phantom knights 04 - deceit in delaware (28 page)

It had taken all of my restraint to keep from charging out and removing that rope from about his neck. If that woman had not rode up when she had, I would have called a halt to William’s ridiculous plan.

Sam told me that they were ready, and that was all that I needed to run through the woods toward the rear of the house. There I met Leo, Bess, Jericho, Mariah, and Betsy.

“Where is James?” I asked as I stood beside Betsy, waiting for Leo to unlock the hatch that would allow us into the house.

“With Dudley and Hannah.”

Sam and Bess had refused to allow Dudley and Hannah to come with us. For if they had given way to them, William would have been able to come as well, and Bess was having none of that. She did not trust her father.

Betsy’s sweet face was serious, her stance rigid, as we waited for the signal to move. I knew about loss and the heartache that came with losing your family. Betsy was trying to do what I had done all those years ago. She was trying to keep herself moving. If her time was occupied, she would not have a moment to spare for thoughts, for grief.

Reaching down, I pressed my hand against hers and squeezed. Her gaze fluttered to meet mine, but Leo whistled the signal and we moved forward before I could say more.

Leo led the way up the staircase that rounded behind what had to be the fireplaces. There were two doors, one on the ground floor, and the one that Leo and I had entered through. Leo sent me, Bess, Betsy, and Mariah to the ground floor door as he, Jericho, and Sam were going up to the second floor.

Easing open the panel, we were looking upon an empty dining parlor. Stepping through the opening, my boots touched the wood floor with a creak. Wincing, I hurried forward as the others followed me out.

Crossing the dining parlor with eager strides, I leaned against the wall beside the door. Peeking around the corner, my breath caught. Jack and Levi were being led up the stairs.

Caring for nothing else, I charged from the room and followed them up the stairs. The guards heard me and turned. Jack glanced over his bare shoulder, saw me, and struck the guard at his back. The man was not expecting the blow and lost his footing, tumbling down the stairs. Pressing myself against the banister, the man rolled past me. Levi attacked two of the guards surrounding him, knocking one over the banister and to the hall below, while the other got a hold onto Levi’s arms.

An arrow slid through the man’s shoulder and he screamed, dropping Levi’s arms.

Mariah pulled out another arrow, but guards charged into the hall from different doors of the house. Mariah moved up the stairs, shooting arrows at the men trying to approach us. Betsy threw knives down at them from the stairs, and the two succeeded at keeping the guards away as Bess and I ran up to help Jack and Levi.

“Bess, was there a carriage outside when you attacked?” Jack yelled over the shouts of the guards.

“No carriage that I saw,” Bess replied quickly as she dodged a fist thrown toward her face. She and Jack worked together to knock the man over the banister.

Jack cursed, and then apologized when Bess swatted his arm. “Bess, we must make haste. Freddy’s father has left with Mother and Charlotte. We must pursue him before he can reach the harbor.”

“Freddy’s father? I thought he was an orphan.”

“There is no time to explain about that. Suffice it to say that if Luther reaches the harbor before we catch him, he will sail to Lutania. We must stop him.”

We moved toward the stairs. “Where are they keeping the girl who claims to be Edith?” Bess asked.

“I am afraid that is Charlotte. She has been lying about her identity.” Jack grimaced.

Bess halted on the stairs, her expression incredulous.

Catching Jack’s hand, I pulled him to a halt. “Did Luther have another girl with him?”

“You mean Melly? No.”

“Jack, you must find her. She is Luther’s daughter,” I said, but could say no more as Mariah ran out of arrows and the rest of the guards charged toward us.

Jack threw himself into three men trying to come up the stairs. Mariah threw whatever she could at the guards as Jericho, Leo, and Sam charged into the fight.

Bess took my hands and we ran up the stairs together. There was no time to waste. Leading her into the bedchamber that Melly had taken Leo and me into, the wardrobe was shoved aside from where the others had entered the house. Bess and I made our way down the stairs, out of the house, and found two mounts in the barn behind the house. They were saddled, and looked to be tired, but we mounted anyway.

