A Rebel Without a Rogue

by Bliss Bennet

  “Don’t want the bandage pulling loose,” Benedict said, a glint of sympathy lightening the severity of his countenance.

  A raucous shout split the night, followed by a burst of male laughter. Light streamed from an upper floor; loud voices drifted down from open windows. Damnation! Was Ingestrie entertaining?

  Benedict’s head cocked toward the windows above. “Shall we come back another time?”

  In reply, Kit raised the knocker on the townhouse door.

  Voices blared and liquor flowed as Kit followed Benedict through the crush of warm bodies in Ingestrie’s rooms. How charming they were, ton gentlemen at play. Kit choked back his disgust as a clearly inebriated young fop tripped on the carpet, tipping half his glass down another’s back. The smell of fresh whitewash, mixed with the stench of spilled wine, made Kit’s head pound. How long would it take Benedict to run Ingestrie to ground?

  “Yes, Saybrook’s brother, the youngest one. Studying to be a parson—ha!”

  Kit stopped in his tracks. Damnation! What was the latest round of rumormongering saying of him? He edged closer to a crowd of young bucks laughing in the corner.

  “I’d just stepped out of the hall to fetch refreshments for Lady Butterbank—you all know how that woman loves to eat!—when suddenly, I heard the report of a pistol. A pistol, right in the middle of the Philharmonic concert. Why, I nearly spilled Lady B’s ratafia all over my waistcoat!”

  Kit snorted at the appreciative gasps of alarm. He wasn’t certain, but the storyteller’s voice sounded as if it might belong to Lord Dulcie, one of the ton’s prime gossips. Kit craned his neck, struggling to catch sight of the speaker.

  “There I stood, all agog, wondering if Napoleon himself had risen from the grave to lead one last attempt to invade England, when a hooded figure of the feminine persuasion rushed right by me and flew down the staircase.”

  “A woman?” one wide-eyed listener asked. “What of the shooter?”

  The speaker chuckled. “One and the same, my dear, one and the same! And imagine—I almost called out to ask if she required assistance! Why, I, too, might have fallen victim to her bloody reign of terror.”

  “What, was she your lover, too, Dulcie, as well as young Pennington’s?”

  The crowd around the viscount shouted with laughter.

  “Have you a taste for violent females, my lord?” Kit called, raising his voice so that it might be heard above the din.

  The crowd parted to reveal Lord Dulcie, dressed with a flair in marked contrast to the dishabille of the men around him. At the sight of Kit, a sly smile curved up the corners of his mouth.

  “Why, young Pennington, as I live and breathe! I would have sworn that lightskirt of yours had sent you to count the worms.”

  “My brother is not quite ready to stick his spoon in the wall, Dulcie, I assure you,” Benedict replied, his voice cold and tight.

  The viscount’s eyes narrowed. “All too ready, though, to stick his knife somewhere equally unsuitable, Pennington. And he almost a clergyman! For shame, sir, for shame.” Dulcie shook his head at Kit with mournful mockery.

  “That woman was not my lover,” Kit bit out, taking a step in the viscount’s direction. Wounded arm or no, he’d not let any man insult him, especially a dandy such as Dulcie.

  “Not your lover? Why else would she have shot you? Come now, you’ll not convince me the wench simply took exception to a poorly delivered sermon.”

  A restraining hand descended on his shoulder as Dulcie’s audience roared again with laughter. Kit turned to see Benedict give him a warning shake of his head.

  “Allow me to deal with my Lord Dulcie,” Benedict said in a low voice. “Ingestrie just made his way into the next room.”

  Kit glared at Dulcie, then turned back to his brother. The scowl slashing across Benedict’s face suggested that something more than an insult to Kit lay between him and the foppish viscount. Something quite memorable, if the animosity between them still flamed after all the years Ben had been out of the country.

  He’d almost forgotten how good it could be to have a brother at his back. Since their father’s death, the new Lord Saybrook had certainly not been in any shape to offer support, drowning his grief in wenching and wine. But Benedict’s austere expression promised that retribution would be swift.

  With a nod, Kit left Dulcie to his brother’s wrath.

