phantom knights 04 - deceit in delaware

by Amalie Vantana

  “Jack Martin. How good of you to come.”

  “I hear that you have declared war upon the Phantoms.”

  Harvey set his quill aside. “So I have, but there is a way to cease that. Join me. Together we can rule an empire.”

  The years had surely made him daft. “I am not here to join you, Harvey.”

  “Then why have you come?”

  “I have come to see my father.”

  And so it was.

  This is the account of the end of my journey as a Phantom, truly the end of life as I knew it. I thank you, whomever you may be that is reading this account of my life. May you never know the horrors that I have lived through. If my sacrifices have made the world even remotely better for you, then nothing I have done has been in vain.

  My discovery to the truth that my father was indeed still alive began on the day that my wife first confessed about her connection to the Holy Order. The more she spoke, the more I began to realize the truth. Her protector was my father, but William Martin would never have given up control of the girls to anyone. As my mind pieced together the astonishing truth, I came to realize that not only had my father not died, but he had more than one secret society. My father created the Holy Order.

  “She has told you then,” said Harvey after about a minute of stunned silence.

  “My wife did not tell me. I put the truth together myself.”

  “How long have you known?” the man who had once been my father asked. Risking his life, he turned his head to meet my gaze.

  “Since my wife told me of her true identity.” Looking into his brown eyes, I could not believe that I had not known the truth longer. He had pulled off the greatest coup, on his own family.

  When Guinevere told me of her history, slowly, the thought struck, and then, like a fire being given free range over a forest, the truth had grown. I had thought about the names of the ships my mother had owned, Guinevere’s guardian who owed a debt to her family, and the Holy Order. Then I thought about Harvey. Thinking hard over the past, it occurred to me that I had never seen him and my father together.

  My father had first mentioned meeting Harvey at his club, and then came the parties where both had been present. After we arrived, my father disappeared, supposedly meeting with friends in the card room, and a while later Harvey would arrive. They each spoke highly of the other. And there was the difference in their looks and carriage. Harvey’s hair and beard were gray and white, he had a long scar on his face, and he walked with a limp. My father had none of that. The only similarity was the eyes, but many men had brown eyes. Under bushy gray eyebrows, I did not know the difference. I did not see the difference because it never occurred to me to do so. When I had discovered the truth, it took a few weeks to decide what to do with my newfound truth.

  “Rise.” Pressing the barrel harder into his skin, I pulled back his chair. He rose with fluid grace. As tall as he was, I had to raise my arm to keep the barrel against him, but he knew better than to see my height as a hindrance.

  “Walk,” I ordered.

  My father walked toward the closed door that would lead into the throne room. On the other side of that door were the twelve lords of Levitas. I had made certain that they all had arrived before finding a way into the temple.

  He opened the door and stepped into the brighter room. All of the lords were seated and waiting for Harvey. When he stopped beside his throne, I stepped to his side, keeping the pistol aimed at him.

  The surprised and shocked faces of eleven out of the twelve lords would have caused me to smile if I were not so astonished.

  “I give you good evening, high lords of the Holy Order of Levitas,” I announced. “You may be curious as to why I am standing before you, holding a pistol upon your leader. You see, you have something, or should I say someone, who belongs to my family.”

  It had been over a week since Guinevere became one of the lords. Since she returned home with the tidings that Harvey had declared war upon the Phantoms.

  When I told her what I was going to do, she pleaded with me not to approach Harvey. She asked me not to challenge the Holy Order, until I explained that I knew the truth. I knew that my father was alive.

  I was ashamed that the truth had not come to me sooner than when Guinevere was confessing who she was. I felt as if I should have known, but my father was a master of disguise. He did not want me to know the truth and so I had not. His disguise was so great, so deeply rooted, that I never stopped to question. Never suspected.

  The last eight years had been full of so much deceit that I no longer knew who to trust. My sister kept secrets from me in the name of protecting me, my brother had lied in the need to prove himself. My greatest friends had both lied about their identities. My wife’s deception was a difficult one to swallow, but I had hope that one day we could get past it, if we lived that long.

  Through all of the lies, deceit, and manipulation, it was my mother’s secrets that had affected me the most. Her deceit was so rife that I did not know if forgiveness was possible, for she would never make me believe that she was blameless. She had twisted the truth for years, and now I was paying the price.

  If I lost my life in this approaching final battle, she would be, in part, to blame. She knew it, and what affected me the most was the knowledge that she would not have changed her actions if given the chance. She believed in what she had done. But what she believed was a lie.

  A curse slipped through Dudley’s lips as his eyes grew large. He quickly fixed his emotions, and rose from his chair. “Jack, old fellow, allow me to explain.” Dudley spoke as if I did not understand the significance of his presence inside the temple.

  “There is no need, for I know.”

  Dudley gulped. “The devil…”

  Hannah rose from where she had been seated beside Dudley. She hurried around him with her arms outstretched as if to protect him, but I would not hurt Dudley, nor did I care that his presence meant that he was one of the lords of the Holy Order. My focus was upon the other lords.

