A Rebel Without a Rogue (9 page)

But as Kit searched for a likely messenger, Ingestrie himself stepped onto the pavement. His face the picture of petulant ire, he waved toward two men who followed, urging them not to dawdle. Hauling heavy, hastily packed trunks on their shoulders, the men pushed past Kit to drop their burdens with grunts of relief into a waiting dray, then turned back, presumably for another load.

“Hold there, driver! I’ve need of your services,” Ingestrie shouted as the cabbie Kit had hired began to pull away. Catching sight of Kit, the viscount gave a puzzled frown, as if he couldn’t quite recall who this other gentleman was, though he knew that he ought. “Done with that cab, are you, sir?”

Kit nodded. “Setting off on another voyage already, Ingestrie? Benedict told me you’d just arrived in London.” Would Miss Cameron be accompanying the young lordling on what looked to be a journey of no short duration?
 

“Benedict?” Ingestrie’s eyes clouded, then widened. “Ah yes, Pennington’s brother, ain’t it? Good chap, Pennington. Give any brother of Pennington’s a drink, I would, ’cept it’s all packed up in the cart there.”

“Removing entirely, are you? Surprised to hear it.”

“Yes, so was I when the pater called me up on the carpet,” Ingestrie said. “No need to rusticate, not over a mere wench. But would he listen? Never saw a man take anyone into such dislike, and for no cause whatsoever! Not as if I’d bring her to Almack’s, or Gunter’s, or any place a respectable girl’s likely to frequent.”

“That’s the last of ’em, yer lordship, ’cept for the ones belonging to the lady,” one of the carters interrupted as he sidled past them to add another box to the pile.

Ingestrie gave an impatient yank to one of the many capes of his greatcoat, pulling it free from where it had caught under his collar. “Be sure you return for the others, man, after you’ve delivered these. And don’t allow her to abscond with them; they’ve all got to go back to the blasted dressmaker.”

“Miss Cameron does not accompany you, then?” Kit asked, working to mask his surprise.

“Haven’t I just been saying the pater’s taken against her? And how he got wind she’d accompanied me here, I’ll never know. Traveled steerage on the way over, far away from his sharp eyes, didn’t she? But somehow fathers always know, damn their eyes.”

Ingestrie threw a coin in the direction of one of the carters, then bounded up the steps of the waiting carriage. “I envy you, Pennington, having only an elder brother to answer to. Especially one who enjoys his pleasures as much as does yours. No need to worry about the antecedents of one’s lady friends, not with a fellow like Saybrook as the head of one’s family.”

Kit scowled, but the obtuse fellow paid no heed. Hanging from the open window of the hack, he called, “Wish me luck in finding a girl as lovely as Fianna back in Staffordshire. I dare say she’ll have an easier time finding a new companion than I, more’s the pity. Do you think Saybrook might take an interest? Oh, no need to scowl so, just because you’ve not the blunt to keep her.”

Kit banged a fist against the carriage door, sending the startled lordling flying back into the squabs. “Drive on, growler!”

“Impudent dandiprat,” he muttered as he made his way up the stairs to Ingestrie’s former lodgings. Miss Cameron was no kin to the viscount, but he’d left her behind with as little compunction as if she’d been a soiled napkin, or a wine bottle emptied to the dregs. No matter her own failings, Fianna Cameron was well rid of such a blackguard.

The carters hadn’t closed the door behind them; it swung open at his touch. Miss Cameron sat perched on top of a trunk in the otherwise empty room, her thin brows arching over a small volume she held open in her ungloved hands. No sign of tears, or even of anger, marred her pale skin; from the sight of her, one would never have thought she’d just been abandoned by a feckless lover. Indeed, dust motes stirred in the shaft of late morning sun surrounding her, almost as if they danced at her fey command.

Some strange part of Kit wanted to dance, too, almost as if knowing she was no longer tied to Ingestrie had freed something wild inside him, something he’d not even known he’d been keeping under tight rein.

