A Rebel Without a Rogue (12 page)

Might not have forgotten the suspicion that had flashed through his brain when she’d called him—

“Christopher.” Her whispering lips traced a path up his jaw to the lobe of his far-too-sensitive ear.

Yes, there, she’d said it again, just as she had on the front steps—not
his
given name, but his uncle’s. His uncle, who’d been a major when he’d served with distinction in Ireland during the Rebellion of 1798. A conflict about which he would never speak. A conflict in which this woman had shown inordinate, angry interest.

Could the man whom she sought be his uncle?

He pulled away from her, searching for the truth in her face.

Fey green eyes, sharp as the needles on a pine, stared up at him, enticing him to set aside all suspicion, to tumble back into their drugging depths.

His uncle had been right to warn against the terrible power of the
leannán sídhe
. For even now, with doubt teasing at the corners of his brain, every fiber in his body urged him to crush her back within his arms and never let go, to bind this fairy mistress so that she might never offer the balm of her cool lips to another.
 

If it had only been a matter of himself, he might even have done it.

But if she meant to ruin the good name of his uncle—

Should he summon the watch? He had no real evidence that she wished to harm Uncle Christopher, only the surety of his intuition. Many a London constable would be all too happy to throw a lowly Irishwoman into gaol on little else than the word of a viscount’s son. But Kit’s sense of justice would not allow it.

No, first, he needed to find out more. Not only
if
his uncle was truly the man for whom she sought, but
why
she was in search of him. Her words had led him to assume she sought her natural father who’d abandoned her, an assumption she hadn’t denied. But what if she had a more malevolent reason for her pursuit?
 

Bloody, bloody hell. What if she’d been the one who’d shot him at the Crown and Anchor? Not intending to harm him at all, but mistaking him for his uncle?

“Mr. Pennington. Kit.” He felt her shrug beneath his hands. “You’re hurting me.”

He looked down, confused. When had his fingers curled so cruelly about her arms?

He released her, but then caught her back again, his arms pulling her tight to his chest. One palm cradled her head close against his shoulder, keeping her from watching his face as a tangle of suspicions whirled through his brain.

To ferret out the secrets of such a guarded woman, he’d have to keep her close to hand. Not as close as his uncle’s bedchamber, of course. But perhaps as close as his own? That’s what she’d assumed when he’d told her he’d provide for her, that he meant for her to be his mistress, wasn’t it?

The thought of having her beneath him sent a shiver, part fear, part desire, racing down his spine. But it would be sheer madness to actually take up with a woman he suspected might be intent on harm. If he extended the offer to be her new protector, but did not immediately partake of her charms, how long would he be able to keep her from suspecting his true motives?

And if word got out that he’d invited a woman to take up residence, rumors about him would once again run rife through the
ton
. He could just hear Dulcie and his cronies now, trading tales about the youngest Pennington’s new paramour. Or perhaps they’d even say he’d made up with the one who had shot him. . .

Would such rumors damage his political aspirations beyond repair? Not if he could keep her presence a secret from the gossips. And from Uncle Christopher. And Theo.

But even if word did spread, Kit would sacrifice more than a seat in Parliament to ensure his uncle’s safety. Nothing was more important than family. Nothing.

He clenched his hands against Fianna’s back, steeling himself for the task ahead, then stepped away from the enticing creature in his arms.

“It seems I’m not as much of a gentleman as I might wish, at least where you are concerned, my dear,” he murmured, looking down as if abashed. His body might be only too happy to cooperate in such a deception, but it would all be for naught if his expression gave his doubts away. He reached out and took her hands in his. “Will you let me take care of you, Fianna?”

He waited, his body tensed.

Until at last her fingers gave a wordless squeeze of consent.

Kit Pennington was not living in his family’s London home; the knocker had not been on the door at Saybrook House when she’d gone there in search of Major Pennington the day she’d arrived in London. No, Kit’s lodgings lay only a few streets away from Ingestrie’s. Yet they might have been a world apart, so different did they seem. And not only because Kit’s lay in Mayfair, and Ingestrie’s in less fashionable Marylebone. In fact, the furnished rooms the viscount hired had a decided air of style about them, with their rich red walls and gilt-embellished picture frames, a style the forgiving shadows of lamp and candlelight only enhanced. But in the bright glare of day, the cracking paint and worn upholstery, the stains from spilled wine and burns from countless careless cigars, were harder to hide. Ingestrie’s penchant for leaving his soiled clothing and other belongings scattered about only added to the dilapidated air. Fianna had been glad to wander London’s streets each day in search of Major Christopher Pennington, if only to escape the dispiriting pall that fell on her whenever she found herself alone in those rooms.

But as soon as she stepped inside Kit’s chambers, an unfamiliar serenity settled about her. The woodwork in the two main rooms, painted in a dark green that might have been oppressive, instead warmed. During the day, the room would likely be awash in sunlight, given its tall windows topped only by the smallest of swags. Green-and-white striped upholstery, and a lighter green stripe on the papered walls, contributed to the open, airy feel. Though she stumbled over a footstool—covered with fabric of the same color and pattern as the carpet below it, masking it from her eyes—the room still made her feel as if she were walking amidst a stand of springtime trees, drinking in the promise of new life, new growth.

How ironic, that he would bring a harbinger of death to such a vitally alive retreat.

“My brother’s doing, not mine.”

She frowned at Kit as he walked into the room and set her valise on the edge of the carpet.

