Page 183 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
Ava did not move.
But he was right there a second ago.
Isobel came up beside her but said nothing.
Her silence told Ava enough.
She could have called after him. She could have asked Hector where he had gone. She could have pretended it meant nothing, that he had simply remembered some duty and stepped away before she could reach him.
She did none of those things because she didn’t need to. Doing that would only delay the inevitable and put her in denial. Thetruth was sitting right in front of her, clearer even than the morning sun.
He was avoiding her.
Ava looked once more at the empty place where he had stood, then lowered her gaze.
The knowledge sat plain before her now. Heavy. Clear. Past argument.
When she had gone to his study, she had hoped she was imagining it. When she had spoken to Isobel, she still wanted a different explanation. Now, she had none left to borrow.
He wasavoidingher.
“Ava—” Isobel’s voice rose behind her.
Ava shook her head almost immediately.
“Look, ye daenae have to?—”
“Oh, trust me, Isobel, I understand yer brother perfectly. He doesnae want to see me.”
“I daenae think that is why. He probably had something urgent to do.”
Ava scoffed.Urgent.“We need to start calling it what it is, Isobel. Yer brother has grown tired of me.”
“Ava—”
“Let us walk back. I want to lie down.”
Isobel opened her mouth to speak, perhaps to protest, but then she seemed to think better of it. Now wasn’t the time.
“All right,” she said, and they both turned in the direction they had come from.
CHAPTER 17
Later that morning,Ciaran left the castle as early as he could.
He wanted to feel the ground under his feet, and he wanted it in a way that had nothing to do with Ava. After the brief encounter he had with her in the gardens this morning, the break was the one thing that could bring him back to normal.
He needed something solid to hold on to. Some semblance of his old life. The village beyond the castle gave him that, or had once. The path down from the castle, the bend past the lower wall, the familiar spread of cottages and trade and daily labor, all of it belonged to a life older than his marriage. He wanted that older shape back.
He walked as he always had—hands loose at his sides, gaze clear, pace steady enough to suggest neither hurry nor invitation. He was not there to admire the day. He was there because routine had once made sense of him. A laird through his own village,seen, obeyed, and left largely untroubled by whatever lived in other people’s hearts.
The village answered him as it always had.
A woman carrying a basket stepped aside too quickly and nearly knocked her shoulder against a post in her haste to give him room. A pair of boys dragging a sack of grain fell silent the moment they spotted him. One man by the smithy bowed his head without looking up. Another turned his attention too quickly to a wagon wheel that did not need such close inspection.
No one challenged him or tried to stop him.
He was used to the respect he got, and he knew all too well that the respect didn’t come out of nowhere. It had fear sitting underneath it. He could almost hear them murmur his name as he walked. Of course, he couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it came from, but it followed him very closely, like the wind itself on the back of his neck.
