The Charleston Chase (Phantom Knights Book 2) (23 page)

“Too long,” he murmured against my skin, sending
tingles across my skin.

“What?” I asked rather breathlessly.

“You were gone too long.”

I laughed a little incredulously. “I was gone but
moments.”

“Months,” he kissed the curve of my jaw, “years,” he
kissed my cheek then pulled back. “I would have come to you this
morning, but Jack required my assistance. I was able to speak with
him.”

My relief was great. He did not regret last night. I
raised up to place my lips against his cheek.

“I had thought that perhaps you would regret last
night and slap me again for my forwardness,” Sam said.

Wait! He spoke with Jack? As in
sought his permission? Surprise made me move out of his embrace. “I
do not regret it.” I picked up the portmanteau and set it on his
desk. “Will you keep this for me?”

Sam approached it, his finger flicking over the
latch. “It is locked,” he said.

“Yes, and I hold the key. When I am ready, I would
like you to see what is inside, but not today.” He was looking over
my shoulder, and his breath was caressing the bare skin of my neck.
I stepped away from him, moving to the bookcases, my heart beating
rapidly enough to make breathing difficult. “I was wondering if I
could borrow a book on runes.”

“Bess,” he said, appearing beside
me and taking my hand, his eyes softened and he smiled, “there is
so much I want to say to you, but I find that I do not want to
wait. Will you—”

The door opened, and Jack came in.
“Trying to compromise my sister, Mason? I should warn you that it
is not
I
who will
skewer you if you take such liberties.”

“I believe you, Jack. Bess does not need any help in
taking me down a peg.”

“You remember that, Samuel Mason,” I told him,
casting an impudent grin, but my mind was replaying his words. Was
he going to speak about our predicament again? Declare himself?
Would I have accepted? After Andrew, I was determined to marry for
love. I liked Sam, but I could not say that I loved him. I did not
know what love felt like, but I was sure that when I felt it, I
would know.

“Rose wanted me to inform you that you and I are
escorting her and Bess home. The carriage is at the door.”

In the carriage as I was seated beside Rose, I
reminded her that she had business with Sam, to which she smiled
supremely. “None so much as presenting you with a chaperone, dear
Bess.”

Sam winked at her, and I was sure they were all
working together against me. The peculiar thing was; I did not mind
in the least.

We arrived at the house, and both Jack and Sam
accompanied us inside. I wanted to know what Sam had started to
say, but as soon as we stepped into the foyer, I knew that was not
going to happen this day.

“Char?” Sam yelled immediately.

“Betsy!” Rose shouted as we moved into the
parlor.

They were not in the parlor, but Rose’s escritoire
was knocked over, and articles were strewn all over the room.
Chairs were overturned, and pillows were torn apart.

“Upstairs,” I said as I ran toward the stairs and
then up.

The door to Betsy’s chamber was ajar, and I shoved
it open, ready to attack, but no one was there. Her chamber was in
disarray, looking as if it had been searched quickly and violently.
Sam and Jack reached Char’s door and opened it. Both girls were
there; Betsy tied to a chair and Char unconscious upon the floor.
There was a cloth tied around Betsy’s mouth. Sam knelt beside Char
as Jack set to untying Betsy. Sam lifted Char and placed her on the
bed.

“Who did this, Betsy?” Sam asked sharply as Jack
untied the cloth.

I moved to Betsy as she was shaking visibly. I drew
her against my side.

“It was Levi,” she said.

Jack and I exchanged a look over Betsy’s head. We
were each incensed.

“He arrived with a few men. He said he would search
the house and leave, and we would not be hurt, if we did not stand
in his way.”

“Why is Charlotte unconscious?” Sam demanded.

“She stood in his way when he started to search her
chamber.”

Sam’s expression turned murderous.

Betsy quickly added, “Levi did not strike her; one
of the others did. Levi was angry, shouting at the man while he
checked on Charlotte.” Betsy inhaled a shuddering breath. “He
wanted the artifacts.”

