phantom knights 04 - deceit in delaware

by Amalie Vantana

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked as Levi drove the carriage away from the others.

  There was a moment when I felt as if this was a trap. That Levi was not truly on my side. Which was ridiculous. Levi and I had worked together for months before he left Savannah with my sister.

  As Levi drove the carriage, Freddy sat beside him with a blunderbuss in hand. I held on to the seat as the carriage moved out of the town and down a country road. Dirt and rocks were kicked up at the speed we were traveling, but Levi did not let up until he turned onto a narrow lane.

  When we arrived at a two story stone cottage that was surrounded by trees, the front door opened and Reverend Gideon Reid stepped out, followed by my sister Mary Edith.

  Climbing down from the carriage, I ran toward my sister, touching her arms, her cheeks, even her nose to make myself believe that she was real and had not been taken hostage as those men had told Bess.

  Mary Edith, with her blonde hair and brown eyes, looked little like me, but she had our family’s regal looks. She threw her arms around me and hugged me so tight that moisture stung my eyes. Blinking them quickly dried them for I refused to cry. My sister was safe and there was no need for tears.

  Holding my sister’s hand, I moved forward to greet Gideon. He had once been Jack’s mentor. Jack had introduced me to him, and then I began visiting with him weekly. He knew more about me than most people, which meant that I trusted him.

  He appeared older than I remembered, but that did not stop him from bowing low before me.

  “Milady, it does my heart well to see you.”

  Reaching forward and hugging him, he returned my embrace. When he looked down at me, his eyes were full of his usual kindness.

  “Come into the house,” Mary Edith said, drawing me into the quaint cottage with fading wallpaper and old furniture.

  A matronly woman appeared in the narrow foyer as I was removing my hat and gloves.

  “Mrs. Stone, my sister has arrived at last,” Mary Edith said jovially.

  The woman, whose face matched her name, nodded once. “Yes, miss. Does the young lady wish for a rest, or perhaps some tea?”

  “Tea would be charming. Thank you, Mrs. Stone,” my sister said kindly before she ushered me into the parlor and sat upon a plush sofa.

  We were joined by Pierre. When I saw him, I laughed. “Jeanne will be overjoyed that you are looking so well. She was quite disgruntled by your absence.”

  Pierre smiled. “And my daughter?”

  Levi came in then and told Pierre that the others were going to the Stacey House, whatever that was.

  When we were gathered in the parlor, Freddy asked why we had been brought to the cottage and not the others.

  “When we received word to expect you, we thought it best that we separate everyone,” Levi said, giving really nothing away.

  “Why did you need Pierre?” I asked, trying to gain more information.

  “We were attacked a fortnight past,” Gideon said when Levi refused to speak. “We had thought that they had come for Mary Edith, but that was not so.”

  The room went so quiet that I could feel the silent information being shared between those who knew what had happened. Levi, Gideon, and Pierre were exchanging glances while my sister stared at her clasped hands.

  “Who then did they come for?” Freddy asked.

  “Me,” Levi said. Inspecting him better, I noticed the dark half-moons beneath his green eyes, the three creases in his forehead, and the way his black hair was angled in all directions as if he pulled it regularly. Though the wild hair was rather normal for Levi.

  “Why would my uncle want you and not my sister?”

  Levi and Mary Edith exchanged glances, driving me to distraction with their furtive looks and silent exchanges. So much so that I exclaimed, “Enough with the looks! Be a little more forthcoming, I beg of you.”

  “Uncle Luther wants Levi because Luther believes that he has me,” my sister said.

  “How is that possible?”

  Gideon leaned forward, his hands clasped before him. “Because the person currently residing as his prisoner has told him that she is Mary Edith.”

  That took me aback. Why would someone do that? What possible reason could they have for lying to my uncle and risking their life in such a care-nothing-for-their-safety way? “Who would do something so foolish?”

  Levi’s expression turned dangerous, wild. “You will not be pleased with the answer.”

