Secrets In Savannah (Phantom Knights) Read Online Free

he
leaned over me to check my wound.
    “Did he hurt you?” Bess asked as she
flew to my other side.
    I shook my head, but Bess sucked in a
breath. I knew what she was staring at for I felt myself losing blood.
    Bess shouted something, but it sounded
muffled to me. Sam appeared above me, and then my mother and Gideon, but I
could not speak to any of them. There was little feeling in my body as they
worked on me, trying to stop the blood. My mother was speaking to me, for her
mouth was moving, but I focused on the ceiling, trying to calm the shuddering
of my breaths. My nose burned and my eyes filled with stinging moisture, but
not from tears. From anger, from fear, from helplessness—a feeling that I
detested with the whole of my being. My back was shaking, and my feelings came
back like a rush.
    Sucking in a breath, I pushed at the
blanket tucked across my stomach, and tried to push myself up. The pain that
ricocheted through my body forced a cry out of my mouth, and my head dropped
back as I squeezed my eyes shut until the pain lessened. My mother was saying
my name; Bess was shouting, even Leo was speaking, but all I could see was
Guinevere’s terrified face as the guards carried her away.
    Where was she? What had Lucas Marx done
to her?
    “Jack!” Bess shouted my name, and I
opened my eyes.
    “What?” I demanded in a far stronger
voice than I thought myself capable.
    Bess was leaning over me near my head,
and she ran her soft, cool fingers across my forehead. Her brown eyes were
filled with concern. “She is well, Jack. She is well.”
    A spasm shook me, and I closed my eyes
again.
    “I saw her at the harbor on an outbound
ship. She is gone, but she was well.”
    That was all I heard for several hours.
When I awoke, it was dawn. My mother was asleep in a chair by the fire; Leo was
asleep on his feet, leaning against the wall, and Bess was sleeping beside me
on the bed.
    Curled on her side with a hand tucked
under her cheek, she reminded me of when we were young children, and I would climb
into her bed and have her tell me stories. Bess was an excellent story teller,
always creating adventures that awed me. Her stories were one of the reasons
that I took to being a spy in the beginning. The adventure, the intrigue, the
role playing all held me spellbound for the first few years. Until I killed a
man.
    There is no going back from something
like that. Stories never tell you the guilt that fills you, the memories that
haunt you, and the innocence that you lose when you take a life. I grew up that
day and saw that I did not like the life my father had created for me. That was
why I left the Phantoms to join the militia and fight in the war. If I had to
kill people, I wanted to know without any doubts or secrets that I was doing it
for a cause far greater than myself and the greed of men.
    War was full of greedy men, but I
believed in freedom. I believed in this small country called America, and the
great potential that I saw in it and its people. People like my sister.
    Bess stirred, and her eyes fluttered
open. When she saw me looking at her, she smiled sleepily, asking me how I
felt.
    Annoyingly weak, but alive was what I
told her.
    She sat up, shoving her dark brown hair
out of her face while reaching to the bedside table and bringing a letter to
the bed.
    “I need you to make me a promise,” she
said and I felt my brows rise. “I want you to let Guinevere go. She is the
reason that you almost died.”
    “Lucas—”
    Bess gripped my hand. “Lucas tried to
kill you because of Guinevere. You must let her go.”
    “We have been through this, Bess. I will
marry her.”
    “Even when she refuses to come to you on
your deathbed?” Bess held out a folded letter.
    As I took it, Bess looked truly
repentant for whatever she was about to say. “Pierre has sent word that he
rescued Guinevere from Lucas. He gave her a choice to come to you, but she
chose to leave you to your fate.”
    The letter said as Bess had, but