A Rebel Without a Rogue

by Bliss Bennet

  If Kit continued to grant her that privacy.

  “Bah, the light’s going,” Benedict Pennington grumbled, kicking at the balls of paper scattered about his chair. “And not one halfway decent sketch to show for an entire afternoon’s work, devil take it. You’ve been far more productive, unpacking that. Now I can use it for my own books and prints.”

  “Do these belong to your brother, then?” Fianna asked, waving a hand toward the shelf behind her.

  “Our late father. Liked to keep abreast of all the political rumors bruited about town, no matter how ridiculous.”

  Might Kit’s brother be more inclined to talk now that the sun had gone down? Fianna donned her most ingratiating expression as she helped him pull a portfolio of prints down from the shelf. “What a kind brother you are, to bring them here for Kit. You must be a very close family.”

  “Nothing kind about it,” he replied, stooping to collect the discarded sketches. “Just wanted the clutter out of my studio.”

  “Ah yes, your brother did mention something about superior light in Pennington House’s attics.”

  “Yes, I’d finally got them all cleared out, and was just setting up my easel when Aunt Allyne demanded I hide this lot away up there.” Benedict kicked at the mostly empty trunk. “Been sweeping through Pennington House like a whirlwind, she has, trying to rid it of anything she deems the least bit objectionable before she allows our sister to take one step inside. Just imagine the gossip if she allowed Sibilla within a mile of a radical newspaper!”

  “Why bring them here, then? Why not simply toss them on the dustheap?”

  Benedict grimaced. “Should have. But if Kit found out, I’d never have heard the end of it.”

  “Does your brother take an interest in politics?”

  “Kit? Politics?” Benedict laughed. “My brother is far too quick-tempered to meet with success in that field, I assure you. Sibilla’s the only Pennington who shared our father’s interest in politicking. More’s the pity, as she’s a girl. Still complains that it was Kit, not her, who had the luck to be in Manchester during the massacre. As if anything about that infamous day could be considered the least bit fortuitous.”

  “Your brother was at Peterloo?” Mr. Wooler had commented upon that strange detail, too. Whatever had Kit been doing at such a place?

  It had been hard not to take grim satisfaction in the news from England during the summer of 1819, hearing that British soldiers had turned their weapons for once not upon her countrymen, but upon their own. That a peaceful gathering to hear radical orator Henry Hunt urge parliamentary reform had turned into a bloodbath had not surprised her in the least. But that the English newspapers had decried it, printing not only damning accounts, but engravings of unarmed women and children being cut down by English soldiers, had shocked her to her very marrow. What had Kit been doing there?

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Benedict said. “Growing up, all my brother ever wanted was to go for a soldier. And there he was, defending innocent Englishmen from the very men whom he’d always idolized.”

  “Kit wished for a military career?”

  Benedict nodded. “Army mad, for the longest time. Sucked up all that patriotic drivel about defeating Napoleon’s tyranny and bringing justice to the world as if it were mother’s milk. But Father refused to purchase his colours. Packed him off to university instead, to study for the ministry. Kit, dutiful child that he is, did not fight his fate. Takes loyalty to his family quite to heart, does my younger brother.”

  Her lips thinned at his derisive tone. “Unlike yourself?”

  “I find that, as a virtue, loyalty is often overrated.”

  “And justice as well?”

  “A lofty ideal, to be sure. But as with loyalty, more often boasted of than actually practiced. Particularly among the members of the upper ten thousand.”

  “And yet these two ideals form the very heart of your brother’s character.”

  Benedict Pennington’s jaw set. “Recognized that already, have you, Miss Cameron? You, though, seem a bit more difficult to read. I wonder—to whom do you owe your loyalty?”

  Ah, the man’s sharp tongue could lash out at someone besides himself, could it? But such attacks were easy enough to parry. “A courtesan’s loyalty is always to her current protector, is it not?” she replied, careful to keep her face turned downward in a pretense of brushing dust from her skirts.

  A long beat of silence followed, which he broke only after she had raised her eyes to his. “And Kit’s first loyalty will always be to his family.”

