Page 46 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
“Maybe I did. Maybe I didnae. I want ye to repeat it.”
Ciaran shrugged, exhaling as loudly as he could. “I said… I have a telescope in me tower.”
So her mind had not been playing tricks on her. That was exactly what he had said, and it was what she had heard.
The words were so unexpected that for a moment, she only looked at him. “A telescope?”
He kept looking ahead. “Aye.”
That was all. He didn’t offer any explanation or attempt to make the fact less strange than it sounded.
A part of her was beginning to understand now that it was his way of talking. He didn’t use twenty words when only two would do. Yet, for some reason, the admission landed with surprising force.
It was not the object itself that surprised her, though she had not expected such a thing from him. It was the picture that formed in her head. A solitary man in a tower, watching the night sky, keeping a private habit no one had thought fit to tell her about because no one likely imagined there was such a thing to tell.
For a man known for being severe, the picture felt almost intimate.
Ava found herself smiling before she meant to.“I would never have guessed.”
The corner of his mouth twitched slightly. “Most people wouldnae.”
“Nay, they wouldnae.”
For a moment, she tried to imagine it clearly. Ciaran in his tower alone, looking upward through glass and brass toward the same heavens her mother had taught her to dream about.
The image should have felt odd. Instead, it felt reasonable in the strangest way, that a man like Ciaran would have quite an odd hobby.
How could something make sense and no sense at the same time?
“Me mother would have liked that,” Ava said.
“The telescope?”
“Theideaof it.” She glanced up at the sky again. “That a man who looks as though he might distrust every soft thing in the world still keeps a way to study the stars.”
He gave her a look at that, not offended but not amused either. More as if he had not expected to be read so neatly and did not entirely care for it.
“It serves practical uses as well,” he pointed out.
“Of course, it does.”
That made him breathe out something close to a laugh.
The sound was so small that she might have missed it if she had not been listening to him with far too much attention already. She said nothing about it. Instead, they just walked on.
Ava did not press him with foolish questions about how often he used it or whether he watched the stars alone or what first made him want to do such a thing. The moment felt too finely balanced for that.
He had given her a nugget, and she sensed that taking it too greedily might snap whatever had opened.
Still, the knowledge remained between them and felt heavier than anything.
She understood why he did that at the end of the day. She had spoken of her mother and a dream held for years, and he had felt it was only reasonable to reveal something about his private life.
Ava grew aware of him beside her in a new way then. He was not just the man she had married or even the man who had kissed her so fervently the other day. Rather, he had become more present. Moreapproachable.
She kept her hands folded before her because she did not trust them to stay still.
The path narrowed slightly where grass pressed close to stones, and when they rounded a stand of low shrubs, his arm brushed hers for the briefest instant. The contact was nothing, yet her whole body noticed it.
