Page 2 of Bargaining with the Devil

When he was near enough to her to speak over the wind, he said firmly, “Time to be coming in, a chara.”

Her head whipped around, shawl slipping from brown hair, and he finally caught a look at her face—young, oval-shaped, startled—and the peculiar blue shade of her eyes, not far off violet.

“Holy bleedin’ Jaysus!” was not what he’d meant to say next, but ’twas what she got. The surprise on her face neatly mirrored his own shock.

It didn’t matter. Only the most important part now; the rest must wait. “The tide’s coming in fast.”

She was frozen, lips parted, eyes wide. Soon literally frozen as well, if the weather had anything to say on it. And then drowned. Or drowned first and frozen later. Goddamn this weather. Hell wasn’t hot. It was cold, freezing cold. He should know; he was calf deep in it.

“Are you stuck?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. Her eyes were . . . distant. Not wholly there, somehow. She was a siren, mayhap, a sea maiden tempting an unwary man into danger.

Well, and he was a ghost.

“Are you stuck in the mud?” he tried again.

She sucked in a breath. “No-oo.”

He held out a hand. She looked at him like he’d thrust a snake in her direction.

“’Tis either the both of us stand here together until the tide claims us and floats both of our corpses out to Muir Éireann,” he said grimly, “or you come with me now. There,” he elaborated, pointing towards the distant rock on which his coat and boots waited. He strove for a gentler tone. “Your choice. But if I’m choosing, I’d prefer to go on living myself.”

“Yes,” she said faintly. And then “Yes” again. Her voice was stronger on the second affirmative.

“Then give me your hands, Miss Muir.” He extended both of his.

Her fingers were icy in his when she grasped them, letting him lead her a slow step at a time back to safety.

Frigid water bit deep into his muscles, trying to steal what warmth remained. His feet had gone numb. But somehow, some way, they gained the shoreline.

Damn this day to the Devil and fuck him twice on Sundays. Because included among what he’d not wanted today, seeing Lucinda Muir again topped the list.

Chapter 2

Lucy learned, two years ago on the road out of Paris, that there was more honesty in the soul of a man whose profession was killing people than in the heart of the man who’d murmured pleasantries against her knuckles and bought her frocks and fripperies.

That didn’t mean she’d ever wanted to see Mr. Quinn again.

She hadn’t expected to see anyone at all walking the mudflats along Balcary Bay on such a dreary morning, but even had she predicted an encounter, Mr. Quinn was the very last man on earth she’d have dreamt up.

He was certainly no dream now, crouched at her hearth to stir up the fire she’d banked last night.

“’Twas daft of you to be so far out on the mudflats.” He glanced towards her, pushing a lock of hair forcefully off his face when it fell over his brow. Crystalline droplets of rain still clung to the dark strands.

“I walk them often.” What an inane exchange to have, all things considered. As though he wasn’t a ghost from her past, unexpected, uninvited, unwelcome.

“And is it regular, you going out so far with the tide coming in?” His movements were efficient, but from her vantage where he’d deposited her into the chair nearest the hearth, his arms were visibly trembling just a little. No wonder. She wasn’t a dainty armload, and he was neither tall nor musclebound.

Humiliating, that her feet had stopped working properly partway to the cottage, too numb to support her a step farther. After she’d stumbled several times, going to her knees the last time, he’d said a few very rude words and scooped her up like she weighed nothing, carrying her the rest of the way to her cottage. And she’d let him for some reason, had even allowed him to carry her right on into the cottage like some parody of a happy couple on their wedding day.

And how ironic. According to first-footing, a dark-haired man as first to cross the threshold after midnight at Hogmanay augured a lucky year to come. Mr. Quinn’s nearly black hair met the spirit of the Scottish New Year’s superstition, but it certainly didn’t feel lucky that he’d turned up today.

He’d twisted back to look at her now, frowning. Still waiting for an answer to his presumptuous question about her walking habits, apparently.

“What if I do?” It wasn’t any of his business where she walked or how far out. Or why.

His eyes, a cool blue green, remained on her a moment. “I didn’t take you for a fool two years ago.” He turned back to the fire.