by Bliss Bennet
“Do you think I take any pride in my service in Ireland?” Slashes of red burned across the man’s sunken cheeks. “I was trained as a soldier, not a constable. I should have been fighting against France, not stuck with the dregs of the British army, subduing a barbaric populace. God, how I begged to be transferred to another regiment, any regiment, as long as it was serving far from that blasted, bloody land.”
“Enough!” Fianna hissed. “You may have lost your pride, but I lost my father, my mother, my entire family.” She jerked the pistol toward the paper on the bed. “And unless you sign, I’ll make sure you lose yours.”
Pennington sat back in the bed, his back resting against the headboard. “Please. Just try to blacken my name to Kit, and see how long his tender regard for you lasts.”
The muscles in Fianna’s arms quivered from the weight of the pistol. She tensed, forcing her arms to hold straight. “If you don’t sign, I’ll kill you.”
The Major spread his arms, palms up in invitation. “Go right ahead, my dear. I’m more than ready to meet my maker.”
A Mháthair Dé! How could she return to Ireland, to her father’s family, without the means to redeem his name? She risked drawing a step closer, so she might press the pistol’s muzzle against Pennington’s chest. “I’ll do it, damn you. I will!”
A strange smile fluttered about his lips. “I’d expect no less of an Irisher. Bloody violent beasts, the lot of you.”
A violent beast, was she? And what of him? Yes, he deserved to die, the lying, hypocritical bigot. Fianna waited for memory and rage to fill her with purpose, as it had when she’d brought down the other men who’d dared to betray her father. But her thumbs did not move to raise the flint. For all she could see was Kit, kneeling over the limp, lifeless body of his uncle, his kind eyes now as hardened as the Major’s, cursing his uncle’s killer, cursing her, to damnation.
Fianna stared down at the gun between her hands, then back up at the Major’s face. How long had she been standing there, lost in the nightmare vision? Long enough for him to snatch the pistol from her hands, if he’d truly wanted to. . .
She began to shake her head, waiting for her jumbled thoughts to come into some semblance of order. “You want me to do it, don’t you? You want me to kill you. Why? Are you mad?”
The Major’s lips thinned, but he said not a word.
She took a step back, then another, allowing the weight of the pistol to pull her arms down. “No. Not mad. You want me to prove it, don’t you? Prove that your contempt of my people is warranted. Show Kit how vile I am, how I could never be worthy of a place in the high-and-mighty Pennington family. In any family of honor.”
Christopher Pennington’s eyes narrowed. “Misplaced your bravery already, my jade? Are you sure you’re really Aidan McCracken’s get?”
“Yes, I’m Aidan McCracken’s daughter. And Mairead O’Hamill’s. Both had courage, far more than I thought I could ever muster.”
The Major’s lips thinned into a cold smile. “Not far wrong, were you?”
Fianna stared, unseeing, at the pistol in her hand. “Was I? I always thought I had to prove that I belonged, that I deserved a place in the McCracken family, by bringing you to justice. And now, too, that I’d sacrifice anything to be worthy of the O’Hamills. Worthy of Sean’s regard.”
“Then prove it, girl,” Pennington hissed. “Pull that trigger!”
She looked up, realization tingling in her chest. “But if I kill you now, what would that prove? Only that I’m just as bad as you think me, a violent Irish beast. You’d die with a smile on that cold face, knowing in your heart that you were so much better than me, than any Irisher. Knowing that Kit would hate me forever for betraying him.”
Fianna shook her head. “No. I won’t let you do it, Major. I won’t play the violent beast your hateful prejudice would have me.” She lowered her arms, pointing the pistol toward the mattress. “I’m not the unworthy one, Christopher Pennington. You are.”
The Major’s lips pulled back, baring his teeth. Without warning, he lunged forward, snatching the pistol from her unprepared grasp.
His breath coming in short, sharp pants, he raised her father’s firearm, aiming it at her head. “Damn you, wench. Damn you for a disloyal coward.” His hands trembled as he raised the flint to full cock.
