Page 65 of Bargaining with the Devil

“Quinn offered to hold Rachel while I rested a few moments, but I must have fallen asleep.”

“’Twas no trouble holding her,” Quinn told her. “She slept for all of it. You don’t need to take her back now on my account. I don’t mind it, her sleeping on me.”

“If you’re certain . . .” Isobel sat in her preferred chair, picking up her embroidery bag. “You’re very good with her.”

“I have six younger sisters.” His throat moved visibly before he added, “Had six younger sisters. Only five are living now.”

Isobel glanced towards her. “You have six sisters still, even if one is lost to you.”

Rachel made a smacking sound on her thumb and snuggled closer into Quinn’s arm without waking. He gently patted her back.

It squeezed her heart, the picture of Quinn so comfortably cradling Rachel. “You’ll be a good father someday.” And why did those words stick in her throat? She ignored Isobel’s incisive stare.

He brushed a wispy curl back from Rachel’s face. “’Tis a little strange to think of myself as a father. Doesn’t go too comfortably with my current life. Lately I’ve been thinking I want to change it though, what my life looks like. Dónall, that’s my stepfather”—he looked towards Isobel—“died two years back. Mam has Gráinne’s husband—Gráinne’s my oldest sister living—to help her out, sure. And he’s a good man. But they’re busy with their lives and raising two little ones of their own. Probably more than that soon. So I’m thinking she could use me around regular, Mam could. Not just visiting here and there when the job lets me loose for a time.”

One of Rachel’s hands had snaked upwards so that it was lying just below the hollow of his throat where his shirt was open, finding comfort from his skin as she slept.

While she’d sought far less innocent things from Quinn, she also drawn that same comfort from sleeping with his arms around her.

“It looks different now, home, so Aoife writes. She’s the one marrying,” he told Isobel. “The shore is different, that is, even since I was last home, since Mairéad . . .” He took a moment before continuing. “Since we lost my oldest sister Mairéad. ’Tis better that way, I’m thinking. There’s a sanctuary harbor going in at Dún Laoghaire since Dublin Port is hard for ships to make in foul weather. ’Tis changing the waterfront considerably, and ’twill change the town too, I’m thinking. ’Twill be interesting to see.”

Isobel smiled at him. “Things never stay the same, do they?”

“No. Sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better.” He briefly laid his hand atop Rachel’s.

She looked resolutely to her knitting, although the pattern she was working didn’t truly require her eyes on it. But it hurt too much at the moment to look at Quinn.

“There’s a cèilidh tonight at the Arms,” Isobel said, tactfully changing the subject. “That’s⁠—”

“’Tis close to the same in Gaeilge: céilí.”

It wasn’t interchangeable, his Gaeilge with their Gaelic. Some words and phrases were comprehensible, some weren’t.

“Will you come tonight?” she asked, finally looking at Quinn again.

He smiled at her. “Hoping to dance with me, are you?”

“Perhaps.” She never danced at the gatherings, but she could humor him in his teasing.

“I spoke with Blackmore about this earlier,” he said, looking to Nathaniel. “’Twill be useful, mayhap. An extra set of eyes on the both of you, but also, I got enough of a look at the men rowing Lymington out from Heston that I might recognize them if they’re there tonight.”

“If they’re local,” Isobel said, mouth turning down. “It chills me to think that we—Lucy, mainly—have been under watch, possibly by people with whom we’re friendly.”

That was bothering her as well. She’d not gone out of her way to form relationships to the same degree that Isobel had; she just hadn’t felt like involving herself in community life that deeply, but she could think of no one that she suspected of wishing her ill.

“I haven’t turned anything up yet that suggests they’re local to Auchencairn specifically,” Nathaniel remarked.

“But would you? It seems to me they’ve hidden it well regardless.” Isobel drew a deep breath, the sort she did when she was determinedly turning the subject. Her sister’s face was hopeful, turning towards her. “Will you bring your fiddle tonight?” She asked that same question every time there was a cèilidh in Auchencairn.

This time, there was something besides hope in her sister’s voice—what was it? It little mattered. She was bound to disappoint Isobel as she always did. The answer remained the same each time.

“Perhaps.” But she knew she wouldn’t. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to outright deny it, not with whatever else colored Isobel’s tone this afternoon.

It wasn’t that she didn’t miss playing, because she did. Some days desperately. But it had felt for a long time that all the music that was once in her heart—in her soul—had gone silent. Music had been such a large part of their family life. With half her family gone, the music had died as well.

Rachel startled awake, gripping a fistful of Quinn’s shirt and blearily looking around. When her eyes landed on Isobel, she reached out her arms.

“And that’s my cue to take her after all.” Isobel laid her embroidery down. “She’s hungry.”