A Rebel Without a Rogue (31 page)

“Bold enough to ask for your help, in spite of the harsh words with which we last parted,” she said.

He frowned. “Not coin for the passage home? I’ll ne’er believe young Pennington’s cowed a brave O’Hamill.”

“No, not coin. Only a place to stay. A pallet on the floor will do, if you’ve a blanket to spare.”

“For the child of my sister? A blanket, mayhap even a pillow, for as long as she needs them.” His lips caught somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “Lord knows I’d not wish any kinswoman of mine ill. But far better to suffer a broken heart than to turn a blind eye to one’s duty.”

“Duty?”

“To one’s country and one’s family. You’ve come to help our cause, just as you promised.” He wrapped her hands in his two rough palms and squeezed. “And just when we’d thought all lost.”

The eagerness animating his face sent her stomach tumbling. She’d come to ask his help in hunting Major Pennington, not to become entangled in whatever schemes he had afoot. How could she have forgotten the bargain she’d made?
 

Best to gather all the facts, though, before refusing him outright. “Just what is it that you wish me to do, Sean?”

“You sacrificed so much, Máire—your name, your family, your very virtue—all for the chance of killing a man already dead.” He leaned forward, his eyes kindling with passion. “But what if that sacrifice was not all in vain? What if it freed you to strike a blow that truly mattered for your country?”

“A blow against what?”

His eyes narrowed. “Say rather against whom.”

“Killing, Sean?” Fianna drew her hands from his. “I’ve little skill with firearms, not even my father’s.”

“You have Aidan McCracken’s pistol with you? Where?” Sean knelt by the bed and jerked open her bag, rooting around in its contents without regard for her cry of protest. His face lit with the zeal of a martyr as he shook the firearm free from its wrappings and raised it to the light. “How fitting, for Aidan’s pistol to fell his most fervent enemy!”

“What enemy? Sean, who are you targeting?”

“Why, no other than the Butcher of Ireland himself. Castlereagh.” The name spit from his mouth with as much vehemence as if it were spread with rancid butter.

“Viscount Castlereagh? The British Foreign Secretary?”

“Foreign Secretary now. But he had the gall to call himself Chief Secretary of Ireland in 1798. Was it not Castlereagh who gave the orders then to quarter troops upon the people, to steal their horses and carriages? To demand forage and provisions from the starving populace? And then, did he not put down the rebellion with the brutality of a savage? And was he not responsible for this damned Act of Union, with its false promises of greater rights for Irishmen? Any true Irish patriot should be glad of the chance to send the bastard to his grave.”

“You wish me to shoot Castlereagh,” she said, her voice as dispassionate as she could make it.

“No. As much as you might relish such a task, Máire, I’ll be reserving that right for myself.”

But the thought of Sean committing murder, rather than herself, gave her no relief. “Then what is it you want of me?”

Sean returned to the table and grasped her upper arms. “Our most comely men have been trying to turn the head of a housemaid, any housemaid, in his employ. To use her to gain access to Castlereagh’s house. But there’s no Irishwoman amongst them, and the English ones all look on us with scorn.”

Her brows furrowed. “And you wish me to try for a post?”

“That’s one idea. Or you might befriend a footman or a groom in the bastard’s employ.”

“Befriend? Or seduce?” Fianna jerked free of her uncle’s grasp. “Just what is it that you’re asking of me, Sean?”

“Come now, surely it won’t come to that. Not if you use the talents with which the good Lord has blessed you. Your comely face. Your beguiling ways.” His expression hardened. “And if any man offers you insult, he’ll be repaid tenfold. The O’Hamill honor will be avenged. On all accounts”

A sudden, sick fear darted into her mind. “Did you avenge the O’Hamill honor when my father violated your sister, Sean? Did you betray Aidan McCracken to the English?”

Sean’s ruddy face paled. “Christ Jesus, Máire! How could you think such a thing? I loved Aidan, loved him like a brother.”

