A Rebel Without a Rogue (8 page)

No, she’d done far more than weep and wail in her campaign against those who’d betrayed her father. She’d not been Ingestrie’s victim, nor any other man’s, but their hunter, ensnaring each in order to achieve a larger, more worthy goal. And she’d be damned if she shied away from using Kit Pennington, or even this grim-faced Mr. O’Hamill, if the using would help gain justice for her father and his family. She wasn’t the daughter of Aidan McCracken for nothing.

“From Cork, are you, sir?” Fianna asked as she leaned forward across the table. “Englishmen may have little ear for the speech of our countrymen, but I assure you, I can tell the difference between a man born and bred in the south and one who hails from Antrim or Down. What cause have you to lie, sir?”

A grim smile played about O’Hamill’s lips. “A smart one, aren’t you
?
But not as smart as you think. A truly intelligent wench would be far less worried about from whence I hail, and far more about the fire with which she plays.
Tá na téada curtha go húr agus cloisfear í
, indeed!”

Fianna’s lips thinned. “Then you do know what the words on the pistol mean. Why did you not say so?”

“Because young Mr. Wooler, involved as he is in radical politics, would have recognized them immediately. And I believe, Miss
Cameron
,” he said, his tone giving a derisive edge to her name, “you would not have liked that at all. No, you would not have liked that one little bit.”

She pulled up the memory of the words he had offered—
a harp, strings, hearing
—allowing them to tease at something long forgotten, tucked away far in the back of her brain. Her father’s voice, deep, impassioned, proclaiming not just a slogan, but a creed. . .

“
Equality—It is newly strung and shall be heard
,” she whispered, her eyes widening in both awe and dismay. The sheer audacity of Aidan McCracken, to translate the seditious motto of the United Irishmen into Gaelic and inscribe it on his pistol for all to see. Flaunting it right under the noses of the English oppressors, mocking them not only for their arrogance toward the people they looked down upon as so very inferior to themselves, but also for their ignorance of that people’s language and culture. She’d never been prouder of her daring father.

And she’d never been more frightened of another man than she was of the one sitting across from her. O’Hamill knew. Somehow, he knew she was the one who had taken that pistol and aimed it at Kit Pennington, the son and brother of English lords. She could see the knowledge of it in the loose, confident way he held himself in that chair, in the shrewd, cunning glint in those dark green eyes. And he meant to use that knowledge to his own advantage. Despite whatever kinship lay between them.

He took up her cup and downed a large gulp before dropping it back in its saucer with a loud clink. “Bah. It’s gone cold. Why doesn’t the wench bring any fresh?”

Fianna pushed back her chair, groping in her reticule for coin to throw on the table. She had to leave. Now.

But he followed her out the door and over the rough cobbles of the street. Could she lose him in the alleys behind the tea shop?

“I’m to have no thanks for my friendly warning, then,
cailín
?” he called. “To be sure and I thought you had the look of an O’Hamill, but no child of our Mairead’s would have shamed her family with such a show of ingratitude.”

Fianna stilled in her tracks. “Mairead? Mairead O’Hamill?”

“Heard of the O’Hamill, have you?” he said, taunting her by focusing on the least important of the two names. “Descendants of Binneach, son of Eoghan, son of Niall of the Nine Hostages, founder of the Uí Néill dynasty? Poets and wise men, advisers to the mightiest of the land, they were, before the English sullied Éireann shores.”

He paused, as if waiting for her to speak. Did he expect her to claim a place in such an exalted lineage? She would not give him the satisfaction.

Booted footsteps rang against the cobbles, bringing him one step closer, then another. “A
McCracken
might have forgotten such a proud heritage,” he whispered over her shoulder. “But a daughter of Mairead’s? You’ll never convince me of it.”

Fianna allowed the shudder to finish its course through her body before carefully turning to face the man who should have been a stranger, but was not.
 