  I felt myself begin to understand more of the duplicity that had been played upon me. Every person in the room I knew well. My father had chosen his lackeys with care, for everyone in the room owed him some kind of debt.

  If all of these persons were on my father’s side, Luther had no hope of succeeding in his plan to steal the throne. My future no longer looked so bleak. For I knew that I could control these people, I could steal the reins from my father.

  “Do be seated, Harvey.” Shoving the barrel into his back, I guided him to his throne.

  Once he was seated, I stood beside his chair.

  “You have some nerve, sir, being alive when you should be dead,” I spat at my father. He watched me as one would a stranger. With interest bordering on unconcern. I thought perhaps my father truly was dead … until he spoke.

  “If you want to be like me, son, you must remember to always be seven steps ahead of the enemy.” He leaned to the side of his throne, at his ease, and smiled.

  Gripping the handle to my pistol tighter, I raised my voice. “That is what I am now? Your enemy? I am your son! You abandoned your family, and for what? A place on a council?” I was sure to add venom to my words, and it worked as Jeanne, my mother’s former housekeeper, winced.

  Pierre placed a hand on her shoulder, and her hand came up to cover his. Curious that.

  “There is more to my vision than a place on the council, Jack. I made a vow long before you were born, to protect a land, a people, a queen, and this is what I have been doing. This is the reason for the Holy Order. All of it was to protect my queen and my country.”

  “Your words may feel good in your heart—though I doubt it—they do nothing to change the fact that you are a traitor, a blackguard, and a failure as a father. How does it feel, William? To know that you have failed your family, your blood?”

  My father was shaking his head, his expression full of grief. “This is why your sister was named my successor. Your vision
is too narrow, your mind too inner focused.”

  Stepping closer to him, I pointed my pistol at his forehead. “Do not speak of my sister. Because of your selfishness, your cruelty, your vision, my sister—your daughter—has lost much! Do you know that she still has nightmares about what happened at the plantation? That is all your doing.” He did not even flinch, but Sam did.

  My kind, calm brother by marriage was one of the twelve lords. If Guinevere had not warned me, I might have been tempted to enact a deadly kind of mischief against him. That was the kind of information that needed to be told at the opportune moment. I did not know how Bess would take the news when she heard the truth.

  “You could have stopped this. You could have protected Bess, but you did not. You destroyed your daughter’s peace and mind by your selfishness.”

  There was a collective gasp in the room, but my attention was riveted upon my father’s paling face. That sally had struck home. Bess would have tried to hit me if she had heard me using her trials as strikes against our father. She was coping with the nightmares. She loved her new life with her husband, even if she did not know the full truth about Sam.

  After a long pause, where everyone watched us with baited breath, waiting for the gauntlet to be thrown, my father’s lips twitched and then he smiled.

  “My son, what a flair for the dramatic you do have.”

  Lowering the pistol, I placed it in my belt. “I learned from the best, sir.”

  Everyone in the room sat completely still and silent, as if they could not believe what was happening before their eyes.

  “Come, my son, let us sit.” My father had a chair placed beside his throne. As I sat beside him, I made certain to keep all emotions locked away. It would be disastrous for my plans if my father read my intent. He was, after all, the one who taught me how to read people.

  Meeting Guinevere’s eyes, she was watching us closely. She knew of my plan, but she did not know how I was going to achieve it.

  “You have your hands full with that one,” my father whispered to me, seeing the direction of my gaze.

  “As I imagine that you planned this whole time,” I replied.

  To my utter astonishment, my father shook his head. “She must take all of the merit for your marriage. I tried to keep her away from you.”

  “Why, sir? You must see how well suited we are.”

  “Indeed I do, but there is still much that you do not know about her history. I had hoped to spare you that pain.”

  He had? I looked down at my black gloves, a strange twisting in my gut.

  “What is it, Jack?” My father spoke with more compassion than I remembered him possessing. I supposed it was due to having achieved his greatest desire. He thought I was there to join him, his cause.

  “There is much that I do not know about your history as well, but there will be time enough for that. I would like to know what you propose to do. What is our next step?”

  My father grinned, and I had the oddest sensation as if I had pleased him. That had never happened before that I remembered.

  “First, we must do away with Luther,” my father said with decision. “Then we will hold a meeting with the Phantoms. It is time that they choose if they are with us or against us.”

  “And if they are against us, what then? For I will not allow Bess to be harmed,” I said. My hands rested on my knees, and I had to fight the urge to grip them. This was my father, the man who had taught me how to read people by their actions. If he read my distress, he would begin to question my motives.

  “You will not allow it?” he questioned with a lift of his bushy brows. “Are you making the orders now, Jack? I do not believe that you have gained that right.”

  Oh how wrong he was. Smiling my most charming, I looked into my father’s eyes that were so much like Bess’s that it took me a moment to speak. I told myself that I was not betraying her trust. That I was doing this for her good. With that entrenched inside my head and heart, I did something I had never done before in my life. I took the reins of control from my father.

  “That is exactly what I am doing. You see, I am now in control of your secret society.”

  My father was not threatened, nor did I expect him to be. His lips turned up in a smile. “Indeed?”