The blood pounded in Fianna’s ears. She could not allow the Major to pull that trigger. Kit would be even more devastated by his uncle’s betrayal than he would have been by hers.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped closer, laying her two hands atop his. She stared at those deep blue eyes, so familiar and yet so distant. “Will you truly shoot the woman your nephew loves, sir? Kit has forgiven you for much, but I wonder if even his loyalty would survive such a blow.”
A hint of the vulnerability that so often shone from Kit’s eyes glinted in his uncle’s. Would it be enough?
Fianna took a step back, then another. Drawing her skirts wide, she knelt into a respectful curtsy. “Bid you good day, sir.”
Turning her back on the man for whom she’d spent a lifetime searching, she straightened her shoulders and stepped toward the door.
Kit’s heels drummed against the dirty floor of the hack. A trip from Marylebone to Bloomsbury should take no more than a quarter-hour. But this carriage was moving slower than a slug. Damnation, he should have just commandeered Theo’s horse and ridden ahead.
Theo’s cane tapped lightly against Kit’s boot. Kit bit back his scowl. Theo had every right to take him to task, if not for fidgeting like a boy, then for placing the uncle they all loved directly in harm’s way. But neither Benedict nor Theo had said a word of censure, not back in his rooms, and not here in the carriage.
Kit closed his eyes, pressing his head back against the squabs. How had he allowed his passion for a woman to blind him to what he owed his family? To what he owed his uncle, his godfather, a man who had always taken the greatest pains to look out for Kit and his concerns?
But would Fianna really do his uncle harm? Even now, every feeling rebelled against the notion.
He’d taken the cold, haughty leannán sídhe as the mask, the warm, loving woman in his arms as the truth of her. But perhaps it had been just the opposite. Could love have made him so utterly blind as to mistake the concealment for what it concealed?
A hand, rather than a cane this time, forced his leg to still. Lord, when had he started the tapping again?
Kit jerked his knee out from under Benedict’s hand, unable to meet his brother’s eyes.
“She’ll not know where to find him, even if she’s still intent on seeking him out,” Benedict offered.
“Yes, we’ll reach him long before she will,” Theo added. But still he pounded the head of his cane against the roof of the hack and chided the driver for his sloth.
Still loyal, the both of them, even to a brother who had betrayed their trust.
How long would that loyalty last, though, if Uncle Christopher came to harm because of him?
Kit threw open the door of the hack as the vehicle drew up beside Aunt Allyne’s house. Leaving Theo to deal with the driver, he jumped to the pavement and rushed up the stairs. The knob of the front door offered no resistance to his touch. Unlocked, damn it all to hell.
“Sir!” One of the footmen Kit had hired hurried down the passageway, dismay evident on his face. “My apologies, sir, I did not hear the knocker.”
Kit waved off the man’s apology. “Bates, has a young woman—”
“A beautiful young woman,” Benedict interrupted.
“A strikingly lovely young woman,” Kit said, with a glare at his brother, “come to call on the Colonel?”
“No sir. No callers today, not even the physician.”
Benedict’s shoulders slumped against the wall in relief. But Kit could take no comfort from the words. How easy for a woman, alone, moving with stealthy grace, to enter without the footman noticing at all?
Taking the treads two at a time, Kit raced u
p the staircase. Four broad strides took him to Uncle Christopher’s bedchamber. His nightmare—Fianna, with cruel smile and smoking pistol, his uncle, tangled in sheets and blood—had it come to life?
Kit pushed open the door.
No blood.
No Fianna.
But, damn it all to hell, no Uncle Christopher, either.
Kit took a step into the room, his breath rasping. The Colonel was not in the bed, although its mussed sheets said he’d occupied it not long before. Curtains drawn; not in the chair by the window. No steam or clatter rising from the bathing chamber. A leannán sídhe might transport the emotions of a man she beguiled, but his body? How the hell had Fianna spirited a fully grown man out from under their eyes?
A shuddering moan raised the hair on the back of Kit’s neck. It had come from the far side of the bed.
Two strides brought him around the bed frame. Uncle Christopher lay sprawled, facedown, on the floor beside it.
