Page 26 of Bargaining with the Devil

She turned. She looked unsurprised. Not happy about it either. She did stop walking, at least, till he got closer.

“Cold day for a walk, a stór.”

“Why can’t you leave me alone?” The words were enunciated fine but whisky-scented. “Oh. That’s right. It’s because there are men about”—she gestured into the air—“who’d like to kill me.” Sarcasm etched her words, but she wasn’t slurring them.

“’Tisn’t safe.” She could take her pick, what he meant by that.

A wrong step on the stones, and she’d be over the edge. That wrong step was considerably more likely with whisky in her. And she hadn’t quite convinced him she’d not been waiting for the sea the other week. Here she was daring the cliff now.

“I wanted to be alone. It’s exhausting having you always underfoot.”

He came in careful. “We’re going to talk this through, a stór. If ’tis me has you drinking the whisky today, has you walking here on the cliff’s edge, then we’ll be talking about it.” He held out his hand. Just like he’d done out in the bay.

Only this time she didn’t accept it. And this time there weren’t even questionable mudflats beneath her. When she took a step back, her heel caught on loose stones, which clattered down the slight slope before plummeting off the edge.

Blood surged loud in his ears. She’d be next. “I’ll not do a fuckin’ thing to you, a mhuirnín. I’m just wanting to talk.” Another couple of stones slid free. “And I’m hoping to do it somewhere more level.” He debated stepping closer, but he didn’t want to alarm her further.

What could he say that would reel her to him, to safety? “The cliff will still be here after.” His gut clenched at how she might take those words, depending on why she was so close to the edge. “Will you talk to me a minute now? Over here?”

She wavered, looking uncertain . . . but also looking like she was considering it.

He levered his hand so it was palm up, held out like an offering. Which ’twas. He willed her to take it.

And this time she did. Carefully he enclosed her hand in his and accepted the other soon as she extended it, drawing her forward. As she stepped forward, another stone skittered loose behind her, bouncing off into the void.

She made it to him safe. He pulled her trembling body hard up against his as she slid her arms around his neck. She took great heaving breaths like she’d just run a race.

She’d been racing, all right, trying to outrun her demons.

He was trembling too, and ’twasn’t just the cold. “I thought I was going to lose you over the edge, a stór.” He kept his voice gentle despite the violent upheaval inside. ’Twas always the way of it, being cold and purposeful in a moment of extreme danger and only feeling the rest after.

“I don’t know why I stepped backwards when you held out your hand,” she whispered, barely louder than the whistling wind. Her breath hitched. “I don’t know why I was walking so close to the edge.” She buried her face against his neck, and he almost missed her next words. “I don’t know why I don’t care more.”

“You care. ’Tis just hidden away sometimes.” He hoped that was true. He hoped that she did care, that she cared enough to fucking think twice the next time what ate at her drove her to defy Fortune again and again, because one of these times, there’d not be a next time. Fortune always claimed the unwary in the end; she was impartial to a fool’s motivations.

What had set Lucy off today? “Why were you drinking whisky in the middle of the afternoon?”

“I don’t drink it during the day usually.” Avoiding the question.

“Just at night to sleep sometimes.” He drew back enough to look her in the face, but he didn’t release her, not even a fraction. “What had you feeling like you needed it today, a stór?”

She didn’t release his neck either despite the space he’d opened up between them. “Why did you kiss me?”

Was that what this was about? “I kissed you because you were looking at me like you did the other night.” And she’d wanted it; he was sure of it. The expression on her face now, though, was close to how Mairéad’s face had looked during that long-ago conversation, the one he’d never forget and never get over.

His stomach dropped. It seemed he’d put that look on Lucy’s face by kissing her. She’d wanted it at the time, sure. ’Twasn’t arrogance recognizing when a woman wanted him, and she had. She’d invited the kiss, looking up at him and telling him she’d not had any whisky. He’d been careful to give her an opening partway through in case she’d changed her mind about the kissing. She hadn’t. But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t regretting it after the fact. Clearly she was.

“Was it only that? The way I was looking at you?”

What was the right thing to say? The bare truth, probably. “I kissed you because I wanted to. Because I wanted you.” And damned if he knew why, really. ’Twas against his better judgment, getting tangled up with her. Had he any other choice about being in Scotland, he’d not be here. They’d not have given in to temptation. But he didn’t, and they had, and ’twasn’t much use thinking how it might have gone otherwise. Too late to change it, sure, but ’twas never too late for regrets.

For all his faults, he was the last man on earth who would coerce a lass, Lucy or any other. But if ’twas the kiss had sent her spiraling, it hardly mattered what his intent had been in the moment.

If, that was, ’twas truly about the kiss. Her next words suggested ’twasn’t only that. “You know what I was before. That didn’t factor into it at all? Kissing me?”

“I know the circumstances you were in before,” he said carefully. Which was reluctant mistress to a French baron who’d got himself mixed up with treason, having more ambition than good sense. And she’d been introduced to the baron by Jeremiah Compton.

“It amounts to the same thing,” she said bitterly. “The circumstances and what I became.”