CHAPTER ONE
Auchencairn, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland
Quinn didn’t want to be in fucking back-of-beyond Scotland. In January, no less, a chill wind whipping icy moisture off the Solway Firth.
He didn’t want to deliver the message he’d come to give Blackmore.
He didn’t want to think about what came after once he’d relayed that message.
The sum of which was the reason he was meandering along the coastline of Balcary Bay on this dismal morning rather than sitting somewhere nice and warm, feet propped up by a roaring fire, mayhap having a pint or some whisky to stave off the bitter day. ’Twould be grand, that, right about now.
He was procrastinating walking along here, and he knew it. Merely forestalling the inevitable but, in so doing, snatching a few minutes more before he lit the fuse that would blow up Blackmore’s quiet life here.
Blessed Jesus, ’twas drizzling now too. Could this day bring any additional misery? Well, ’twas young yet, the day. Best not to ask that question. Don’t go borrowin’ trouble, Ciarán a mhic, Mam was fond of saying.
He tugged his coat lapels closer and rounded a rocky outcropping. Far out on the bay’s mudflats, a woman walked alone.
Too far out.
Didn’t she realize the danger she placed herself in, walking so?
He’d grown up in County Dublin, halfway between Blackrock and Dún Laoghaire, right where Dublin Bay met the Irish Sea.
Treacherous mudflats claimed the unwary there, had for centuries.
There were sometimes shingled areas that served as pathways of sorts, sure, but one wrong step and mud would hold you fast for hours, in which case you’d best hope the tide was a low one.
Or a wrong step another way and you’d find yourself in quicksand, sinking.
Swallowed whole, even, till the next turn of the tide.
Speaking of, this tide would be coming in soon, if ’twasn’t already.
Even now, he walked alongside last night’s high-water mark, clearly defined.
The shingle was scoured away, the underlying mud displaced in great scoops.
The significance of that hit him all at once.
’Twas January . . . and with a nearly full moon last night.
Every child who grew up on a tidal coastline was warned off it early, what that meant.
The year’s highest high tide and ’twould come in fast.
Fucking hell, she had no business whatsoever being out there.
Not his business either, that she was. He sat down on a rock anyway.
Which was wet from the drizzle and colder than a witch’s tit. Fuck Scotland anyway.
’Twasn’t the discomfort that was grating on him most. He’d endured far worse in the Rifles.
He just didn’t want to be in Kirkcudbrightshire today.
And now he didn’t want to be here either, on this particular rock, waiting on some fool of a woman out on the mudflats. He burrowed a bit deeper into his coat.
The tide was coming in. In the ten minutes he’d been sitting here, the water line was shifting.
The woman was still out there. She hadn’t moved at all.
Or rather, she was moving her arms, periodically pulling her shawl tighter and the like, but she wasn’t progressing back towards shore or anywhere else.
In fact, she was still faced entirely towards the firth.
The drizzle was picking up. His coat was keeping off the worst of it, but she had to be soaked clear through out there in the bay, just a shawl draped over her head and shoulders.
Inland wind met the incoming tide head-on.
Farther out in the bay, waves were forming.
They’d return soon enough, fourfold in height, pushing the tide higher as it flooded the shore.
Likely she was local, because who else would be eejit enough to be on this beach today? Besides him, that was. Even the fishermen weren’t out at their stake nets.
She must know by now that the tide was coming in. If he could see it from where he sat, so could she.
His heart beat a tattoo in his chest, blood firing, hairs on his arms lifting.
The chill chasing up his spine had little to do with the icy wind-driven spray.
What if she could see that the tide was coming in and didn’t care?
Was waiting for it, even? Wouldn’t be the first time a woman did it, walked into the sea.
He had cause to know.
He came to his feet, advancing from where sand turned to mud. He cupped his hands, calling, “Best be coming in now, don’t you think?” but the wind snatched the words away.
Or else she ignored him. Whichever way it was, she did take a few steps. Except not back towards the beach, towards safety—but out towards the bay, towards the incoming tide.
He could stand here and wait to see what else she’d do. Sure, and he’d stand here watching her drown if he did.
Muttering curses at herself and her ancestors—his own too while he was at it, for surely they’d not gouged out a living from the rocky earth of Ireland only for their descendant to die a fool’s death—he worked his boots and stockings off, using the former to anchor his coat to the rock.
If he wore the boots out there, he’d only lose them to the sucking mud.
And if they both made it back to shore, they’d need the coat.
The air temperature wasn’t much above freezing; setting out from the Auchencairn Arms this morning there’d been a heavy frost on the vegetation.
He should have just stayed in bed at the Arms, only he hadn’t slept in a bed regular since he was twelve, so he wasn’t accustomed to lounging.
Most of the time he spent in genuine beds these days, when he managed it, wasn’t spent sleeping.
He might have tried a little harder to remember the last one’s face had he known she’d be the last lass he’d ever find his pleasure with in this mortal life before he died trying to play white knight to some Scots óinseach.
The tide was running high and fast, propelled by the wave action in the bay. Sand, mud, water: all ’twas frigid on his bare toes. Closer to her now, he saw that water saturated the woman’s skirt. ’Twould weigh her down, that would, even if the mud didn’t.
When he was near enough to her to speak over the wind, he said firmly, “Time to be coming in, a chara.”
Her head whipped around, shawl slipping from brown hair, and he finally caught a look at her face—young, oval-shaped, startled—and the peculiar blue shade of her eyes, not far off violet.
“Holy bleedin’ Jaysus!” was not what he’d meant to say next, but ’twas what she got. The surprise on her face neatly mirrored his own shock.
It didn’t matter. Only the most important part now; the rest must wait. “The tide’s coming in fast.”
She was frozen, lips parted, eyes wide. Soon literally frozen as well, if the weather had anything to say on it. And then drowned. Or drowned first and frozen later. Goddamn this weather. Hell wasn’t hot. It was cold, freezing cold. He should know; he was calf deep in it.
“Are you stuck?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. Her eyes were . . . distant. Not wholly there, somehow. She was a siren, mayhap, a sea maiden tempting an unwary man into danger.
Well, and he was a ghost.
“Are you stuck in the mud?” he tried again.
She sucked in a breath. “No-oo.”
He held out a hand. She looked at him like he’d thrust a snake in her direction.
“’Tis either the both of us stand here together until the tide claims us and floats both of our corpses out to Muir éireann,” he said grimly, “or you come with me now. There,” he elaborated, pointing towards the distant rock on which his coat and boots waited.
He strove for a gentler tone. “Your choice. But if I’m choosing, I’d prefer to go on living myself. ”
“Yes,” she said faintly. And then “Yes” again. Her voice was stronger on the second affirmative.
“Then give me your hands, Miss Muir.” He extended both of his.
Her fingers were icy in his when she grasped them, letting him lead her a slow step at a time back to safety.
Frigid water bit deep into his muscles, trying to steal what warmth remained. His feet had gone numb. But somehow, some way, they gained the shoreline.
Damn this day to the Devil and fuck him twice on Sundays. Because included among what he’d not wanted today, seeing Lucinda Muir again topped the list.
Bargaining with the Devil
is available for purchase.