A Rebel Without a Rogue (13 page)

And yes, there went Ensign Farmer, right on cue, leaning over the wooden counter like a fish ensnared on a line. Kit held his own body still, refusing to give in to the same compulsion. Damn them both for fools.

“Please don’t apologize, Ensign. Of course a man as busy as yourself hasn’t the time to examine
all
the lists.” Miss Cameron laid a gloved hand atop Farmer’s ink-stained fingers. Would the familiar squeeze she gave them leave the boy as addlepated as the last clerk she’d enthralled?

“If I might just look at the older records myself? I’ve come so far, you see, and my poor mother is so very distraught. . .”

Ensign Farmer bit his lip. “I truly wish I could help, ma’am. But I’m not allowed to bring members of the public behind the counter.”

Fianna’s lowered lashes, so dark against her pale cheeks, hardly fluttered; her quiet sigh raised her small but enticing bosom only the slightest bit. But her subtle machinations proved quite enough to entice the hapless ensign.

“I suppose—I might bring the ledgers here? If you wouldn’t mind standing while you examine them?” he asked, as if she, not he, had the right to grant such an indulgence.

“What a wonderful idea, sir. How clever of you to think of it!”

The clerk slowly backed away from the counter, unable to tear his eyes away from the demure look of adoration with which Fianna gifted him. Only after his backside caught the edge of a desk and sent a pile of papers flying did he turn to search for the ledgers in question.

Kit could not stop himself from smiling a little at the poor man’s discomposure. When he turned to Fianna to share the joke, though, all he saw was a frown. Why would a woman so skilled in manipulation not show some triumph, not even the least bit of pleasure, at her success?

“Here are the ones from the 1790s, ma’am, one for each regiment,” Ensign Farmer said as he returned with an armful of dusty books. “Are you certain you don’t know his regiment?”

“Unfortunately I do not,” Fianna said as she examined the words scrawled on each cover. “Only that it was stationed in Ireland in 1798.”

Ensign Farmer frowned. “In Ireland? Oh, I do wish you’d said so earlier. Ireland’s an entirely different matter, indeed.”

“Different in what regard, sir?” Kit asked.

“Why, before the Act of Union in 1800, troops stationed in Ireland were paid for not by the English Parliament, but by the Irish one.”

“And the significance of the distinction?” Kit asked.

“I’m afraid, sir, those muster rolls are not kept here, at the War Office, but at Dublin Castle.”

Fianna’s face fell. “Do you mean I’ve come all this way, only to discover the information I need is right there, in my own country?”

“Oh, I hope not, ma’am! Surely the records must have been transferred here after the Union. Perhaps Ensign Timms will know where they’ve been stored.” Farmer gazed toward the back of the office, where another man sat scribbling.

Kit snatched up a piece of foolscap and scribbled down his direction. “Perhaps you might send a note, informing us if you come across them, Ensign?” Tossing the pencil on the counter, he took Fianna’s elbow. He’d not spend another hour kicking his heels in this drafty, dusty place, watching yet another young clerk succumb to Fianna’s far-too-compelling charms.
 

The sound of the ensign’s sighs dogged them until Kit yanked the door closed behind him. How long would they have to prolong this wild goose chase before he could catch her in a falsehood? And how many more smitten clerks would she leave in her wake?

As they left Horse Guards and made their way toward St. James’ Park, Miss Cameron pulled her hand free of his arm, presumably to retie her bonnet ribbons. But she did not retake it as she fell back into step beside him. “If the War Office is to be of no aid, perhaps the regimental agents should be my next line of inquiry. Do you know if there is a place where such men typically congregate?”

Her tone held none of the honey she’d poured out so freely to the clerks at the War Office. Why was her tone far more brusque, her words more direct, when she spoke to him, a man whom she’d agreed to bed? Did she guess he was growing suspicious? Or did she simply believe him already so in her thrall that no further effort on her part was required?

“I’ve not the least idea,” Kit bit out, taking her hand and placing it back upon his arm. Ah yes, petulance was always so very charming.