  Not to you, his crossed arms and stiff posture implied, without any need to speak the words aloud. For all Benedict Pennington scoffed at familial fidelity, he seemed remarkably protective of his young brother. And not only because the two shared a surname.

  How might her life have been different, if she’d been worthy of such family loyalty? If her mother had refused to give her up to Aunt Mary, refused to leave her behind? If Grandfather McCracken had allowed her to stay with them in Belfast, rather than sending her away to school, and then out to work as a governess? Might they have grown to care for her, despite her faults, rather than seen her simply a burden that duty required them to bear?

  She gave a light laugh, then bent to smooth out the crumpled sketches he had collected from the floor. “La, sir, you begin to frighten me. What, will your brother throw me over because I failed to adequately inspire your artistry?”

  “No, that fault lies entirely with myself, I’m afraid.” He moved to collect the rejected efforts, but she pulled them closer, grateful for the distraction they provided.

  “Not all your efforts are failures, sir. At least not the ones where you sketched from memory rather than from life. Look, this one of Kit, and this one, of the fashionable, animated fellow—someone from Ingestrie’s party, is it? Lord Dulcie? Why, he fairly leaps off the page.”

  With a grunt, Benedict Pennington swept the sketches back into an untidy pile, then stuffed them into a portfolio. “You flatter me, ma’am. The only place these will be leaping is straight into the dustbin. Now, the hour grows late, with no sign of my brother’s return. Shall I send a boy to the chophouse around the corner to procure our dinner? Or shall we brave the streets ourselves?”

  She answered by taking up her redingote from its peg in the entryway.

  Who was the bigger fool, she wondered as they made their way down the stairs. A man such as Kit Pennington, who believed in justice, and loyalty to family, with such youthful naïveté? Or a woman such as herself, chasing after justice in the hopes of catching hold of a family loyalty always just out of reach?

  Kit blew on his gloved hands, though it did little to warm them against the damp March chill. His afternoon had been spent better than his morning, dodging the raindrops as he arranged for extra footmen to be installed in Aunt Allyne’s house. Now, he could only watch and wait. Would Fianna take the bait he’d laid, and prove his suspicions warranted?

  He’d been skulking about for the better part of an hour now outside his own rooms, trying to appear as inconspicuous as possible as he waited for her and his brother to return from wherever they’d gone to procure dinner. He hadn’t been quite ready to share his misgivings about her with Benedict, not without any actual evidence of wrongdoing on her part. But Ben had answered his summons, and not demanded any explanations in return. A sign of fraternal loyalty? Or had the offer of a beautiful woman ready to serve as model been explanation enough for his forbearance?

  His breath huffed out, sending a cloud of amused steam into the icy night air.

  A low, sardonic laugh drew him back into a shadowy doorway. Yes, there, just turning down from Oxford Street, the dark figure of his brother, beside him the far smaller one of Fianna Cameron. Was it his fancy, or simply the fog swirling about their feet, that made it look as if she drifted above rather than walked on the cobbled pavement?

  Benedict turned the key in the front door lock, then ushered her inside. Kit paced, bea
ting his numb hands against his chest, resisting the urge to race up the stairs and hurry his brother along. This time, praise heaven, he had far less time to wait; within a few minutes, Benedict returned to the street, his quick steps taking him toward Grosvenor Square.

  A light flared in the window above, then moved deeper into the rooms. A part of him stubbornly believed that she’d remain inside, prove his suspicions unfounded. But when the light above snuffed out, and a tiny caped figure tripped down the front steps to the pavement, he pushed that obviously false wish aside.

  She did not seem to have the Army List in hand, though, nor the note he’d left with it, the note with instructions that it be returned to Christopher Pennington at 7 Curzon Street. A location far from Aunt Allyne’s actual Bloomsbury townhouse. Perhaps she’d simply memorized the address?

  Her small size and dark clothing allowed her to blend with ease into the evening shadows. It took all his attention to keep her in sight without alerting her to his presence, so much so that he paid little heed to the streets they walked. Yes, she headed in the direction he’d anticipated, skirting the edge of Mayfair, making her way on to Bloomsbury.