  “Indeed.” Rising, I faced the twelve. “My father demands a show of support. I put it before you, great lords of the Holy Order of Levitas. A vote. If you are for me taking the majority control from William Martin, known to you as General Harvey, step forward.”

  No one moved, and my father began to laugh. “Son, I see that you are the same wit as when you were a child. I had hoped you would have outgrown—” he broke off as Pierre rose and took a step forward.

  Smiling at our old informant for the Phantoms, he returned it. Next to him, Arnaud, our former butler and Pierre’s brother, rose and stepped forward. Jeanne followed, and then Dudley and Hannah stepped forward. Freddy stepped up on the other side of Hannah and gave me a nod. I had six, which was half, but I was not content yet. I wanted my father to see that almost all of his minions now followed me.

  My wife stepped forward, smiling her encouragement. Leo moved to stand beside her. And then, to my astonishment, Rose joined them. Rose, the heir to the throne in Lutania, was voting for me.

  Martha, Guinevere’s former companion, stepped forward and nodded to me, though she refused to look at my father.

  “That gives me ten,” I said to my father.

  “Eleven,” Sam corrected as he stepped forward. He met my gaze with fire in his own, and a warning.

  There we had it. Eleven were on my side. I did not expect Mrs. Stanton’s allegiance.

  “Well,” my father said slowly, rising. “The majority have spoken. Hail your new leader.”

  Those who had voted for me began to smile.

  My father bowed slightly at the waist, sweeping his hand out before him. “It will be my pleasure to serve you.” As he straightened, he said, “What is your first order as our new leader?”

  That one was a simple decision. “As the new leader of the Holy Order, my first order, and it will be obeyed,” I said to my father, “is that the Holy Order of Levitas is hereby disbanded.”

  There was a moment where shock radiated through the room, but I was not through. “It is also my ruling that each of you make a choice. You may help me to restore the rightful heiress to the throne, or you may choose to immigrate to another country of your choice.” The surprise on their faces looked as if it had frozen them. “Should you try to remain in America, President James Monroe has ordered that you be imprisoned until a trial can be arranged. The choice is yours.” Even though I knew there was not much of a choice.

  My last letter from James had insisted that I find and disband the Holy Order. He wrote that if I could not he would send others to finish where I failed. Thankfully that was not necessary.

  “Well,” Dudley said, the first to speak up, “I for one have always wanted to become a Phantom.”

  “I do have a mask,” Hannah piped up next to him. “The world needs the Blue Enchantress, if I do say so myself.”

  Sam, Leo, Rose and Guinevere nodded their agreement. In the end only Mrs. Stanton and Martha chose to leave America.

  Facing my father, I hoped that he would not try to fight me. If he did, I would have no choice but to escort him to Washington where he would face a trial. “You began all of this with the Phantoms, and it is the Phantoms who will end it.”

  “The boy becomes a man,” my father murmured, a small smile upon his lips. Snapping his attention to me, he bowed again. “We will follow your lead, Loutaire. What comes first?”

  “Now that the threat against my wife and her sisters is locked in one of your cells, we move forward with returning the rightful heir to her throne.”

  My announcement did not meet with the excitement that I was expecting. Dudley and Hannah were staring at me with unease writ on their faces. Everyone else looked at my father. My father turned back to
his seat, and when I sat beside him, he spoke in a low voice.

  “That may be difficult. You see, Luther is no longer our prisoner. Someone,” my father looked about the room, “helped him to escape. I am afraid that the threat against them is very much at large.”

  “You suspect one of your own to be working with Luther?”

  My father’s expression was grim. “As we were the only ones who knew where he was, and how to get him out, yes, I do suspect one of them. Who, I have yet to discover.”

  “Do you suspect Luther of having gone to Charleston?” My heart constricted at the thought. I knew that there were enough people there who could fight, but Luther struck me as a man who would wait until your back was turned to strike.

  He had murdered his brother and his brother’s wife for a crown, and he would have done the same to my wife and her sisters had he been given the chance. He had married ten year old Rose to a man that he thought he could control, and when that failed, he had sent his guards to kill them.

  Not that I approved of my father’s duplicity by any means, but I would say that I was grateful that he had taught my wife how to fight. Her abilities had saved her life on more occasions than she had confided in me.

  “No, for Luther is not a man to carry out his own deeds,” my father admitted.

  Like you, I had wanted to say, but it was not fully the truth. When Guinevere had come to me with all of the secrets, she had admitted that she had lied. Harvey was never as despicable to her as she had made it seem. They fought constantly, and she said that lately he was becoming too puffed up in his own esteem, but it had been a plan between the two of them to draw the Phantoms into a fight with the Holy Order. They needed our assistance in disbanding the branches of Levitas, and so they had manipulated us into helping them. Guinevere had apologized profusely, but I was still a little angry with her for all of the lies. I did not blame her as much as I blamed my father.

  My father wanted the Holy Order and the Phantoms joined. He wanted us to clean up the mess that he had made, leaving no loose ends so that when this was through he could go to Lutania and take up his post without any scandals following him.