A Rebel Without a Rogue (20 page)

Tossing Kit’s note aside, she hurried toward his bedchamber.

He’d not brought many of his personal effects here from Pennington House, it seemed, just a few changes of clothing, a razor and a comb, a brush and some blacking for his boots. His pockets contained no notes, no papers, only a few loose coins and one round bone button, blue thread hanging from its holes. A small cake of hard soap lay in a saucer by the ewer, the cloth beside it damp and redolent of not only the wintergreen of the lather, but the scent of Kit himself. Spicy, pungent even, yet suffused with something that urged her to bring it close to her face and breath deep. Frowning, she set the temptation quickly aside.

She expected a man who valued loyalty to family so highly to keep
some
memento of his relatives about. But no letters, no keepsakes, no cameo portraits cluttered the night table or the small desk by the window. Certainly no books borrowed from a relative named Christopher, with the lender’s name and direction conveniently penned on the flyleaf.

And no flintlock pistol.

No excuse, then, to linger by the bed, wondering if its tangle of sheets meant that his sleep had been as troubled as hers. She closed the door behind her with a sharp click.

Perhaps in the drawing room? But the only things in the desk seemed to belong to Kit’s brother: a few invitation cards addressed to
The Honourable Benedict Pennington
, bills for paints and canvas, charcoal sketches of unclothed women and unfamiliar countryside scenes. Tamping down her frustration, she placed each back precisely where she’d found it.

Where else, where else? Her eyes scanned the room. Might it be tucked away behind some books? Kneeling by the shelf, Fianna tipped out volume after volume, fingers reaching into dusty, empty crevices before setting each back in disappointment.

 
As she levered herself up with a hand placed on the table beside her, her fingers grazed a spine of brown kid. The words
Debrett’s Peerage,
embossed in gold leaf, sent her pulse racing. How like the arrogant English, to proclaim in print the noble lineages of their ruling families. Charlie Ingestrie had certainly cherished his copy, but it hadn’t revealed anything about the whereabouts of Major Christopher Pennington when Fianna had consulted it.

This looked to be a newer edition, though. And might not a copy owned by a Pennington be annotated with more detailed information on the family, as Ingestrie’s had about the Talbots?

Kneeling back on the carpet, she thumbed open the book’s leaves, turning past the engravings of the coats of arms, past the dukes and marquesses and the endless lists of earls, to the small section of viscounts. And there, on page 279:
 

ARTHUR PENNINGTON
, VISCOUNT
SAYBROOK
, and Baron Pennington, of Much-Easton, and a Baronet; Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire:
born
3 March 1756, succeeded his father Arthur, late viscount, 10 March 1801;
m.
, 22 Oct. 1791, Mary, da. and co-heir of the late Sir James Hammond, of Sleebeck Hall, co. Pembroke, esq., and has issue,— 1. THEODOSIUS,
b.
16 Sept. 1792; —2. Benedict,
b
. 14 March 1795; —3. Christian, 3 May 1797; —4. Sibilla, 15 Feb. 1802.

Someone had inked in “
d.
14 May 1821” in the margin by the viscount’s title, bringing the listing up to date. Less than a year it had been, then, since Kit had lost his father. Some soft part of her hoped the man’s death had been peaceful. Watching a parent die in violence and shame certainly had little to recommend it.
 

Fianna’s finger brushed gently over Kit’s name and the date of his birth. Not even twenty-five, he was, with two elder brothers both younger than her own thirty years. She sat back on her heels, shaking her head. As if the difference in their ages were all that kept them apart.

Fianna pulled her eyes away from the viscount’s sons, finger skimming to the bottom of the page in search of her real quarry.

And there, at the very end of the entry, the list of the previous viscount’s issue:

2. CHRISTOPHER, colonel in the army,
b
. 28 Feb. 1759.

This book, like Charlie Ingestrie’s before it, named no estate, no property where the Major—no,
Colonel
now—might be found.

But it did not matter. For there, penciled into the margin, the letters and numbers blurring before her eyes:

d.
25 Sept. 1818.

A parade of damning memories marched through Kit’s mind as he strode from Bloomsbury back to Mayfair, taunting him for doubting his uncle. Fianna’s insolence to the soldiers outside the War Office. Her railings against the Englishman who’d written such a partisan account of the Irish Rebellion. Her fiery tirade against English oppression, so intemperate that even the Irishman O’Hamill had warned her against her outspokenness. Confirmation, each one, of the likelihood of the Colonel’s suspicions.

In the face of such evidence, what else could he do but assent to his uncle’s plan? Trick Fianna, use her as she’d been using him, to lead him on to bigger game.

But what if his uncle were wrong? Or only partly right? What if Fianna were the illegitimate daughter of the rebel his uncle had been charged with executing, but had nothing to do with the plot Talbot had discovered? What if her only goal was personal, not general, justice?

Kit yanked off his gloves, slapping them with frustration against his thigh. To think he should be pleased by the thought of a woman intent
only
on killing his uncle. His grim laugh echoed up the stairwell as he ascended the steps to his lodgings.
 

He paused outside the closed door, his palm pressed against its frame. By which did he wish to be greeted—an empty room? Or a raven-haired woman whose eyes always hid the truth?
 

