Skeletons in the Closet (Phantom Rising Book 2)

by Davyne DeSye

  He lit lamps as he went – those that had not been smashed or broken – lighting the ruined house as he went. He found the bodies of two of his servants behind several packed trunks in the foyer. He discovered another body in the kitchen, crumpled in the far corner. Upstairs, he found a trunk – not yet packed – in their bedchamber. The candle of hope burned in his chest with every room he entered that did not contain the body of the one person he could not bear to see.

  Certain that Christine was not in the main house, he returned to the tunnel labyrinth. He searched it as carefully as the rest of the house before making his way to the final room – the room with the tunnel to the cliff face. His heart rose into his throat choking him with despair. This room, like the others, had been disturbed.

  She may still have escaped! This destruction could have been done after she escaped!

  His eyes moved from the tipped up bed and the open tunnel mouth to the mirror over the vanity.

  Please! Please have left me a message, Christine!

  Erik lifted the bench from where it lay across the small room and pulled it before the vanity. He turned the silver hairbrush over in his hand and removed the back cover, revealing a secret compartment full of red powder. He lit a candle and ran the flame over the surface of the mirror, and then used the large brush from the face powder to brush the red powder over the surface of the mirror.

  There!

  He could make out words on the mirror, and brushed more of the red powder against the surface, heating the mirror face as needed with the candle when the words would not come clear. He closed his eyes and took a deep calming breath before reading the message Christine had left him there.

  Mazenderani, she had written at the top. He might have guessed as much, but at least now he was certain.

  I love you, were her next words, and his eyes burned with love and pain, and the frustration that she would have wasted any time on the words.

  “I love you,” he whispered into the dim silence of the room.

  My shoe, were the next senseless words, but Erik knew an explanation would follow – a code, a sign of some sort.

  I will escape with two – meet me at the old tree. Erik understood. She would not escape with only one shoe, and if she should escape, she would meet him at the tree that stood on her old farmstead in Korsnäsborg, her childhood home.

  I will be taken with two – Mazenderan. Erik translated again, understanding that if she was captured – kidnapped – they would not take her with only one shoe.

  If I am to die – you will find my shoe – I love you.

  Erik’s eyes blurred as he read the last words, loving his wife and damning her for the second foolish waste of time and words.

  A shoe! He spun as he rose from the chair and lifted the lantern, swinging it to and fro, searching the floor of the small room. His pulse slowed when he did not find a shoe, but he determined to be certain. He emptied the room of its entire contents, filling the tunnel leading to the room, and then descended into the escape tunnel and searched it to its far end. No shoe.

  Erik admired Christine’s choice of code signals in what must have been a moment of terror and despair. No one would consider the loss of a shoe – or the retrieval of one – to be anything more or less than it appeared. The code was not perfect, he realized, nor could it be. Christine could have escaped through the tunnel, and then been killed before she could reach safety. She could have been killed before she was able…

  Stop!

  He refused to allow his mind to move in those death-shrouded circles.

  First, to Korsnäsborg, willing Christine to be there, at the old tree, waiting for him – picturing their tearful reunion, feeling the warmth of her skin on his lips as he kissed her beautiful face.

  Climbing over the detritus in the tunnels, he re-entered the house, moving to gather the few supplies – and weapons – he intended to take to Korsnäsborg. He threw the few implements into a satchel, and gathering up two half-eaten loaves of bread, he turned from the bright kitchen to the blackness of the open door to the yard, ready to run to the stable to determine whether Christine had been able to take a horse.

  “You hurry like a man running on coals.” The husky feminine voice washed over Erik like ice, speaking Persian. He spun in the open doorway to the yard toward the speaker, hand on the knife at his belt.

  There, between the two large preparation tables stood a woman, the lower half of her face veiled in the Mazenderani fashion, her body wrapped in colorful silks. Behind her stood two enormous, muscular Persian men, neither as tall as Erik, but both outweighing him. When Erik did not move or speak, the woman threw her head back and delivered a rich, thrumming laugh.