“But he debauched your sister, did he not? Got a bastard on her, never married her. Why was that not a smirch on the manhood of the O’Hamill?”

“Damn it, Máire, it was Aidan! He was fighting for us, not crushing us under his boot. His love for Mairead did us honor.”

“But mine for Kit does you none?”

“It’s not love that you feel,
cailín
,” Sean answered, the line of his mouth grim. “Or it won’t be, not once you know the falsehoods that rogue’s been whispering in your dainty little ear.”

Fianna dropped back in the chair. “Major Pennington?”

Sean leaned against the table, his fit of temper already put behind him. “Discovered it yourself, did you? And left him over it? Ah, there’s a wise child.”

Fianna caught back a curse. “How long have you known?”

“That yon Pennington lied to you? A few days now. Doubted old devil Pennington cocked up his toes without my hearing of it, despite the tale young Christian spun you. Spent some time tipping a glass in the taverns about town, I did, the ones where old soldiers like to gather and talk of old times. Places no
cailín
would find a welcome. Took some time, but at last I turned up a fellow who’d served under the Major—no, Colonel, he is now—in the Peninsula.”

“And you did not think to tell me?”

“Am I not telling you now?”

Now, days later. When it best served his purposes. Fianna leaned forward, hands gripping the edge of the table. “You know where he is, don’t you?”

“As well as young Pennington does, to be sure.” The sourness of her uncle’s smile would have curdled milk, if there’d been any on the table.

“Then tell me, and let me be done with it,” she bit out from between clenched teeth. Sean’s reminder of Kit’s falsehood had stung. As he damn well knew it would.
 

“Ah, and are you forgetting our agreement so soon,
cailín
? My help for yours, was it not?”

“The Major’s direction, in exchange for beguiling Castlereagh’s servant? A harsh bargain, even for an enemy,
Seanuncail
, let alone a member of one’s family.”

Sean’s eyes narrowed. “Any person unwilling to devote himself—or herself—to the cause of Irish freedom is no kin of mine, Máire.”

“The crow’s curse on you, Sean. You’re as blindly devoted to your murderous purpose as Kit is to his family.”

“Quick, you are, to realize it. Quick enough, no doubt, to track the Major down without my help, now that you know he still lives. What would it take? A day or two? A fortnight, mayhap, if you were truly unlucky?”

Fianna jerked from her chair and crossed to the window, staring out at the milling mob. So many people in St. Giles. But not a one, not even an uncle, that she could call her own.
 

She felt him come up behind her, his hand falling heavily on her shoulder. “But why wait? Does not this pistol sing to you of vengeance, if only you’ve courage enough to grasp it?”

Fianna stared at Aidan McCracken’s pistol clutched in her hand. When had she taken it off the table?

She turned, caught by eyes so very like her own. She’d wanted so desperately to belong to a family. The McCrackens. The Penningtons. Even, perhaps, the O’Hamills.

But belonging always came at a cost, did it not?

“I’ve courage enough,
Seanuncail
,” she whispered, tilting her chin high.

He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Of course you do, Máire. Of course you do. Are you not an O’Hamill?”

He strode back to the table and snatched up a pencil. But he paused before placing it to paper, his green eyes boring into hers. “And if I give you Pennington, you’ll give me Castlereagh? Or do all in your power to help me bring him down?”

Fianna swallowed back the bile rising in her throat and nodded.

 
As Sean began to scratch out Major Pennington’s direction, the voice of Fianna’s grandfather echoed in her ear. Not Grandfather McCracken, but her other, barely remembered O’Hamill one.

Never forget, Máire, the three greatest rushes—the rush of water, the rush of fire, the rush of falsehood
.

Who would feel the greatest rush from falsehood today? Kit? Sean?

Or herself?