Riding hard down the drive, we turned to the left once we reached the main road. It was a fortunate chance that we had dressed in men’s clothing for riding side saddle would not have been conducive to the speed with which we rode to chase the carriage.

The carriage must not have been in too much of a haste because we found it after only a mile. Since we were two miles from the town, we had that distance to halt the carriage.

Riding up beside the carriage, I shouted at the postilion to halt. Luther, sticking his head out of the window, demanded that the postilion keep going. Luther’s head disappeared back inside. That did not set with me, so I urged my horse on, sure that I could get those horses to halt if I had to.

Reaching the front horse, I moved my horse in to where my leg was almost touching the other animal. Doing something I should not have considered in my current state, I leaned over. My saddle slipped and I gripped onto the leather, almost falling off the animal. There was not enough there to grip. Sucking in a breath, I grabbed the leader’s harness. With a great heave, the horses began to slow, though angrily.

The postilion was shouting at me as Bess rode up beside me. Without a thought to the jolting, I slid off my horse and stomped toward the carriage door. Jerking it open, I raised my pistol.

Bess was holding her pistol on the postilion as she angled her horse across the road before the dancing horses. After telling the man not to move, he cursed young cubs who thought they could get away with any manner of larks, but he made no move to dismount.

My gaze narrowed upon the dark interior of the carriage, and then my body jolted, releasing a piercing shriek.

A man leapt from the carriage, knocking me back and landing atop me on the grass beside the road.

Pain shot through my back like a thousand pin pricks against my skin. All wind was knocked from my body, and it was not returning as his large body squashed mine into the grass. He grabbed my wrist and jerked my hand above my head. I screamed out, a raspy noise, as the pain intensified in my back.

Something struck the man’s head, for it bobbed toward me, and then again and again until the man’s eyes, so close to my own, rolled back in his head. Bess was there and shoved him off of me.

Bess tried to help me to stand. The pain was thudding in my body, but I had to get up. I had to fight. My gaze settled on the carriage, and my entire body filled with fear.

“Raven!” I shrieked as I grabbed Bess’s hand and jerked her toward me. Nearly losing our balance, we stumbled and then twisted and dropped just as a rock flew past our heads.

Outrage was mine. That he would dare to attempt such a craven thing as throwing rocks, well, I was fairly incensed. Pulling a knife and my iron from my belt, I forced myself up and stomped toward the postilion.

Bess scrambled to her feet and joined me, her knife in one hand and her pistol in the other.

The postilion was on his feet, watching us through narrowed and crooked eyes. He was neither tall nor brooding. His bulk was on the smaller side, and there was nothing to distinguish him as a brute. If he was handy with his fives, as Levi called them, he did not look it. He appeared more accustomed to tending horses than dancing about a boxing saloon.

Bess and I each advanced on our right foot, our blades out before us. He swiped mine away with his forearm as he tried to throw a punch against Bess’s cheek. She checked, and her blade glanced up his arm, making a long rend in his sleeve.

Grabbing her dagger, he threw it into the brush at the beginning of the trees. I threw my hand with the iron against his wrist. I lunged for him with my knife. My knife cut through the elbow of his coat, pinking his skin. Bess grazed his arm in three places, as I slammed my iron upward, right against his chin. There was a definite crunch, but it was not from the iron.

Spinning around, the carriage was moving forward, Bess’s horse having been moved to the side of the road. Before I could make a sound, Bess was running forward. She hopped up on the bank nearest her horse and threw her leg over. The horse danced a few steps and then charged forward at the insistence of Bess’s knees.

Limping toward my horse, I used the bank to mount, but it was not as quick as Bess had been. As soon as my backside touched the saddle, pain was dancing along my spine in a terrible country dance. In and out, up and down. Holding on to the horse’s mane, I leaned forward, rising and falling with each progression of hooves against the ground.

Bess neared the carriage, and I urged my slug of a horse on faster, wanting to catch up to Bess. That was when I saw who was driving the carriage. Freddy!