  The door Benedict had pointed to led not to another parlor, but to a bedchamber, although the number of rowdy gentlemen it contained suggested anything but peaceful slumber. A young man held court here, the stiffness of his starched collar at odds with the lazy slump of his body against the mantel. Smiling, he waved one arm, mock conducting the chorus surrounding him as it swayed and chanted:

  And where are your maidenheads,

  You maidens frisk and gay,

  We left them at the alehouse,

  We drank them clean away—

  Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, Viscount Ingestrie, Kit presumed. Eldest son of Earl Talbot, the recently recalled Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

  As the chorus came to a rousing, if somewhat slurred, conclusion, his host caught sight of Kit. “And who might you be, sir?” he asked, his words deliberate and slow.

  Kit bowed. “Christian Pennington, my lord. You are acquainted with my brother Benedict, I believe?”

  “Ah, the youngest Pennington! Another man who has won out against sore affliction,” Ingestrie cried, raising his glass in tribute. “I survived the depredations of barbaric Ireland, and Pennington here endured the attack of a vindictive female. But where is your brandy, man? Someone bring this fellow a glass!”

  Kit refused several overflowing tumblers thrust in his direction. “Ingestrie. Might I have a word in private?”

  “Oh, oh, don’t let him foist his baggage off on you, Charlie!” a portly man called from the corner. “Last thing you need, a woman with a pistol!”

  “Ingestrie’d never be so daft!” another voice shouted. “’Sides, haven’t you seen the prime ’un he brung back from his travels?”

  “I’d take a clean Englishwoman over an Irish whore any day, even one with her own fire-arm.”

  “Ah, is yours so lacking, Pierson, you need a woman to bring her own?”

  Suggestive sniggers followed as Kit towed the half-inebriated Ingestrie out into the passageway.

  Best to be as quick and direct as possible, especially if Benedict was right about the sluggishness of Ingestrie’s wits. “I find myself in need of a man with a reading knowledge of Gaelic, sir. As you’ve just returned from Ireland, my brother thought you might be able to help.”

  Ingestrie gave an ungentlemanly snort. “I can’t even understand it when they speak the blasted words, Pennington. Never thought it worth the trouble to learn to read it. Besides, in Ireland, anyone who’s anyone speaks English.”

  Kit crossed his arms, struggling to contain his disappointment. Would he have to ask Uncle Christopher after all?

  Obviously impatient at having been pulled away from his guests, Ingestrie’s eyes wandered back toward the bedchamber. With a sudden start, he pulled himself away from the wall against which he had slumped, knocking Kit’s injured arm as he pushed past. Kit struggled to hold back a curse.

  “Fianna!” Ingestrie slurred, tottering down the passageway.

  Had he been thoroughly dismissed? But then Ingestrie flapped his hand in Kit’s direction and pointed down the hall. “Fianna might be able to help.”

  Kit followed Ingestrie’s gaze to see a woman—the only woman in the room—calling to someone over her shoulder. Her dark hair, unbound, spilled in thick, flowing waves down to her slender waist.

  An unexpected chill traced down his spine. A woman, in the midst of this rabble?

  “Brought her back with me from that godforsaken land across the sea,” Ingestrie proclaimed with drunken pride as he grasped the woman by the waist and turned her to face Kit. “Fianna, my very own wild Irish girl.”

  Green eyes, green as
a summer lake in shade, met his.

  Did the English hang attempted murderers as quickly as they executed rebels?

  Fianna’s heartbeat pounded in her ears as Ingestrie pulled her to his side. How had the man she’s shot found her? Had she been so mad with fear that she’d not sensed she’d been followed as she fled?

  Her mind detached itself somehow from her body, floating above, observing rather than participating in this fearful, deadly farce.

  She waited for the ringing denunciation, the outraged calls for the constable or the watch. But the man across from her remained blessedly silent. Did he truly not recognize her? Or did he only wait for a private moment to take her into custody?

  He hardly looked much older than Ingestrie, this man she’d shot, just shucking off boyhood, coming into the first bloom of his manly strength. It irritated her, the way his tousled blond curls, ripe for a woman’s hands, fell over his high forehead, though she kept her face impassive. His square chin and thin lips suggested a determination far more stern than Ingestrie’s ever would be, though she saw something sweet, untouched, lurking in the depths of his blue eyes. Easily hurt, this one would be, and not just by the pain of a bullet.

