Secrets In Savannah (Phantom Knights) (27 page)

The three artifacts that I had
were the ones Bess had brought from Charleston, and the three that Guinevere
had were with people she said she trusted. There was a seventh artifact
somewhere, but Guinevere said she knew where it was and that it was safe.

When our search was complete, and
we had returned home, Guinevere told me about Frederick’s letter from Harvey.
He meant to declare war, but on whom and why Guinevere could not tell me for she
did not know. She said it could be the royal guards, or it could be the
Phantoms. One thing she knew for sure was that Harvey would strike those he
thought were against him.

After our evening meal, I spent
time writing a second letter to Jericho and Mariah before spending the rest of
the night with my wife.

When morning came, my wife and I
decided that if war was to come to us, we needed at least one day to ourselves.
A day without talk of spies, war, tyrannical uncles, or old leaders who had
gone off the edge.

We set out on foot toward the
marketplace. She needed some time away from the chaos of what had happened at
the plantation, and the constant worry of when George would arrive.

“I have been thinking about when
this battle is at an end, what I would like for us to do.”

She looked up at me with her
extraordinary eyes full of interest.

“I would like for us to go away on
our own for a time. We could live in New York, or Boston since I take it you
never lived in Boston as you told me.”

She smiled almost innocently. “I
did live in Boston for a month while Harvey was setting up the Philadelphia
branch of
Levitas
, but I never lived there with my
family.”

“Where else have you lived?” I was
intrigued by my wife and all she had done in her eighteen years.

“I lived in New York for a few
months when we first arrived, and then we moved to Baltimore where I underwent
training. Once my guardian thought I was prepared, he moved me to Charleston,
to put my skills to use.”

I pressed her hand lightly. “One
day soon we must speak of your guardian.”

“We will, one day. You must
understand that I was trained never to tell stories that were not my own. It
will take me some time to get my mind past that way of thinking.” For a moment,
I thought she might cry, but she only shook her head. “From the time that I was
twelve, my guardian trained me to be whom he wanted me to be. Now that I am no
longer the white phantom, I am unsure of who I truly am.”

“I can tell you that,” I said at
once.

She gazed up at me, and it took
all of my restraint to keep from turning us around and taking her home to spend
another kind of time together.

“You are Guinevere-Constance
Martin. A woman who can be whoever she wishes. With an exceedingly handsome
husband who loves her no matter whom she chooses to be.”

We moved down the road, and I knew
by the smile on her face that I had put her mind more at ease.

“Where did you go from
Charleston?” I asked; both curious and wanting to hear her voice for it was
what put me at ease.

“General Harvey thought it was
time to place me in
Levitas
, to keep a rein on
Richard’s activities,” she glanced up at me, “and we heard about your having
left the area to help out in Washington. The timing was perfect.”

I was silent for a few moments as
we walked along the brick roads, passing houses and well-kept greens in the
center of the squares. “Was Levi the one giving reports of our activities?”

“Not until after I was living in
Philadelphia, did Levi begin to report to us.” She smiled whimsically. “You
should know that he gave only false reports, but General Harvey has his spies
everywhere. The man is well to do, and money can open one’s lips faster than
the bottle if the price is high enough.”

Levi had been the youngest on our
team, but more than that, he was our brother, adopted when my father brought
him home to join the Phantoms. So, when he had blamed Bess and me for his
capture and branding by
Levitas
, it had broken a part
of us.

It turned out that Levi had not
joined the Holy Order, but was using his post with them to save Bess.

Guinevere touched my cheek. “You
will see him again,” she said as if she could read my thoughts.

We continued our walk, and I took
Guinevere to the market district where people were selling their wares. All
along the market streets were carts of different foods, most harvested from the
nearby plantations. I chose some fruit and paid for it while Guinevere had a
look around. Milliners with hats, women selling reed baskets, men offering to
shine boots, hand carved walking sticks, jewelry of every shape and color, and
it was all accompanied with loud singing.

Slaves from the plantations made
up most of the sellers and the women, to get the attention of the passerby,
sang jaunty tunes to try to draw attention to their stands. The men, not to be
outdone, raised their voices trying to be heard over the melodious calls.

I joined Guinevere at one of the
stands where a dark woman was walking around singing the praises of her wares.
She showed special interest in me, coming in close, but Guinevere’s possessive
hold on my arm made her laugh. She winked at me as she went on with her song.
The truly terrible thing about it all was that there was more to be had in the
market than food and handmade goods.

When Guinevere asked me what that
woman was about, and I told her, it angered her. I could tell that she was
prepared to do battle on the woman’s behalf. It strengthened my love for her,
but I knew something that she did not seem to grasp.

“Do not show that you feel pity,
they would not look upon it kindly.”

“What can we do?” she whispered
back.

I smiled as I looked down at the
makeshift table and selected a bracelet made of dark blue beads. After I had
paid the woman for it, I held it out to Guinevere. She smiled as she held up
her wrist so I could slip the bracelet onto her arm.

“Buy something,” I whispered in
her ear.

We walked on, arm in arm, looking
over the different stands. We stopped at a stand where an elderly man was
seated on a crate trying to sell apples from a basket.

“How much?” Guinevere asked,
pointing at the apples.

He smiled fondly at her, a
toothless grin, and said a penny an apple.

“No, how much for the lot?”

