Page 28 of Bargaining with the Devil

“’Tis a grand memory, a mhuirnín.” If he was a little less cold, likely his cock would be all too happy to remember it too, except he wasn’t altogether sure his cock hadn’t frozen clean off. “And it might warm me right now, if ’tweren’t so bleedin’ cold.”

She was out here without a cloak. He had his coat, which he’d opened around her as much as he could, but ’twasn’t proving much respite after standing stock-still on the top of a fuckin’ cliff in the fuckin’ January wind.

“You weren’t wearing a coat that day in the bay,” he remarked. “You aren’t wearing a coat now. Do you prefer the cold?” Or was it just that she was already so cold inside those times that she didn’t even notice the temperature?

“I suppose when I’ve slipped into that . . . mindset, it makes no difference at the time. I do notice it once I’m back inside, particularly by a fire throwing out heat. The warmth of the flames registers on my skin, but if I touch my face with my fingers, my skin is still cold.”

She was cool to the touch, all right. A marble maiden. Only marble maidens were never carved so tormented. Dreamy, if they were Muses; fierce, if they were terrifying goddesses, Athena or the like; angelic, if they were Madonnas. They were never tortured.

Human after all, his marble maiden.

The danger of the heights and the sea had passed, but they’d still be catching their deaths of cold did they not move elsewhere. The clouds said a storm was brewing. He was reluctant to let her go just yet though, reluctant to interrupt this moment where she was confiding in him just a bit, reluctant to give her an opening to patch the break in her wall back up.

“Will you talk to me about some of it?” he asked softly. “Mayhap wrapped up in a blanket by a fine fire? Separate blankets,” he added lest she take it as him importuning her for something she didn’t want. “I’ll not be sharing mine seeing as I need it all to myself.”

She smiled, a true smile. “A fire sounds nice.” She didn’t say anything about the talking part, but he’d take what he could get right now, which was her safe inside and warm.

Back in the cottage, she eyed what was left of the whisky on the way towards the hearth.

He’d not say a single fucking word about it if she picked it up right now, not this time, not even with how he’d found her on the cliff. If ’twas what she needed to get the words out of her, the memories eating at her like acid that sent her walking today, so be it.

And he’d be there after, to stop her going to the sea.

Chapter 11

She’d meant to talk to Quinn. Truly, she had. Some of the embedded pain lodged deep in her had loosened on the cold clifftop this afternoon, his arms wrapped around her.

But she’d left the whisky alone in the cottage—not that she hadn’t considered another drink—and when what she’d had earlier wore fully off, the weight of everything crashed back down.

She’d wanted Quinn’s kisses, and she’d wanted what they’d done on opposite sides of her chamber door, and admitting that had felt like the most natural thing in the world while she was in his arms, all the more because she’d believed him that he’d done it for no other reason than he’d wanted to. Because he’d wanted her, not because he’d presumed her sexually available because she’d been another man’s mistress when she met him or that she’d be easily seduced just because she’d been naïve once before. With some men, one must weigh their every word for nuance and subtext and subterfuge. Ciarán Quinn was not such a man. She had learned of him two years ago, reinforced in spades these past two weeks, that he said exactly what he meant.

Ironic that the two most fundamentally honest men that she’d ever met, aside from Da, were men who told sanctioned lies for a living: first Nathaniel and now Quinn.

It was one of the other men she’d met, one who’d been far less honest, who had slithered back into her mind after she’d willingly, gladly, kissed Quinn.

She didn’t want to remember Teddy. Didn’t want to think about Theodore Garnewood now or ever again. She didn’t want to remember how foolish she’d been to trust him. Foolish. Rather an understatement, a word best applied to a young girl making a silly but ultimately inconsequential error in judgment. Her error in judgment was far more grave.

And once that error was made, she’d compounded it several times over. Why had she thought she couldn’t go home? They wouldn’t have thrown her out, Maman and Da and Isobel. And if she’d come home, even sullied and disgraced, would Maman then have lived rather than succumbing to illness? Would Da therefore not have died as well, not heartbroken over losing Maman?

She’d not even said goodbye to them. Worse, she’d been childishly resentful when she left. Resentful that Isobel, recently widowed, was too deep in grief to have time for her. Resentful that Maman’s illness left her without energy to spare and that Da’s attention was all for Maman. She’d not known the last time she stepped out the door of their London home that she’d never see either of her parents again. She’d been persuaded so easily to leave them, swayed by Teddy’s golden good looks and his whispered promises. They’d return to London before long, wedded and happy, and her family would see then that she’d made a good marriage; he assured her repeatedly of that.

And she’d believed him blindly. She’d believed that his kisses were vows, and she’d believed that her physical desire was just another sign that they were meant to be together, for surely such feelings could only happen within a loving relationship.

His kisses had meant nothing. Or more properly, those she gifted him with her whole heart meant nothing at all to him. And the rest of what she’d given up, her innocence and her trust, had meant even less.

Why, oh why, had she kissed Quinn? They’d both wanted it—and he wasn’t Teddy—but it was unwise. Foolish. Foolish. She was foolish. Again.

Without the whisky and the cold wind to numb her, the cottage was stifling. Quinn crowded her just by existing. She was hemmed in by his occupation of her cottage and his bloody rules for her safety out of doors. And it wasn’t rational being frustrated about it because she knew his concerns were valid. If Lymington was even half as criminally minded as his brother, he was a dangerous man.

She didn’t care. Right now she just did not care. She was irritable and restless and suddenly couldn’t tolerate another single moment shut up in the cottage with Quinn. The weight of their earlier conversation suffocated her.

A storm was blowing up; the whistle of wind through the thatch told her that. So be it; it matched her mood. She snatched up her cloak—she’d wear that this time, at least—and stalked towards the door. “I’m going for another walk.” She didn’t invite Quinn, but he’d come after her anyway.

Yes, there was the cursing she expected as she closed the cottage door behind her. Truly, she’d never been around a man with a vocabulary to equal Quinn’s. And yes, there was the creak of the cottage door opening again and it slamming shut behind him.

He didn’t try to catch up with her, not at first. But she felt his presence behind her and his eyes like heat on her back as she strode down towards Balcary Bay.

The tide was out. Across the bay, Heston Isle loomed tall out of the choppy water surrounding it. It was beyond unwise as a destination: It would be dark in another hour, there was bad weather coming, and it was one of the places Lymington’s smugglers might be lurking. It was a terrible idea to try walking to it now, even with the shingle fully exposed at the moment, especially coming from the bay instead of striking out from Almorness Point on the other side.