Secrets In Savannah (Phantom Knights) (33 page)

They had a plan laid out when we
arrived, and once Guinevere informed them of her uncle’s name, status, and
reason for being in Savannah, they had us remain in the warehouse. As the
captain led his soldiers to the frigate, Guinevere stood beside me, her hands
wringing and her foot tapping to reveal her anxiousness.

A foreign flag was flapping in the
wind as the captain of the militia called out to the captain of the frigate,
and no protest was made against the soldiers boarding.

“They should have the situation
resolved in a short space of time,” Mrs. Stanton assured us as she smiled and watched
a task that she thought was of her orchestrating.

For ten minutes, we watched the
soldiers question the sailors and search the ship.

When the captain of the ship
looked our way, Guinevere gasped.

“That is not my uncle’s ship. That
is not his ship!” Grabbing a pistol from my belt, Guinevere ran out of the
warehouse.

“Guinevere!” I shouted after her,
but she did not halt.

Leo and I, along with Frederick
and all of his guards, chased her down the wharf toward a smaller vessel that
was further out, and in no way remarkable.

My wife would have rowed herself
out to it without thought if I had not captured her first.

“This is my uncle’s ship. The
other is a ruse.”

“I believe you,” I said, pulling
her away from the boat, away from a path to certain danger. “Now I need you to
believe in me. I need you to stay here with Leo.”

“No!”

“I will not lose you,” I said,
motioning to Leo. “If she tries to board that ship, you have my permission to
truss her up.” Holding Guinevere’s shoulders, I pressed my mouth to her forehead.
“Have faith in me.”

Releasing her, I turned away,
knowing that if I allowed her to speak she would have me agreeing to take her
with me.

Frederick was preparing to climb
into a long boat when I joined him.

“Perhaps you should remain with
your wife. This mission is too personal for you to be objective,” Frederick
tried saying, but I shoved past him, climbing onto one of the empty seats.

Dudley joined us a moment before
we shoved off. He took the last seat in our boat and as the two long boats
rowed out to the schooner; I studied its lines, and its deck, searching for
anything that could be a clue to where my family was being held. From the short
distance, I could not make out any movement on the deck. When we came upon the
schooner’s port side, Frederick yelled to the ship’s captain but no response
came. Instead, ropes were tossed to us from people we could not see.

“This does not bode well with me,”
Dudley murmured, and though I agreed with him, I was one of the first to board
the ship.

“Vat can we do for you, sir?” one
of three sailors on the deck asked.

“You have something that belongs
to us,” Frederick said, “and once it is returned to us, you may be about your
business.”

“Vat might
zet
be?”

“A man and two women, who were
abducted last evening by someone on this ship.”

The sailor looked askance, but as
my gaze searched each sailor, one of them gave me a clue that I needed. He was
fidgety, and by his third glance to a hatch door, I knew where to begin the
search.

As Frederick listened to the
sailor’s assurance that they had only just arrived with the morning tide, I
moved to the hatch.

Throwing it open, someone shouted
at me in Danish, but I ignored him, descending into the dark recesses of the
ship. Dudley followed me down to a narrow passage that had two doors. He chose
one door, and I went to the other. Pulling back the hammer of a pistol, Dud
opened the door.

An explosion ricocheted in the
confined passage, knocking me back a step.

“Dud,” I shouted, starting toward
him.

The door behind me burst open, my
arms were caught, and I was pulled back, tossed from one sailor’s hands to
another.

Rage coursed through me, filling
every part of me. I threw myself against my captors, needing to see Dud, to
make sure he was alive.

“Jack, I’ve got them,” Dudley shouted,
and relief rocked me, blasting me with an extra dose of vigor.

It took six captors to contain me,
and when they spun me, I was facing a man I knew without a single doubt was
Guinevere’s uncle.

“You are the brother?” he asked in
perfect English.

I did not reply.

“There is no cause to be
disgruntled. I mean you no harm. And I can see the family likeness,” he said,
smiling pleasantly.

He was nothing how I imagined.
Tall, thin, with an elegant black mustache, he was regal in bearing, and had a
pleasant face. Oh, how deceiving ones looks could be. For though he was
smiling, there was a calculating callousness in his dark eyes.

“As you say. If you indeed mean me
no harm, why then have you abducted my family?” I asked, adopting his way of
conversational speech.

“What is the phrase, ‘a life for a
life’? You see, you have three of my family so I have convened yours here,
where they will remain until my family is returned to me.”

The deuce they will!

“You are mistaken if you believe I
know anything about your family, missing or otherwise. So here is how this will
play out. I am taking my family off of this boat, and you may sail back to
whatever place you call home,” I said with perfect frankness. I would not allow
him the opportunity to issue orders to me.

He grinned fully, appreciatively.
“Such spirit. I imagine I can understand why she has come to care for you. She
always did have great spirit as a child.”

Before he murdered her father
before her eyes.

How would Guinevere have been if she
had been raised with parents who loved and protected her? Spirited would not
begin to describe her.

“You will remain adamant?” he
asked with an amused lift of his dark brows.

My expression did not change, but
inside I was fighting a great desire to choke him.