His sunken eyes widened, and he
leaned forward, his back nearly hunched over his walking stick. He quoted her a
price that could not be right but to correct him would be to shame him so
instead she opened her reticule and removed a half dollar.

“Here,” she said, pressing the
coin into his palm.

Holding the coin back out to her,
he told her that he did not have change.

“I do not require change as I am
sure that the price you quoted did not include the basket. What I have given
you I believe is fair considering the fine craftsmanship of this basket.”

The man stared at her as if she
had lost all sense, but my wife smiled at him and picked up the basket.

She plucked an apple from the
basket and bit into it. Juice dripped down her chin, and the man chortled as
she wiped her mouth with the edge of her sleeve. She chuckled in reply, looking
at me.

The conviction struck me that I
was seeing my wife truly for the first time this day. She was not the white
phantom, nor the servant of the Holy Order, or even Guinevere. She was
Constance, and she was remarkable.

A movement beyond Guinevere drew
my gaze. A man with dark hair was tossing an apple in the air and catching it
as he walked past the stands. The back of his head was all I could see as he
disappeared into a clock shop, but his stride. I knew that stride.

Taking the basket of apples from
Guinevere, we strolled toward the clock shop. When I held open the door to her,
she looked at me curiously, but entered.

Inside, every wall was covered in
all imaginable shapes and sizes of clocks, but the only other person in the
shop was the merchant.

Disappointed and feeling rather
foolish, I realized how ridiculous it was to hope that Levi had returned to us,
but hope I did. Levi would have called me a
clodpole
if he knew that I was searching a clock shop for him because the back of a
stranger’s head looked similar to his.

While the merchant followed
Guinevere about the shop in the hope that she would make a purchase, I glanced
in the back room. It was empty, nor did there appear to be a second door.

“Jack, what are you doing?”
Guinevere was smiling as she approached me.

“I thought I saw Levi come in
here. Ridiculous, I know.”

Guinevere’s face had gone pale for
a moment before she spun around, examining all four walls of the shop. She
closed her eyes; her brows furrowed. Spinning in a slow circle, she halted when
she was facing me again.

Guinevere asked the merchant to
give us a moment alone to discuss which clock to purchase. He moved behind his
desk and began polishing a set of pocket watches.

“Block him with your back,” she
whispered to me and I obeyed without question.

The clock that Guinevere began
examining had a glass pane so you could see the inner workings. She turned the
key in the lock and stuck three fingers into the back of the clock.

When she removed her hand, she
held a small folded paper.

“How did you know where to look?”

“The ticks were off,” she said as
she rehung the clock on the wall. “Close your eyes and listen to the ticks.”

Doing as she said, I could hear
the ticks of the clocks. They were all working in rhythm until something moved,
and one of them began to tick different from the rest. It was doing two ticks
for every one tock.

Guinevere moved to the desk, and
pointed to something. Opening her reticule, she dropped some money into the
merchant’s hand.

“There is no need to wrap it.” She
picked up the item and turned toward me, smiling enchantingly.

“For you.” She held out a gold
pocket watch with an engraving of a circle of feathers carved on the top.

Accepting it, I ran my finger over
the engraving. “I will treasure it.”

She took my arm, and we left the
shop. It was not until we were two roads away from the marketplace that she
unfolded the paper.

S. A. W. C. 12.

“Are you going to tell me what it
means or am I to guess?”

“It is a code to meet at
midnight,” she replied, folding the note and placing it in her reticule.

“Who would dare to request a
meeting with my wife at such an hour?”

“Levi works for me, Jack, not for
the Holy Order.”

That struck me like a punch to the
gut. Why would Levi do that to Bess and me? To our family? I knew he made the
pretense of joining the Holy Order, but that he worked with my wife instead of
coming back to our family filled me with an unavoidable anger.

“We developed a code that when we
needed to meet we would set a clock off its ticks.”

“How long has my brother worked
for you?”

Guinevere bit her bottom lip.
“Since he rescued me from an attacker in Charleston.”

My body stiffened, and Guinevere
took my arm, patting it. “The brute did not harm me as Levi found us in time.”

If she told me his name, I would
have taken the first boat to Charleston and destroyed him, but she wisely
refrained.

“When I discovered that Lucas had
sent guards to Philadelphia, I needed someone to go there and guard my sister.”
Guinevere halted before my mother’s house. “If Levi is here, then he knows
where my sister is being held. Tonight we can finally discover where they are
hiding. Tonight, Levi will be coming to the house.”

GUINEVERE

S
omething was tapping in my
chamber. It was a click that came every few seconds or so.

“My love,” I said with a sleep
filled groan, “if you wish to wake me there are more ingenious ways than
tapping.”

“I am not tapping. It is coming
from the window,” Jack said with no hint of sleep in his voice.

Sitting up, I realized that I had
fallen asleep on Jack in the parlor while we were waiting for Levi to arrive.

Rising and snatching a dagger from
the side table, I tiptoed to the parlor window.

As the moonlight illuminated Levi
Martin on the street before the house, my stomach tightened. What I had neglected
to inform Jack was that if Levi was coming to the house then something had
happened to Edith.

“It is Levi,” I said, and Jack was
striding into the foyer before I had a chance to turn around.

Jack pulled back the bolts on the door,
but as he opened it, Levi was not there. Jack went outside, whispering Levi’s
name.