Falling to his knees, Kit reached out a hand and turned his uncle onto his back. He could find no gunshot, no knife wound, not even the least sign of blood. All he saw was the twisted, wasted lower limbs of a soldier who had sacrificed his ability to walk while defending his country.
And a pistol—Aidan McCracken’s pistol—clutched tight in his uncle’s hand.
Uncle Christopher’s eyes fluttered open.
“Did she do this to you, sir?” Kit asked, helping the older man into a seated position. “Did she threaten you, push you from the bed?”
Kit tried to ease the pistol from his uncle’s grasp, but the Colonel held on to it with the tenacity of a drowning man clutching at a lifeline. Could he be afraid, even of Kit?
“Colonel? Did she hurt you?”
His uncle’s eyes focused on Kit’s face for a moment, then glazed over once again. With a groan, he tipped his head back against the bed, his Adam’s apple a prominent, vulnerable bump against the sunken skin of his neck.
“No, damn her heart.” Kit had to lean closer to catch his uncle’s whispered words. “Enticed her here, didn’t I? And gave her every opportunity. Practically painted a target, right here on my chest. But still, she would not do it.”
“Enticed her?” Kit raised his eyes to his brothers, who now stood by the door. Did his expression look as bewildered as theirs? “Whatever can you mean, sir?”
“Aye, enticed her. Made certain her devil of an uncle knew precisely where to find me. She’d not be able to resist such an invitation, not a child of mad Aidan McCracken’s.”
The man’s fall from the bed must have injured his brain. What else could account for such strange talk?
“Why would you wish to see Miss Cameron, Colonel?” Benedict asked, kneeling by his uncle’s side. Yes, his brother’s soothing tone might help calm their uncle enough so that they could safely move him to the bed.
But Uncle Christopher shook off the hand that Benedict laid on his shoulder. “Why? Because it’s time I laid down this blasted guilt that’s been hanging about my neck these five-and-twenty years.”
“Guilt?” Kit asked. “Come, sir, what has guilt to do with an honorable soldier?”
Uncle Christopher’s eyes snapped open as he grabbed at Kit with a shaking hand. “No, you wouldn’t understand, would you, Christian, how a man’s honor and his loyalty to his country could ever come into conflict. Because I made damn sure you never would. I made your father swear he’d never allow you to join, no matter how hard you begged.”
Kit sat back on his heels. “But it was Father—”
“No,” Theo interrupted. “It wasn’t. Before he died, Father told me of his promise to Uncle Christopher, and made me promise, too, never to purchase you a set of colours. And to not breath a word of it to you.”
Kit stared at Theo, then his uncle, struggling to find the right words. “Why, Uncle? Why didn’t you wish me to join? When the army was your life?”
Uncle Christopher shook his head “Such the idealist you were, Kit! Always championing the weak and downtrodden, always convinced that goodness and right always win out in the end. How could I bear to see such spirit ground into the dirt by the ugly realities of a military life?”
“Ugly realities? You’ve never spoken of such, sir.”
“Of course not! What man would want to talk about taking food from the mouths of the impoverished to keep his own soldiers from starving? About watching his men and their flintlocks mowing down poor bastards armed with nothing more than pitchforks and pikes? About the dishonorable things he’s forced to do to women and children? Cruel things, foul things, things to which you, a gentleman, would never stoop.” Uncle Christopher’s eyes bored into Kit’s. “Only to wake up one day to find yourself doing them all the same, your beloved honor lying dead in the dust beside you.”
Kit’s brain reeled. He’d long left behind any youthful illusions he’d once cherished about the infallibility of the British military. Men charged with defending their country did not always act with wisdom, or even honor, as he’d witnessed firsthand on the bloody grounds of St. Peter’s Field. But to hear his uncle suggest that such behavior was not a horrible aberration, but the norm? Even for an officer of the Colonel’s caliber? Impossible!
“What has any of this to do with Miss Cameron?” Benedict asked.
“She was supposed to end it! And she brought the pistol, yes,” Uncle Christopher cried, shaking the weapon in an unsteady hand. “But would she give me the satisfaction of taking away my sorry life? Of relieving me of this burden of guilt I’ve been carrying for more than twenty years? No, far too cunning a bitch, that get of McCracken’s. She’d not end my misery, no, not she. She wants me to feel how bitter it is, to see a nephew who once worshipped me as a hero now stare at me with disillusionment and contempt.”