Jack said something that sounded like a low curse
and moved toward my chamber. I released Betsy to follow him.

“He did not get them, Jack.”

Jack turned at the door to my chamber. “How do you
know?”

I moved forward, so that only he would hear me say,
“Because only this morning I took them to Sam’s house.”

Jack let out a deep breath and leaned against the
door.

Rose came up the stairs with a frown upon her face.
“The servants had been locked in the cookhouse. How are Betsy and
Charlotte?”

Rose found her smelling salts and waved them beneath
Char’s little nose. When she did not immediately waken, Rose
repeated the process. Char’s eyelids flickered, and she moaned
weakly. My heart went out to her.

As Rose, Jack, Betsy, and I set to righting the
chambers, Betsy told us that Levi had left the house only ten
minutes before we arrived. He did not want Betsy running to find
us, so he had tied her up, apologizing for the need to do so.

When Char was on her feet, Sam was issuing orders.
“Jack, I need you to take the girls to my home in Rose’s carriage.
Bess and I are going after Levi.”

“Sam, if anyone is going after Levi, it is I. He is
my brother, my responsibility,” Jack said.

“His men attacked
my
sister and broke into
my deputies’ home. He is in my city, and his capture is now in my
hands.”

“As your sister whom he attacked, I too have a
right,” Charlotte said obstinately.

Sam turned on her. “Absolutely not!”

“Absolutely so! If you deny me, I promise I will
follow when your back is turned.”

Sam’s jaw was grinding, and I felt as if everyone
was holding their breath, waiting to see how Sam would respond.

He shook his head, threw his hands
up in an exasperated gesture, then said, “Very well, but you will
stay beside me or Jack.” He paused, giving her a determined
look.
“Is that clear?”

She replied by kissing his cheek and allowing Rose
to help her to find her weapons.

Locating my weapons in all of the
disorder that was my chamber was not difficult. It did not appear
that Levi had taken anything, for
he only
wanted the artifacts. I did not waste time in changing my dress for
my work clothes. When I joined everyone in the foyer, I had a belt
slung over my shoulder full of weapons.

Sam’s plans were to go to his warehouse first.
Charlotte had recognized one of the men with Levi as a sailor who
had been out of work since the war. Sam said he was usually to be
found at the waterside tavern.

Sam’s entire focus was on the task
ahead as we walked, and I was able to truly see him for the first
time as the leader of the Charleston Phantoms. Seeing him like that
put the pieces together in my mind. Sam was nothing like I
had
first thought. His mind was clever;
his actions were always planned, and he never operated out of
haste. He calculated every risk, choosing to pursue the more
dangerous tasks himself than risking his team. I had the feeling
that he never thought of himself; everyone else was of more
consequence to him. He did not see his true value.

Sam left us at a road away from
the port, going to the tavern alone. I held Jack’s timepiece as we
waited. Charlotte paced the street, Rose leaned against a tree,
and
Betsy stood quietly beside Jack, who
was tearing a leaf into thin strips.

Half of an hour had passed before Sam returned. He
was scowling when he said we must make haste.

We walked four roads away from the harbor and
stopped across the street from a large abandoned building that had
boards over the ground floor windows. The windows on the second and
third floors were cracked or broken. Sam said the building had once
been a factory that manufactured cotton before a fire destroyed
part of the building.

The board from the front door had been removed,
which assured us that someone was inside the building, or had
been.

Once inside, we decided to break into teams to cover
more areas. Sam and Charlotte would search the first floor, Betsy
and I the second, and Rose and Jack the third.

The staircase was still intact as we made our way
up. We parted from Rose and Jack at a long hall that had several
doors. The fire that had rendered the building unproductive must
not have reached the second floor, for it looked untouched by
anything other than dirt and small creatures.