“It is a pity that you are
determined to break my niece’s heart.” He rose, picking up a packet of letters
bound by string. “I have been warned about your ability to escape death, so in
the event that you proved uncompromising, I have taken the necessary measures.”
He looked at the men surrounding me. “Do it, but be sure to make it as swift
and painless as possible.” He halted beside me, looking down his thin nose at
me. “It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance, John Martin.” He walked
out of the cabin, pulling the door closed without a second glance at me.

The guards holding me shoved me
forward. Throwing my hands out, I caught myself on the wall of the cabin.

They were fools if they thought
they could take me out. I was a Phantom. Escaping such situations was what I
did best.

Twisting around, prepared for a
fight, I was met by twelve pistols aimed straight at my head.

“Would any of you be interested in
a fight to the death?” I asked with a quirk of my brow.

Their only response was to pull back
the hammers on their pistols.

Searching my mind for a means of
escape, I tried to reason with them, but they either did not speak English, or
they did not care.

Doubt tried to set in. Would this
be my end?

As one of the guards began to
count down in Danish from three, I began to pray for some kind of intervention.

When he said one, my final thought
would be of Guinevere, of what we should have had. When he said one, I would
breathe my final breath with the knowledge that the oath had come true. I had
risked all ... for Guinevere.

GUINEVERE

L
eo and I only remained on the
wharf long enough to see Jack board my uncle’s ship, and then we sprang into
motion. We were of the same mind that Jack would require our assistance in dealing
with my uncle.

We were preparing to row our own
boat out to the ship when someone called down to me.

“Might we be of assistance?”

Harvey’s ship still in the harbor,
his men preparing the sails. A rope was thrown out to us, which Leo tied to the
boat. Harvey’s sailors pulled us to their ship then helped us aboard. Harvey
and my sister were standing beside the helm when Leo and I reached the deck.

“Guinevere, just the woman we
require,” Harvey called out to me jovially. He had been anticipating this moment
for years, the moment when he would rid us of our uncle and claim his place on
my sister’s council.

“What say you, fire a warning over
the bow, or strike the mast?”

“A warning and nothing more. My
husband is aboard that ship,” I commanded.

As Harvey’s ship aligned with my
uncle’s, Harvey’s quartermaster gave the order to fire a warning that they
would not soon forget.

A sinking feeling settled in my
stomach as I interpreted those words, a moment before the cannon fired.

The ball struck the bow, shattering
the wood and causing the ship to heave.

“What the devil was that?” I threw
at Harvey.

“Guinevere, do try for a smidgen
of decorum,” my sister said with long-suffering.

“Decorum can go hang,” I snapped
before leaning over the rail, searching the deck for Jack.

Harvey laughed. “You will never
make a mealy-mouthed chit out of Guinevere. She has been with me for too long.”

“Too long is the correct
sentiment,” Rose said. “Do you suppose we can get on with things?”

“Mr.
Smithers
,
prepare to board,” Harvey called out to someone down the deck.

When the plank was laid,
connecting the two ships, Harvey halted beside me. “You should remain here with
your sister. I will see to Jack’s safety.”

“Are you ever in earnest with your
words or do you live to bait me?” I asked as I plucked a pistol from his belt.

“Whether you believe me or not, I
have your best interests closest to my heart.” Harvey sounded earnest, which
was one of his greatest coups. He could look and sound earnest, pulling people
in before he made the switch, taking from them everything they held most dear.

“You forget that I have spent
years under your tutelage. I know how to tell a fudge when I hear one,” I said
before taking Leo’s hand and allowing him to help me cross the plank to my
uncle’s ship.

Frederick was there to greet me,
his men standing over a group of sailors tied at the hands and feet.

“My uncle?” He was not among the
bound, nor was he among the standing.

“Below,” Frederick said and I ran
for the open door to a hatch. “It may be a trap, Guinevere,” he called after
me, as if that could stop me.

Leo grasped my hand before I had
stepped onto the top step. “Let me go first.”

Moving aside, I allowed Leo to go
first into the narrow passage below.

Leo went to a door that was
standing open, and inside we found Dudley, Sam, Bess, and Charlotte in the
midst of a crowded fight against a group of royal guards. Jack was not there,
bringing on a wave of desperation. If Jack was not with his family, then he was
with my uncle. Desperation gave way to determination, and then an insatiable
desire for revenge

For the first time in years, I
looked upon the approaching meeting with my uncle without fear.

Leo jumped into the fight, not
halting to see that I did not follow.

Backing away from that cabin, I
stepped softly to the second door where I knew that I would find my uncle.
Where I would find Jack. In what capacity, I could not stop to consider.

Throwing open the door, the scene
before me was not at all what I expected.

Instead of being held at the end
of a barrel, Jack was seated in a chair at a table, my uncle seated beside him,
and the two of them were talking in what could only be described as amicable
tones.

Looking up, my uncle saw me, and
exclaimed, “My niece.” He rose and made as if he would approach me.

Horrified, I stepped back. His
voice was cultured, and it brought on a rush of pain. He was the younger image
of my father, other than his complete lack of kindness.

“You do not deserve to look like
him,” I whispered. Forcing strength into my voice I went on. “You do not
deserve to stand before me!”

His face filled with sorrow. “Is
that why you ran from me? You thought I had something to do with your father’s
death? I tried to stop them. Your sister was there; she will attest to my
innocence.”

“You do not speak of my sister!
She was ten years old, and you sold her to the highest bidder!” Gripping the
knob on the door was my only source of reining in my anger.