A Rebel Without a Rogue (30 page)

Fianna took a stance by the window, her hands folded neatly at her waist. Far better to let a potential enemy make the first move.

Saybrook held out his cane, hat, and gloves, as if expecting a servant to take them; when she remained still, he shrugged, then tossed the lot onto a side table himself. He then spent some minutes gazing about the room, examining its contents with the eye of a connoisseur.

Only then did he spare her his attention, considering her with the same dispassion he had paid to the furnishings and decorations. Then, after looking his fill, he lowered himself into the most comfortable chair in the room. He leaned back and stretched out his legs before him as if he were readying himself for a lazy afternoon’s nap.

Such an obvious mark of incivility told her more quickly than any words that Theo Pennington knew at least some of who and what she was. And that he wanted her to be well aware of the regard, or rather lack thereof, in which he held her. No, this would be anything but a friendly visit.

“I received a quite interesting letter this morning, Miss Cameron,” he began, in a tone as negligent as his posture. “Perhaps even upsetting, if one may admit to having feelings in this day and age. Might you guess what said letter contained?”

Fianna took a seat on the settee opposite, clasping her hands beneath her chin as if deep in thought. “I cannot begin to imagine. A billet-doux from your
chère amie
? A dunning note from your tailor?”

 
Theo Pennington’s eyes narrowed. He might think to intimidate her, but she was not entirely without resources of her own.

“A peer of the realm would hardly find any such news the least bit disturbing,” he answered. “No, the letter I received was of a more personal nature. From my youngest brother.”

“Oh? But I understand Christian has written to you many times over the past two months, all without causing you the least alarm. Or perhaps I misunderstood; were you too prostrated by his news of Mr. Norton’s disloyalty to pen even a line in return?”

“I took steps to address the issue of Mr. Norton, I assure you, ma’am. There was no need to inform Kit of every detail.”

“How unfortunate that your brother has not the skill of reading minds. For then he might have known just what you were about, without your having to take the trouble to write him of every detail.” Fianna gave him a polite smile, then lowered her eyes to the hands she had folded in her lap.

“He may not be able to read my mind, but I assure you, ma’am, I am well able to read yours.” He leaned forward, his eyes intent upon hers. “And it holds nothing but trouble, trouble for me and mine.”

“What, did Kit send you a copy of our little book? I admit, some might find it a bit outspoken, but I assure you, sir, nothing we’ve written can be legally prosecuted under the Gagging Acts.”

“A book? I know nothing about a book. I am speaking of Kit’s plans for the future.”

“A future you’ve all but ensured he won’t have,” Fianna accused, her tone far sharper than she had intended. “Refusing to support his bid for Parliament shows a surprising lack of family feeling on your part, sir. Although perhaps one should not expect an Englishman to demonstrate loyalty, even to his own kin.”

“I have enough family feeling to put a stop to the more ridiculous of his schemes. Bad enough to discover he’s been spewing his fantastical ideas about the equality of man throughout the taverns and coffeehouses of London. Did he honestly think I’d allow him to do so in the midst of the House of Commons?”

“Afraid he’ll draw the ire of one of your drinking companions, are you? Or cause one of your gaming connections to call in your debts?”

“Indeed not, ma’am,” he replied, leaning back in his chair and resting his tented hands atop the slight paunch of his belly. “Afraid he’ll be shunned by society for taking up with undesirable acquaintances.”

“You consider me one of said undesirable acquaintances, my lord?”

Saybrook flashed a brief, chilling smile. “An Irishwoman? How could you be anything but? Oh, you’ve a compelling countenance, no doubt, although your person is rather slight to truly delight a man’s senses. Tell me, what tricks of bed sport have you plied to bewitch him? For I cannot imagine any other reason he’d be fool enough to believe another man’s doxy worth the time of an archbishop.”

“Archbishop?” Fianna laughed to hide her confusion. Did Kit think to undertake her religious conversion?
 

“Yes, I thought you would find it amusing. What an innocent he is, our Christian, thinking he can rescue all the waifs and strays of the world. Even as a boy, he was always insisting on saving unwanted kittens from drowning, and rescuing smaller boys from the bullies. This time, though, I fear he has spent too much time with Aunt Allyne, listening to her tales of prostitutes miraculously returned to the path of righteousness. Or perhaps it was you who put the idea in his mind.”

“The idea? What idea?”

Saybrook drew a letter from inside his waistcoat, tossing it contemptuously on the floor by her feet. “I would not have believed it, even of gullible Kit, if I had not read it myself. And in his own hand, so there can be no mistake. Imagine the scandal if someone besides myself had be the one to open his oh-so-touching declaration that he was to wed a whore.”

Wed a whore?
Fianna knelt down and took up the letter with a shaking hand. Surely Kit had forgotten his misguided offer of marriage. He’d never repeated it, not after that one mad night when he’d discovered her with Sean. And she’d certainly not brought it up again, no matter how often his whispered words of love tempted her to imagine a future with him. To believe the son of an English lord would marry an Irishwoman, let alone one who had been bent on executing his own uncle—why, she would have been a fool to spend even a moment dreaming of it.

Yet as she scanned the lines Kit had written to his brother, informing him of his intention to take one Fianna Cameron, spinster, to wife, the tight, anxious loneliness inside her, her everyday companion since childhood, began to dissipate, replaced by a lightness and warmth of which she could hardly remember the like. To declare such intentions to an eldest brother, the head of his family. To declare that nothing would sway him from his course. Such words from Kit, a man who held loyalty to family so very dear!

Fianna clutched the letter to her heart, as if its slight heft could keep her giddy, weightless self from floating clear up to the ceiling. What an idealist he was.

And how much she loved him for it.

