Secrets In Savannah (Phantom Knights)

by Amalie Vantana

  “This does not bode well with me,” Dudley murmured, and though I agreed with him, I was one of the first to board the ship.

  “Vat can we do for you, sir?” one of three sailors on the deck asked.

  “You have something that belongs to us,” Frederick said, “and once it is returned to us, you may be about your business.”

  “Vat might zet be?”

  “A man and two women, who were abducted last evening by someone on this ship.”

  The sailor looked askance, but as my gaze searched each sailor, one of them gave me a clue that I needed. He was fidgety, and by his third glance to a hatch door, I knew where to begin the search.

  As Frederick listened to the sailor’s assurance that they had only just arrived with the morning tide, I moved to the hatch.

  Throwing it open, someone shouted at me in Danish, but I ignored him, descending into the dark recesses of the ship. Dudley followed me down to a narrow passage that had two doors. He chose one door, and I went to the other. Pulling back the hammer of a pistol, Dud opened the door.

  An explosion ricocheted in the confined passage, knocking me back a step.

  “Dud,” I shouted, starting toward him.

  The door behind me burst open, my arms were caught, and I was pulled back, tossed from one sailor’s hands to another.

  Rage coursed through me, filling every part of me. I threw myself against my captors, needing to see Dud, to make sure he was alive.

  “Jack, I’ve got them,” Dudley shouted, and relief rocked me, blasting me with an extra dose of vigor.

  It took six captors to contain me, and when they spun me, I was facing a man I knew without a single doubt was Guinevere’s uncle.

  “You are the brother?” he asked in perfect English.

  I did not reply.

  “There is no cause to be disgruntled. I mean you no harm. And I can see the family likeness,” he said, smiling pleasantly.

  He was nothing how I imagined. Tall, thin, with an elegant black mustache, he was regal in bearing, and had a pleasant face. Oh, how deceiving ones looks could be. For though he was smiling, there was a calculating callousness in his dark eyes.

  “As you say. If you indeed mean me no harm, why then have you abducted my family?” I asked, adopting his way of conversational speech.

  “What is the phrase, ‘a life for a life’? You see, you have three of my family so I have convened yours here, where they will remain until my family is returned to me.”

  The deuce they will!

  “You are mistaken if you believe I know anything about your family, missing or otherwise. So here is how this will play out. I am taking my family off of this boat, and you may sail back to whatever place you call home,” I said with perfect frankness. I would not allow him the opportunity to issue orders to me.

  He grinned fully, appreciatively. “Such spirit. I imagine I can understand why she has come to care for you. She always did have great spirit as a child.”

  Before he murdered her father before her eyes.

  How would Guinevere have been if she had been raised with parents who loved and protected her? Spirited would not begin to describe her.

  “You will remain adamant?” he asked with an amused lift of his dark brows.

  My expression did not change, but inside I was fighting a great desire to choke him.

  “It is a pity that you are determined to break my niece’s heart.” He rose, picking up a packet of letters bound by string. “I have been warned about your ability to escape death, so in the event that you proved uncompromising, I have taken the necessary measures.” He looked at the men surrounding me. “Do it, but be sure to make it as swift and painless as possible.” He halted beside me, looking down his thin nose at me. “It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance, John Martin.” He walked out of the cabin, pulling the door closed without a second glance at me.

  The guards holding me shoved me forward. Throwing my hands out, I caught myself on the wall of the cabin.

  They were fools if they thought they could take me out. I was a Phantom. Escaping such situations was what I did best.

  Twisting around, prepared for a fight, I was met by twelve pistols aimed straight at my head.

  “Would any of you be interested in a fight to the death?” I asked with a quirk of my brow.

  Their only response was to pull back the hammers on their pistols.

  Searching my mind for a means of escape, I tried to reason with them, but they either did not speak English, or they did not care.

  Doubt tried to set in. Would this be my end?

  As one of the guards began to count down in Danish from three, I began to pray for some kind of intervention.

  When he said one, my final thought would be of Guinevere, of what we should have had. When he said one, I would breathe my final breath with the knowledge that the oath had come true. I had risked all ... for Guinevere.

  CHAPTER 33

  GUINEVERE

  Leo and I only remained on the wharf long enough to see Jack board my uncle’s ship, and then we sprang into motion. We were of the same mind that Jack would require our assistance in dealing with my uncle.

  We were preparing to row our own boat out to the ship when someone called down to me.

  “Might we be of assistance?”

  Harvey’s ship still in the harbor, his men preparing the sails. A rope was thrown out to us, which Leo tied to the boat. Harvey’s sailors pulled us to their ship then helped us aboard. Harvey and my sister were standing beside the helm when Leo and I reached the deck.

  “Guinevere, just the woman we require,” Harvey called out to me jovially. He had been anticipating this moment for years, the moment when he would rid us of our uncle and claim his place on my sister’s council.

  “What say you, fire a warning over the bow, or strike the mast?”

  “A warning and nothing more. My husband is aboard that ship,” I commanded.

  As Harvey’s ship aligned with my uncle’s, Harvey’s quartermaster gave the order to fire a warning that they would not soon forget.