You are kind, sir, to offer her your hand, and the protection of your name. But we cannot in all good conscience recommend such a course. Tho’ it pains me to write it, Maria was ever a strange, quiet, unfeeling child, tainted as she was by her Irish Catholic upbringing. My father also fears her moral sense is not all that it should be. The last letters we had from her hint that she thinks to take God’s will into her own hands, wreaking vengeance against those she believes have wronged her. And what is to say that someday she will not regard you as in the same light, and turn against you? Nay, do not trust your future happiness to the keeping of such a woman.

Now, you will say she is passing lovely, but do but remember your Proverbs:
Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised.

“Ho, sir! Have a care!”

The cry from above jerked Kit to a halt, just in time to prevent his imminent collision with a ladder. His eyes hitched to the workman perched at its top, bucket and cloth in hand. Devil take it, he’d almost brought a pail of dirty water crashing down on his head. And on the damned letter he’d received just this morning from Fianna’s aunt, the contents of which had absorbed so much of his attention that he’d not paid the least heed to his surroundings. How had he walked all the way back to his rooms without taking notice?

Kit waved a hand in apology, and the workman responded in kind. “Gen’lemen,” the man muttered, shaking his head as he returned to the washing of his windows.

“Has the beauteous Miss Cameron taken to writing you love notes, Kit?”

Benedict stood leaning against his front door, his stern face struggling to hold back a grin. His brother had witnessed the entire ridiculous episode, had he? Well, at least word of his absentmindedness would go no further than his own family.

“Back to try your hand at drawing Miss Cameron again, are you, brother?” Kit asked, shoving the note deep in the pocket of his greatcoat. He’d no wish to share its cruel contents with anyone, family or no.
 

Benedict shook his head as he followed Kit inside. “Can’t seem to make any of my portraits come right since I’ve been back in London. Viscount Dulcie’s been bruiting it about that an artist who’s lost his touch must go all the way back to the beginning, and take up still life again. As if I were a child with his first drawing master! Bah.”

“Then why are you here?” Kit asked as they climbed the stairs.

“A summons from the esteemed head of our family.”

Kit halted in front of his door. “From Theo? What reason did he give?”

“None. But since he wished to meet here, not at Pennington House, I’ve hopes that it’s you rather than me who’s being called onto the carpet.” The corner of his brother’s mouth turned up in the hint of a smile. “What have you been up to, brother of mine?

Oh, only informing the head of his family of his intentions to wed a woman entirely unsuitable for a gentleman of his rank and station, as no doubt Theo would rage. But damn, he was tired of stuffing his desires into the confines of the mold his family set before him. Why should Theo care if a third son of a viscount married outside the
ton
? No matter whom Kit married, within a generation or two his descendants would only be a distant branch of the noble line.

But care Theo did. Enough, it would seem, to interrupt his round of dissipations and call in person to make his objections known. And to gain the higher ground by making himself right at home in Kit’s absence. For there his brother sat, in the middle of the drawing room, arms crossed, eyes narrowing as he watched his younger brothers enter.

But of Fianna, there was no sign. Had she gone out before Theo’s arrival? Or had she hidden herself in a back room?

“Theo,” Kit acknowledged, tossing his hat on the table. “Apologies for not being home to receive you. Benedict tells me you wish to speak with us?”

“I did, yes.”

Kit gritted his teeth as Theo gestured to them to take a seat, as if he were lord and master here rather than Kit. Benedict sat, but Kit remained on his feet.
 

His elder brother leaned back in his chair. “But it seems there is no longer a need. I’ve taken care of the problem, and with far less difficulty than I had anticipated.”
 

“What problem?” he asked.

“The problem of your unfortunate infatuation with Miss Fianna Cameron. Did he inform you, too, Benedict, that he intended to wed the wench?”

“Marriage, Kit? Truly? I’d not the least idea.” The look in Benedict’s eyes, equal parts surprise and concern, had Kit clenching his fists.

“As head of the family, Saybrook had the right to be informed first,” Kit said. “Despite his less-than-admirable performance since taking on that role.”