  To his surprise, though, she passed right by the turn that would take her to Curzon Street. Nor did she loop back after a few streets, realizing she’d missed her direction. No, she trod straight through Bloomsbury, then on into the City. Where could she be headed?

  His boots, not intended for such lengthy walks, had long set to blistering his heels when she finally drew up outside a nondescript building in Bishopsgate and slipped inside.

  He cursed when he caught sight of the coffeehouse’s sign swinging lazily in the wind. What the hell was she doing at the Patriot, a known haunt of radicals and reformers?

  If she’d come here to meet with someone, he’d best not scare the person off by trailing her too closely. He waited in a doorway across the street, his foot tapping out the minutes. When he could restrain his patience no longer, he followed.

  Something about the low-ceilinged house struck him as familiar, though to his straining eyes it looked no different from a dozen other such establishments he’d been to during his years at Oxford. After his experiences at Peterloo, he’d searched out the haunts of others who found the government’s actions there, and the coercive bills it passed to restrict public protests, intolerable. Peering through the clouds of smoke, he scanned the room.

  A few tables of idealistic gentlemen sat by the door. Some surely fired by the passion of youth to protest injustice, others drawn less by political reasons and more by the thrill of attending a potentially seditious meeting. A larger number of tables were occupied by older, hardened workingmen, men who’d be intent not on abstract justice, but on more specific political reform. Universal suffrage, most likely.

  And there, sitting in the shadows at a table far from the fire, the slight figure of Fianna Cameron, the sole woman in the room.

  She still wore her cloak, and had her back to the door. But there was no mistaking the proud, straight set of that spine, the stillness with which she contained her wary energy.

  No one sat across from her.

  He edged away from the door in case the person whom she planned to meet had yet to arrive.

  But before he could take up a strategic position at the bar, a large hand clapped him on the shoulder. “Pennington! Never thought to see a nob like yourself gracing our fair tavern.”

  The room’s noise would have swallowed up many another man’s words. But not those of George Abbington-Pitts. A thin man, but Abbie had a voice that could rival that of the brashest costermonger hawking his wares in the streets. Hadn’t Kit and Sam Wooler been taunting him about that very thing as they’d left the political meeting for the Crown and Anchor’s news room the night Kit had been shot?

  How far had Abbie’s cry carried? Kit darted a wary glance toward the depths of the room.

  Glittering green eyes stared back at him, unblinking.

  “Another time, Abbie,” Kit said, his chest tightening as he shrugged off his friend’s hand. “I’ve an important appointment to keep.”

  Abbie was clearly half cup-shot now, as he’d been that night at the Crown and Anchor. Still, the intoxicated were often strangely canny. Might Abbie, unlike Sam, recognize Fianna as the woman who’d shot Kit?

  Why should the thought give him such a hollow feeling?

  He pushed through the crowd toward Fianna’s table.

  He’d expected her to show guilt, or at least a hint of dismay, at the sight of him. But instead, she wore that impassive, imperious expression, the one that suggested he was merely another foot soldier summoned to hear her queenly command.

  His eyes narrowed.

  “You read my note,” she said with a quick nod. “But why did you not stay out of sight as I requested?”

  Kit frowned. She’d left him a note? What in hell was she about?

  “No lady should sit in a London coffeehouse unaccompanied,” he replied, deploying politeness to cover his confusion. “In fact, we should leave. Immediately.”

  She pulled back from the hand he offered. “Ah, but we’ve already established my lack of ladylike credentials, have we not? Why should I let such a paltry concern stand in the way of finding the man for whom I seek? Did I not write that my informant specifically instructed me to come alone? And now you burst in, instead of keeping hidden as I had instructed.”

  Informant? She’d come here seeking information—but about whom? Her mysterious father? Or Major Christopher Pennington?

  Her eyes swept the room, then narrowed as they returned to him. “You’ve frightened him off, no doubt.”

  Kit held out his hand again. “Oh, no doubt at all. So you should have no objection to leaving.”