Mere lust, most likely.

He welcomed the feeling, even while recognizing the need to restrain it. No one in the family had ever spoken of it, but they all eventually realized that the late Lord Saybrook had suffered from a venereal disease. And ever since Kit had realized the true cause of his father’s decline into death, he’d found himself indifferent to, put off, even, by the fairer sex. That said indifference was proving to be of limited, not protracted, duration reassured him no end. Yet Ingestrie, damn the insolent pup, was certainly correct that he was in no position to take on a high-flyer. More importantly, he’d promised himself never to allow his baser urges to put him at risk of becoming diseased, as his father had been.

Even in the face of temptation as alluring as Fianna Cameron.

His footsteps echoed against the newly uncarpeted floor as he made his way into the empty room. At the sound, she looked up, her wide green eyes drawing him toward her.

“Mr. Pennington. How kind of you to call.” She closed her book and set it on the trunk beside her. Not the
Army List
he’d lent her, but some other, weightier tome.

Kit cleared his throat. “Miss Cameron. I came to inquire about your search. But I fear you have more important matters occupying your time.”

“Indeed, sir, you find me woefully unprepared for entertaining.” Her gaze swept over the empty room as if she could not quite believe how quickly it had been denuded of its furnishings. But her voice betrayed no unease. “If you’ve no objection to using a box for a chair, you are more than welcome to keep me company whilst I await the carter’s return.”

Instead of sitting on the box, which rested against the far wall, Kit took up a stance beside the trunk on which she perched. The sunlight lit the back of her head, where her dark, thick hair was dressed in a decorous knot. Tiny wisps along her hairline had pulled free, though, drawing his eyes to her nape. If he blew a puff of air across it, would she react to the glissading curls?

Shaking his head free of the whimsical urge, he tucked his hands behind his back. “Did the
Army List
prove of help, ma’am?”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Pennington. Although it included several men of the same surname, none of them were the man for whom I search.” She sighed, drawing the cloth of her dress tight across her small breasts. “If only you had served in the military, you might advise me on how to go on.”

Kit forced his eyes back to her face. “I may not have served myself, ma’am, but I do have friends amongst those who have. Horse Guards should be your next stop, I believe. The records of every man who has served his country are stored there, in the War Office.”

“The War Office? But will they allow a woman, particularly an Irishwoman, access to such records?”

Kit frowned. As the son of a nobleman, he took it for granted that any government official would be more than happy to help him with any inquiry he might pose. But of course, the same would not be true for a woman such as Fianna Cameron. “Perhaps not. But if I inquired on your behalf, I could send you word of my discoveries. If you’ll give me your future direction,” he ended awkwardly.

“Ah, there’s the rub, sir. I’ve little idea where I might find myself tomorrow, and none at all where I’ll be at some unspecified date thereafter.” Remarkably even, her voice. And her face, unsmiling but unruffled. As if being abandoned by a callow protector were as expected as the daily rising of the sun.

Perhaps for someone like her, it was.

Still, a despicable excuse for a gentleman, Ingestrie. “Did the viscount not provide adequate funds to see you home?” he asked, his hand reaching for his pocket. Did he have any banknotes with him?

Her ungloved hand reached out to stop his, then jerked away as another electric spark shot between them. She tucked her hand back in her lap. “More than enough for the mail to Holyhead, and the steam packet back to Ireland. Apparently ‘the pater’ wants this wild Irish girl as far away from his errant heir as possible.”
 

His eyes narrowed. “You’re not going, though, are you?”

“I am not going. Not until I’ve completed the task I came here for. I’ve not sacrificed so much only to be put aside now.”

Had it been a sacrifice, suffering the attentions of a puppy such as Ingestrie? Her beauty struck him as without age, yet nothing about her suggested the first blush of youth. Nor that she’d suffer the foolishness of a child such as Ingestrie with any degree of pleasure.