  “Have you forgotten our language?” she asked in Persian. Changing to French, she said, “Would you prefer I spoke in another?”

  “Sultana,” he said, for it could be no other. When last he had seen her, she had been a precocious – and dangerous – child of ten, not the voluptuous woman who now stood before him, but the shape of her eyes, and the velvet venom in her tone betrayed her to him.

  “Erik, my beloved,” she answered, again speaking Persian. She detached one side of her veil and pushed it aside. “When we knew each other so well, you called me by name.” She took two provocative steps toward him, moving her hips as she walked in an insinuating dance.

  “We no longer know each other well,” he answered, stifling the anger that threatened to color his words. He must tread carefully if he had any hopes of discovering Christine’s fate, or of extricating Christine from the Sultana’s clutches if she yet lived. He entertained no doubt that this woman was responsible for the wreckage surrounding him and the disappearance of Christine.

  “Say it,” she said sliding closer to him, one hand brushing from hip to hip across her stomach. “Call me by name, beloved.”

  Erik clenched his teeth against the curses and oaths he meant to utter. After a moment’s struggle during which she moved closer and closer to him, he said, “Naheed.” It came out as a croaking whisper, and knowing she would not be satisfied, he cleared his throat and said her name again. “Naheed.”

  “Thank you,” she said, lowering her eyes in apparent gratitude, as if he had granted her a great favor. Closing the last of the distance between them, she stopped, a mere handbreadth from him, and raised her face to his. It seemed to Erik that she expected an embrace or a kiss, as if they were old lovers reunited after more than forty years – a ridiculous and revolting notion, considering her extreme youth when last they parted.

  “Where is my wife?” he asked, his voice quiet and toneless.

  The Sultana exhaled in apparent disappointment, and turned from him, although she did not step away. “Ah, yes.” After another sigh, she turned to him again. “Am I not beautiful, Erik?”

  “Yes,” he answered. A smile of cunning satisfaction grew on her face. “You look much like my wife – although older.” The statement was both cutting and true. The Sultana’s features were similar and the shape of her face was the same. Her skin tone was darker than Christine’s. They both had lustrous hair although of opposite tones – Christine’s golden and full of curls while the Sultana’s was black and straight – and the same large eyes. The glare those eyes directed at him now took away from their beauty, but they were still remarkable: clear amber, with a darker green ring at the outer edge, and brown flecks throughout. Just as they had when she was a mere child of ten, they sat in striking contrast to her otherwise dark features.

  Erik wanted nothing more than to see the clear, deep blue of his wife’s eyes.

  “Where is my wife?” he asked again.

  The Sultana spun and began walking away, hips moving from side to side in an exaggerated motion, leaving Erik with the impression of a snake moving through grass. She stopped as she reached her bodyguards, and looking over her shoulder at Erik, said, “Come. I have a proposition for you.” The guards moved aside as she began walking again, then followed her as she left the
kitchen.

  Erik followed as she picked her way around overturned furniture and scattered debris to settle in a lounge chair in the large drawing room. An ominous gaping hole into his tunnels darkened the room once made bright by a massive gilt mirror. Erik shook with anger as he imagined Christine’s fear when the tunnels were breached.

  The Sultana reclined and stretched before she spoke. “She lives,” she said, smiling at Erik as though she had told a joke. Erik tried to suppress the shudder of relief that ran through his body. “But others also live, whom I would have die. A life for a life, then.” And again the sly smile.

  “Explain yourself,” Erik said, lowering himself to a chair.

