A Rebel Without a Rogue (19 page)

“You’re in good time, Christian,” his uncle said, looking up from the silver medal he held in his hand. Another Waterloo souvenir, no doubt.

“Yes, sir. I have a few things I wish to discuss with you before Theo arrives,” Kit said. His usual smile was proving difficult to summon. He hated confrontations, particularly ones with members of his family.

“I’m afraid that Theodosius will not be joining us today, Christian,” his uncle answered, his voice holding no hint of welcome. “For I have something I need to discuss with
you
, before you ask your brother to endorse your political ambitions. Come here, sir, where I can see you.”

Christopher Pennington straightened his shoulders, then gave Kit a long, cold stare. “Would you believe it possible, Christian, for a man to be shot by a mysterious assailant and not inform his family of the fact?”

Damnation! He’d not expected the gossip to reach as far as his reclusive uncle.

“I informed Benedict, sir,” Kit said, meeting his uncle’s steely glare. If there was one thing his uncle could not abide, it was a man who would not stand his ground.

“You informed Benedict, you say?” The
tap, tap, tap
of the medal in his uncle’s hand, rapping against the table, echoed in Kit’s head. “You must forgive me. I was not aware that Benedict had become head of this family.”

Kit’s chin jerked. “Forgive me, sir, but you are no more the head of the family than is Benedict.”

“Oh, Saybrook knows of this little escapade, does he? He is the one who decided to keep me in the dark?”

Kit could not allow such ire to be directed at an innocent. “No, sir. That decision was mine. Mine alone.”

The color in his uncle’s cheeks rose, then just as suddenly fell, making him look far older than his years. He slumped down in his chair, his eyes shifting away from Kit to gaze, unseeing, out the window.

“So this is what you think of me, is it, Christian? A feeble, sapless old man, unable to withstand even the hearing of bad tidings? Certainly not able to offer help in bearing injury, or to prevent future harms.” The man’s white head nodded. “Of course. What more could one expect of a man who cannot even move his own legs?”

“Uncle, no.” Kit knelt in front of the Colonel’s chair, taking the man’s hands in his own. The thinness of the skin, the boniness of the fingers beneath his own, shocked him. He gentled his grip.

“Even when Father was alive, you know I held you in the highest esteem,” he said, his eyes fixed on his uncle. “And now that he’s gone, there is no one in this family I respect more. I only kept the incident from you because your physician told us that undue excitement might do further injury to your health.”

“But being quizzed by my friend Earl Talbot about the gory details of my nephew’s attack, an attack about which I knew nothing, why, that was sure to keep me in the finest of fettle.”

Kit released his uncle’s hands and sat back on his heels. The man might be frail of body, but his spirit would not be kept down. “I apologize, sir. I had no idea gossip would spread so quickly.”

“Yes, well, you can thank Talbot’s son for that. What better could you expect, though, from a boy as crackbrained as to bring an Irish wench back to England to whore for him? Talbot had not the least idea what Ingestrie had done.”

“What do you know of Miss Cameron?” Kit asked, jerking to his feet.

“
Miss
Cameron, is it? Since when do you give such courtesies to other men’s doxies, Christian Pennington?”

Kit ignored the rebuke. “How could you know Ingestrie had taken up with an Irishwoman?”

“How could I not? The stripling boasted of his ‘wild Irish girl’ to all the young bucks, including several of the officers formerly under my command. Benedict and Theo may not think it worth their time to visit the senior male of the family, but men of the army do not forget what is due to their superiors.”

“And you spread their gossip to Ingestrie’s father? Why?” Kit asked, his voice thickening.

“Why? Because no man minds his son setting up a clean English girl as mistress, or even a Frenchwoman, now that the war’s over. But an Irisher? Truly, Kit, how could you think I’d not?”

Kit paced in front of the window. “Ingestrie threw her over, you know. Tossed her barely enough coin for passage back to Ireland, then abandoned her to make her own way home.”

“Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. If they had more than a spoonful of brains between ’em, Parliament’d send the Irish back to their own cursed shores, each and every one.”