Betsy and I each had a loaded pistol. She took the
left side and me the right. The first room I entered was bright
from the sun shining through two broken windows. There was an
overturned desk and some old parchment scattered on the floor, but
nothing else. The second, third, and fourth rooms were much the
same. When I reached the last room, the door was closed. Betsy had
reached the end of her side of the hall without finding anything,
so she stood beside me as I turned the doorknob and pushed open the
door. It squeaked on rusty hinges, and Betsy gasped.

There was a large hole in the floor from the fire,
but through the hole, on the first floor, was Levi. He was speaking
with some men but not loud enough for us to hear. I moved closer to
the hole.

Betsy grabbed my arm, holding me back, or so I
thought, until a man appeared with Charlotte.

“Griffin, find Loutaire and tell him what we have
discovered.” I did not give her time to say anything as I moved
toward the stairs and down.

Quietly, but quickly, I made my way down the stairs
and turned to my left. The hall led around the front of the
building and took a turn to the left, to where the fire had been.
The hall was black; pieces of the ceiling had fallen through to
reveal the upper rooms, and there were holes in the walls on the
left, but the right side was black with boarded-over windows. There
were two holes on the left wall, one the size of a head and looked
into a wide, open room, the next large enough for me to step
through.

The large open room was where the fire had been, for
it was the most destroyed and still smelled of burnt wood. The back
of the building was one large hole surrounded by charred pieces of
wood. Someone had been in the building since the fire, for there
was a row of stacked crates between me and the other wall.

There was a sharp sound like someone being smacked
from the other side of the crates, followed by Charlotte’s voice.
“I cannot fathom why I ever let you kiss me!”

“Let me?” Levi said.
“
You
kissed
me
.”

Hearing his voice set my feet into motion.

“Do not pretend as if you did not enjoy it,”
Charlotte said.

Stepping around the corner of the crates, I saw them
facing each other in the middle of the room. There was light
shining on them from the large hole in the back wall. Levi’s cheek
was red from where Charlotte must have struck him. His clothes were
different from those he had worn the last time I saw him. He was
dressed in all black, but the clothes were of a finer material than
his Phantom clothes.

Swallowing against the burning pain in my throat, I
moved forward. A crunching sound echoed through the room, and both
Levi and Charlotte turned toward me. Levi grabbed Charlotte around
the waist and put her between us with a pistol against her
temple.

“How long, Levi? How long have you been betraying
me, betraying your family?”

His voice thundered, “You are not my family! You
never cared for me, and you proved it when you allowed me to be
tortured in front of you.”

“So you joined the Holy Order? They were responsible
for your torture!”

His laugh was bitter. “You know so little of what
you speak. Guinevere told me as much when she came to nurse my
injuries at Stark Manor. She was there for me when you should have
been.”

The pain inflicted by his words left me bereft of
hope for him, but I had to carry on. “Was Guinevere responsible for
Henry’s death?”

“No,” he said with a note of the devil in his voice,
“but you will be seeing him soon, so you may ask him.”

I nearly dropped my pistol, in my shock. Levi, the
wild boy whom I had always cared for, always loved, had betrayed me
and our family and was threatening my life.

The rage coursing through me made me say, “Release
Charlotte, and let us fight this out like men.”

He laughed. “There lies the problem. You are not a
man, though you fight better than most men alive.” Levi stuck his
head around Charlotte’s shoulder grinning at me. “Do you remember
when we were learning how to use the art of seduction? How
distracted you were when Jericho kissed you,” he mused. “I learned
something about you that day.”

“What would that be, Levi?”

Levi did not reply. Sam was pushed into the room by
two burly men, one holding a gun to Sam’s head and the other
pointing a sword at Sam.

Charlotte screeched and tried to move toward her
brother, but Levi jerked her against him. He whispered something in
her ear, and she stopped moving, her face draining of color.

“Put down your weapon, Raven,” Levi said.

“If I do not?”

“Oh, I think you will, unless you want Sam’s death
on your conscience as well as Ben and Henry.”

“Your fight is with me. Let them go.”

“Raven, you know that my fight is with anyone who
dares to come against me.”