Page 197 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
“It isnae safe, wife. Ye’ll stay here.” The words came out harder than he had intended.
He heard that too late. Ava heard it at once.
Her lips parted in disbelief. “Stay here?”
“Aye.”
“Me father may be hurt.”
“I ken that.”
“Then I am going.”
“Nay.”
The force of the word stopped her for a beat, but it did nothing to calm her. The fear in her face sharpened into anger.
Ciaran could see the exact moment when he lost the ground he should have held more carefully.
“But me father?—”
He cut her off because the thought of her on the road was already too much. “Yer father isnae yer protector anymore. I am.” He heard his own voice and still did not stop. “And yewillobey me.”
The yard had gone quieter around them. His men continued carrying out orders, but Ciaran knew with a grim clarity that every person within earshot would remember that line.
Ava stared at him. The hurt on her face landed harder than her anger had.
“Are ye being serious?”
“Ava—”
“Ye have become me protector?”
“Ava, ye must understand?—”
“What? Because ye have become me husband, me father is suddenly useless? Worthless?”
Ciaran felt the truth of that and kept going anyway, driven by the same fear that had ruined his judgment the moment she had arrived. “I said, ye’ll stay here.”
Her chin lifted. “Ye daenae get to command me out of this, Ciaran.”
He felt a pang in his chest at the mention of his name. “That isnae what I am doing.”
“It is exactly what ye are doing.”
He almost mentioned the road, the danger, the smoke, the possibility of whatever had caused the fire still waiting there. He almost gave every practical reason that made his refusal right. However, none of those reasons changed the fact that she was looking at him as if he had shut a door in her face when she most needed him to open one.
Hector rode past then with the first of the men, the clip-clop of horses’ hooves breaking through the tension between them.
Ciaran stepped back half a step and kept his voice level.“Ride hard and send me word.”
Hector nodded once and led the men out.
Ava did not look after them. She looked only at Ciaran.
For one second, he thought she might say something worse than anything she already had. Something final. Something he could not take back into himself later and explain as fear. Instead, she drew a tight breath.
“I came to ye because I thought ye might be on me side and let me go,” she said quietly. “I suppose I was wrong.”
