Page 4 of Bargaining with the Devil

Devil take this man. “No, I wasn’t waiting for the sea.”

Perhaps she deserved his skeptical look, because she wasn’t sure she’d answered entirely honestly. But it wasn’t his concern. She neither wanted nor needed interference in her life.

“Can I leave you to yourself long enough to walk back to town and collect my belongings from the Arms?”

She bristled at the impertinent question and its implication, and then the rest of it caught up with her. “Why do you need to collect your belongings?” That he needed to do so, paired with his phrasing, suggested he was returning here with said belongings.

“I’ll be staying with you.”

“No, you will not!” The absolute ballocks of this man. Just because he’d helped her back to shore—and carried her to the cottage when she couldn’t walk—in no way gave him liberty to stay here.

“I’d rather not, truly.” His dour expression suggested he told the truth and didn’t make her a whit more amenable.

She glowered at him. “The door is right there. I feel certain you can find your way through it, a resourceful man like yourself. And no doubt you can determine how to shut that same door, allowing me to lock it. From the inside, so I don’t receive any unwelcome visitors who might turn up later today.”

He had the effrontery to laugh openly, head back, before the smile dropped from his lips. “’Tis like this, Miss Muir. I can’t leave you here in this remote cottage fending for yourself, not till Blackmore’s back and we put our heads together.”

“Whyever not?”

His ocean-colored eyes caught hers. “Because your life is in danger.”

’Twas all there on her face that she didn’t want to hear him out: anger in the set of her full mouth, blue flame in her eyes. ’Twas more emotion than she’d shown earlier. Good then, even if ’twas directed at him.

Unfortunately, with Blackmore gone, it fell to him to make the explanation to convince her. And unfortunately for the both of them, it mattered less than a toadstool’s cap against rain whether she wanted him here or not.

“You can bar the door to me when I’m back in an hour, sure, but I’ll not be leaving that easy.”

“And I suppose I have no choice in the matter.”

“None.”

“Then I thank you for not pretending otherwise.” Gratitude in the words, sure, but her voice was bitter as the January wind this morn. She was no longer a siren luring him to ruin but the Cailleach, the queen of winter, wearing a young woman’s form.

Even with her brown hair bedraggled from the damp and nose still red from cold, Lucy Muir was more than average pretty. That hadn’t changed in two years: her large blue eyes and full mouth and lush, abundant curves anywhere and everywhere a man might be interested in putting his hands.

But ’twas beauty like ice is beautiful. Like frost creeping over everything near it, making everything a little more beautiful but freezing it brittle. Was she brittle now too, easily shattered? He hadn’t thought it in France, but two years was a long stretch of time to be living with devils. And devils tended to multiply with the years if they weren’t vanquished proper early on.

And I know at least one or two of yours. “Much as I’d like to give you a choice, ’tis a decision out of my hands. Your life is in danger.” Best to reiterate that; her face said she was considering arguing a bit more.

“So you say. Am I to be told why?”

He’d get to it in a minute. He didn’t want to, but he would. “I’ll be staying with you for a time whether you like it or not, looking out for your safety. I’ll try to stay out of your way⁠—”

“Look around you.” Her scornful laugh was devoid of amusement. “This room and the small chamber beyond are the extent of my home. It’s a refurbished crofter’s cottage.”

Just over the hill was the larger one, presumably where Blackmore and her sister lived. “Mayhap the main cottage⁠—”

“No.” A shard of ice, that single sharp word.

“As you say.” ’Twould be easier to keep watch on this smaller dwelling anyway, inside and out.

Her mouth softened slightly. “This is the space where I am comfortable. It is small, but it is my own in its way. If Isobel and Nathaniel were here presently, perhaps . . . But they are not. And I will not be driven from my own cottage by whatever nebulous threat you claim exists.” Her voice wobbled a bit on the last. She wasn’t as unrattled as she wanted him to think.

“The threat’s not nebulous at all. ’Tis very real,” he said bluntly. “Loose ends unravelling from two years ago. ’Tis one such thread has sent me up here.” And just when he was meant to be going home to see Mam and his sisters for the first time in years too. Fucking poor timing, but so it went.

She’d gone noticeably pale. “So you’ve come for my brother-in-law. Even though he’s out of that work now.”

“To talk to him, sure, but ’tis on your account in particular I’ll be staying.” He was going to have to hurt her with the name of a dead man. He hadn’t a choice; he’d been sent here to do exactly that. ’Twas a large part of why he hadn’t wanted to come here. Only he hadn’t expected to tell her himself. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, of all the bleedin’ times for Blackmore to be away from home for several weeks.