A Rebel Without a Rogue (27 page)

“Wiser than you, I’d say, Mr. Pennington,” O’Hamill said at last, his chest thrust forward at a belligerent angle. “At least I make damned sure I’ve the right to touch a woman before placing hands on her. A pity you cannot say the same.”

Kit’s eyes narrowed. What right did O’Hamill have to touch Fianna? She’d never spoken of him, not once in the days since she’d welcomed Kit to her bed, and he’d not pressed her about it, knowing little but ill to come from the waking of a sleeping dog. Yet here the burly Irishman stood, laying hands on Fianna and casting aspersions on Kit’s character with all the authority of a judge.

What was the man to her? Not a husband, nor a lover, as he’d once suspected, not when she’d given herself to him so freely, with such joy. Kit looked more closely at the man’s green eyes, the familiar set of that stern mouth—

“Miss Cameron—she is your sister, O’Hamill?”

“No. Miss
O’Hamill
is the child of my sister. My niece.”

“Your niece?” Kit felt his blood rising. “And here I thought it an uncle’s sacred duty to keep a sister’s child safe from harm. Particularly when she has no father to offer his protection and guidance. But perhaps it was your idea that she trade her honor for a chance at vengeance. Were you the one who set her in Viscount Ingestrie’s way?”

O’Hamill growled, low and menacing. Kit’s shoulders tensed, readying for the man to spring. But Fianna wrenched free of her uncle’s grasp, setting herself between them. “Sean had nothing to do with my meeting Ingestrie, Kit. Nor with my decision to use him to get to England. I’d no idea Sean was even in England, not until we met him with Mr. Wooler.”

“But after?” Kit replied, his eyes not on her but on O’Hamill. “You knew your niece was being kept by Ingestrie, but made no move to help her? Excuse me if I find your paternal instincts distinctly lacking.”

“She made no mention of any such relationship,” the Irishman bit out, shaking off his niece’s restraining hand. “Now that you’ve informed me of it, though, you can be sure he’ll pay the price for sullying the honor of the O’Hamill. No man has the right to touch her, not without my permission.”

Fianna gasped, her eyes snapping green fire as she gazed back and forth between them. “The only man with the
right
to touch me is the one
I
allow to do so. At this moment, I’m not inclined to grant either of you the privilege. Sean, go now. And do not come again unless I summon you.”

“Máire, you cannot—”

“No.” Only one word, but uttered with the absolute authority of a woman who had long forged her own path through life. “No more. After I have concluded my work here, I will consider the merits of yours. Now leave us.”

O’Hamill stared at her for a long moment, then at Kit, before turning on his heel and striding to the door. But before leaving, he wheeled around, his finger jabbing toward the manuscript pages lying on the table.

“Mad, it is,
cailín
, to think a few bits of writing will win you a place in the heart of any McCracken. Although not as distempered as fancying young Pennington here will carry you off to church and wed you out of hand, as I’m fearing you’ve fooled yourself into dreaming.”

“Mad, perhaps,” she answered, her eyes never wavering from her uncle’s. “But my choice, Sean.
My
choice, not yours.”

O’Hamill’s lip curled, a scar at its edge puckering white.

Kit’s jaw tightened, but Fianna laid a restraining hand on his arm before he could make a move in O’Hamill’s direction. He looked down at it, then up into her eyes, seeing not the command she had issued to her uncle, but the vulnerability of a plea. Kit reined in his burgeoning temper, just barely. To compensate, he snaked a possessive arm about her waist, a silent challenge, but a challenge all the same.

A vein pulsed at O’Hamill’s temple as he picked up a battered cap from where it lay on a side table. “So be it, niece. But when this fine
Christian
here tires of you, and tire of you he will, come to me, Máire O’Hamill. For I’ll never turn a child of Aidan and Mairead’s away from my door.”