  A sinking feeling settled in my stomach as I interpreted those words, a moment before the cannon fired.

  The ball struck the bow, shattering the wood and causing the ship to heave.

  “What the devil was that?” I threw at Harvey.

  “Guinevere, do try for a smidgen of decorum,” my sister said with long-suffering.

  “Decorum can go hang,” I snapped before leaning over the rail, searching the deck for Jack.

  Harvey laughed. “You will never make a mealy-mouthed chit out of Guinevere. She has been with me for too long.”

  “Too long is the correct sentiment,” Rose said. “Do you suppose we can get on with things?”

  “Mr. Smithers, prepare to board,” Harvey called out to someone down the deck.

  When the plank was laid, connecting the two ships, Harvey halted beside me. “You should remain here with your sister. I will see to Jack’s safety.”

  “Are you ever in earnest with your words or do you live to bait me?” I asked as I plucked a pistol from his belt.

  “Whether you believe me or not, I have your best interests closest to my heart.” Harvey sounded earnest, which was one of his greatest coups. He could look and sound earnest, pulling people in before he made the switch, taking from them everything they held most dear.

  “You forget that I have spent years under your tutelage. I know how to tell a fudge when I hear one,” I said before taking Leo’s hand and allowing him to help me cross the plank to my uncle’s ship.

  Frederick was there to greet me, his men standing over a group of sailors tied at the hands and feet.

  “My uncle?” He was not among the bound, nor was he among the standing.

  “Below,” Frederick said and I ran for the open door to a hatch. “It may be a trap, Guinevere,” he called after me, as if that could stop me.

  Leo grasped my hand before I had stepped onto the top
step. “Let me go first.”

  Moving aside, I allowed Leo to go first into the narrow passage below.

  Leo went to a door that was standing open, and inside we found Dudley, Sam, Bess, and Charlotte in the midst of a crowded fight against a group of royal guards. Jack was not there, bringing on a wave of desperation. If Jack was not with his family, then he was with my uncle. Desperation gave way to determination, and then an insatiable desire for revenge

  For the first time in years, I looked upon the approaching meeting with my uncle without fear.

  Leo jumped into the fight, not halting to see that I did not follow.

  Backing away from that cabin, I stepped softly to the second door where I knew that I would find my uncle. Where I would find Jack. In what capacity, I could not stop to consider.

  Throwing open the door, the scene before me was not at all what I expected.

  Instead of being held at the end of a barrel, Jack was seated in a chair at a table, my uncle seated beside him, and the two of them were talking in what could only be described as amicable tones.

  Looking up, my uncle saw me, and exclaimed, “My niece.” He rose and made as if he would approach me.

  Horrified, I stepped back. His voice was cultured, and it brought on a rush of pain. He was the younger image of my father, other than his complete lack of kindness.

  “You do not deserve to look like him,” I whispered. Forcing strength into my voice I went on. “You do not deserve to stand before me!”

  His face filled with sorrow. “Is that why you ran from me? You thought I had something to do with your father’s death? I tried to stop them. Your sister was there; she will attest to my innocence.”

  “You do not speak of my sister! She was ten years old, and you sold her to the highest bidder!” Gripping the knob on the door was my only source of reining in my anger.

  Luther lowered himself into the nearest chair and laid a hand over his eyes. “A mistake that I have regretted from the moment that I signed the writ. I know that you will not believe me, but I have changed my ways. Prison will do that to a man.”

  He lowered his hand and met my gaze. “You will not know this but, after you ran with your sisters, the country rebelled. For two years, we had a civil war and most of that time I was held a prisoner in my own brother’s castle. Your father’s steward has run the country for seven years while I, the rightful steward by birth, was forced out of the country.”

  He was lying, for that is what he did. He was trying to gain my pity, something that he would never have.

  “If what you speak is the truth, it is more than you deserve. I would have had your head chopped off and staked on the castle wall.”

  “You see what I mean?” he asked Jack. “Such spirit.”

  Those words drew my attention to Jack. He was sitting too still; his gaze fastened on me as if trying to convey a message. When his eyes glanced to the right, I became aware of the others in the cabin.

  I had been so focused on my uncle that I neglected to take all in.

  “Now that you are here, and your sister, I imagine, we may be about the trade,” Luther said.

  “There will be no trade, for you are far outnumbered,” I assured him.

  “If you would but listen to my terms, no one else need be harmed.”

  No one else? Searching Jack’s face, neck and chest, he appeared unharmed, but he was not rising.

  “What have you done to him?” Luther did not respond so I repeated it in a shout.

  “Means nothing to you indeed,” Luther mused with a smirk tossed at Jack.

  Jack did not move, and I released the rein on my carefully guarded emotions, giving them way to do what they craved. Raising my pistol toward my uncle, I fired.

  Dropping the pistol, I pulled three knives from my weapons belt and threw them one after another at the approaching guards. Grabbing two more knives, I ran forward, dodging a fist thrown at my head. Slicing at his arm with one knife, I threw the other into a man going for Jack.

  He stumbled toward Jack, landing on his knees beside the table. Jack threw himself forward, falling on the guard, with the chair attached to him.

