phantom knights 04 - deceit in delaware Read Online Free PDF Page A

polishing, ever the emotionless, unfeeling woman. “You should not have been there.”
    “Someone had to try to stop them,” I replied, my voice cracking as the memories rushed at me, breaking through the reservoir that I had built to keep them away.
    “Has Jack seen the scar? Has he asked how you received it?”
    A shudder coursed through me. Yes, Jack had seen the four inch scar on my side above my hip. Though he did not know how I received it. It was one of the reasons I despised Uncle Luther.
    When my father was being tortured before my mother, I tried to stop my uncle’s men. Being ten, my sense was not as it is now. Now I could see the folly of my decision, then I did not stop to think. Grabbing a torch from the wall of the tunnel where I was hiding, I went through the secret door behind the tapestry. No one saw me until I charged out and lit one of the guards on fire. My uncle’s men captured me easily after that. Uncle Luther was not in the room, so I did not know if he would have stopped what happened. One of the men held my mother while the other placed a knife against my bare skin. They said that there was no need for all of us to live. I fought and received a cut across my side. Uncle Luther came in when I was passed out on the floor, or so I made them believe. I kept my eyes closed as if I had gone unconscious. Uncle Luther made the pretense of objecting to what was happening to my father, but when the guards made a circle around my father and uncle, I saw. I saw the knife that Uncle Luther forced into my father. I watched my father’s last breath.
    Rose huffed out a sigh and shoved the barrel of the pistol I was holding away from being pointed at her. “You are not ashamed, but neither can you see the larger picture. You are so clouded by hate that you cannot see what must be done.”
    Twisting around toward the bed, I clenched the gun in my hand, willing myself not to strike my sister. How dare she say that to me? Me! All I have done has been for my family, to protect us until the time came when we could return home.
    “I know what must be done, better than you. It was forced into me for ten years, and then Harvey made certain that I never forgot my past or my place.”
    “Why then would you marry Jack? Why would you risk everything on him?”
    How could I describe it to her in a way that she would understand? “Have you ever wanted something so much that your heart continually aches? You know that until you have it nothing in your life will feel in place?”
    “Yes,” Rose said, surprising me. “That is how I feel about home.” She came to face me. “If you love him so much, why did you deceive him? You should have told him the whole truth when you were confessing our past.”
    There was no explanation that I could give that would be acceptable to her. The truth was that I knew Jack would not marry me if he knew every detail of my past, and I was too afraid to risk my future with him.
    “Jack is going to be hurt no matter what you do, Constance, and you know what must be done.”
    Placing the gun on the bed, I left Rose and went down the stairs, needing to breathe and not go back into that chamber and throttle my sister.
    After I had been stabbed, Uncle Luther had me taken to my bedchamber and locked inside. Martha was there and she tended to my wound. She came with me through the tunnel, back to the room where my mother was being kept. That was when my mother told me to take the artifacts, my sisters, and run. Martha pledged to watch over me for the rest of her days. We found Leo in the tunnels with my sisters. After getting the artifacts, we ran, and I never looked back at our home.
    When I was halfway down the stairs, the knocker on the door sounded. Jack came out of the parlor with a pistol in one hand and a fireplace poker in the other. He unbolted the door, then slowly opened it.
    It was Leo returning from the harbor where he had been gaining information about each ship.
    Jack asked Leo