His eyes narrowed as he jammed the cap onto his head. “Even one who allows the honeyed promises of a Englisher to make her forget what she owes her family and her country. She’ll remember soon enough, she will, once his promises prove as false as the devil’s.”

He slammed the door with such force, the echoes reverberated right through the floorboards.

When had Fianna picked up his hand in hers, carefully uncurled his fisted fingers from around the gorse branch, the one he’d plucked from an early-flowering bush, anticipating the pleasure it would give her? And when had he forced one of its pointed spines so deep into his palm?

“Do you commonly go about stealing limbs from unsuspecting hedgerows?” she asked, dabbing at the welling blood with a lace-edged handkerchief. The handkerchief he’d given her, to replace the one she’d ruined wiping the scrape of the young Irish sweep. Would she leave him before he could gift her another?

“Do you believe him? Am I as false as the devil?”

“Hush, now,” she crooned, wrapping the handkerchief tight about his hand. “You’ve made me no promises, Kit.”

“No? Not in word, perhaps. But certainly in deed. Whenever a man lies with an unwed maid, the act itself is a promise. At least if the man cares anything for his honor.”

“But I care so little for my own. At least if my uncle is to be believed.” Her tight, pained smile made Kit’s own lips thin. How deeply her uncle’s words had cut.

“And I was no maid when you took me to your bed, as you well knew.” Fianna kept her eyes lowered as she tied the linen about his hand in a tight knot. She grazed the tips of her fingers over her handiwork once, then again, before pulling them away. “Come, shall I find a vase and some water for this dangerous excuse for a bouquet?”

Kit caught her hands between his before she could move away. “Do you want to leave, then? I won’t stand in your way, if that is what you truly want.”

Fianna bent her head, her eyes avoiding his. “Why must you always push so, Kit? How can I know what I want, what I feel, before I’ve had a chance to think everything through?”

“Feelings aren’t always subject to reason, Fee.”

“But they must be,” she said, jerking her hands free of his so she might pace across the carpet. “They have to be. How else may one protect oneself from wanting something one can never have?”

“What can you never have? A family?”

“Yes,” she cried. “A family, one that looks out for its own, cares for its own. Loving and loyal, a family that cares about the happiness of its members. That helps them achieve their goals. A family like yours.”

The corner of Kit’s mouth turned up. “I think you overestimate the bonds of Pennington family affection, Fee. At least the filial ones.”

“What?” she cried, her forehead furrowing with disbelief. “Do not tell me Saybrook refuse to support you over that disloyal Mr. Norton?”
 

For the first time, Kit saw a flush blaze across Fianna’s face. Not one of shame, or of pleasure, but of anger. Cold, unfeeling Fianna Cameron, angry on his behalf? The disbelief that had been congealing inside him since leaving Theo’s townhouse slowly began to thaw.

“Yes. Or, at least, no, Theo is aware of Norton’s growing tendency to side with the opposition, and that steps need to be taken to stop it.” He raised one corner of his mouth, hoping the smile conveyed self-deprecation rather than self-pity. “But he is not convinced that I am the man to take Norton’s place.”

“Why? Because your politics are too radical? Ah, did I not advise you not to reveal the depths of your beliefs?”

Kit shook his head. “Even if I had taken your advice, Fee, it would have been in vain. Theo already has another candidate in mind. One whose temper will not be a hindrance to him, as mine always has been to me, as my brother was kind enough to point out.”

“What? Does he not realize that passion is what persuades others to join one’s cause?”

Kit smiled. “Kind of you to term it passion, not temper. But Theo, I fear, is more afraid of alienating old friends than interested in winning new allies. Strong feelings, whatever name you give them, are far more likely to lead to the first, at least to Theo’s way of thinking.”

Fianna jerked to a halt beside the table, slamming her palms down on the stack of papers. “Then your brother is a fool. Was it not my father’s passion that led men to embrace his cause? His passion that led men to dream about a new way to live, to fight for the chance to make a better life? And is it not your own passion that makes you such a powerful communicator? I’d be entirely unable to capture it, my father’s passion, if not for the example you’ve set me every day since we began this project.”