  Might she turn such innocence to her advantage? A sentimental tale of woe to explain her mistake? With the addition of batting eyelashes, and a gentle clasp on the arm, might she even keep herself out of gaol?

  “Anna,” Ingestrie said, his hand sneaking down from her waist to curve around the jut of her hip. “My friend Kit Pennington here needs a bit of the Irish translated. Told him you were just the chit for the job.”

  She’d shot a Pennington, then, at least. Just not the right one.

  Might he be a relation, though, of the man she sought? She’d paid little attention to the family lineage in Debrett’s Peerage, casting aside Ingestrie’s copy of the book when it gave no hint of Major Pennington’s current abode. Might this young man be the Major’s son? Or perhaps his nephew?

  Her mind raced, working to spin this disaster into opportunity.

  “Anna?” Ingestrie prompted, pulling her from her own thoughts. “Will you help?”

  “Of course.” She turned her head away so that his slobbering kiss, half thanks, half heavy-handed claim, landed on her cheek rather than her lips.

  Ingestrie gave her hip a squeeze before releasing her, reminding her just whose bed she was expected to warm after this evening’s guests returned to their own. With a quick nod, she grabbed a decanter from the table and filled his empty glass just before another of his boisterous friends pulled him back into his bedchamber. If her luck held, he’d be in no shape to partake of her charms after they all finally departed.

  If her luck held, she’d not be forced to leave herself.

  Drawing in a deep breath, she tucked her hand beneath this Mr. Pennington’s arm. The arm she hadn’t shot.

  When she needed to guile a man, she’d sometimes force herself to press her breast against the side of his arm, as if charmingly unaware of the distance between his body and hers. Yet tonight she refrained, worried that the pounding of her blood would give away her fear. Instead, she blinked her eyelashes and gazed up at him with her most artless expression.

  “Tell me, sir, how may I be of help?”

  So many fops and fribbles degenerated into a foolish stupor when she turned her face to them, their eyes widening as if they wished to swallow her whole. But this man’s gaze only narrowed.

  “Do you have a surname, ma’am?”

  If he only knew how many! And some of them even legally her own.

  “Why yes, of course, sir. Cameron, it is.”

  “Well, then, Miss Cameron. May we not remove from the din of Lord Ingestrie’s guests, so I might ask you about this?”

  Her father’s pistol lay in the man’s gloved hand.

  Kit’s injury must have addled his brain as well as damaged his arm. For a moment, he’d taken the woman standing before him to be a spirit or a wraith; surely, such strange, eldritch beauty could belong to no mere creature of bone and flesh. With skin as pale as moonlight, wide green eyes hiding behind a spill of sable hair, a veritable leannán sídhe she seemed, a fairy so ethereally lovely that a mere mortal would overcome any obstacle to win the chance to touch his lips to hers, lips as ripe with promise as a lush summer plum. He’d always scorned them, the foolish men in the tales Uncle Christopher had brought back from Ireland, sacrificing everything in their all-consuming passion for a mere fairy girl. A leannán sídhe might gift the man of her choice with artistic inspiration, but she’d demand his life force in recompense. What rational man would give up his very life for a mere woman, fairy or no, he’d challenge his uncle, his words redolent with adolescent disbelief.

  One glance at this haunting creature and suddenly Kit knew how utterly foolish his doubts had been.

  But then Ingestrie had groped her, and slabbered over her, and the illusion had fallen away. She was only human after all. Less than human, if one took the church’s strictures against whoredom as guide, a low wretch who’d forfeited the character of woman. He’d preached against such creatures once, with a discomfiting sense of his own hypocrisy, in the days before he’d become disillusioned with his divinity training.

  He’d come here tonight for information, not to judge anyone’s morals. But the memory of his father’s death from the pox—a disease he’d picked up from his own kept woman—still sent a shiver of disgust tracing across his frame.