Kit’s fists clenched at the Colonel’s ugly slur against Fianna, but the words that followed pulled him up short. “Why would you believe I’d ever hold you in contempt, Uncle?”
“Because she’ll tell you the truth of it,” Uncle Christopher cried. “The truth of what I did to her father, to her family. If she’d murdered me as she was supposed to, you’d have taken her for a liar. But now—”
Kit’s insides turned to ice as his intuition made the connection. “Was it you who spread the rumors that McCracken had turned apostate? That he’d betrayed his own men, all for the chance of a pardon?”
Kit grabbed his uncle by the lapels. “Did you, sir? Did you besmirch a gentleman’s honor? Did you lie?”
Uncle Christopher stared at Kit for a long moment, then gave one short, sharp nod. “I’d have done far worse if I’d thought it would end that bloody, pointless uprising even one day sooner.”
Kit’s hands fell to his sides. My God. How had he never seen it? The dutiful, loyal soldier, never speaking of his time in Ireland—it was all a mask Uncle Christopher had donned, wasn’t it? A mask hiding the sins he’d committed, a mask intended to protect poor, kindly Kit from the harsh truths of the world.
A mask to protect himself from his own shame.
A mask, yes, a mask just like the ones Fianna wore. Why, though, had it been so much easier to look beyond hers than to see the one behind which his uncle hid?
Theo dropped to his knees by Kit’s side, laying a gentle hand on Uncle Christopher’s sleeve. “Sir, please, let us remove you to the bed,” he said. The Colonel’s grim words still hung in the air, unacknowledged.
Yes, that would be just like a Pennington, wouldn’t it? To ignore their uncle’s bitter revelations, pretend he’d never mentioned anything about the dishonorable things he’d done. If you were loyal to your family, then you overlooked the frailties of its members, pretended they had no weaknesses, did you not? And above all, you hid all signs of flaws from anyone outside the tight family circle.
Hadn’t Kit spent his entire life doing the same? Accepting his father’s decisions about Kit’s future without protest. Pretending Theo’s fall into debauchery after their father’s death was only a bit of har
mless carousing, rather than the debilitating grief that he’d never been allowed to voice. Following his family’s lead by steering the conversation away from Uncle Christopher’s time in Ireland whenever outsiders happened to bring up the topic in casual conversation. To save him discomfort, they’d all reassured themselves. But had it not been just as much out of fear of what he might reveal, and an unwillingness to share his pain?
The intention behind such blindness might be a kind one, but too often only injustice resulted. Injustice against Fianna and her family, who had suffered so much because of his uncle’s silence. Injustice against Kit, never allowing him to know the complex man behind his uncle’s shiny, heroic façade. But most of all, injustice against Christopher Pennington, a man who had suffered in silence for years under the burden of his guilt, with no way to expiate the pain of his sins. For how could you ever be forgiven for an injustice no one, not even yourself, would acknowledge you’d even committed?
No. Kit would no longer allow himself to be blinded by a loyalty that refused to see.
“Uncle,” he said, moving to kneel beside his brother. But the Colonel shook free of both Theo and Kit. With painstaking effort, he dragged himself to his feet. One arm leaned on the bed behind him, supporting his shaky weight. His eyes clouded as he slowly raised the other. The one still holding Aidan McCracken’s pistol.
With a quick shift of his wrist, Colonel Pennington pressed its barrel to the center of his chest.
Kit’s heart nearly burst out of his chest. “Bloody, bloody hell,” he heard Benedict whisper. But Kit only had eyes for the pistol, wavering in his uncle’s trembling hand.
“Uncle, no.” Kit rose to his feet, but stilled as his uncle brought the pistol to full cock.
“I can’t stand it, Christian,” Uncle Christopher said, an unfamiliar tremor in his voice. “The dishonor I’ll bring to this family, once all these secrets come out. I won’t stand for it. Now step back, and allow me to finish this.”