Page 236 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
“Ava.”
She nodded once without meeting his eyes.
He brought the bloody knife to the rope and cut it loose. It fell away, and he watched the red marks around her wrists. He took her hands in his own and rubbed them hard, as if to force warmth back into her cold fingers.
Laird O’Malley lay crumpled a few feet away, one arm bent under him at an odd angle, the blood dark at his side. The sight of him should have brought relief. But it only brought the knowledge that one threat had ended and another had begun.
“Look at me.”
Hector and two of his men reached them then, their boots striking the ground. One of them bent over Laird O’Malley’s body and the other scanned his men, who were now dead on the floor as well.
Hector crouched beside Ciaran and Ava, sword still in hand, breathing hard. “Are ye hurt?”
“She was pushed,” Ciaran said.
“I askedher.”
Ava drew a shaky breath and said. “I am fine.”
That answer should have soothed him. It did not.
Finedid not answer anything. He needed to know whether she could stand, whether anything in her was broken, whether she would faint, and whether the look she had just given him would remain after the tremors stopped.
There was only one way to find out.
He put one arm around her back and helped her sit upright, and she let him do it.
“Ava,” Ciaran murmured, quieter now.
She flinched, then steadied herself. He reached out to wipe the blood from the scrape on her cheek, and again, she let him.
“We must get ye back home,” he said.
Ava looked at him then with a strange clarity that told him she had heard every word he had said earlier.“Because I mean so little to ye?” she asked.
Hector rose and turned away, barking orders at the men to check the ground below and watch the treeline. He gave them privacy without pretending not to hear. The wind still came hard from the drop, and somewhere below, more stones shifted and fell.
“That was for him,” Ciaran sighed.
Her mouth trembled. “Aye.”
He rose and then offered her his hand. She took it after the smallest hesitation. He pulled her carefully to her feet and kept hold of her elbow while she found her balance.
The men closed in around them, and Hector returned, a look that seemed to suggest satisfaction resting on his face.
“It is done,” he declared.
Ciaran kept one hand on Ava’s back as they turned away from the cliff’s edge. She did not pull away, but then, she did not move closer either. She walked beside him in shaken silence while the men formed around them and the morning cold swallowed the cliff behind.
“Let us go home,” he whispered, almost involuntarily.
CHAPTER 31
By the timethey reached the castle, Ava’s whole body hurt. It hurt even more when Isobel rushed forward and enveloped her in a warm hug.
“Oh, thank Christ, ye’re alive!”
“Isobel, I daenae think she can withstand that now.”
