Secrets In Savannah (Phantom Knights) (24 page)

Gideon had been my friend and
mentor for two years, so he knew when I needed to confess and when I needed his
support.

After telling him everything that
I had been holding in, his words were not at all what I expected.

“It is not enough to say that you
love your wife, Jack, you must find ways to show her.”

Gideon leaned forward, as he
always did when he was about to impart things I did not want to hear.

“From the moment that her parents
were murdered, Guinevere has never been treated as if she has any worth beyond
being a tool. She was trained to be the figurehead of the Holy Order. Harvey
was the true leader, but Guinevere was the one who carried out his orders. It
was their exchange to keep her sister safe.”

My heart throbbed with pain. I had
been disappointed in her yesterday, and I was sure that it had shown in my
eyes, as it did in my words.

“If she refused, Harvey would have
cast her and her sister to the world. They would not have lasted long.” Gideon’s
face turned stern, angry. It was the first time in our acquaintance I had seen
him thus.

“Harvey wanted a puppet to do his
bidding, but he did protect her from the one person who could do her the most
harm.”

Gideon’s wrinkled hand fisted, and
I knew what he would say would forever change me.

“When she was captured, she was
ten years of age. Her uncle wanted control of the family property, and there
were only two ways to gain it. One was for him to kill the existing heirs, or
to force a marriage between the eldest and someone he could control.”

Gideon did not look away from me,
and I felt my dread turn into horror and anger.

Knowing Guinevere, she would not
stand for such things happening; it was as sure to me as the rising of the sun.
That had to be when she ran. I hoped.

“Her uncle forced a marriage
between his wife’s nephew and his deceased brother’s eldest,” Gideon said,
crushing my hope.

Jumping up, I walked to the
window. With my fists tight at my sides, I needed to throw something, or hit
something.

My wife had been forced into a
marriage when she was a child. Did that mean that we were not truly married?
No. Guinevere would never do that. What happened to the man then?

“He was poisoned on their wedding
night,” Gideon said, as if I had spoken the words aloud. Perhaps I had.
“Guinevere took her sister, companions, and the artifacts, and ran. She has
been running for the last eight years, trying to protect her sister from
falling into such vile hands.”

That was why she was so comfortable
placing the iron against
Sturges
. He had said
horrible things about Edith, and Guinevere had lost her control. His words had
spoken of a horrible fate happening to her sister, one that could have happened
to Guinevere if she had not poisoned the man.

No matter that he did not do any
physical harm to her, enough emotional damage had been done that she was still
enduring it eight years later.

My thoughtless words at the temple
had only added to her pain. I saw the pain in her eyes when I said those hurtful
things to her.

After a year of chasing her, she
was mine, and I had neglected her because she kept secrets from me.

Her secrets should have been
something that we discussed before we said our vows, but they would not have
changed my mind. I did not regret my marriage. I regretted my attitude toward
her. She was doing as she was trained, and I was doing as I was trained.
Perhaps we would not agree on everything, but that would not define how I loved
her.

“There is one more thing I would
like to discuss with you,” Gideon said, drawing my attention. “When Guinevere’s
sister is returned to her, she must be placed in safekeeping for as long as
their uncle is a threat. I would like to be that one.”

“Never could we ask that of you.
The danger alone—” I tried to say.

Gideon laughed with earnestness.
“You of all people know how capable I am to hide the girl. I am the best
choice, but that decision is up to Guinevere.”

There was no time to say more, for
the front door opened.

Striding into the foyer as
Guinevere stepped into the house, she paused, but the cool reserve with which
she held herself did not deter me.

As I reached her, I wrapped my arm
about her waist and pulled her to me. My lips pressed against hers and held. My
hand burrowed in her hair that was tucked into a cap. It took some time, at
least several seconds, for her to relax, and her body to lean toward me.
Holding her as close as she could be without being a part of me, I lessened the
pressure of my lips and allowed my love to flow from my touch to hers.

“Forgive me,” I whispered against
her lips. “Forgive me.”

Someone cleared their throat. Leo
was standing behind Guinevere, doing his best to block the outside. We were
blocking his way into the house and his ability to close the door.

Taking Guinevere’s hand, I pulled
her with me up the stairs to my chamber. Once inside and the door firmly
closed, I took my wife in my arms.

“What changed you?” she asked as
she held on to me.

“A timely reminder that my faith
in you is not circumstantial upon you confiding in me.”

“Does this mean that you trust me
to tell you the truth in my own time?” she asked hopefully.

“Yes, but I ask one thing in
return.” Leaning down, I kissed the small mole beside her lips. “Have faith in
me. I will never abandon you no matter what secrets you harbor. We are in this
together until the end.”

Now how to make that end as far
away as possible?

GUINEVERE

W
e had been in Savannah for seven
days, and I was no closer to locating my sister. George was in Savannah, but he
was hiding himself well, and I was near to the limit of my patience.

Charlotte had lied about George’s
arrival, and finally everyone was seeing it and the danger of her situation. Jack
and Leo had gone out to book passage for Bess and Charlotte to go back to
Charleston. Sam was to stay in Savannah to aid us in finding his uncle.

Sam and Bess had been spending all
of their time keeping watch over Charlotte, so it was a surprise to see Bess
standing by the parlor window, her attention fixed on something outside. “What
do you make of our shadows? I have counted three this day alone. Two are on a
loop, walking past the house every two hours, but the third perplexes me. He
remains stationed on the green until one of us leaves, then he moves to the far
corner.”