“Well, there’s one who’s not returned to her own country,” Kit heard himself say before the rational part of his brain could think better of the words.
 

“What, has the whore wormed her way into the arms of another unsuspecting young cub already?” The Colonel’s eyes narrowed. “Into yours?”

Kit crossed his arms over his chest. “Why do you take against her, Uncle? Is it simply your general antipathy for the Irish? Or has she done you some particular harm?”

“Is shooting my nephew, my own flesh and blood, not reason enough?”

Kit stared at his uncle, his stomach sinking to hear the suspicions he’d not allowed himself to acknowledge voiced by another. “You think Ingestrie’s mistress and the woman who fired upon me may be one and the same?”

Uncle Christopher frowned. “I don’t know, not for certain. But given what I’ve heard, it’s certainly possible, don’t you agree? Is she the comely wench of whom you spoke, the one in search of an army officer?”

Kit nodded.

“And the pistol with which you were shot—are the rumors that it is in your possession true?”

Kit just strode to the door, calling for a servant to bring his greatcoat. He reached into its pocket and retrieved the firearm, then placed it on the table in front of his uncle.

Uncle Christopher took it up, his bony fingers tracing over the long steel barrel. “Christie & Murdoch, if I’m not mistaken. Elegant, they were, those Doune pistols. Favorites with the officers of the Highland regiments.”

Leaning over the table, Kit asked, “Highland? Its owner was a Scot, then, not an Irishman?”

“A Scot by birth, but an Irishman by choice,” his uncle murmured, his finger tracing over the inscription.

“You know this pistol? And its owner?”

“Aye, Christian, I do.” The Colonel’s eyes lowered before Kit could make out what hid in their depths. “Or at least I did.”

“Who, Uncle?”

The Colonel raised his eyes to Kit’s. “Aidan McCracken. The leader of the Antrim rebels during the rebellion in ’98. Mad, he was, and wild, that Scot, believing he and his fellows could bring about in Ireland what the colonists had done in America. As if the ignorant and bigoted Irish would ever join with any men not loyal to the Pope.”

“But it was a woman who shot me, not a man,” Kit said.

“McCracken lost his life in the conflict. But firearms live on, long after their rabid owners have been put down.”

Kit’s mind raced. “The woman who shot me—she’s a relation of this McCracken’s, you believe?”

“There were rumors that the fool had lain with the daughter of an Irish crofter, and had gotten a child off her.”

Fianna Cameron, the bastard child of a dead rebel and an impoverished Irish girl? Kit’s hands clenched. In anger or in sympathy? He hardly knew.

“And this relation of McCracken’s—she meant to shoot you, then, not me? But why would she wish you harm?”

His uncle tapped a finger against the pistol’s inscription.
Tá na téada curtha go húr agus cloisfear í
. “McCracken thought himself so clever, to have translated their motto into Gaelic. But I soon learned its meaning.”

“Their motto? What motto?”

The Colonel pointed to a letter on the table beside his bed. Kit retrieved it, then handed it to his uncle and sat down in the chair beside him.

He thought his uncle would open the letter, but instead he tapped his forefinger against the paper’s seal, imprinted in a round of green wax. Kit bent down to examine it more closely. The seal consisted of an oval surrounding an elaborate harp, with two banners, one inscribed “IT IS NEW STRUNG AND SHALL BE HEARD,” the other “EQUALITY.”

Kit looked up at his uncle. “There’s a harp on the Irish flag, isn’t there? But I don’t recall it bearing such a motto.”

“It doesn’t. These words have nothing to do with any valid government, Kit.” His uncle’s voice hardened. “They’re the rallying cry of the group McCracken and his cronies founded. The United Irishmen. Those bloody treasonous rebels.”

 
Kit’s finger traced the edges of the wax seal. “But what has any of this to do with Fianna Cameron?” he asked, his voice remarkably even given the growing dread roiling his gut.

