wrapped around his wrist, my entire body tensing as I fought to keep the knife away. My elbow locked as my forearm shook against his strength. I tried to raise my other hand, but could not move it above a few inches from the blanket that was tucked around me. The tip of the knife was only an inch from my chest. My strength was diminishing. He was seconds away from piercing my skin.

  Guinevere’s face, the way I last saw her, flashed in my mind. The fear that was there, not just in her but in me, the helplessness, the knowledge that there was nothing we could do to save each other. When I was shot, and my body fell, all of my thoughts, all that mattered was her. If she were here, she would not have been standing aside screeching for help; she would have been fighting.

  A light wind brushed over me from the open window, and as if she were here commanding me to fight, my strength was renewed, enough to lift my upper body and throw my head against my attacker’s head.

  It was enough of an impact to force him to retreat a step. I needed to use it to my advantage, to get the knife, but my vision was filled with black dots, the room was spinning, and my head dropped back to the pillow like useless weight. I could not raise my hand above my chest. It was like I was seeing from someone else’s body that I could not control.

  He shook his head and came at me with a growl.

  I could do no more, and he knew that, for he grinned. He placed the tip of the knife over my heart, but he did not plunge it into me. Instead, he toyed with me, pressing the knife hard enough that I could feel the tip drawing blood, but not hard enough to plunge into my chest.

  As he leaned close to my face, I could smell his foul breath. “Where’s the girl?”

  “Right here,” said a woman who should not have been there.

  He twisted around, removing the knife from my chest. I breathed out a harsh breath as Bess stood in the open doorway, her hands on her hips and a look on her face that promised retribution.

  The seriousness of the situation struck me to the gut causing me to grimace at the slicing pain. Bess did not have any weapons in her hands. Not that she could not fight without weapons, but the man was a brute. He was well over six feet tall and the breadth of a tree.

  He lunged for Bess, swinging the knife, and my body jerked, needing to help, but the pain held me prisoner against the bed.

  Bess jumped to the side, punching his ribs as he passed her. Sliding to a halt on the wooden floor, he twisted and lunged again. Bess hopped back like a skilled fighter would in a boxing match. She knocked the hand with the knife away with one fist while the other slammed against his cheek with enough force to send his head bobbing to the side.

  On any other woman, a hit like that would have broken her hand, but not Bess. From the moment of their betrothal, Bess and Sam had been training together. Everything from boxing to fencing, they did together, Sam instructing and Bess correcting.

  He growled as his hand swiped at her, and the knife grazed the front of her blue dress. Bess’s breath hissed as she bumped into the dressing table. There was not much room to move about, only five feet of unimpeded space. With a wardrobe, fireplace, dressing table, and chair surrounding them, Bess had to be precise with her movements.

  He lunged, and Bess spun. She delivered a well-timed hit to the back of his head, shoving his forehead against the looking glass above the dressing table
and cracking the glass. He twisted so fast that Bess did not have time to clear his path. He wrapped his hand around her neck, but it gave her the perfect angle to throw a knee between his legs. He grunted as he lifted Bess into the air, and to my horror, began slamming her against anything in his path.

  Where was Sam? Where was Leo? I tried to shout, but no audible sound would come from my lips, only hissed breaths.

  My entire body was tight, and the pain was breathtaking, but I could not stop as I watched my sister being slammed against my wardrobe. Her hands came up, her thumbs jamming into his eye sockets. He let out a slew of curses as he stepped back, swiping his arm over her hands to knock them away.

  Bess slid down the front of the wardrobe as he released her. What she had done was not enough to blind him, or stop him, for he hunched and ran at her. She sidestepped him, her hands landing on his back and shoving him against the wardrobe. Bess backed to the fireplace and grabbed a poker.

  “Bess!” I tried to shout, but it came out as a rasp.

  The man had the knife raised to throw at Bess. Bess raised the poker. My chest rose and fell in quick successions as I watched, helpless to do anything.

  A shot exploded in the room, and my body jerked at the sound, sending fiery sparks of pain across my chest.

  Sam stood in the doorway holding a pistol, Leo and Gideon behind him. Bess kept the poker raised until the man had fallen to the floor, then she lowered it and released a long breath before smiling at Sam. As he reached her, he wrapped his arms around her, searching her face.

  “My thanks, darling, for your intervention,” she said to him in a voice that she tried to make lighthearted, but it quivered.

  “How are you, Jack?” Leo asked as he leaned over me to check my wound.

  “Did he hurt you?” Bess asked as she flew to my other side.

  I shook my head, but Bess sucked in a breath. I knew what she was staring at for I felt myself losing blood.

  Bess shouted something, but it sounded muffled to me. Sam appeared above me, and then my mother and Gideon, but I could not speak to any of them. There was little feeling in my body as they worked on me, trying to stop the blood. My mother was speaking to me, for her mouth was moving, but I focused on the ceiling, trying to calm the shuddering of my breaths. My nose burned and my eyes filled with stinging moisture, but not from tears. From anger, from fear, from helplessness—a feeling that I detested with the whole of my being. My back was shaking, and my feelings came back like a rush.

  Sucking in a breath, I pushed at the blanket tucked across my stomach, and tried to push myself up. The pain that ricocheted through my body forced a cry out of my mouth, and my head dropped back as I squeezed my eyes shut until the pain lessened. My mother was saying my name; Bess was shouting, even Leo was speaking, but all I could see was Guinevere’s terrified face as the guards carried her away.

  Where was she? What had Lucas Marx done to her?

  “Jack!” Bess shouted my name, and I opened my eyes.

  “What?” I demanded in a far stronger voice than I thought myself capable.