  CHAPTER 16

  JACK

  My wife and I had been separated. That was all that was going through my mind when I looked about the courtyard and saw her gone. Was that their aim all along? To distract us so that they could take her? I thought that until I left the courtyard, going in search of my wife, but what I found caused me to slide to a halt.

  There was a wolf standing in the street, holding a bow and an arrow.

  Dudley hit my back as he ran out of the courtyard, stumbling when he saw the wolf.

  When the man wearing the brown wolf face mask began to smile, Dudley leaned over my shoulder.

  “Do you know this wolf man?” Dudley asked me.

  “Dudley, Jericho. Jericho, Dudley Stanton.”

  Jericho pushed the mask up his head until his face was revealed. “Ah, yes, I remember you. I drove you home often enough,” Jericho said with a laugh.

  Dudley tilted his head to look Jericho over, but he appeared to still be lost, so I told him that Jericho had been our family’s coachman, as well as Fenrir, a deputy of the Phantoms.

  Dudley’s head snapped up. One second Dudley was standing calmly beside me, and the next he jerked forward and swung his fist into Jericho’s stomach.

  “What the devil,” I exploded, grabbing Dudley’s shoulders and holding him back.

  “That’s for kissing my wife!”

  What? I looked from Dudley’s angry, fuming face, to Jericho’s bent, panting form. Jericho had kissed Hannah? When?

  Jericho leaned his hands against his knees, but met Dudley’s gaze. “Is that what she told you happened?”

  “No. She told me that she kissed you, but your lips still touched hers and for that I hit you.” Dudley shrugged off my hands and straightened his cravat, though it was beyond repair.

  “Fair enough, I suppose.” Jericho rose to his full height, but gingerly rubbed his stomach.

  “I suppose it is self-explanatory if it involves Hannah,” I said. When Dudley bristled, I began to ask Jericho why he was in Delaware, but Hannah ran out from the courtyard.

  “Why are we standing about? Let us away at once,” Hannah said as she ran toward us.

  Dudley began to move toward the carriage that was not the one we arrived in, but Hannah did not. She was mesmerized by the sight of Jericho.

  “I remember you,” Hannah said as she turned her attention upon Jericho’s face. There was a knowing smile on her lips as she looked him over.

  Dudley marched over to her and took her arm in a firm clasp. He guided her away from Jericho.

  As Jericho took up the reins of the carriage I climbed up beside him on the seat.

  “Where is Mariah?”

  “She went on ahead of us.”

  “So it was she and you who sent those flaming arrows? Our thanks for that.”

  Jericho smiled but said nothing as he guided the carriage away from the town and into the country for half of a mile. When he rounded the bend in a grassy lane, a two story stone house was before us.

  When the carriage stopped, the front door to the house opened and a woman emerged.

  “Mother!” Dudley hurried forward to greet his mother.

  What was the woman doing in Delaware? She was supposed to have left the country…

  It struck me like a ray of light breaking through clouds. Mrs. Stanton was the traitor.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “She is here for the same reason we are,” Jericho said as he ushered us all into the cottage.

  “
What reason is that then? And where is my wife?”

  Mrs. Stanton led the way into a small parlor.

  “My nieces have gone then?” Mrs. Stanton asked.

  My gaze riveted upon Jericho with so much force that he raised his hands in a motion of surrender. “Do not look murder upon me, Jack. I assure you that your wife and her sister are safe. They are with Levi.”

  “Levi is here? How is he? We heard that Luther had captured Edith. How is Gideon?” My questions flowed without ceasing until a woman exclaimed from behind me.

  “Jackal!”

  Twisting around, Mariah was standing upon the threshold with an impish grin upon her lips. She was the only person on the earth who could get away with calling me Jackal. It had been her teasing name for when I released my Phantom laugh.

  Grabbing her around the waist, I lifted her feet off the ground as I hugged her. “Ria, you do not know how much I have missed you.”

  “Unhand my wife, fiend,” Jericho said as he came up behind me.