  Jack and the chair rolled to the side, but Jack could not get up from there, his hands and feet bound to the chair.

  Starting toward him, the man I had sliced on the arm grabbed my hair, so I let him have it. My wig hung from his hand, astonishment on his flush face.

  Ducking and spinning around his arm, I popped up at his side; my knife placed against his cheek.

  Two of the men I had stabbed had pulled out the knives and were pushing to a stand. It was time to make a choice.

  “Are you going to kill me?” the man at the end of my knife asked.

  My choice made; I lowered my knife and stepped back. “I am not.”

  A knife flew past my shoulder, going straight into the man’s chest. “I am,” Harvey said with alacrity.

  One of the stabbed men took a step toward me, but paused when Harvey raised a set of pistols. “You two, out.” Harvey stepped into the cabin, and the two bleeding guards stumbled into the passage where they were overtaken by Harvey’s men.

  I ran to cut Jack free while Harvey walked regally toward my uncle.

  “You,” my uncle spat, incredulity and a fair amount of fear showing in his startled eyes.

  “Either your aim is terribly off, or you have learned compassion during your sojourn with your chosen swain,” Harvey pronounced as he took in the hole in my uncle’s shoulder, a shot that was my chosen stamp. I would not kill when I could avoid it.

  Cutting Jack’s bonds, I helped him to stand. His arms wrapped around me at once, as his face buried in my neck. After placing a gentle kiss on my skin, Jack straightened, took my hand, and led me out of the cabin.

  “We should not leave those two alone,” I said as we moved to the second cabin.

  “After what I just went through, Harvey can finish him with my goodwill.” Jack halted before the cabin door to pull me against him, his mouth meeting mine in a crushing embrace.

  We had done it, just as he always said we would. Though I knew it was far from over, for it had been too simple, I allowed myself to feel relief. Jack was safe and alive, my uncle was now our captive, and after one final task, I could finally put off the role of white phantom for good.

  CHAPTER 34

  JACK

  Guinevere’s uncle was put in chains and taken over to Harvey’s ship where Guinevere and I were summoned to join him.

  Leo and Dudley escorted us to the captain’s cabin where we found Luther seated in a chair, his hands chained behind his back.

  For a man in his predicament, he showed no outward qualms.

  When he saw my wife enter, his lack of qualms appeared genuine. He did not fear her. Knowing her as I did, she would rectify that oversight.

  “Now that you are here perhaps you will be so good as to have these men unchain me,” Luther said, glaring up at one of Harvey’s guards.

  “If it were up to me, you would be tarred, feathered, and then hung for all to make mock of,” Guinevere said with vehemence.

  “A little gruesome for my taste, but no less than he deserves,” Rose said from the open door.

  Luther’s head jerked in her direction, and he tried to rise but was shoved back down.

  “My lady,” he murmured with reverence.

  Rose swept past him without a glance and deposited her regal form in the chair behind the desk. With her fingers laced, she laid her hands on the top of the desk and allowed her eyes to rest upon her uncle.

  “My nieces, together at long last,” Luther exclaimed. “If you will have your henchmen release me, we can be on our way at once. There is no time to be lost.”

  “Luther, desperation is unbecoming. You will neither be released, nor will you be returning to Lutania. From this day forth, you are banished from my kingdom. It shall be a decree that should any person see you within the borders of our soil you are to be shot without question.�
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  “You would not,” Luther gasped, as if he were truly surprised. “I am your uncle, your kin, your guardian.”

  “Your status as uncle was forfeit the moment you murdered my parents, and you were never my guardian. You may have forgotten, though I doubt it, that I have the will. I was left to the protection of another.”

  “Lies. It is a forgery. I have the true will in my possession,” Luther replied as if he believed what he said.

  “That is the forgery, and there are those who will attest to it,” Rose informed her uncle, growing more heated with each word. “Steward Klaus, Lord Alvard, and Lord Adamsen witnessed the drawing of the will, and they hold a copy for a purpose such as this.”

  “Unfortunately Lords’ Alvard and Adamsen disappeared not long after you, and I believe that you will find Steward Klaus has no recollection of said will.”

  Leo stepped into the cabin, slamming the door behind him. “That is quite enough out of you,” Leo told Luther as he advanced toward him. Leo pulled the hammer back on his pistol and raised it, pointing the barrel straight at Luther’s head.

  Luther was not disconcerted in the least, but smiled. “Lord Adamsen. Yes, I thought it would be you that I found as her lackey. Still the faithful dog, I see.”

  Leo slammed his fist against Luther’s nose. Luther tipped back, his chair falling over with him. Red was covering Luther’s face as he tried to stand, but Leo stepped on his shoulder, holding him on the floor and pointing his gun at Luther’s head.

  “You will not speak of my sovereign in such a way,” Leo hissed.

  “Wait until we return home, your insolence shall be dealt with, that I promise you,” Luther retorted, blood trickling from his nose.

  “Have you heard nothing? You have no authority to threaten the head of my guards, Luther,” Rose said and at once my eyes sought out Leo’s. He met my glance for an instant before refocusing on Luther.