  She must have felt it, for her hand dropped from his arm. Was that hurt that flared in those wide green eyes? If it was, blinking lashes and a teasing smile soon hid it from view.

  Surely the feelings of a courtesan need be no concern of his. “The landing outside, perhaps, Miss Cameron?”

  She nodded, then took the stairs to the floor above, away from the male shouts and laughter. The light from a gas lamp on the street set a halo around her hair, but kept her face in shadow.

  “What is it you wish from me, Mr. Pennington?” she asked, her low voice nearly as enticing as her face. “I’ve no knowledge of firearms.”

  “Viscount Ingestrie suggested you might be able to aid me with a translation.”

  Her lips curved in an insolent arch. “Oh, are the lines your Latin tutor set beyond your ken, young sir?”

  “I’m hardly of an age to need a tutor, ma’am.” The petulance of his tone, though, would scarcely persuade her of the fact. Forcing himself to speak more evenly, he added, “What I require is someone who can read Irish.”

  “Read Gaelic?” She laughed, her arms crossing tight over her chest. “When the schools insist we learn only English?”

  “But surely, outside of school—”

  “In Ireland, sir, English is the language of power. Gaelic’s only spoken by the poor. And what cause have they to learn to read or to write it?”

  Kit frowned. He’d hardly expected to find a political radical in the midst of a viscount’s revels. “Why, then, would someone go to the trouble to engrave Gaelic words on a flintlock?”

  She took the pistol he held out to her, squinting at the letters in the dim light. After staring at it for several minutes, turning it to and fro in her small but strong hands, she shook her head, looking up with strangely blank eyes. “I’m sorry, sir. I wish I could help.”

  She held the pistol out to him, but just as he reached for it, she tucked it back against her chest. He jerked his hand away before it accidentally brushed against the small but lush curves of her breasts.

  His eyes narrowed. Had she intended to discompose him? Or was it only his own lust, reasserting itself after lying so conveniently dormant these past months, that urged his body forward?

  He took a step back, once again placing a decent distance between them.

  “Why would an English gentleman take any interest in Gaelic words, sir?” she asked, gazing not at him but at the weapon in her hands.

  “Not the words, but the man to whom they might lead. I’m searching for the owner of the pi
stol, and the engraving’s my only clue.”

  “You seek to return the firearm to its rightful owner?”

  “No, I intend to send the woman who borrowed it to gaol.”

  She frowned. “To gaol? Merely for borrowing a pistol?”

  “No, for firing it in my direction.”

  She laughed, then flung the gun out, pointing it at his chest. “A mere woman had the gall to attack a strapping lordling such as yourself?” Her lips turned up in the merest wisp of a smile as her thumbs raised the flint to full cock.

  A strange mix of shame, fear, and desire clenched Kit’s gut. “My Lord Ingestrie may take pleasure from such games of violence with his paramour, but I have little liking for insult guised as flirtation.” He stepped forward, capturing the hands clutching the weapon between his. “Only a fool points a pistol in a man’s direction, even an unloaded one.”

  “Unless that fool wishes to do him harm,” she answered.

  Her breath, redolent of wine and spice, warmed the air between them. But even through his gloves, the cold of her hands bit into his palms.

  “Tell me, what harm did you do her, to drive the foolish wench to fire upon you?” she asked.

  “Rumor has it that she’s my discarded mistress,” Kit said as he drew the pistol from her grasp. Frowning, he strode to the window. “But I swear I never laid eyes on her before that night. Not that anyone will believe it, not after Lord Dulcie and his fellow gossips finish spreading their tales.”

  “And why should such rumors upset you? Do not men of fashion take pride in the irrational lengths to which they can drive their discarded lovers?”

  “Men like Ingestrie, perhaps,” Kit accorded, glancing back at her over his shoulder. “But some gentlemen place a higher value on their honor. I assure you, I have no wish for such a reputation. Particularly not now.” Not unless he was prepared to allow his political aspirations to die stillborn.

  “How remarkable. An Englishman who’d rather not be known for his amorous exploits.” Silk skirts swished across the landing, and an icy palm lit upon his back. “Perhaps, if you left this pistol with me, I might make some inquiries on your behalf?”