  The Sultana sighed as though she were bored. “My exquisite father – you remember him, beloved – he wanted you dead after your service to him, for the simple crime of your own genius.” She paused to raise a hand, palm down, fingers splayed, and examined the rings on her fingers. “My father has taken a new wife,” she said, and for a moment, Erik thought ludicrously that she was referring to Christine. “And now, that twice-damned spawn of a three-legged dog has borne my father a son.” The statement was delivered in a singsong tone that belied the venom behind the words. She continued to examine her hands, rings, fingernails. “A SON!” Her hand became a claw that scratched at the cushions as she shrieked the final words. Her face transformed into a face he remembered from long ago – a vicious rictus of anger and hatred painted on the face of a young girl.

  “And?” Erik asked, allowing a small amused grin to curl his lips, knowing well enough that the Sultana would have preferred a response of nervousness or weakness at her outburst. The evil woman recovered herself and her mouth smoothed into a coy, sweet smile.

  “You must know I have no intention of allowing a son to threaten my position,” she answered.

  “So kill him,” he answered, knowing the statement would not shock the Sultana, and knowing also that the deed would not be outside her ability – or her pleasure.

  “I cannot,” she said, with a sudden pout. “Oh yes, I have helped others of my father’s son’s to Allah, but my father begins to suspect treachery. He guards the insipid woman and her squalling son day and night.” She smiled again and said, “So you see, I cannot.”

  Erik feared that he did see. “And?” he asked again.

  “You have become obtuse in your old age,” she spat, sitting up, and pointing an exquisitely manicured finger at him. She smiled and sank back onto her side across the lounge. “As you will,” she said. “I have your wife. She has not been harmed – and you must remember how extraordinary that is for a woman of my… habits.” She winked at Erik, and he clenched his fists and the muscles of his body to keep from lunging at the monstrous woman. “You will kill my father’s newest wife, and her wretched son, and your wife will be released.”

  Erik closed his eyes in a prolonged blink as he heard the explanation he feared.

  “Or, my beloved,” the Sultana continued, her tone now one of intimacy and invitation. She rose from the lounge and crossed the room to where he sat, then lowered herself to her knees before him. “We can be reunited. You can have your old position with me. Perhaps over the years you have learned new methods of torture with which to entertain me.” She placed her hands on his knees and began moving them up his thighs.

  Erik stood so abruptly that he overturned his chair, and the Sultana fell back on to her bottom. She looked at him in hurt surprise for a moment before she recovered herself, and licking her lips, smiled again from where she sat at his feet.

  “And if I refuse?” he asked.

  “Why should you refuse? I know the sort of entertainments you like, the sort you devised for me. We could have that again…”

  You make me ill. He did not say the words. His memory of the angry young man he had been, how he had helped the little Sultana, sickened him with regret and shame. He took several breaths to calm himself, aware that he was dealing with a deranged woman – a woman who held his beloved’s life-threads in her hands.

  “I am no longer engaged in the business of torture, nor do I wish to be,” he said through clenched teeth.

  The Sultana raised one hand into the air and one of her bodyguard moved forward to help her rise to her feet.

  “Then do as I ask. Kill the woman and the boy.” She turned away from him as she spoke, again affecting boredom.

  “Again, if I refuse?” he asked.

  She turned back to him and studied him, as if he were an interesting insect trapped under glass. She flipped a hand at him as if dismissing the question. “You will not refuse.” She turned away from him. “I will not permit it.”

  “My wife. Where is she?” he asked. The Sultana behaved as if he had not spoken, beckoning to her guards and gesturing toward the open front doors of the house.

  “Naheed,” he growled, elongating her name through clenched teeth.

  She turned at the sound of her name from his lips.

  “Beloved,” she said, and raised her cupped hand as if to caress his face across the distance between them. “Thank you for making it so clear to me how much you care for her,” she said sweetly, and with sudden iron in her voice, “and remember that I hold her in my palm.” She clenched her outstretched hand into a fist, turned again, and continued walking away from him. She threw her final words at him over her shoulder: “I will keep her until you have done as I have asked. Take years if you wish, but do not expect me to restrain myself from… enjoying her… for too long.”