  Bess was leaning over me near my head, and she ran her soft, cool fingers across my forehead. Her brown eyes were filled with concern. “She is well, Jack. She is well.”

  A spasm shook me, and I closed my eyes again.

  “I saw her at the harbor on an outbound ship. She is gone, but she was well.”

  That was all I heard for several hours. When I awoke, it was dawn. My mother was asleep in a chair by the fire; Leo was asleep on his feet, leaning against the wall, and Bess was sleeping beside me on the bed.

  Curled on her side with a hand tucked under her cheek, she reminded me of when we were young children, and I would climb into her bed and have her tell me stories. Bess was an excellent story teller, always creating adventures that awed me. Her stories were one of the reasons that I took to being a spy in the beginning. The adventure, the intrigue, the role playing all held me spellbound for the first few years. Until I killed a man.

  There is no going back from something like that. Stories never tell you the guilt that fills you, the memories that haunt you, and the innocence that you lose when you take a life. I grew up that day and saw that I did not like the life my father had created for me. That was why I left the Phantoms to join the militia and fight in the war. If I had to kill people, I wanted to know without any doubts or secrets that I was doing it for a cause far greater than myself and the greed of men.

  War was full of greedy men, but I believed in freedom. I believed in this small country called America, and the great potential that I saw in it and its people. People like my sister.

  Bess stirred, and her eyes fluttered open. When she saw me looking at her, she smiled sleepily, asking me how I felt.

  Annoyingly weak, but alive was what I told her.

  She sat up, shoving her dark brown hair out of her face while reaching to the bedside table and bringing a letter to the bed.

  “I need you to make me a promise,” she said and I felt my brows rise. “I want you to let Guinevere go. She is the reason that you almost died.”

  “Lucas—”

  Bess gripped my hand. “Lucas tried to kill you because of Guinevere. You must let her go.”

  “We have been through this, Bess. I will marry her.”

  “Even when she refuses to come to you on your deathbed?” Bess held out a folded letter.

  As I took it, Bess looked truly repentant for whatever she was about to say. “Pierre has sent word that he rescued Guinevere from Lucas. He gave her a choice to come to you, but she chose to leave you to your fate.”

  The letter said as Bess had, but there was more. Pierre warned that Lucas would send men after me as we witnessed.

  The only part of the letter that truly interested me was that Pierre was escorting Guinevere away from Charleston “to a place of safety.”

  “Now that you know the truth, you must let her go. I cannot and will not lose you.”

  As mother was waking, Bess said no more about the letter, but she left me with much to consider.

  Later in the afternoon after having visited with all of the Charleston Phantoms, Gideon, and my mother, Bess had forbidden any more visitors and told me I needed my rest. Though I was not tired, Bess was adamant. As she walked to the door, I halted her.

  “I want you to go ahead with the wedding, Bess.”

  She spun around, her dress fanning out.

  “I know that you decided to put it off for a few weeks because of me, but I refuse to allow it. I am wounded, not dead, so there is nothing to keep you from marrying Sam.”

  Bess gaped at me before crossing her arms over her chest in a truly ‘older sister’ pose.

  “If you do not marry him forthwith, I will get out of this bed and march you to the church, I swear it.”

  She smiled and when she came close I saw the tears in her eyes. She leaned down and kissed my brow. “How does tomorrow sound?”

  “Like a drop of honey from the heavens,” said Sam from the doorway, and I laughed as Bess whipped around. She moved to his side and as he took her hand, holding her nearer, an ache formed in my chest.

  Guinevere and I should have been married and attending Bess and Sam’s wedding together.

  “Jack,” Bess said softly, but with worry covering her face, “no matter my feelings toward her, Guinevere is safe. Pierre said so in his letter.”

  “No, Bess,” I said with a calm that I was far from feeling. “I am sure that I know where she has gone, and she most assuredly is not safe.”

  CHAPTER 3

  GUINEVERE

  7 May, 1817

  Washington

  Standing a little straighter, I breathed in and then out to calm myself. It would not do to face the interview with frayed nerves. Harvey would sense my emotions within seconds and play upon my feelings as he had always done. That thought did its job.

  Clamping my teeth together, I stared at the wooden door across the temple floor from where th
e Holy Order’s guards had left me to wait. I did not look around, for there was no need. Harvey had taken up residence in the place that Pierre lived for many years, protecting one of the sacred artifacts. The dais, instead of holding a pedestal and the Sfære af lys, held a single golden throne.

  There were smaller thrones placed around the walls of the square temple, all occupied. The colorful glass dome above me had been repaired. Harvey had been working hard in the short time since his escape from Charleston, but that was Harvey. He refused to hold his court anywhere that was not as ostentatious as he was himself.

  “Standards, Guinevere, are what we have and what we must demand from others.”

  The wooden door at the right of the dais opened and a tall man with the haughty demeanor of a pompous king walked into the room and deposited himself on the large throne. Wearing a claret colored coat with gold buttons instead of his usual regimentals, he could have almost passed as a stately gentleman ... almost.

  When he saw me, surprise showed in his brown eyes before quickly turning into amusement, but I saw his surprise and it sent leaps of excitement through me. For once he did not expect me.

  He held out his hand as if he expected me to curtsey low—as he taught me to do—and to kiss his bejeweled hand.

  When I made no movement toward him, he spoke. “You are slipping, my dear. I expected to see you a week past.”

  He always said dear in a patronizing voice, as if he were speaking to his favorite dog.

  “On the contrary,” I mocked, “I would have been here a week past if you would have told me where you were to be found instead of leaving me to the wolves.”

  He laughed, and the sound grated on my nerves, but I did not allow myself to show emotion. I would not give him the satisfaction.

  “I would hardly call young Martin a wolf. Would you?”