Page 62 of Bargaining with the Devil

“Nay. I killed my first man at twelve, not long after I hied off after the Rifles.” ’Twas an old story by now, for him at least. “I’d told the serjeant I was fifteen. A scrawny fifteen, sure, but fifteen, on my father’s grave. And how was he to know I wasn’t in fear of my mortal soul, swearing so on my sire’s grave? But they knew I was younger than I’d said, so they tested me. My resolve, I guess. By then, they knew I could handle a rifle fine. There was a man who’d deserted. He was court-martialed for it, and the sentence was death by firing squad. Six men needed. They put me on it. And I did it.”

“And it was your shot that killed him?” Her voice was a whisper.

“No way to be sure which round did what damage. But all six shots hit the mark, and any of those six could have proved fatal alone. ’Tis partially the point, having six men. A higher likelihood that ’twill truly be the final punishment for the miscreant, sure, but mayhap if you’re one of the six called to dispense it, you can tell yourself ’twasn’t actually your shot.”

“And you were twelve.” She was still whispering.

He smiled briefly. “Aye. ’Twas only the first time I was tested in similar fashion. And from there . . .” He shrugged. ’Twas an accelerating progression of events after that. But she didn’t need to hear about those. He’d distract her off that line of thought, mayhap.

Except he was also tired. There’d been a lot of burning the candle at both ends lately. He moved sideways, lying with his head in her lap and his feet hanging off the settee’s end. Felt right, having his head there.

Twists of her hair were coming free around her face. It had natural curl to it, her hair.

She stroked light fingers over his jaw. He hadn’t bothered with shaving this morning. Didn’t seem to bother her, the way she was rubbing him like he was a cat.

He was relaxed, a bit sleepy. Content overall, which is why her question came as such a punch to the gut.

“Will you tell me about Mairéad?”

Quinn’s face went very still. She almost—almost—regretted being the reason he lost his relaxed ease. But she also wanted to know.

“I . . . Perhaps I shouldn’t pry. It’s just . . . You’ve mentioned Mairéad several times. But not why she’s . . .”

“Dead,” Quinn finished softly.

The night she’d been drinking whisky, he’d said he had one memory that haunted him. And from everything he so carefully didn’t say about his sister, she was starting to piece together an idea of what had happened.

“The man you told me about on Heston Isle, the one you hate . . .” The man whose death Quinn had dealt. “Did he have something to do with her death?”

He closed his eyes and drew a ragged breath. She set her fingers lightly in his hair, stroking through the strands.

“Aye. Lorcán killed Mairéad.” His eyes were still closed tight. “Mairéad told me what happened. She was—” He took another sharp breath.

The thoughts were out of order, but perhaps he was trying to speak of something so terrible that the words wouldn’t come out in order. She understood a thing or two about that. She brushed his hair off his forehead, the lock that never did stay to the side.

“She was seventeen,” he said quietly. “Young yet, sure, but old enough for marriage. But that wasn’t what he’d wanted of her. She was sixteen when he . . .” He opened his eyes, and her breath caught at the anguish in them.

“She told me what happened, that she was five months gone, and that he’d laughed in her face when she asked if they’d be marrying before the babe came. ’Tisn’t the end of the world, I told her. I’ll talk to him. And I thought . . .” He swallowed. “I thought with a little time, she’d see that even if he didn’t come ’round, that though ’twas hard for Mam, having had me out of wedlock, she’d gone on to marry a good man anyway. And Mam and Dónall would never have cast Mairéad out. Never. But she . . . I will regret forever that I didn’t recognize in her eyes, didn’t understand, how truly hopeless she was,” he finished softly.

This was that memory, the one that still cost him sleep, the one he’d said would haunt him forever. Her heart ached for him. “Some people are good at hiding it. How near that cliff they are.”

“Or the sea.” His glance was speaking; he recognized the implication under her words and layered in truth of his own.

Because— Oh God, no wonder he’d not been letting it go with her. “Was it— Did she drown?”

It was in his eyes, before he cut them away, that Mairéad had. “Aye.”

It was uncharacteristic that he wasn’t meeting her eyes. She was so used to it, to his eye contact, no matter how uncomfortable, that it felt almost like he was shutting her out. He wasn’t though; he was shutting himself into the past.

She wanted to offer him what comfort she could, but would he even want that from her? When she’d been reopening his wound every day for weeks? Tears were gathering; she didn’t bother brushing them away. Just kept her fingers moving softly in Quinn’s hair as he closed his eyes again.

“No one saw her do it,” he continued. “Or rather, afterwards there were some who’d seen her out walking, too far out. But no one knew what she was truly about, and no one saw it happen. The sea took her, and the sea gave her back a few days later.”

One tear spilled over. She dashed it away before it could drip onto Quinn’s face. He opened his eyes again, maybe because she’d pulled her hand away from his hair.

One of his hands came up to cover hers on her cheek. “So to answer what you first asked, aye, Lorcán killed her. Not with his hands, but by abandoning her when she carried his child.” He laid his hand back on his chest. “And he threatened Gráinne next. A year younger than Mairéad, she is, and four younger than me. Don’t know if he meant it or was just trying to get under my skin a little. Didn’t matter either way. Not after he’d already sent Mairéad to her grave.”

“And you killed him,” she said softly. It shocked her far less than it should have. “Because men like that don’t change their ways.” Her voice was bitter, but she didn’t bother masking it. She needn’t with him.