“Benedict, not Theo,” he answered, gesturing to the room around them. “My middle brother, the artist of the family. Though of late he’s been pouring his energies into portraits, he’s not above raising a brush to a wall if the color of a room’s not to his liking.”

“You share chambers with him?” she asked, careful to keep her distance. How foolish she’d been, throwing herself at Kit that way, with no clear aim in mind. And to allow it to go on so! With the exception of Ingestrie, her rule had been to allow the men she cozened only a taste of her favors, enough to entice but not satisfy, so that they would grant her whatever she wished in the vain hope of winning more. That it had been Kit, not she, who had been the one to break their embrace had disconcerted her more than she cared to admit.

Only the memory of Grandfather McCracken, his bent finger tracing over and over the letters that inscribed his lost son’s name in the family Bible, could persuade her to accompany the far-too-self-possessed Kit Pennington to his rooms.

“No, these are Benedict’s rooms, not mine. He urged me to exchange with him after the shooting, so that my attacker would not be able to find me so easily.”

Her back stiffened. But when her eyes darted to his, nothing in his face suggested any hidden meaning lay behind his declaration. No, he still did not suspect her.

He moved toward a window, pulling the curtain shut against the darkening evening. “And when he discovered the light for painting was even better in the attics at Pennington House than it is here, he vowed he’d never return. You’ve no cause to worry; he’ll not bother us.”

It was not Benedict Pennington who caused her hand to stroke over and over her sleeve, chasing wrinkles that even she could not see. Why had all the boldness with which she’d kissed Kit earlier suddenly abandoned her? Fianna removed her gloves and set them on a side table.
 

“Are you the youngest Pennington, then?” she asked, perching on the edge of a sofa. She’d not be the one this time to make the first move.

But he remained standing, his hands clasped behind his back. “No. In addition to my two brothers, I have a younger sister, Sibilla. Aunt Allyne will soon be traveling into Lincolnshire to bring her up to town.”

“For her debut? Your mother is unable to oversee it?”

“We lost our mother some years past.”

“And your father, too, as your brother now holds the title?”

He gave a short, sharp nod.

She tamped down the unwelcome stab of sympathy. “You rely on Mrs. Allyne, then, for counsel and support? Have you no other elder relations upon whom you may call?”
An uncle, perhaps?

“Oh, the stray distant cousin or two,” he replied, turning back to her with a shrug. Sitting down in the chair opposite, he leaned forward, elbows perched on his knees. “What of yourself? Is your father still living?”

A vision of a much younger Sean, holding her small body high above the crowds so she might bear witness, shot through her mind. Her own father, leader of the Antrim rebels, standing tall and calm by the gallows. Nodding to Major Pennington, who had overseen his imprisonment and trial. Ascending the scaffold, attempting to address the people who had gathered not just for the spectacle, but in tribute to his leadership, his courage, his friendship. Smiling as the rope was put around his neck.

And behind him on the Market Hall spikes, the heads of four other rebels, sightless eyes staring out over the crowds, flies lazily buzzing about the festering flesh. . .

Máire—
no, Fianna, your name is Fianna
—jerked to her feet. May the cat eat her, and the devil eat the cat, if she were fool enough to share such a memory with the likes of Kit Pennington.

Ever the gentleman, Kit stood as well. But something stronger than mere civility had him taking a step toward her. “Is there something wrong, Fianna?”

“I find I am rather tired this evening,” she said, folding her hands tight below her breasts.

“Then perhaps we should retire early. May I show you where you’ll sleep?”

Somehow she nodded, even as her mouth grew dry. Would he remain with her the entire night? Or take himself off to other pursuits, as Ingestrie often had after taking his pleasure of her?

Taking up her valise, Kit guided her down the passageway. Opening a door at its end, he gestured her inside a simply furnished room. As she stepped inside, her eyes went straight to the plain white dimity curtains hanging from the half-tester bed. A bed only large enough for one.

“If you find yourself in need of anything during the night, my room is just across the hall,” Kit said. With a stiff bow, he retreated into the passageway, closing the door gently behind him.

CHAPTER NINE

“My sincerest apologies, sir. I can find no record of a Major John Pembroke in any of this year’s muster rolls.” Ensign Farmer bobbed his head with red-faced deference not in Kit’s direction, but in Fianna’s. “Have you asked the Clerk for Widow’s Pensions? Or examined the
Army List
?”

Pressing folded hands into the small of his back, Kit suppressed a grimace. The ensign was the fourth clerk at the War Office to whom they’d been shunted off, all in search of a man whose existence might, if his suspicions were true, be only a figment of Fianna Cameron’s cunning imagination.
 

Given said suspicions, he should be pleased, not chagrined, at the continued inability of the War Office’s clerks to uncover any sign of the man whom the Irishwoman continued to imply was her natural father. Yet some soft part of him clearly wished the assumptions he’d initially made about her search to be true, wished her a righteous innocent rather than the creature of guile he feared she must be.

It hadn’t been his aristocratic connections that had persuaded anyone at the War Office to aid them in their search, as he’d assumed, but rather the power of Fianna Cameron’s strangely compelling countenance. At the sight of disappointment on her narrow, fey face, each War Office clerk had moved a little closer, as if he would gladly offer himself as sacrifice if he could but lift the burden of dashed hopes from her dainty, fragile shoulders. That tiny moue turning down the corners of her mouth even affected Kit, though he’d watched her don it, then remove it now several times in a row.