Uncle Christopher pulled the letter from Kit’s hand. “There are rumors of a movement to resurrect the group. And a plan to take their fight beyond Ireland’s shores. Here, to English ground.”

Kit shook his head. Another of his uncle’s unsubstantiated fears? Or was there something real behind this latest claim?

His doubt must have shown on his face, for his uncle grabbed his arm and drew Kit close. The man’s eyes bored into his. “Talbot told me, Kit. Earl Talbot, the former Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He fears there’s a plot to assassinate someone, someone high up in the government. And he wants your help to stop it.”

“My help?” Kit jerked back in his chair.

“Yes, your help. I told him of your political leanings, and assured him you’d be willing to use your contacts among the radicals to help sniff out the plotters.”

Kit’s eyes narrowed. “You wish me to betray my friends and allies?”

“No, of course not! No Pennington would ally himself with those who would use violence to bring about political ends. But surely not all the men of your wider acquaintance have such qualms. Or the women.” His uncle leaned forward in his chair, bringing his face closer to Kit’s. “Take that treacherous wench who shot you. If she’s still in London, and she’s the child of Aidan McCracken, you can be certain she’s at the heart of it. Follow her, find out with whom she associates, and I’ll pass on the information to Talbot.”

“I don’t wish to be impertinent, Colonel,” Kit said, his boot tapping against the floor. “But if Fianna Cameron is a political assassin, why would she wish to kill you?”

Uncle Christopher looked down at his hands for a long moment, then raised his eyes to Kit’s. “Because she thinks to take the right of the state, and of God, into her own weak hands, before going on to more important prey.”

At Kit’s puzzled frown, his uncle leaned forward, his fist pounding against the table. “Vengeance, Kit! Vengeance. Because it was I who oversaw the hanging of that damned traitor she likely called father.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Can’t go out a-charing for one morning, but what hussies must be a-comin’ and ’ticing away me own poor boy to the pub!”

“Hussies? Who you be calling a hussy?”

Fianna awoke with a jerk, her breath catching in her throat. Angry voices—where? Her eyes darted about the room.

“You know right well what I mean, Sukey Timms. Turn me own family against me, will you? Get along with you, afore I tear yer precious hair out.”

“You gonna take that, Sukey? Pitch into ’er now!”

Outside. The voices came from outside, from the alley below. No one was accusing her. Fianna rubbed a hand against her throat, urging the race of her pulse to slacken.

Even now the women’s quarrel must be ending; she heard no more screeching, or even the sounds of a scuffle, but only the slap of shoes against the cobbles. She reached out to pull up the sheets that she’d kicked off the bed. No need to borrow trouble from a crowd of charwomen, not when she had a quarrel of her own with which to deal.
 

Fianna dressed quickly, girding herself to face an opponent far less craven than Sukey Timms.
 

But when she emerged from her own room, she found the sun-filled apartment empty.

“Kit?” she called, stepping into the drawing room. The only answer was a note resting on the mantel.
F—I’ve an errand to run. Back by midday. —CP
, he’d written, in a bold, slashing hand.

She ran her thumb over the edge of the foolscap, fretting again over the question that had kept her awake until she’d finally fallen into a troubled sleep near dawn. Why had she responded so strongly, so unthinkingly, to Kit Pennington’s kiss?

Some foolish part of her longed to believe that no man could kiss a woman with such passion if he cared nothing for her. But all her prior experiences with the other sex suggested that neither moral nor rational faculties held much sway when base lust controlled the reins. No, a man could all too easily woo with hot kisses in the evening and betray with cool detachment in the morn.

And if she remained until this evening, he’d surely expect her to lie with him. A dangerous prospect, given how something weak and craven inside her yearned for the sweetness of his touch, even now, knowing how likely it was he suspected her. No, far better to take the letters and disappear into the teeming London streets, leaving Kit Pennington and his innocent, boyish charms far behind.

She was moving down the passageway, considering what she would take with her, when she realized the one error in her plan. Kit Pennington still had her father’s pistol. She couldn’t leave without the flintlock, the only memento of Aidan McCracken besides his letters she’d ever had.