“Oh, and haven’t you just the way of her?” he asked, the ghost of a smile whispering across his lips. “That nose up in the air, those green eyes flashing, cutting a man down to size quicker than a sword. A brave
fear
, Aidan McCracken, to take up with a
sidh
such as our Mairead.”

A chill shivered down Fianna’s spine. “Who are you?” she whispered, needing him to say the words out loud.

He took a step closer, lowering his voice as he pulled the cap from his head. “Sure and you’re not knowing your own uncle Sean, Máire O’Hamill?”

Fianna jerked back. This dark, hard man, her mother’s young brother? The same eager boy who’d followed Aidan McCracken about with the devotion of an apostle? Not a distant connection, but the closest of kin?

She shook her head. “But they left—y
ou
left. You all fled, before the soldiers could come and take you away. Aunt McCracken, she told me she gave you the money to go to America, so they wouldn’t capture you and hang you, as they did my father.”

He nodded. “’Tis true, my father and my sister sailed for America. But not I. I’ll not be abandoning the cause of Éirinn so quick as all that.”

The Sean O’Hamill she remembered had been a boy, only a handful of years older than herself, far too young to take part in any of the fighting the rebels had planned. But he’d hung on Aidan McCracken’s every word, whispering under his breath the pledge taken by the United Irishmen, determined someday to play a role in bringing liberty and equality to their people.

Her mother, Mairead, would sit and watch, pride warring with worry, as her young lover set her even younger brother aflame with visions of Irish freedom.

Her mother
—

Fianna’s breath caught in her throat. “Is she here with you? Mairead?” she whispered.

He considered her for a long moment before answering. “She is not. Did I not say she’d gone to America?”

“Where?”

“I know not.”

Fianna pressed a fist against her chest. How quickly thoughts of vengeance had been forgotten, overshadowed by the yearning for a mother’s arms.

But Mairead O’Hamill did not deserve the name of mother. No, not after abandoning her to the McCrackens, their beloved Aidan’s only child, in exchange for mere coin. Not after purchasing her own freedom at the expense of her daughter’s. Not after leaving Máire behind.

No, Mairead’s daughter was a McCracken now, not an O’Hamill. She’d prove it, or perish in the attempt.

But might even an O’Hamill still be devoted to the memory of a hero such as Aidan McCracken?

She stepped closer to Sean, laying a hand on the man’s rough sleeve. “Help me find someone,
Seanuncail
?”

He laughed at that, the joke of the old nickname, as if a boy only four years her senior could be counted among the doddering old men typically granted the respectful title of “grand-uncle.” Rougher and lower than she remembered, that laugh, yet in it she finally recognized her childhood playmate, a boy who’d always had time for an illegitimate niece shunned by neighbor and parish alike.

“Come to London chasing after a long-lost love, have you, then?” he asked.

Her hand tightened on his arm. “A lover? Say instead a killer.”

“Aidan McCracken’s killer? Ah, so that’s why you’re hanging after young Pennington. Not being much of a help to you, is he, though, I’d wager. And what’s a wee slip of a
cailín
such as yourself going to do to the likes of the Major, even if the boy were to lead you to him? Bat your eyes at him until he cries sorry?”

Fianna’s hand jerked away, her stomach seething at the derision in his voice. But instead of backing down, she took a step closer, hands clenching tight by her sides.

“Mayhap,
Seanuncail
, you’ve not heard what’s become of the other men who betrayed my father? How Samuel Russell lost all his money at cards, trying to win enough to please a ladylove? Or how Alan Simms’s wife won’t let him near his children after catching him with another woman, his trousers down about his ankles? Or of that gaoler at Kilmainham, how his own brother beat him within an inch of his life, all over a mere
sidh
? Curious, how each lost what he most desired, far beyond the means of its recall. And all taken away by a wee slip of a
cailín
. Or so I have heard.”