“Will you search out another protector, then?” he asked. Why? What she did with herself was certainly no concern of his.

“That would be the wisest choice for the likes of me, would it not?” Her eyebrows arched, challenging him to deny it.

“What if I were to offer you another choice?” he heard himself say.

“Another choice?” The brittleness of her laugh scraped against his ear. “What, do you offer yourself up for the role? I’ll confess, I’d not thought you the type. You seem remarkably unmoved by my womanly assets.”

“You mistake me, ma’am,” he bit out, clenching his hands behind his back. “The choice I offer does not involve trafficking in those, as you so charmingly describe them, womanly assets. In fact, it would require you to keep them under proper restraint. But it would offer you a safe place to live, and honest work. If, that is, your only goal in coming to England is to find the man who will complete your family. But perhaps I mistake the matter. Even after you’ve finished your search, do you intend to continue on as you’ve begun? Taking up with someone a bit more experienced than young Ingestrie next time, perhaps?”

Miss Cameron’s lips thinned. Ah, at last, a crack in her icy calm. A minuscule one, but a crack nonetheless. Even that regal raise of the chin, meant to convey how wide of the mark his ill-bred barbs had flown, could not mask the intensity of her words when she finally deigned to speak.
 

“My only goal, sir, is to repair my broken family.”

“Then allow me to conduct you to a place from which you may do so free from the importuning of persons who do such little credit to the title of Englishman as does my Lord Ingestrie.”

With a sweep of his hand, he invited her to take the first step through the open door.
 

Only after she’d accepted, crossing to the landing with a mien as lofty as any queen’s, did he think to question the wisdom of becoming even more entangled in the affairs of Fianna Cameron.

As the carriage wheels bumped over cobbled pavement, Fianna cursed herself for a thrice-bedamned fool.

Hadn’t she used her head-turning looks to bend a man to her will dozens, nay, hundreds of times, during her quest for retribution? Of late, she’d relied on their power so often she hardly had to think, deploying a gaze here, a touch there as instinctually as a general deployed his troops on the battlefield. Distasteful, indeed, even loathsome at times, to do it, but such qualms had never kept her from her purpose before.

Why, then, had she scrupled to turn the force of that beauty on the man who sat across from her in the hack?

She’d certainly beguiled far uglier men. That fat old turnkey from Kilmainham Gaol, for one, the one who’d taken Father’s money but then not given him the food or books he’d promised in return. And those three other rebels imprisoned alongside her father, who’d all pledged to stand with him in protest against English oppression, but then, as the weeks dragged on into months, begged their relatives to petition for their individual releases. She’d been all of four when that had happened, but she’d waited until time, and her looks, had ripened, then flirted and flaunted until she had each ancient apostate panting for a mere glance from her. How satisfying, to betray each in her turn, just as they’d betrayed her father, and then to write to Grandfather McCracken, sending word of the punishment God had seen fit to visit upon each sinner.

Only by using the one execrable endowment with which the Lord had seen fit to gift her had she been able to bring such treacherous men to justice, to prove herself worthy of the McCracken name.

Why, then, did she not have young Mr. Pennington begging even now to make her his mistress? To carry her back to his own rooms, where she might find some further clue as to the whereabouts of his uncle, instead of off to God only knew where? Or if she couldn’t bring herself to use him, why did she not tell him to instruct the hack to take her to St. Giles, where Sean O’Hamill had taken lodgings?

Fianna stared from under lowered lashes at the man on the seat opposite, willing his eyes to hers. But unlike every other male she’d deliberately enticed, Kit Pennington did not stare back. Instead, his gaze stayed fixed on the book she’d been reading back in Seymour Street, flipping through its pages with eager interest.

How was she to beguile a man who regarded her with such indifference? Nay, who barely regarded her at all?

She rustled her skirts, even gave a little cough. But still his eyes did not wander.