  “Afraid she might kiss him?” Dudley asked in a scathing voice.

  “I was not, but now I am,” Jericho retorted, never losing his good humor.

  Setting Mariah down, I took hold of Jericho’s neck and pulled them both to me. It had been eight months since last we were together. After spending years with them, living in the same house, working on the same missions, they were as much my family as Leo, Levi, and Bess.

  Mrs. Stanton interrupted our group by introducing Mariah to Dudley and Hannah. They remembered her as Bess’s maid from Philadelphia, but Hannah took it further.

  “Oh, you are Artemis! How I have longed to make the acquaintance of one who can wield the bow as well as you.” Hannah’s earnestness was writ on her face as she came forward and clasped Mariah’s hand.

  “It is true then. When Jeanne told me that you were her daughter, I could scarce believe it. Though seeing Mr. Stanton here surprises me all the more.” Mariah cast a curious look to me.

  “Oh, Dudley is my husband,” Hannah said, as if it were the most natural occurrence in the world.

  Mrs. Stanton looked down her impressive nose at me. “Perhaps we should return to important matters. Your wife is safe.”

  Mariah smacked Jericho’s arm and he leaned back, rubbing his arm.

  “What did I do?” Jericho demanded.

  “It is what you did not do. Here is poor Jack, worrying about his wife and you say nothing to relieve his mind.”

  I smiled triumphantly at Jericho. His brows descended lower over his brown eyes. His strong jaw tightened as he cast me a mock scowl.

  Mariah’s black hair was pulled back, which always made her vibrant blue eyes more prominent. They were the first feature that anyone noticed on her because they were so remarkable. Clear blue that shone as beautiful as a clear sky. Her exquisite face was the next feature that people were privileged to look upon. A face that had succeeded in gaining us many successful missions in the past.

  “We thought it would be safest if we split everyone up so that Luther’s guards could not get us all in one swoop. Levi has your wife safe, with her sisters, Freddy, Leo, and Reverend Reid,” Mariah explained.

  “So you know then, about Guinevere and her sisters?” I asked.

  Mariah’s eyes widened. “Indeed we do, and never were we more astonished. Jeanne has kept us informed, and she wrote to us when Bess was captured by General Harvey. Our astonishment grew by leaps when we heard that he was the leader of the Holy Order. Levi then wrote to us and asked for our assistance in keeping Edith Harvey safe, and we came as soon as we could.”

  The front door opened and a rush of people came into the cottage. Bess was first, calling out my name. When she entered the parlor and saw first Jericho and then Mariah, my calm, mature sister squealed. They took turns with her as Sam, Betsy, and James entered the house.

  “We could not allow you to have all the fun,” Mariah was saying with a laugh to Bess.

  Sam stared at Mariah and then a smile bloomed across his face. “You, I remember. At my uncle’s house.”

  Mariah grinned at him. “And again when you came to call on Bess. Imagine my surprise to learn that the same man who had so wholly infuriated her had been the one to win her hand at last.”

  “At last? You make me sound so disagreeable,” Bess said as she linked arms with Mariah.

  “Never that, but having received as many offers as you had,” Mariah said, making Sam’s eyebrows rise in question, “we began to despair of you ever finding your heart’s desire.”

  “Well I did,” Bess said, meeting Sam’s gaze. His smile turned soft.

  “Monroe’s guards and the constables are staying at the Delaware hotel. Two of each will be stationed outside each of the houses, switching off every five hours,” Jericho told me, and I wondered how he knew that they were coming.

  “Levi received an express from Leo while you were in Baltimore,” Jericho told me in answer to the question that I had not voiced.

  When all of the introductions were made and we were all seated around the parlor wherever we could find a chair, we spoke of what was next to come.

  We would begin by scouting out the house where Luther was keeping himself, and we would make our plans accordingly.

  When Mariah and Jericho took everyone else off to show them their bedchambers, Mrs. Stanton asked that Bess and I remain behind.

