Page 217 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
Ciaran came closer. “What is it?”
“The comet.” She was almost laughing in disbelief, joy, and fear that if she stopped speaking, it would vanish. “Me mother saw it once when she was a girl. She never forgot it. She used to say she had seen many fine things after—balls and London rooms and the sea in summer and a hundred other pretty sights—but none of them struck her as that comet did.”
His gaze stayed on her face.
Ava took a breath and steadied herself enough to continue speaking. “She said it made her feel the world held things larger than just what we concerned ourselves with. She used to say that if she achieved nothing else in life, she wanted at least to see that comet once again.”
Ciaran’s eyes moved briefly to the telescope, then back to her. “And ye kept her notes.”
“Aye.” Ava turned back to the instrument and laid one hand on its brass tube with more care than before. “After she died, I kept all of it.”
She swallowed once. The excitement stayed, but something deeper had joined it.
“It changed after she was gone,” she murmured. “When I was little, it was only one of Ma’s stories. Afterward, it became something else. A thing she had loved. A thing she had waited for. A thing she had left behind without meaning to.” Her fingers tightened. “I think I began waiting for it because it was one way to wait with her.”
Ciaran said nothing. He stood there and listened, which was what she needed from him most.
“She had a whole life,” she continued quietly. “Marriage, children, duties, disappointments, ordinary tiredness—all the things that crowd a person into thinking only of what is in front of them. Yet she kept room for this, too. For the thought that one beautiful thing might return after years. I could never quite forget that.”
Ava looked back at him. Her face felt warm, and her eyes stung.
“I always thought that mattered more than the comet itself. She kept believing she might see it. She kept looking up. I loved her for that. I still do. And I always felt that if she could carry such hope through all the hard parts of life, then I ought nae become the sort of person who stops looking.”
Ciaran’s face contorted with an emotion she felt before she could name. He looked at her as if she had given him something heavy and living and a little dangerous.
She looked away and quickly bent to the telescope once more. One look was enough.
“Oh, we shall miss it if we stay here talking.” She moved at once, her skirts gathered in one hand, excitement taking her whole body with it. “Come.”
“Ava.”
“It is there. Truly there. Come.”
She was already halfway to the door. Ciaran followed without argument, which only made her hurry further.
They went down from the tower, through the passageway, and out into the night, leaving the castle behind them.
The air by the loch was cold enough to wake every part of her. She did not care. She looked up once, then down toward the end of the loch, trying to find the best place, then back up again in case the sky had changed in the breath she had spent moving.
Ciaran took off his coat. “Lie there,” he said.
He spread it on the ground with care, before Ava sank down onto it and gathered her skirts close. The grass beneath still held the dampness of the night, but the heavy wool kept the worst of it from her.
Ciaran lowered himself beside her, one shoulder nearly brushing hers, one arm bent behind him for support, before he shifted and lay more fully on his back. She did the same.
The loch stretched dark at their side, and the sky opened wide above them. The cold air touched her cheeks, and the ground pressed firm beneath the coat.
She was aware of Ciaran every second, the heat radiating from him near enough that she couldfeelhis breathing. She could even feel just how small the space between them was, and she knew one careless moment would close it.
“Me mother once told me that she would stand outside with her father to see it when she was young. She wrote that down once. She said she thought the sky had opened just for them.”
His voice came low beside her. “And did it?”
Ava smiled despite the lump in her throat. “She believed it did.”
She kept watching the sky as she spoke.
“After she died, I used to take out those notes and read them when I missed her worst. Some daughters inherit jewels. Some inherit recipes. I inherited this.” Her hand moved once over her middle, then settled again. “Dates and stars.”