“Oh, I would not be so quick to smile,” Saybrook drawled, drawing Fianna back from the reverie into which she’d fallen. A keen, knowing expression had taken the place of his previous careless air. “You may have Christian under your thumb, but you’ll not find me so easy to gull.”

Reaching into the pocket of his frock coat, he pulled out not a pistol, as she had half expected, but a handful of sovereigns. “Do not misunderstand,” he said, tossing them lightly from palm to palm. “I am willing to grant you something for your pains. A princely sum for an Irishwoman, would you not say? Particularly one of dubious morals.”

With a quick jerk, he tumbled the coins into her lap. They clattered there for a moment until she settled them with a quelling hand.

With lazy but heavy grace, he rose and moved in front of her, his height and bulk clearly meant to intimidate. “Take them, and be gone before he returns.”

Arrogant, stupid man. As if he were the only one with a flair for the dramatic.

Rising slowly from her chair, she forced him to take a step back or be pummeled by the weighty coins that rained down from her lap. They hit the carpet as softly as summer rain. “And if I refuse?”

He waited, watching a solitary coin that had landed on hardwood floor as it spun on its edge before, with a sickly wobble, it finally toppled to its side. When he raised his eyes, they burned bright with suppressed anger. “Then I’ll not scruple to report you to the local magistrate as a drab of the lowest order. And insist on your prosecution as such.”

“Kit will never allow it,” she said, forcing ice into her voice.

“Oh, believe me, madam, he’ll offer no protest. At least not after our uncle has given him a proper set-down. He may not have much respect for my authority, but he has the utmost respect for the Colonel. How he could ever take up with you after what Uncle Christopher suffered at the hands of your countrymen, I can’t begin to imagine.” He kicked at a coin that had landed near his polished boot, sending it spinning across the room.
 

“Your uncle,” Fianna whispered, arms falling to her sides. “But I thought he was dead.”

“Dead? Christopher Pennington?” Saybrook gave a sharp bark of a laugh. “Word of Kit’s doings aren’t likely to improve the old campaigner’s disposition, but I don’t imagine they’ll send him to an early grave. How important you imagine yourself, Miss Cameron.”

She hugged her arms tight to her chest. Important enough to win Kit’s heart. But not to gain his loyalty, his trust. He’d reserved both for his own uncle, his own kin. Not for her.

She could not even blame him for it, could she? For now that she knew her father’s enemy still lived, was not that cursed old familiar, vengeance, rising up inside her, its icy talons clawing away any softer feelings she had been unwary enough to welcome?

What right did she have to demand he hold justice for her family higher than loyalty to his own?

None. None at all.

She steeled her spine against the shudder that threatened to bring her to her knees.

Fingers pried open her clenched hand, pressing the smooth, cool metal of a sovereign within the nest of her palm. “Take it, and be gone,” Saybrook whispered. “There’s nothing for you here.”

How foolish for an Irishwoman to allow her hopes to fly high as an air balloon. Had not the first balloon to wreck fallen to earth in Ireland? And had it not burned an entire street in Tullamore to the ground?

No, there could be nothing here for her. No matter how much Kit might think he loved her, he’d always put his own family first.

Fianna’s fingers closed tight about the coin.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The twisted maze of streets with their dingy, straggling houses and crowds of idlers loitering about the gin shops surely would have sent any genteel Englishwoman into a fit of the vapors. But to Fianna, the soft vowels and harder consonants lilting off the tongues of its denizens felt uncannily familiar. The parish of St. Giles, which had once served as refuge for a colony of lepers, now housed another race of outcasts: her desperate Irish countrymen, who had flocked to the city in hopes of escaping the grinding poverty of their homeland, only to find themselves ensnared within the filth and squalor of London’s most infamous slum.

Difficult, it was, to find Sean’s rooms, the way the streets and courts darted in all directions, tangled as a ball of yarn after a kitten’s pounce. Someone less determined surely would have given it up as a bad job hours earlier. But at long last, one listless fellow, leaning with stolid indifference against a post, nodded a lazy head toward the lane for which she searched.
 

The woman who answered her knock made no answer to her inquiry for Sean O’Hamill, only turned and plodded down the dank passageway. Fianna shut the door behind her and followed in the crone’s footsteps, taking care not to allow her skirts to skim against the dirty walls. The building might once have held only one family, but the noise and smell suggested that now, each of its rooms housed an entire brood.

The old woman jerked her head toward the last door before trudging back to the front of the house.

Setting her portmanteau by her feet, Fianna raised a fist and knocked.

Her uncle gave no sign of welcome at the sight of her. But neither did he gloat, nor pinch his lips tight in reproach. He simply opened the door wide, gesturing her inside.

His room was far cleaner than the passageway that led to it, its wooden floor free of dirt, its single bed neatly made. Hardly enough room in which to swing a cat, here, but she’d made do with smaller. If, that is, Sean would have her.

He took her portmanteau and placed it by the bed. “Wish to talk of it?” he asked as he pulled out one of the two rickety chairs by the scarred wooden table.

“What is there to say?” Fianna sat down with a sigh. The need to find the Major had once pricked her as sharp as a spur. But now, after Kit, only lethargy greeted the prospect of resuming the search.

Her uncle took the chair opposite, resting his folded hands atop the table. “Oh, many a
cailín
likes to weep and wail over a lost love for at least a few days before turning her attention to more important matters. My shoulder’s a strong one, if you’ve a need of it.”

“I’d as lief swim back to Ireland in nothing but my shift.”

Sean bit back a laugh. “Ah, what a bold, free-spoken child it is. That’s the Máire I remember.”

Hardly a child any longer. And wise enough to keep her thoughts to herself, even in the days when she’d worn skirts far shorter than these. But if it pleased him to think her courageous, she’d not say nay.