“That one is my shadow,” I told
Bess as I joined her by the window. “He only leaves when I do.”

She wrote that down in a small
leather bound book. “And the others?”

“Royal guards, or spies for
George, I do not know,” I said, watching as one of them walked past the house.
His gaze met mine for a second before he looked away, continuing on his
leisurely stroll as if nothing were amiss.

“What say you to a little outing? I
understand that you have yet to see the plantation,” Bess said, turning away
from the window.

There was mischief in Bess’s eyes
that made me agree. She wanted it to be a girls outing, and she wanted to be
gone before Jack returned.

Twenty minutes later, we snuck out
of the house, fetched our horses from a nearby stable, and rode out of the
city. When we slowed our horses to a trot, Bess explained her reason for
wanting to go to her family’s home.

“My father kept a selection of
weapons in his workshop that I thought might give aid in the forthcoming
battle. Father was a craftsman, and created many weapons that the phantoms
used.”

Hannah, whom Bess had invited to
join us, was intrigued by the Phantoms and asked Bess all manner of questions,
which Bess did not answer. I was unsure why Bess invited her along until Hannah
had dismounted at a place near the plantation where we were to leave our
horses.

“I choose to keep her close, and
never allow her to be alone with my husband,” Bess told me before dismounting.

As we ran across the front lawn, I
took in the Martin’s plantation. It was a two story home neither grand or like
the other plantations that I had seen. The only bit of beauty was the row of
flowers lining the path to the door. The house was shabby compared to the
beauty of Sam Mason’s plantation.

After looking in the windows and
finding the house empty, Bess pulled a key from her pocket and unlocked the
door. As she opened the door, we saw a woman dusting a table toward the rear of
the foyer. Bess backed out of the house, straight into me, and I bumped into
Hannah, knocking her onto her backside amongst the flowers.

Bess knelt below a window as I
helped Hannah to her feet.

“They must be preparing for my
arrival. Sam and I were to spend our wedding trip here beginning tomorrow.”

“How do you propose to get in
without being seen?” Hannah asked as she bounced around like a puppet on
strings. She would squat down, then pop up and look in the window. She crawled
to each window and repeated her ridiculous, jerky movements.

“What are you doing?” Bess was
staring at Hannah as if she were an oddity from a country fair.

“Spy maneuvers,” Hannah breathed
as she rolled under the third window.

“You are not a spy,” Bess informed
her.

“Perhaps not yet, but I am
worthy.” Hannah rolled all the way back to us, climbed to her knees, and
whispered conspiratorially. “Here is what I propose. We will climb in through
the window, sneak up behind the woman,” Hannah slapped her hands together, “and
club her on the head.”

“You will not club any servant of
mine over the head!”

“Second proposition,” Hannah went
on unperturbed. “I will create a suitable distraction and draw the enemy out
into the yard. You two will climb through the window and make your way to the
workshop. We will rendezvous there unless I am captured. In which case, they
may do their worst. Unless it is branding, or hanging, or digging a grave with
my hands.”

“What?” Bess looked as if she was
one ridiculous comment away from placing a muzzle over Hannah’s mouth.

“Then I will betray your names
without a second thought. These,” Hannah stuck out her hands and wriggled her
fingers, “are too lovely to sacrifice for anyone.”

Hannah marched into the house, and
Bess shook her head as we followed. The servant was not in sight so we followed
Bess down a hall to the back of the house even though Hannah whispered that she
should pursue the maid and truss her up.

When we entered William Martin’s
workshop, I began to sense what kind of man he was. Nothing was out of order. It
looked as if it had sat untouched since he left Savannah. Bess stood just
inside the door, breathing deeply as her eyes searched the dusty room. There
was a moment of pain in her eyes, before she blinked it away and marched
forward.

“Take anything that you believe
could be of use,” she said as she began rummaging through a chest of drawers.

While Hannah searched one table, I
walked down the length of the second. There were hammers, screws, nails, broken
clocks, boxes of different shapes and sizes, but nothing to say that a master
of disguise had once worked there.

Hannah exclaimed, and when she
faced me, she was wearing a mask. It was black leather with the head of a
peacock raised on one side and a long tail flowing down to beneath the opposite
eye. It was painted exquisitely, but it made Hannah appear as if she were
crossing her eyes.

“That was one of Father’s first
masks. He created all of our masks except Leo’s,” Bess said as she carried on
with her search.

“It is perfect.” Hannah tossed her
head, striking a pose like a goddess statue. “My Phantom name could be feather,
or blue enchantress.”

“Or Crow,” Bess interposed as she
searched through a pile of cloths. She met my eyes, and we both smiled.

As the search went on, I had found
a few pistols that appeared to be in good condition when Hannah exclaimed
again. She held out an intricate gold ring with the crisscrossed band of a
Celtic knot.

When Bess saw it, she gasped,
snatching it from Hannah. “That is my father’s wedding ring.” She held it up to
the light coming through the window as if it were a rare golden treasure.

“I take it that your father had a
fascination with puzzles,” I said as I went back to my search for weapons.

“Why, yes. He collected them. How
did you know?” Her eyes were narrowed as if she suspected me of some misdeed.
After
all we had been through, still she did not trust me.

“That is a puzzle ring.” Bess gave
it to me, and I began to twist and rotate the ring until there were eight
separate bands. I could have laughed when I noticed a crease in the eighth
band. Pulling on the ring, the band came apart to reveal a small pick.