As we dined on cold meat, fruit, and an assortment of cheeses, I watched Rose and Leo, for they each were behaving unusual. Rose asked Leo about his travels with Jack over the last few months, and Leo answered her. Leo never spoke to people if he could help it. It was a testament to Rose’s ability to put people at their ease. She was genuinely interested in what he had to say.
After lunch, I told Rose I wanted to look for a book before we went home. I had thought about the symbols on the black box and realized that some of them were Greek runes. Sam, who had a book on every subject, surely had one on runes. I had searched the book room for a little over half of an hour before Jack and Sam arrived.
When I saw Jack’s state of undress, I was not shocked, even understanding when I learned he had been in confinement for brawling in the middle of the marketplace. When he told me about the fruit fight, I laughed. Sam’s gaze snapped to me for the first time, and my laughter faded under the scrutiny of his intense gray eyes. I felt heat spreading over my neck and into my cheeks, but I would not be the first to look away.
In the light coming in through the windows, Sam’s eyes looked almost green instead of blue-gray. I allowed myself to admire his face for the first time without guilt. I loved the slope of his nose, the hair that decorated his face, how his lips were the same size, neither one being larger than the other. They were soft and perfect. I had never thought much about a man with curly hair, but after Sam, I could not imagine liking anyone else half as much. He had slowly, word by word, look by look, embedded himself into my thoughts. His intensity had never once scared me, but filled me with heat from the first time we met. I liked him, and that is what scared me.
“I declare, Samuel Mason, I have never seen such intensity until Bess arrived,” Rose said, breaking into Sam and my holds on each other’s gazes.
Sam smiled at Rose. “Some mysteries I save for only very special people, Rose Eldridge.”
Rose appeared pleased with that reply. Jack had gone up to change his attire, and Sam led us into the parlor. His house was not completely set to rights from the previous night’s party, but his servants were busy at work in the rest of the house.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of having you pay me a visit?” Sam asked casually.
“Bess had something she wished to discuss with you,” Rose said, looking to me.
Sam’s eyes were upon me, and his brows rose in inquiry. There was no sign of change in his demeanor toward me, like last night had not occurred at all.
A slow burning anger and hurt twisted me into knots. “Not so much discuss as something I wished to show you, Mr. Mason. Allow me a moment to fetch it from the book room.” I rose and left the parlor, going into the book room where I had placed my portmanteau near one of the bookcases. Taking deep calming breaths, to calm my mind from twisting everything that he did and said, I heard the door close behind me. Turning to see Sam walking toward me, I stood my ground, staring up at him without a hint of my churning emotions showing on my face. When he reached me, his arms went around me, and I was pulled against him. He did not kiss me but buried his head against the side of my neck.
“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.”
With a nod from Levi, the man with the sword struck a blow to the back of Sam’s head. Sam swayed before dropping to his knees. Charlotte screamed, but the sound was cut off by Levi’s hand covering her mouth. The man jerked Sam back up and struck him in the gut twice, and when Sam tried to fight back, the sword slashed his arm.
My hands were shaking violently. I was so terrified that they would kill him that I could do nothing but scream. “No! Levi, stop this! I will do anything.”
Levi snapped his fingers, and they stopped their attack on Sam.
“Perhaps I should go ahead and kill him now. You will never do as I say.”
Slowly, I lowered my pistol to the ground. “I will, only let them go.”
Levi smiled, and I wanted to strike it from his face. “Therein lays your weakness, Raven. I saw it with Jericho, and again with Sam. Love makes you weak, Raven. It always has, and always will.”
Levi’s green eyes were narrowed in the familiar way that told when the boy disappeared, and the Phantom appeared.
I held Levi’s gaze. “Let. Him. Go.”
“Levi!” thundered Jack from somewhere behind me.
Levi’s grin disappeared as he shoved Charlotte toward me, turned, and ran. A gun went off, and the ball hit one of the men near Sam in the forehead. I looked away, reaching down for my pistol as Jack ran past me chasing Levi. I raised my pistol, pulled back the hammer, and fired at the man trying to follow Levi; the man who had beaten Sam. The ball hit him in the back between his shoulders.
Charlotte was beside Sam when I reached them. He was sitting on the ground.
“Are you all right?” he asked me when I knelt beside him, his voice thick and slightly rough.
The Charleston Chase (Phantom Knights Book 2) Page 17