Page 9 of Bargaining with the Devil

Lucy nodded. “Do you expect me to remain here”—she gestured to her cottage—“at all times until Lymington is apprehended?”

“Not entirely. ’Twill be expected that you keep up your usual routine. Church and the like.”

“I do not attend church every week. I suppose I should. Isobel does, but quite honestly I don’t feel like it every week.”

“’Tis mayhap no great surprise to you, but I’m not a regular churchgoer myself.”

“No, I had not imagined you were.” Her tone was dry, amused.

“’Tisn’t that I’m not a believer in God. Mam made sure I have the proper fear in me of God and the Devil both and that I’m on a first name basis with most of the Irish saints. But none of those relationships require my arse in a church pew every Sunday. Not that I have occasion to attend regular anyway, what with my work.”

“The matter of your soul and mine notwithstanding, it will not be out of the ordinary if I do not attend church between now and when Isobel and Nathaniel return. Some might have opinions, but no one will find it out of character for me. But wouldn’t it be suspicious if I don’t keep to my usual patterns in other ways? I’m—” She swallowed. “I’m being watched, I presume.”

“Aye.” No use sugarcoating it. “Probably not every minute. But ’twill be odd if you don’t stick to your regular ways, whatever those are. ’Tis just that you’ll need to be more cautious. I’ll stay out of the way, out of sight if I can, but you shouldn’t be haring off by yourself.” He met her eyes. “I’m going to be needing an agreement on that, a stór, that you won’t hare off by yourself.”

She exhaled and nodded. “I understand. But I do walk regularly. Most days, in fact.”

“Along the bay?’ He kept his tone neutral.

“Yes. I prefer the shore. Isobel prefers up on top of the heugh, so when she is home I walk up there with her sometimes to appease her.” Her eyes were a bit soft on the corners, talking of her sister. “Nathaniel likes the water’s edge. Sometimes he walks with me there.”

He didn’t want her walking at the water’s edge, not if she might be tempted out farther. “I’ll walk with you there in his absence.”

“Do you enjoy rambles along the shore, Mr. Quinn?” Both her tone and her eyebrows were skeptical.

“As it happens, I grew up in sight of the sea.” And once upon a time, ’twas his favorite place in the world to while away an hour or two. He had a more complicated relationship with water now.

“Not quite an answer.” Her tone wasn’t as sharp as before. Softened by speaking of her family, mayhap.

’Twas all the answer he was going to give her. “Although I’d like to keep a low profile as long as is feasible, especially at first, ’tis inevitable I’ll get noticed. When that happens, ’tis best we have a story ready.” He didn’t want to find himself at the wrong end of a musket if the local men took it upon themselves to defend Lucy from an outsider. ’Twould certainly be ironic though if violence came at the hands not of the smugglers but from men with Lucy’s best interests at heart. He was prepared for the former; the latter, not so much.

“And just what shall the story be?” She again looked genuinely amused. “Unless you’ve a facility for putting on accents, I do not think anyone is going to buy that you are a cousin from Glasgow or Edinburgh. Although I suppose we could perhaps have some distant branch of the family in Ireland. Your coloring is somewhat similar to Isobel’s,” she said doubtfully.

“Nay, ’tisn’t a story that would hold much water, a family connection of that sort. So we’ll stick a bit closer to the truth and say I was a man in Blackmore’s company of the Rifles. ’Tis true that he was an officer and I was a Rifleman, anyway.”

She tilted her head. “Did you know one another on the Peninsula?”

“I knew who he was, him being an officer, but I wasn’t under his command. So no, not when we were both in the Rifles.” Their acquaintance had begun later when they’d both been handpicked for a shadow detachment formed of men with particular skill sets. Blackmore’s was that he was practically a bleedin’ parrot with Continental languages and could pass himself off as nobility if he cared to—besides being able to put a man down from two hundred yards with his rifle.

As for himself, he could kill a man a dozen ways. Twice that, if discretion and stealth made no difference. Not details he need to tell her though. “’Twill be enough to say to anyone curious that we go back to the Rifles, for ’tis a shade of the truth.”

“So you are, what . . . taking a leisurely journey through Scotland in January?” Her winged brows lifted. “Perhaps to visit Dundrennan Abbey? We aren’t far from it, after all.” Her tone might have been teasing in a woman with more warmth to her than Lucy Muir.

He shrugged. “Stranger stories are true. But we’ll say I’m on my way home to Ireland and thought to look Blackmore up. ’Tis just a bit of a detour.” ’Twas actually quite close to the truth—God willing, this was just a slight detour.

“But won’t people be suspicious of your connection to Nathaniel if they are suspicious of him anyway? The wrong people, I mean? Lymington’s men?”

She asked a lot of the right questions. Then again, he’d seen the way her mind worked two years ago, laying out what she knew. “Aye, ’tis a risk. But I think ’tis the best angle we have. ’Twould not be too unusual so as to make an odd coincidence, not with so many former soldiers about. A loyal lot, we are.” Or could be, if an officer earned his enlisted men’s respect.

She nodded, crossing her arms and absently rubbing her elbows. Her eyes were pointed towards the window, but her gaze was farther away than that. Mayhap in time as well as space.

Here indoors, without benefit of a lamp against the grey day beyond, her cornflower-blue eyes weren’t as otherworldly as they’d been in the bay. Not one of the Aes Sídhe, setting an enticement.

After a few minutes, she transferred her gaze back to him. “Go and fetch your belongings,” she said. “You needn’t worry about me in the meantime. I plan to change my dress.” Her lips curved up briefly. “As advised. And then I believe I will do a bit of knitting.”

His coat was drying near the fire. He caught it up, grateful for the embrace of the warm fabric. Wouldn’t last long out in the weather, but ’twas something, at least. A man took that sort of comfort where he could; six years with the Rifles and more than six since, as a spy, had taught him that lesson in spades.

“Lock the door after me.” He caught her eyes, made sure before he set his fingers on the handle that she would mind him on that.