Page 3 of Bargaining with the Devil

And that was just it, why she wasn’t pleased to see him. Mr. Quinn was inextricably linked to that time she’d so carefully shuttered. She tried very, very hard to never think of that time. Or the months before it: the poor choices she’d made freely, the far worse ones she’d been forced to make afterwards.

“Why are you here, Mr. Quinn?” Something to do with her brother-in-law Nathaniel, probably. It was Nathaniel who set Mr. Quinn to escort them—her sister Isobel and herself—out of France, back to England, and onward to London.

“’Tis just Quinn,” he said rather than answer.

So very helpful. Not that she was answering his questions any more directly than he had hers. Not that it had mattered to her two years ago who he was. He was Irish from his brogue, was anywhere between twenty and thirty, and two minutes after she met him, he told her he was prepared to shoot anyone who tried to prevent her leaving Paris. For all she knew, Quinn was a false name altogether. Nathaniel was using a false name at the time.

Speaking of whom . . . “If you’ve come to speak with Mr. Blackmore for some purpose, he’s not here.”

Mr. Quinn sighed, loud enough she caught it over the low crackle of flames catching. “And when will he be back?”

“I don’t expect him back for another two weeks at the soonest.”

He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like feckin’ hell. Then louder, “And where is he, gone for weeks?”

Isobel and Nathaniel were visiting aunts and uncles from Da’s side, introducing their daughter Rachel for the first time. She’d been invited too, but she hadn’t wanted to go. She couldn’t fathom the energy it would require of her to spend several weeks among boisterous extended family, however loving.

“Up in Glasgow. I’ll give you the direction, if it’s urgent.” Perhaps that would get Mr. Quinn gone from her life again, and she could pretend this past hour was just a peculiar dream.

“’Tis urgent, sure, but an address in Glasgow won’t solve the issue.”

Apparently all he was prepared to give her were cryptic answers. Fine. They needn’t converse. He had the fire going; it was starting to throw warmth enough into the room to reach her seat. Perhaps Mr. Quinn, stymied by Nathaniel’s absence, would leave now and go back to wherever he was staying or from wherever he’d come.

Satisfied with the fire, he stood. “I need to look at your feet.”

He needed to what? “Excuse me?”

“Just what I said. You couldn’t walk all the way back. The cold, I’m guessing, from how long you were standing there in just stockings. Your feet could be frostbitten.”

This man was undoubtedly many things, but a surgeon was absolutely not one of them. “Do you practice medicine, Mr. Quinn?”

“Don’t need to, to know what standing in that cold water could do. And ’tis just Quinn I said.”

Her tone was surly, matching his: “I can look after my own feet.”

“Do it then, or I’ll be checking them for you. You ought to be getting out of those wet clothes too.” Unexpectedly, he grinned. “I won’t offer to do that service for you.”

Those white teeth flashing in his face suggested he was a man who might have offered to assist with her clothes’ removal under other circumstances. Undoubtedly with great success, were she someone receptive to it; he was the sort of man a woman noticed and kept on noticing whether she wanted to or not. But he knew not to try it with her.

He wasn’t likely to risk crossing Nathaniel regardless. Nathaniel had, after all, coolly shot out the kneecap of the last man who’d threatened her. Minutes before she’d met Mr. Quinn, as it happened.

Mr. Quinn moved towards her now, dropping to his knees in front of her. “I meant it. I’ll be checking your feet now if you won’t do it yourself. ’Tis no joke what cold can do to fingers and toes.”

She hastily bent down, moving her sodden hem aside enough to strip off her wet stockings and examine her feet—without his assistance. The flesh was still cool to the touch. She wiggled her toes. She could feel all of them now; burning pain had accompanied the return of sensation some minutes ago. “They’re fine. I would not like to dance on them, but truly, they are fine. And no concern of yours.”

He didn’t move from kneeling, eyes nearly level with hers since she had yet to straighten up. “Were you waiting for the sea?”

The thrust of the blunt question took a moment to register.

No. She’d not been out there intending to die. Although as the mud started to shift beneath her feet ever so slightly as the tide started pulling back in, she’d stared out towards the firth . . . and yes, the fleeting thought had passed through her mind: What would happen if I stayed right here and just let it take me? She’d not meant to find out, truly, but she’d stayed out there far longer than she ought. She knew it.

It was utterly foolhardy that she’d been out so far and hadn’t come in sooner, but some days—perhaps most days now, if she was truthful—she didn’t care how close she flirted with that edge. She knew that too.

Mr. Quinn’s mouth, so mobile a minute ago when he’d smiled, was grim. “I’ll be needing an answer to that question. Were you waiting for the sea?”

How dare he assume he had the right to her thoughts? “It’s not your business whether I was or wasn’t.”

“I disagree.”