Kit stepped to her side, raising a hand to cradle her face. “Passion drawn to passion?” he asked, his thumb tracing over the curve of her cheek.
 

“I’ve no passion, Kit,” she said, her words stilling his hand. “Cold and unfeeling, that’s the heart of Fianna Cameron. Cold enough to cozen a man with a kiss, to take another into my bed in exchange for a ticket on the steam packet from Ireland. Cold enough to turn my back on my kin. What sign of passion is that?”

“Isn’t wanting to be loved the deepest form of passion?” Kit returned, his lips pressing against her temple, against her throat, before he pulled back to stare into her eyes. “To shape your entire life around the chance of winning love, from your grandfather, from all your father’s kin?”

“But what if Sean is right? What if the McCrackens never take me to heart, no matter how hard I work to reclaim my father’s good name?”

“What if he is? Might your desire for family be fulfilled by your O’Hamill relatives, then? Have you not rediscovered an uncle you once thought long lost? An uncle who may, perhaps, even help you find the mother who was forced to abandon you?”

“Sean has no idea where my mother is. And while he may take me in, will he ever truly care for me? Love me? Even if he can somehow temper his pride enough to overlook the shame I’ve brought to the O’Hamill name, can I truly abandon my father?”

Kit tipped her head up so he could look deep into her eyes. “But your father has already given you what you so desperately want from him, Fee. His love. He gave his life in the hopes of winning a better one for you. What greater act of love could there be?”

Fianna shook her head, her eyes closed tight. Against tears? When she spoke, he had to bend close to hear her whispered words. “Have I truly been such a fool, then? Chasing after the love of a dead man? What kind of passion is that, to want something I can never have?”

The hurt in her broken laughter tore at something deep and low inside him. How strange, to find that love could rise even more quickly than temper.

He couldn’t stop to wonder at it, though, not until the words roiling inside him had a chance to break free. He caught her face between his palms, tipping her head up so she could not miss the sincerity in his eyes.

“Then stop chasing a dead man. Stop longing for the family you lost, and dream instead of the one you’ve found. A family filled with so much love that even your passionate heart cannot help but be filled to overflowing.”

She pulled away from him, her eyes narrowing. “A family?” she asked. “What family?”

He reached for her hands, pulling them flat against his chest so she might feel how deeply she had dug her way into his heart. “With me, Fianna. Become my wife, and make a family with me.”

“Kit,” she whispered, raising a hand to his oh-so-dear face, her thumb brushing against the evening bristles of his jaw. He’d tried to hide it with that wry upturn of a smile, but his brother’s disloyalty had hurt him, hurt him deeply. And somehow, his hurt had affected her, made her jump to his defense as if it were instinctual. Praising passion not only to pay tribute to her father, but to offer Kit some small comfort for his pain.

And yet Kit, so ready to put the feelings of others before his own, had taken her clumsy consolations and transformed them into a balm not for his own wounds, but for hers.

Would she never reach the bounds of this tender man’s kindness?

That he could imagine being married to a woman as flawed as she! How deeply it warmed her, even knowing that his offer of marriage had been made only in the passion of the moment. Perhaps, even, to avoid his own guilt at playing a part, however so small, in what Sean had so callously termed her “ruin.”
 

Of course, as soon as the harsh light of morn brought him back to his senses, he’d realize what a mistake it had been to make such an impetuous, impossible offer.

But she’d not give him cause to regret his kindness. No matter how hard her heart had yearned when Sean had mocked her with the mere idea, she’d not accept what he offered. No, Kit would not have that pain, to know himself a man who would be forced to go back on his word.

But neither did she have the heart to burst the bubble of his so very kind intentions. Not tonight, not when he stood there, so proud and determined, so uncaring of how vulnerable his unthinking words had made him.

No, she might not be able to accept his offer. But she could show him how very moved she was by its tendering.