  “This was given to me for safekeeping until the moment when I thought it best that you receive it.” She placed a leather bound book on the table and I picked it up. Opening it, it was all written in Danish, but I recognized my mother’s name at once. Eleanora. As I flipped through the pages, I realized that it was my mother’s journal, from her life as a young girl.

  “Father gave it to you,” Bess said with assurance.

  “He took it with him when he left to become Harvey. He did not want you learning about your history before he could be there to explain it to you. With what we are facing, you deserve to know the truth. Take it. Read it, and then we will speak.”

  She left Bess and me alone, and together we sat upon the sofa and began at the beginning. When my mother was preparing to leave her home country of Sweden to go with her dearest friend Elisabeth as she was to marry a prince named Eric.

  Elisabeth was the name of Guinevere’s mother.

  The more we read, the more that we understood about our parents’ past. We came to understand why our mother was so adamant that we learn Danish as children. She was trying to teach us about our heritage without telling us the truth.

  The revelation struck as to why our father did not want us reading this until now. He was trying to soften us toward him, toward what he had done in lying to us and hiding himself away for three years. He wanted us to believe that he was doing this for us.

  That was not how we took it.

  It was evening when Mrs. Stanton poured out tea for us as she spoke. “Now you know the truth about how your parents met.”

  “Yes, we know the story, but you never told us, when we spoke before, that Eric’s father was murdered during that attack that gained our father a knighthood.”

  “We also know why father wanted us to read the journal now. He was hoping that it would soften us toward our parents,” Bess explained.

  “Has it?” Mrs. Stanton asked over the rim of her cup.

  “To my mother, perhaps, but not my father. He may have loved her so tremendously then, as she thought, but I have never witnessed such evidence of his devotion.”

  Bess brought forth the journal and laid it upon the table. The first entry was from when our mother was preparing to leave for Lutania and her excitement and nervousness.

  “Why is it written in Danish instead of Swedish?” Bess asked Mrs. Stanton.

  “Your mother is well versed in many languages. It was part of her training to be a lady in waiting.”

  The journal was supposed to tell us why our father swore to protect the girls.

  For hours we had poured over the
words as if they were a story unfolding before us. I pictured my mother as a young maiden arriving in a new country. Young, beautiful, stubborn if some of her accounts were to be believed, and devoted to her friend Elisabeth.

  My mother’s life had been one large adventure. My parents’ romance was like reading about someone else’s life, for I had never known my parents when they were affectionate. The greatest show of affection that my father expressed was when he brought my mother a bouquet of flowers every time he returned from a trip.

  Her life had been wrought with grief, excitement, anger, joy, and a number of society parties. They did things differently in Lutania than we did in Philadelphia, as my mother had little freedom of her own. She was at the call of her queen both day and night.

  My favorite parts were the entries she wrote about meeting my father. Discovering that our parents’ names were truly Willem and Eleanora, and that they had changed them after leaving Lutania, as Guinevere, Rose, and Edith had done, made me feel that I was reading about some other couple’s life, and not my parents. The way they met was fantastic, and the reasons why they had to flee Lutania had me grinding my teeth in anger. A moonlit run to the coast with Luther’s guards pursuing them. It was enough to make me want to seek out Luther and finish what my father had begun all those years ago. To know that Luther was almost successful in ravishing my mother lit a flame within me, a flame of revenge.

  Reading about her past, it became evident why my father refused to allow her to become a Phantom. He had been protecting her from the moment they first met.

  He had once told her that he did not wish for a life of poverty for one who deserved the sun, and the moon, and the stars. She may not have been accustomed to living in poverty, but she never wrote about resenting him for any of their trials. She loved him, and she believed in him, but not from their first meeting.

  She had written of her utter dislike for him in the beginning, until he had rescued her from Luther’s advances. Which, incidentally, was her own fault. She was trying to show my father that he was not the only man who favored her. She actually wrote that she was weary of his kindness. She wanted a spark of fire. She wanted him to overcome the distance that she had placed between them. She wanted to know that he was more than an imitation of every other soldier.