The lines around Sean O’Hamill’s eyes deepened, almost as if they were tempting him to smile. But his lips held fast in a grim line. “Sure, are you, that Old Scratch’s not already called the devil home to hell?”

“Certain,” she lied with practiced ease. Surely the Lord would never be so cruel as to steal Major Pennington away before she had had her chance at him.

Sean stared at her then, his eyes as deep and green as her own mother’s. Could he see it, the hope that burned in hers? The only thing that kept her moving, day through deadened day? The hope that by bringing the men who had harmed her father to justice, and by forcing Pennington to recant his vicious lies, she’d still her grandfather’s pain, and finally prove herself worthy of the McCracken family? A real family to love, one that would love her back?

“They do say no one rejoices more in revenge than a woman, don’t they, now?” Sean said at last. “But the Major’s no player in the current game, even if he is still alive. Why should one bother with the likes of him?”

She swallowed, hard. She should have expected it, yet another rejection from her Irish family. Well, no matter. She’d done all the rest by herself, and she’d not shy away from doing this one last thing alone, either.

With a nod, she turned away and began to trudge down the street.

But before she had taken three steps, a weighty hand on her shoulder drew her back.

“For Mairead’s sake, though, and for Aidan’s, I might be persuaded to spend a few hours looking for yon Major,” Sean said. “That whoreson refused my sister even the small comfort of cutting a lock of hair from the head of her own true love before hanging him dead, didn’t he, now? And turned him into a figure of contempt, rather than the martyr he was, all with a few lies whispered in the right ears. What idiots, to believe a man such as Aidan McCracken would ever betray his men.”

A grim smile slashed across his face. “Perhaps such a fiend deserves the fate a mere
cailín
has in store.”

The bond of common purpose tightened around her then, almost as strong as the ties of kinship she had felt for Sean in their youth.

“And Ireland will soon have need of a daughter who teaches her enemies the price of betraying her,” Sean continued. “One who can do more than just breed, nurture, and give over her men to the republican cause. One ready and willing to exact vengeance upon its worst enemies. Might you be such a daughter, Máire O’Hamill?”

For the first time in a long time, Fianna felt the hint of a smile tugging at her lips. Sean had not come to England simply to raise money for the poor, then, had he? A wily man, this newly rediscovered uncle of hers. Was he bent on political reform? Or did he think to organize another armed revolt?
 

No matter. He’d not turn her from her own purpose. At least not yet.

“Perhaps I might put my hand to your cause,” she said, her tone a tempting drawl.

A dark, satisfied spark brightened his green eyes. He gestured back toward the tea shop. “Then come, and I’ll tell you why I’m here.”

But Fianna remained where she was. “I’ll be more than ready to help you, Sean. But only after you’ve first helped me.”

She reached out a gloved hand and squeezed his arm in a viselike grip. “I need to deliver God’s justice to a killer,
Seanuncail
. Find Christopher Pennington for me. If not for my sake, then for my father’s. So he may rest in the peace he deserves, with the glory of a hero, not the shame of a turncoat.”

Sean looked down at her hand for a long moment, then back up to her face. Slowly, the hand of his other arm reached out to cover her own, clenching until she thought her fingers must surely break under the pressure. But the nod of acquiescence he gave left no room for any feeling but elation.

Christopher Pennington would not remain hidden much longer. Not with both Fianna and her uncle now on the hunt.

CHAPTER SIX

Kit should have been home, preparing for his meeting with Theo and Uncle Christopher. But instead, he found himself again at the door of number 12 Seymour Street, eager to find out if Fianna Cameron had found a clue in the
Army List
he’d lent her. He had the excuse of returning for the book, of course, but perhaps he should have send a note inquiring whether his visit would be welcome. If Ingestrie hadn’t left yet for his daily rounds of the clubs, would he think Kit had designs on his mistress? It wouldn’t do to get the fellow’s back up, or he might find himself in the midst of a ridiculous duel. Perhaps he should send round a boy with a note?