by Bliss Bennet
Kit paced in front of the window. “Ingestrie threw her over, you know. Tossed her barely enough coin for passage back to Ireland, then abandoned her to make her own way home.”
“Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. If they had more than a spoonful of brains between ’em, Parliament’d send the Irish back to their own cursed shores, each and every one.”
“Well, there’s one who’s not returned to her own country,” Kit heard himself say before the rational part of his brain could think better of the words.
“What, has the whore wormed her way into the arms of another unsuspecting young cub already?” The Colonel’s eyes narrowed. “Into yours?”
Kit crossed his arms over his chest. “Why do you take against her, Uncle? Is it simply your general antipathy for the Irish? Or has she done you some particular harm?”
“Is shooting my nephew, my own flesh and blood, not reason enough?”
Kit stared at his uncle, his stomach sinking to hear the suspicions he’d not allowed himself to acknowledge voiced by another. “You think Ingestrie’s mistress and the woman who fired upon me may be one and the same?”
Uncle Christopher frowned. “I don’t know, not for certain. But given what I’ve heard, it’s certainly possible, don’t you agree? Is she the comely wench of whom you spoke, the one in search of an army officer?”
Kit nodded.
“And the pistol with which you were shot—are the rumors that it is in your possession true?”
Kit just strode to the door, calling for a servant to bring his greatcoat. He reached into its pocket and retrieved the firearm, then placed it on the table in front of his uncle.
Uncle Christopher took it up, his bony fingers tracing over the long steel barrel. “Christie & Murdoch, if I’m not mistaken. Elegant, they were, those Doune pistols. Favorites with the officers of the Highland regiments.”
Leaning over the table, Kit asked, “Highland? Its owner was a Scot, then, not an Irishman?”
“A Scot by birth, but an Irishman by choice,” his uncle murmured, his finger tracing over the inscription.
“You know this pistol? And its owner?”
“Aye, Christian, I do.” The Colonel’s eyes lowered before Kit could make out what hid in their depths. “Or at least I did.”
“Who, Uncle?”
The Colonel raised his eyes to Kit’s. “Aidan McCracken. The leader of the Antrim rebels during the rebellion in ’98. Mad, he was, and wild, that Scot, believing he and his fellows could bring about in Ireland what the colonists had done in America. As if the ignorant and bigoted Irish would ever join with any men not loyal to the Pope.”
“But it was a woman who shot me, not a man,” Kit said.
“McCracken lost his life in the conflict. But firearms live on, long after their rabid owners have been put down.”
Kit’s mind raced. “The woman who shot me—she’s a relation of this McCracken’s, you believe?”
“There were rumors that the fool had lain with the daughter of an Irish crofter, and had gotten a child off her.”
Fianna Cameron, the bastard child of a dead rebel and an impoverished Irish girl? Kit’s hands clenched. In anger or in sympathy? He hardly knew.
“And this relation of McCracken’s—she meant to shoot you, then, not me? But why would she wish you harm?”
His uncle tapped a finger against the pistol’s inscription. Tá na téada curtha go húr agus cloisfear í. “McCracken thought himself so clever, to have translated their motto into Gaelic. But I soon learned its meaning.”
“Their motto? What motto?”
The Colonel pointed to a letter on the table beside his bed. Kit retrieved it, then handed it to his uncle and sat down in the chair beside him.
He thought his uncle would open the letter, but instead he tapped his forefinger against the paper’s seal, imprinted in a round of green wax. Kit bent down to examine it more closely. The seal consisted of an oval surrounding an elaborate harp, with two banners, one inscribed “IT IS NEW STRUNG AND SHALL BE HEARD,” the other “EQUALITY.”
Kit looked up at his uncle. “There’s a harp on the Irish flag, isn’t there? But I don’t recall it bearing such a motto.”
“It doesn’t. These words have nothing to do with any valid government, Kit.” His uncle’s voice hardened. “They’re the rallying cry of the group McCracken and his cronies founded. The United Irishmen. Those bloody treasonous rebels.”
Kit’s finger traced the edges of the wax seal. “But what has any of this to do with Fianna Cameron?” he asked, his voice remarkably even given the growing dread roiling his gut.
