A Rebel Without a Rogue (2 page)

The unexpected force of the shot sent her reeling back toward the door.
 

Time hung suspended as, through the dissipating smoke, she struggled to make out her target.

Golden curls. Blue eyes, wide with shock. Blood, drip, drip, dripping from an arm to the carpet below.

A face even younger than her own.

A Mháthair Dé!

Mother of God. Not only had she fired too soon.

She’d fired upon the wrong man.

CHAPTER TWO

“Shot by a spurned lover? When would I have had the time to find such a creature, never mind spurn her? For pity’s sake, Benedict, I’ve only been in London a fortnight.”

Christian Pennington’s boots beat a sharp tattoo of disgust against the Grosvenor Square pavement. Being shot by a woman he’d never met, for God knows what reason, had been bad enough. Being confined to his bed for the better part of a week to ensure the bullethole she’d left in his arm did not fester had been worse. But hearing from his brother Benedict that he’d been cast into the fiery furnace of the
ton
’s lust for gossip, and for something not even remotely close to the truth—Lord forgive him for wanting to do something far more violent than wail, weep, or gnash his teeth.
 

“I’ve only been back in England for a week,” Benedict answered, “but I haven’t been able to take a step outside my door without someone making snide inquiries about the state of my youngest brother’s health.”

Kit scowled. He couldn’t even put the whole humiliating incident decently behind him, not now that this ridiculous rumor that he’d been shot by a former mistress had begun to race through ballroom and breakfast parlor alike. And just when he most needed his reputation to be spotless! If he wanted to clear his name, he had to make that pistol-wielding woman admit he’d done nothing to her to warrant such violence. It ought to have been as simple as visiting her in prison and extracting a confession.

Only somehow, in the melee after she’d pulled the trigger, the maddening witch had disappeared without a trace.

Kit wished he could howl out his frustration to the stars.

But even this late in the evening, Mayfair thronged with denizens of the
ton
. Lord knew he had no desire to provide additional grist for its rumor mill. And poor Benedict was only the messenger, after all, not the source of the tale. Judging from the expression on his face, his brother was as embarrassed to relate the tittle-tattle as Kit was to hear it. Still, if the rumor had reached the ears of the reclusive Benedict, there was little chance it had escaped the attention of their far more sociable eldest brother, the current Lord Saybrook. A realization certainly worth the choicest oath in Kit’s vast and varied repertoire.

“Glad you’ve still enough life in you left to curse,” Benedict said. “Rumor had you bleeding out your last on the Crown and Anchor’s best carpet.”

“I’m not quite ready to go the way of all flesh, I assure you,” Kit replied, shooting a quick glance at his austere brother. Had Benedict just tried to make him laugh? As a child, Ben had been the least playful of the Pennington siblings, but Kit knew little of this brother as an adult. They’d been sent to different schools, and had grown even further apart when Benedict traveled to the Continent to study painting.

No matter. Benedict was a Pennington, and for a Pennington, loyalty to family always came first.

“If only I knew what she looked like! But with that hood pulled down over her face, all I caught was the merest glint of her eyes,” Kit said as he followed his brother across a quiet street. “I pray that your friend Ingestrie will be able to help.”

Kit hefted the weight of the firearm he’d placed in his greatcoat pocket, the very weapon the woman had dropped in her haste to flee. Not the tiny muff pistol one would expect a woman to carry, but a flintlock, similar in size to the cavalry pistol their uncle Christopher had used during his years fighting against the Irish and the French. It had no prancing lion stamped on its lock, as had their uncle’s, nor was it marked with any other stamp that might indicate its place of manufacture. But the light engraving tracing down the pistol’s butt—
Tá na téada curtha go húr agus cloisfear í—
might prove an even better clue.

“Ingestrie’s no friend, merely an acquaintance,” Benedict said. “Stupid as a stick, and a whiner, too. Not likely he picked up enough Gaelic to be able to translate for you, even after spending two years in Ireland.”

“Pity Uncle Christopher’s hatred of the Irish meant we never had an Irish maid or footman. A servant might not be able to read, but might recognize the sounds of the words.”

“The same might be said of Uncle Christopher. And he spent far more time in Ireland than Ingestrie ever did. I still think you should ask him first.”

Kit shook his head. “Have you forgotten how angry he gets if anyone even mentions Ireland, Ben? And his antipathy for that country has only grown more extreme since you’ve been away. Every physician he’s consulted has warned him against raising his temper, and if I ask him, he’s sure to blaze on for hours about the barbarity of the Irish race. Which you’d know, if you’d do your familial duty and pay him a visit.”

Benedict grimaced. “Sure you just don’t want to tell him you allowed a woman to get the better of you?”

Kit just grunted as his brother came to a stop in front of a small townhouse on Seymour Street.
 

Ingestrie’s rooms. Would he find an answer here?

The snap of the flint against the frizzen. The sudden spurt of fire. The smoke, acrid and bitter. . .

Kit looked down as he felt his brother’s hand cover his own, stilling its restless movement over his wounded arm. When had his hand strayed from his pocket?

“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.