  Erik stood, impotent in his rage and frustration as she left the house, her undulating hips wagging at him in mockery.

  “Christine!” he howled, head thrown back, voice tearing at his throat like glass shards. He knew even as he screamed that he was fueling the Sultana’s resolution, but knowing also that his own resolution to find Christine would fail him only upon his death. He would rescue her. And he would not become a murderer of women and children to win her life and freedom. He would not be the man Christine loved, nor would he deserve her love, if he did as the Sultana demanded.

  “Christine!” He screamed her name again and again. With his own voice raging in his ears, he did not hear the men approaching him in the open foyer until he was surrounded. He managed with fists and feet alone to dispense with two of the Persians before pain exploded in the back of his head. He fell to his knees and then onto his face, struggling all the while to maintain his consciousness. His last vision was that of booted feet moving toward him.

  CHAPTER 10

  LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP

  Petter closed the door to his flat and slumped back against it. With his work for Evans at the Bush Exhibition site during the day, his work on his own carvings and plans in the evenings, and Constance in every other spare moment he could find, it was a wonder that he didn’t sleepwalk. Not that he wasn’t enjoying himself. He felt proud of the work he was involved in at the Bush Exhibition, and he had promised Constance to take her on the Flip Flap ride once the exhibition opened. He was exhilarated by the new plans he was designing at the request of Constance’s father, Lord Pendleton, although he had not received a guarantee that a commission would be forthcoming. And Constance. Ah, Constance.

  Constance was a labor of love, in the truest sense of the word. He was so infatuated with the young, exciting beauty that he thought of little else through his waking hours, and often dreamed of her as well. But the girl required work. Her taste for expensive meals and entertainments, her desire for the new and exciting, tested both his energy level and his purse. But she was worth it – worth every moment of his effort.

  He removed a long slender box from his inside coat pocket, and opened the lid to look at his latest gift for Constance. He hoped she would recognize it for the love-gift it was. He closed the lid and sighed, thinking of the thing she would appreciate even more – the knowledge that he had received a commission, that he had started on the road to success and riches. He could not blame her for her ambitions. She was a Lord’
s daughter, and accustomed to the finer things in life. What choice had she but to ensure her future through a provident match? He was determined that he would prove himself the man to win her.

  He sighed again, knowing that despite his current exhaustion, he should go to the shop and attempt progress on Lord Pendleton’s requested design. He would not obtain the hoped-for commission with the plans still unfinished. He placed the lidded gift box on the side table, and turned to leave his flat again. On a whim, he retrieved the box and returned it to his coat pocket. He would like to show Phoebe his gift to Constance, and perhaps preen himself in her praise. Phoebe always seemed able to return energy to him with the comfort and constancy of her friendship.

  He stopped on the way to the shop to buy bread and cheese, knowing the simple food would revive him. He bought more than enough for himself so that he could offer some of the plain fare to Phoebe, knowing that she – with simpler tastes than Constance – would not be offended by the poorness of the meal.

  “Petter!” Phoebe’s happy greeting hailed him as soon as entered the shop. “I was hoping you would come tonight. I haven’t seen much of you with your work at the exhibition.” She bent to retrieve a bundle at her feet, and rose, coming toward him. “My goodness, you look wretched. Do you ever sleep?” Petter smiled at her banter.

  “I brought some…” she started, lifting her bundle toward him, at the same time that he said, “I thought you might…”

  He stopped and said, “My apologies. Go on. You brought…”

  She smiled and unwrapped her bundle, revealing a loaf of brown bread and a hunk of cheese. “I had an early supper and found myself hungry again. Would you like nourishment? You look to need it.”

  Petter pulled a sack from under his arm, and reaching into it, brought out a still warm loaf of white bread and a block of cheese. Phoebe’s dark eyes glittered with good humor, and then both of them were laughing. Phoebe, still giggling, broke her loaf in half, and then broke his in half. She exchanged the two pieces and returned to her drafting table.