Page 168 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
Hector sat across from him at the desk with ink, sand, and sealed paper lying ready between them.
“We send it today,” Ciaran said.
Hector nodded. “Aye.”
There was no reason to delay. Jack Scott was dead. News like that needed to be sent properly before it got skewed by gossipmongers and people who only heard half of the story and decided to make up the second half.
Isla’s father would hear what had happened from Ciaran’s hand and no other person. That much was owed. If not from affection, then from order.
Ciaran kept his tone stripped of all but necessity as he spoke. “Write that Jack Scott died at me hand on the day of me wedding.”
Hector’s quill scratched across paper.
“Daenae make it fancy. That man deserves to hear everything plainly and simply,” Ciaran added. “Daenae dramatize what is unnecessary.”
“I ken how to write a clean sentence, Brother,” Hector huffed, looking up at him and rolling his eyes.
Ciaran ignored that.
He stood by the window for a moment, then turned back and headed to the desk. The room smelled of wax, old wood, and fresh ink. A room built for land matters, levies, agreements, and the dull, useful bones of rule.
He preferred it that way.
These things might be minor, but he liked having places like this. They made his brain alert and gave him avenues to think about these matters over and over again.
His eyes fixed on Hector’s hand.“Write that nay blame is laid at his father’s feet, nor at the feet of his clan, for the actions of a dead man who brought ruin by his own will.”
Hector looked up, only briefly. “Aye?”
“Aye.”
It was important that something like that was properly clarified. One man’s obsession had already bled too far across too many years. Ciaran would not feed it a fresh road now that Jack was dead. There was no need to widen an unnecessary feud after something had been settled.
Hector wrote as fast as he could, and when he was done, he read the sentence back. Ciaran corrected a word, then continued to speak.
Suddenly, he paused. The pause lasted so long that Hector looked up at him again.
Ciaran looked down at the page before him, seeing the dark lines clearly enough and yet not seeing them at all. His mind had gone elsewhere again, toward a room upstairs, toward Ava’s mouth, which had kissed him back without fear.
“Brother,” Hector’s voice cut through the silence.
Ciaran forced his attention back to the matter at hand.
“Add that nay vengeance will be sought,” he instructed.
Hector did not move.
Ciaran frowned. “Well?”
“Ye stopped speaking.”
Ciaran’s jaw tightened. “And now I have resumed. Write.”
Hector resumed writing, but the ease of the exchange had vanished. It always did when silence began revealing more than words.
Ciaran moved back to the desk and set two fingers against the wood beside the page. It should have been simple. State the fact. Close the matter. Send the letter. Return to the dozen other burdens waiting in the wake of a broken wedding and a dead enemy.
Instead, his eyes kept catching on the same line without taking it in. A dull pain throbbed in his shoulder, persistent, and the bandage pulled when he moved too sharply. Somehow, he could still feel Ava’s hands there, careful and warm and annoyingly steady.
