A Rebel Without a Rogue by Bliss Bennet

Author:Bliss Bennet [Bennet, Bliss]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: historical romance; Regency romance; Irish Rebellion
Goodreads: 25878327
Publisher: Bliss Bennet
Published: 2015-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Warm. So very warm, the arms about her back, the cheek nestled against her temple. The chest rising and falling beneath her palm. How long had she sat with him here, down on the drawing room carpet, quiet, anchored, so blessedly empty?

Fianna burrowed her face further into the soft folds of a neckcloth, unwilling to break the spell. No, she’d simply keep her eyes firmly shut, floating, drifting, breathing in the salt of her tears, the starch of his linen, the sharp, soothing mint of the soap with which he’d washed. Time enough later to wonder what she would do, what her life could be, without the lodestone of vengeance urging her ever forward.

Her arm, caught between his body and hers, twitched with numbness. She willed it still. Kit would wake soon enough.

But he must have felt her stir. His arms tightened about her for a moment, but then, all too quickly, fell slack.

She stifled the urge to pull them back. But as he raised his head from where it rested beside hers, an involuntary sound of protest must have croaked from her throat, for his hand immediately rose to cradle her face against his chest. They sat there together without speaking, watching a beam of sun meander across the green-figured carpet.

“Will you tell me about him?” he asked, breaking the long silence. “About McCracken? He must have been an inspiring person, to win such devotion from you.”

“Aidan McCracken. My father.” How strange, to acknowledge their relationship out loud. To talk of him with someone who had never known him. Someone who did not immediately turn away in disgust at the sound of his name.

“He was a kind man,” she said at last, her words coming stiff and slow. “He liked people, thought the best of them. Even after all the horrors he’d witnessed. Foolish, some said. But still, he was kind.” Like you.

Kit circled an encouraging hand over her back.

Fianna took a deep breath, pinching her eyes shut. It was easier to speak without his clear blue eyes staring at her undeserving soul.

“So many assumed I’d been born evil—a bastard, the devil’s spawn,” she murmured. “But Dadaí would never tax me with my sins. Máire, he’d cry, pulling me up into his arms whenever he came to visit. What good deeds has my sweet cailín done today?”

“Is that your true name?” Kit asked. “Máire?”

She trembled to hear the Gaelic syllables on his English lips. “Máire was the name my mother gave me. Though no Catholic priest nor Presbyterian elder would allow me to be baptized with it.”

She felt him stiffen beneath her. In anger? Or in sympathy? But his voice was even as he asked, “Your parents never married?”

She shook her head. “Aidan McCracken might have believed with all his heart that the Anglicans, Dissenters, and Catholics should unite in order to throw off the yoke of English rule. Yet somehow the son of a prominent Presbyterian manufacturer could never quite bring himself to wed an illiterate Irish Catholic.

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