Shaking off his reluctance, Kit pushed open the door and strode down the passageway, marshaling his arguments for the confrontation that was sure to follow. But the sight of stately Fianna Cameron sprawled in an untidy heap on the drawing room carpet, the volume of
Debrett’s
he’d falsely amended held slack in her hands, stifled the words in his throat.

When he’d taken up his pencil to falsely record his uncle’s death, he’d imagined a Fianna happy to read it, relieved to have the burden of taking Christopher Pennington’s life lifted from her shoulders. But no smile, no tears of joy animated the white face of the real Fianna; she stared at the bookshelf beside her, her eyes vacant, unblinking. Even the sharp snick of the door closing behind him did not jar her from her eerie trance. Blank, numb, she sat, as if she’d discovered a member of her own family had died, rather than one of his.

He’d prepared himself to face the familiar Fianna, the cold, enticing
leannán sídhe
bent on his uncle’s destruction. Not this wounded, broken creature, slumped on the floor like a rag doll left behind by a careless child.

Surely his uncle had been mistaken. For how could a woman intent on political assassination look so entirely undone by the news of a personal opponent’s death? Colonel Christopher Pennington, not some high-ranking government official, must have been her only target.

Even so, he should be angry, incensed at this woman who had done nothing but lie to him. But all he felt was a strange, keen tugging, deep within his chest.
 

He knelt beside her and lifted the book from her unresisting hands.

“He was the last one, your uncle,” she whispered, so softly he could barely make out the words. “The final one to pay for betraying my father. I left all the others alive, forced them to live with their shame, as I’ve had to live with mine. For his executioner, though, death alone would serve. But I left it too long—”

A sob broke through her words, stifled by the hands that caught her bowing head.
 

“Fianna,” he asked, his head tipping down to hers, “your father. He was Aidan McCracken?”

A cry—part disbelief, part pain?—tore free from Fianna’s throat. Then, her head began to shake from side to side, her unbound hair whipping against his hand. “And I thought you so easy to deceive, so entirely devoid of guile. But you knew all along, didn’t you, Kit Pennington? That I was the one who aimed that pistol at you, the one who put a bullet in you. You, an entirely innocent man.”

Kit shook his own head. She’d not think him so innocent if she discovered his own deceptions.

“And even after making such a horrible, unforgivable mistake, I still lied to you, still used you.” Her voice rasped with self-loathing. “And for what? So I might rain retribution down on a dead man?”

He fought against the weight of his own lie hanging heavy in his gut. The only words that came to mind were not his own, but those from a divinity training he thought he’d long left behind. “Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”

“And did the Lord take vengeance upon Christopher Pennington? Did your uncle die in pain, in shame? Will his name go down in history as a betrayer of his own people, as my father’s has? Or did he die a good Christian death, his family all beside him? Did he meet his end with fortitude, certain of God’s forgiveness for his crimes?”

The bitterness of her laugh, so pained, so despairing, broke something deep inside Kit. No one should ever have cause to feel so lost, so without hope.

He reached out, taking those small hands—so cold, despite the pool of sunlight in which she sat—between his own. He’d had to do it, had to hurt her, if he was to keep his uncle safe.

“I’m sorry,” he said, knowing even as he uttered the apology how inadequate it must sound.

Her head jerked up at his words, her green eyes glazed with unshed tears. “Sorry? For what do you have to be sorry, Kit Pennington? For being born a legitimate, privileged Englishman, instead of a poor Irish bastard? For burying your uncle with the honor due a soldier, not the ignominy of a traitor? For having a family that loves you?”

He cupped her face in one hand, catching the drop hovering on the edge of her dark lashes with his thumb. “For your losses, my heart. For all your terrible losses. And for my being so utterly incapable of setting them right for you.”

She shuddered beneath his palm, tears coursing down her face. Tears that he’d put there, he and his damned lead-pencil lie.
 

Kit pulled her tight against him, rocking her like a babe as she sobbed. How in the hell was he ever to make this right?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Warm. So very warm, the arms about her back, the cheek nestled against her temple. The chest rising and falling beneath her palm. How long had she sat with him here, down on the drawing room carpet, quiet, anchored, so blessedly empty?

Fianna burrowed her face further into the soft folds of a neckcloth, unwilling to break the spell. No, she’d simply keep her eyes firmly shut, floating, drifting, breathing in the salt of her tears, the starch of his linen, the sharp, soothing mint of the soap with which he’d washed. Time enough later to wonder what she would do, what her life could be, without the lodestone of vengeance urging her ever forward.

Her arm, caught between his body and hers, twitched with numbness. She willed it still. Kit would wake soon enough.

But he must have felt her stir. His arms tightened about her for a moment, but then, all too quickly, fell slack.

She stifled the urge to pull them back. But as he raised his head from where it rested beside hers, an involuntary sound of protest must have croaked from her throat, for his hand immediately rose to cradle her face against his chest. They sat there together without speaking, watching a beam of sun meander across the green-figured carpet.

“Will you tell me about him?” he asked, breaking the long silence. “About McCracken? He must have been an inspiring person, to win such devotion from you.”

“Aidan McCracken. My father.” How strange, to acknowledge their relationship out loud. To talk of him with someone who had never known him. Someone who did not immediately turn away in disgust at the sound of his name.

“He was a kind man,” she said at last, her words coming stiff and slow. “He liked people, thought the best of them. Even after all the horrors he’d witnessed. Foolish, some said. But still, he was kind.”
Like you
.