They walked in silence for some minutes, Kit taking care to keep his gaze straight on the pavement before him. Even if he turned his head, the deep poke of her bonnet would likely hide most of her face. But he’d rather not give her any more hints of just how easily she might beguile him.

They’d come to a stop at Charing Cross, waiting for the crush of traffic to lessen. After a few minutes, he spied an opening and stepped forward. But she pulled heavily against his grip, her slight weight still enough to jerk him back from the road.

“Fianna?”

She made no answer, just stared at a raucous circle of red-coated soldiers blocking the walk before them. One of the men laughed as he held a bag over his head, just out of reach of two small, grimy, barefoot creatures clambering before him. As one of the urchins jumped and swore, the soldier tossed the sack to one of his fellows, over the child’s head.

With the boy’s attention on his prize, he must not have seen the boot the first soldier intruded into his path. The redcoat holding the bag laughed even louder than the first as the boy tripped and fell heavily to the pavement. His smaller companion raced to his side, throwing a protective arm about him.

But the first boy would have none of it. Popping up quick as a jack-in-the-box despite the trail of blood flowing from the scrape on his forehead, he raced to confront his new tormenter. “
A thabhairt ar ais, car ar oineach!
” he cried, his skinny arms flailing to little avail.

Fianna jerked at the words, her hands fisting in her skirts. What, did she mean to launch herself into the midst of a street brawl? Kit reached out an arm and pulled her behind him.

At her cry of protest, he stepped forward himself, jerking the contested bundle from the second soldier’s grasp. He’d not stand by idle and watch children be tormented. Especially not by a soldier. Uncle Christopher had drilled it into him that it was a soldier’s duty to protect, not to harm, the innocent, something he’d taken for granted until Peterloo.
 

The soldier whirled, his grin changing to a snarl as he realized the sack had been taken not by a fellow redcoat, but by a stranger. Kit dropped it and held out a placating hand, offering peace but ready to curl fingers into a fist if the man proved belligerent.

Before the soldier could utter a protest, though, Fianna Cameron had slid between them. She raised her hand and whipped a biting slap across the man’s beefy cheek.

“How dare you bedevil a poor child so!”

The soldier raised a slow hand to his face. Dazzled by the pain of her blow? Or by the beauty of the woman before him? The tussle had knocked the bonnet down her back, revealing her dark curling hair, cheeks ablaze with ire, eyes wide with scorn.

Kit’s gut tightened. He had thought this woman cold, without passion?

The soldier who had tripped the boy—an officer, much to Kit’s disgust—stepped to their side of the circle and laid a quelling hand on his subordinate’s shoulder. “My apologies, ma’am. We’d no wish for our little joke to upset a lady’s sensibilities.”

The lieutenant’s self-assured smile faded as Fianna turned her disdain on him. “And what of the child’s sensibilities?”

“Sensibilities? A lowly sweep? Surely, ma’am, you jest.”

“Besides, he’s an Irisher,” offered the soldier she’d slapped. “Everyone knows they don’t feel as deep as we do.”

“Do they, now?” she muttered, pushing her way between the two men to crouch beside the unkempt children.

The boys’ eyes darted between her and the soldiers, each narrow chest heaving from their exertions. Defiance and fear warred over their sharp features. Would he have to protect her not only from a troop of soldiers, but from these feral children, too?

Fianna, though, seemed undaunted by the boys’ sullen glares. Holding a handkerchief in one outstretched hand to the injured one, she tossed her head in the direction of the soldiers. “
Car ar oineach
, indeed.”

Startlingly white teeth flashed in the midst of that grimy face before a small hand reached up to cover it. But the hand could not hide the laughter that sparked in the boy’s eyes.

“
Shit on honor
,” she translated, before reaching out to dab at the blood on the boy’s brow. “As everyone knows His Majesty’s soldiers are all too wont to do. Every Irisher, that is.”