  Her lips pursed. A small dart of satisfaction arrowed through him. Not used to someone who sparred against her scorn rather than apologized, was she?

  Before she could rise, though, Abbie pushed aside Kit’s arm and slid onto the bench opposite her. “No wonder you had not the time of day for me, Kit, what with this prime article awaiting you. Please, sweetling, tell me you’ve a sister just as pretty as yourself waiting around the corner.”

  Devil take it! Kit grabbed at his friend’s cuffs, jerking his hands away before he could capture Fianna’s. Leave it to Abbie, as arrogant as any aristocrat despite his father’s background in trade, to try to ingratiate himself with a woman even in the midst of a public coffeehouse.

  Abbie, like Sam, showed no sign of recognizing her. Could his suspicions be wrong?

  “If she’d a sister, she’d not want anything to do with you, you half-sprung lout. Take yourself off, that’s a good fellow.”

  “Now is that any way to treat a man whose life you’ve saved?” Abbie slung a careless arm about Kit’s shoulders, pulling him down to the bench. “At least do me the honor of granting me an introduction before banishing me from your lady’s presence.”

  Fianna stared with brazen directness straight at Abbie. “Saved your life? You must tell me all about it, sir.”

  Even the self-assured Abbie seemed momentarily bewitched by those compelling green eyes, for he paused instead of jumping immediately into his tale.

  Before he could begin, Sam Wooler rushed over to their table, waving a newspaper dangerously close to the sputtering candle. “I’ve already told the story to Miss Cameron, Abbie. Besides, we’ve far more important things to discuss before tonight’s meeting starts. Miss Cameron,” he added, his acknowledgment of her far more short and clipped than Kit would have expected.

  The usually friendly Sam folded his arms and frowned at Fianna, then at Kit. Kit glared right back at him. He wasn’t a child in need of Sam’s protection, or his disapproval.

  He stood, nudging Sam out of the way so he could again extend his hand. “Miss Cameron, I believe we must—”

  “Sam, how many times must I tell you how rag-mannered it is to barge in on another’s conversation?” Abbie interrupted, pulling Kit back down beside
him. He batted down the news sheet blocking his view of Fianna, then set his chin atop his steepled hands with an exaggerated sigh of longing.

  “Won’t you introduce me to your friend, Mr. Pennington?” Fianna’s expression remained serene, although amusement, and perhaps a hint of scorn, tinged her voice. Did she find Abbie’s immediate infatuation worthy of contempt? Or was it only his own vile temper that wished it so?

  “What a lovely voice you have, Miss Cameron,” Abbie said after Kit had made the introduction. “Nothing charms like the lilt of an Irishwoman’s voice, does it, now?”

  “Yes, Ireland,” Sam repeated. “I don’t believe the Union of Non-Represented People of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland allows women to join, Kit. Perhaps Miss Cameron should leave before the meeting begins?”

  Fianna’s green eyes narrowed. “Should only men be encouraged to throw off the fetters by which they have so long been bound? Is it not time for the clouds of error and prejudice to disperse for all parts of the Creation, female as well as male?”

  The silence that followed her impassioned pronouncement was broken by a slow, steady clap.

  “It is time, is it not, cailín, for the great nation of Ireland to set the example to her neighbors?”

  Kit jerked in his seat, fists clenching. The expression on the face of the man who approached signaled approval, not derision, but Kit’s eyes still narrowed when he realized who had spoken.

  Sam jumped up from his seat and held out a hand in welcome. “Welcome, sir, welcome. Kit, Miss Cameron, surely you remember our speaker for this evening. Abbie, may I introduce Mr. Sean O’Hamill?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “And this is the wretched state of the Irish population, and the manifold grievances under which they suffer. Absentee landlords; a ruinous collapse in grain prices; tithes levied only upon those who till the land, not the cattlemen and sheep masters who might better afford them; the most crippling of taxes falling upon those least able to pay them. And so I ask you tonight, good gentlemen, to offer what you are able in aid of my long-harassed and afflicted people. Support our efforts to gain equal rights for all Irishmen!”