Bess rode past the carriage, and was almost to the leader when a loud explosion came from behind her. I screamed her name, but she could not hear me. The ball seared her arm a second before her horse reacted to the noise, sliding to a halt and then rearing. Bess tried to hold on, but her arm jerked and her legs slipped. Watching in horror, she fell.

The carriage barreled on, but up at the T in the road where the carriage should have turned left, it turned right. I did not understand why until I saw five riders giving chase.

Sliding off my horse, tears flooded my eyes as my body jolted with pain.

Stumbling toward Bess, she was not moving. When I reached her, her face was two shades paler than normal.

“Please be alive. Please,” I begged as I began feeling around Bess’s neck and chest, for a sign that her heart was beating, that she was breathing.

“I am alive,” she whispered, breathlessly.

Tears burned my eyes more intently. “Thank the heavens. Where are you hurt, Bess?”

“I am unsure.” She tried to move her legs, and found them sound, but she said that there was a sharp pain at the base of her spine, shoulders, and the back of her head. As well as in her arm.

Fear lit up all of my senses as I glanced down the length of Bess and my gaze caught upon something that sent dread through me. “You are bleeding, Bess.” I set to checking her arm, for that was all that I could do for her without assistance.

Tears began to drop from her eyes, and with her uninjured arm, she reached across her. She gripped my hand, stalling my wrapping of her arm.

“Guinevere, I do not feel so well.”

Gritting my teeth, I nodded. The pain in my body was little compared to what she had to be feeling.

I prayed that I was wrong. I begged in my thoughts that Bess would not be suffering what I suspected, but something in my heart told me that my suspicions were correct, and there was nothing that I, or anyone, could do to fix it.

CHAPTER 22

JACK

A
fter my wife and sister disappeared, we fought our hardest, taking out a handful of guards, and pulling the fight from inside the house out to the lawn.

When Jericho grabbed my arm and told me that it was time to retreat, I looked about us, searching the faces but not seeing the one that I sought.

“Get everyone out. I will join you as soon as I can,” I said before turning and running back into the house.

All was quiet inside. Someone was behind me, but I knew it was not an enemy.

“I told you to get everyone out,” I said without looking back. I knew that Jericho followed me.

“I passed your instructions along to Leo,” Jericho replied as he moved along beside me with his fingers loosely holding an arrow against his bow string.

There was something about the house that felt off. A feeling in my gut only, but I had learned over the years to listen to my gut. It had kept me safe more times than I could count.

The woman in black had not left with Luther, but neither had she engaged in the battle. Melly had not appeared either. I had not seen the girl since the guards arrived to escort me and Leo to meet with Luther.

Holding up two fingers, I motioned for Jericho to go to the left where the door to the kitchens stood. I would search the rooms off of the great hall where I had met with Luther and the black widow.

The sitting room was empty so I moved on to the library, a gun room, a music room, and a dining parlor, but each room sat empty and untouched.

I was moving out of the last room and across the great hall when I heard a girl scream. Running into the middle of the great hall, I saw her being held by two guards.

They were struggling to keep their hold her as she swung at them. One of the guards shouted as he removed his hand from her mouth.

“Mr. Jack!” Melly screamed, and then I heard ropes snap. The chandelier gave a jolt, and then the thing dropped. Straight for me.

“Jack!” Mariah shouted.

The full weight of Jericho’s body struck me and I flew backward a few feet as the brass chandelier went crashing to the floor.

Looking straight at the walkway where the ropes for the chandelier were hung, I saw a guard rise with a knife. Mariah and Jericho each released arrows, straight into the guard’s chest.

As the guard stumbled into the wall behind him, the guards holding Melly watched with large eyes before they picked her up and held her body over the wooden rail that ran along the narrow walkway that was there for cleaning purposes and to hang the chandelier.

“Surrender at once or we will drop her,” one of the guards yelled.

“Hold on, Melly,” I shouted up to her.

“That is all I can do,” Melly responded, and I smiled for a moment before the guards shook her over the rail.

“Harming her will not save your lives. Set her feet on the floor beside you and we will allow you to live,” I called out.