“See here, now, ma’am,” the officer began, belligerence edging his voice. “There’s no call to besmirch—”

“No call for arguing with a lady, Lieutenant,” Kit said, using his body to block the man from stepping any closer. “Or harassing hardworking children. You’d do better to gather your men and return to your duties.”

The man glared, but took a step back, clearly reading the implicit threat in Kit’s crossed arms and narrowed eyes. “Your servant, sir,” he offered, with the briefest of bows.

Kit kept his eyes on him as he gathered his fellows and hustled them back in the direction of Horse Guards. Only after the entire troop had turned the corner did he pick up the sack he’d dropped by the side of the street.

“Me soot,” the boy clutching Fianna Cameron’s white handkerchief against his begrimed forehead cried. He abandoned the scrap of linen to grab the heavy bag from Kit. “Master ’ud whip me sore if I’d lost it.”

“Does he beat you, your English employer?” Miss Cameron asked, taking a step closer to the child. She looked ready to rebuke said employer with as much vehemence as she’d used to slap the soldier.

“Oh, not regular-like, miss, not like some,” the other boy answered with a shake of his head. The soot that flew from his hair had Kit forcing back a sneeze. “But there’d be no coins for our supper without the soot to sell. Put it in the ground, farmers do, Lord knows why. Not me place to ask, not if I gets me dinner at the end of the day.”

“Best run along, then, and see your precious cargo safely where it belongs,” Kit said, laying a gloved hand on the boy’s lean back.

The child gave a quick nod. Hefting the sack over his bony shoulder, he took the hand of his smaller companion and scampered off in the direction opposite that taken by the soldiers.

“The boy may have forgotten his manners, but I certainly haven’t,” Fianna’s low voice whispered in his ear. “Thank you, Mr. Pennington, for intervening on that child’s behalf. It is more than many a gentleman would have done, especially when the child in question is Irish.”

Kit bent down to retrieve the handkerchief the boy had dropped, returning it to her with a cautious smile. “I have no jewels to offer you, Miss Cameron, but a new handkerchief is well within my means. I fear the soot on this one will be impossible to remove.”

“Perhaps. But it will serve me well as a talisman. A reminder of the casual, workaday cruelty of His Majesty’s army. Especially toward those of us from Ireland.” She folded the linen carefully before placing it inside her reticule, closing it with a quick snap.

Kit doubted Fianna Cameron had need of any such reminder. Animosity as biting as hers surely stemmed from some act far more brutal than the unthinking teasing of a pair of poor sweeps. What had English soldiers done to her people, her family?

To her?

And had his uncle been the soldier responsible?

Kit shook his head, banishing the traitorous thought. No Pennington would ever harm an innocent, especially a Pennington as honorable as his uncle Christopher. If his uncle was the major for whom she searched, she must simply have the wrong man.

He swore under his breath as Fianna once again began walking away without taking his arm. He couldn’t afford to leave her alone, not for a minute, not until he’d had the chance to take steps to ensure his uncle’s safety.

Kit rushed across the street to catch up to her, thanking the heavens he’d been wise enough to write to both Theo and Benedict this morning. Surely one of his brothers would have enough family feeling to answer his summons without demanding all the whys and wherefores beforehand. Whys and wherefores he was strangely reluctant to share before he understood just what game the woman beside him played.

So far, he’d been able to stand his ground against the strangely enticing aura she seemed able to summon at will. But the crusading, vulnerable Fianna she’d just revealed—that Fianna had the potential to make him forget himself entirely.

Yes, having a brother beside him would help him remember what he owed himself and his family. Especially his uncle, who had sacrificed so much for them all.

He quickened his pace, forcing his eyes not to stray to hers. It simply didn’t matter what sacrifices Fianna might have been driven to make, or why. Not if those sacrifices brought danger to one of his own.

CHAPTER TEN

Fianna’s ungloved finger traced down the column of army agent names listed in the
Post-Office Annual Directory for 1821
. Such agents served as go-betweens for gentlemen who wished to purchase cavalry or infantry commissions and those who wished to sell out. If Major Pennington had left the army, he might have sold his commission through such an agent, and said agent might have a record of his current direction.