Page 100 of Bargaining with the Devil

Not the declaration she’d expected—or hoped for—in this moment, but she’d accept it . . . for now. “It’s one of my favorites. Something that’s always brought me a lot of joy.”

“’Twas joyful too, sharing it tonight. I never did ask you what you played that night at the Arms. That slow air. ’Twas something you felt deeply. And because you felt it, I did too.” He tapped his chest. “’Twas something everyone in that room felt. I’d meant to ask you after, but matters turned complicated rather quickly.”

That was one way to put it: Mr. Pereira and Eva arriving that very evening and then everything else that quickly followed.

“’Tis a memory I’ve carried close since then,” Quinn added softly.

Her heart swelled at the words.

Setting bow to strings for the first time in nearly three years, no song in particular had called to her. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her fingers or her memory with much-practiced tunes. The first ones she’d played were popular jigs. But she’d been unsure until the moment she began to play that her own music was still there in her heart. But it was.

“It was something of my own.” In it were sections of a piece she’d composed long ago in London—a lifetime ago, now—but she’d added to it, twisting it and adapting it as the woman she’d become in the years since. She’d played what was in her heart, the strange mixture of joy and grief, longing and truth.

“’Twas grand, a stór.”

She hoped perhaps he’d kiss her again, but instead, he moved so that he was leaning back against the wall beside her. He turned his face towards hers. “’Tis in my mind to ask you something. Although ’tis more of a suggestion, I suppose.”

“Oh?” Nerves tried to steal her breath, for he looked uncharacteristically grave.

“’Tis Lughnasadh. ’Twas the traditional time for trial marriages in the old times.” His hand slid beneath hers where it rested lightly against the bricks. “It used to be that a man and woman would live together for a year and a day as man and wife. Go their own ways at the end of it if they no longer suited. Stay married if they still did.” He looked sideways at her. “Mayhap ’tis what we should do, to make sure the idea still suits you in a year. Marrying me. If ’tis why you’ve turned up here.”

She tried to find words but couldn’t. Wild, giddy joy had stolen her voice.

“But ’tis the only out I’ll give you, a rúnsearc,” he added, voice deepening. “We’d wed proper after that.”

She took a deep breath. “I don’t need a year and a day, Quinn.”

“Nay?”

“No. It’s you I need, not a year and a day to think it over.”

He smiled. Shook his head. “We’ll make the old covenants tonight between us, but we wait after that on the rest. I’m not rushing you, a mhuirnín, no matter how bad you want me in your bed. Although we’ll be doing that later too, no mistake. I’m too impatient to wait a year and a day for that.”

She’d never been around another person who had the power to make her blush the way Quinn did. But she didn’t want to wait a year and a day for that either.

“Although . . .” He leaned in close. “I do have one condition, seeing as we’ll be getting up to that. Unlikely as it might be, we wed sooner if a babe results. We don’t wait if that happens. Aye?”

She drew a deep breath. “Yes.” And hoped he’d kiss her, with that settled.

But he didn’t, and he was frowning a little now. “Even walking away from the work I did, ’tis not for me to predict every moment of the future. You know what I’ve been. I can’t promise I’ll never take another man’s life. If you can’t square that away with what you need from me, well . . .“

It was certainly not the sort of declaration another man might have made—after suggesting an antiquated form of marriage, no less—but it was certainly something Ciarán Quinn would say. She smiled. “I fell in love with you knowing what you do. What you are. I’ve known who you were right from the first minute we spoke.”

“I told you about Lorcán.” He still looked grave. “’Twasn’t part of the job, that.”

“You might have been angry when you did it, but it wasn’t the sort of anger that comes from something trifling. From . . . from two men having a disagreement because one man’s dog strayed among another man’s herd of sheep or . . . whatever.”

“No,” he said drily. “’Tis not the sort of disagreement I’m ever likely to have with another, one about dogs and sheep.”

She smiled. “You know what I mean. I cannot picture you ever erupting into violence because you disagree with someone at the pub over something relatively minor.”

His lips twitched. “Depends. Possibly they look at me wrong. Make a rude comment about my flock of chickens being inferior.”

She laughed aloud this time. “In that case, I’d say you were fairly provoked.” She sobered. “But what I’m getting at is that whatever you’ve done, whatever moral code you’ve lived by all these years, you’ve still walked a narrow path. There’s a thread of honor running through the heart of you. I don’t fear you. I don’t fear what you’ve done or even what you might be called upon to do in the future. I’m not trying to reform you, Ciarán Quinn.”

“You sure about that? Because from where I stand, looks like we’ll be promising ourselves to each other.” His smile broadened. “Marriage is a humbling event for a man.”

“In this case, I’m the one who’s been more humbled by it.” She meant it. She was the one who’d needed to come around to the idea.