phantom knights 04 - deceit in delaware (3 page)

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.

“He will send his guards in search of the artifacts and Mary Edith. If they are found, he will have them brought to wherever he is hiding.”

“You know that and yet you sit here doing nothing?” I demanded.

“It is not as simple as you believe, Jack. You have taken away my army by giving your information to James. His guards have captured all those who swore to fight for me.”

“This is no fault of mine! Blame yourself, for it is your duplicity that has brought all of this hell upon us. If anything happens to my wife and her sisters, it is upon your head.” With that said, I rose and faced the others. “Those of you who have chosen to remain will be assisting me for the next few weeks before traveling to Charleston with me.

“Mrs. Stanton and Martha, you will pack your belongings and book passage on the first ship traveling to your desired location. This meeting is adjourned.”

Sam came up beside me and I sensed his hesitancy. Not that I blamed him for being wary. If I had thought Bess would not notice a bruise, I would have struck Sam for his duplicity.

“What would you have me do?” he asked softly.

“What you must do should not come as a surprise,” I replied without looking at him.

“You want me to return home and protect the artifacts,” Sam said, telling me where the artifacts were without being specific about their exact location. Sam, Bess, Charlotte, and Abe had sailed home to Charleston the day after the meeting where Guinevere was made a leader, but Sam had come back for this meeting.

“I want you to return home and protect your wife. Protect my mother and your sister, and tell your wife the truth.”

Sam drew me toward the door, away from the listening ears of the others. “She knows, Jack.”

He could not be saying what I thought him to be. Bess would never have left Savannah if she knew the truth. She would have wanted to approach our father with me.

“How much does she know?”

Sam ran a hand through his hair. “Everything.”

Perhaps he told her before he left to attend this meeting and did not give her a chance to accompany him. “For how long has she known?”

Sam glanced toward the others, smiling as if our conversation were stimulating and not an assault of cannon fire upon what I believed to be true.

“Since the night before we were married. After what happened at the plantation, I had to confess the truth. What William planned for Bess was kept from me. If I had known, you may believe that I would have taken Bess away from Charleston.”

He looked over his shoulder and frowned. Following his gaze, William was watching us intently. As if he knew what we were saying.

“What is Bess going to do?”

Sam shook his head, a small smile turning up his lips. “She says that it is left to you to decide. She says that if left to her, William Martin truly would be deceased.”

Her sentiments were understandable. “Then decide I will.”

CHAPTER 3

GUINEVERE

R
ose and Leo had accompanied us back to the Martin’s house in Savannah, where we spent a few days packing the house while Jack and Leo spent time searching for any of Luther’s guards that may have been lurking in the city.