Uncle Christopher pulled the letter from Kit’s hand. “There are rumors of a movement to resurrect the group. And a plan to take their fight beyond Ireland’s shores. Here, to English ground.”
Kit shook his head. Another of his uncle’s unsubstantiated fears? Or was there something real behind this latest claim?
His doubt must have shown on his face, for his uncle grabbed his arm and drew Kit close. The man’s eyes bored into his. “Talbot told me, Kit. Earl Talbot, the former Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He fears there’s a plot to assassinate someone, someone high up in the government. And he wants your help to stop it.”
“My help?” Kit jerked back in his chair.
“Yes, your help. I told him of your political leanings, and assured him you’d be willing to use your contacts among the radicals to help sniff out the plotters.”
Kit’s eyes narrowed. “You wish me to betray my friends and allies?”
“No, of course not! No Pennington would ally himself with those who would use violence to bring about political ends. But surely not all the men of your wider acquaintance have such qualms. Or the women.” His uncle leaned forward in his chair, bringing his face closer to Kit’s. “Take that treacherous wench who shot you. If she’s still in London, and she’s the child of Aidan McCracken, you can be certain she’s at the heart of it. Follow her, find out with whom she associates, and I’ll pass on the information to Talbot.”
“I don’t wish to be impertinent, Colonel,” Kit said, his boot tapping against the floor. “But if Fianna Cameron is a political assassin, why would she wish to kill you?”
Uncle Christopher looked down at his hands for a long moment, then raised his eyes to Kit’s. “Because she thinks to take the right of the state, and of God, into her own weak hands, before going on to more important prey.”
At Kit’s puzzled frown, his uncle leaned forward, his fist pounding against the table. “Vengeance, Kit! Vengeance. Because it was I who oversaw the hanging of that damned traitor she likely called father.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Can’t go out a-charing for one morning, but what hussies must be a-comin’ and ’ticing away me own poor boy to the pub!”
“Hussies? Who you be calling a hussy?”
Fianna awoke with a jerk, her breath catching in her throat. Angry voices—where? Her eyes darted about the room.
“You know right well what I mean, Sukey Timms. Turn me own family against me, will you? Get along with you, afore I tear yer precious hair out.”
“You gonna take that, Sukey? Pitch into ’er now!”
Outside. The voices came from outside, from the alley below. No one was accusing her. Fianna rubbed a hand against her throat, urging the race of her pulse to slacken.
Even now the women’s quarrel must be ending; she heard no more screeching, or even the sounds of a scuffle, but only the slap of shoes against the cobbles. She reached out to pull up the sheets that she’d kicked off the bed. No need to borrow trouble from a crowd of charwomen, not when she had a quarrel of her own with which to deal.
Fianna dressed quickly, girding herself to face an opponent far less craven than Sukey Timms.
But when she emerged from her own room, she found the sun-filled apartment empty.
“Kit?” she called, stepping into the drawing room. The only answer was a note resting on the mantel. F—I’ve
an errand to run. Back by midday. —CP, he’d written, in a bold, slashing hand.
She ran her thumb over the edge of the foolscap, fretting again over the question that had kept her awake until she’d finally fallen into a troubled sleep near dawn. Why had she responded so strongly, so unthinkingly, to Kit Pennington’s kiss?
Some foolish part of her longed to believe that no man could kiss a woman with such passion if he cared nothing for her. But all her prior experiences with the other sex suggested that neither moral nor rational faculties held much sway when base lust controlled the reins. No, a man could all too easily woo with hot kisses in the evening and betray with cool detachment in the morn.
And if she remained until this evening, he’d surely expect her to lie with him. A dangerous prospect, given how something weak and craven inside her yearned for the sweetness of his touch, even now, knowing how likely it was he suspected her. No, far better to take the letters and disappear into the teeming London streets, leaving Kit Pennington and his innocent, boyish charms far behind.
She was moving down the passageway, considering what she would take with her, when she realized the one error in her plan. Kit Pennington still had her father’s pistol. She couldn’t leave without the flintlock, the only memento of Aidan McCracken besides his letters she’d ever had.
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 d
eath? 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.”
