Chapter 2
Ava stood in the middle of the auction hall, hating herself more than anything.
She wished she could return to the past, to a week ago and shake sense into the foolish girl who had once sat safe in her father’s study and agreed that this might be amusing, or useful, or at the very least survivable.
It was none of those things.
The hall was crowded, even though it wasn’t loud, and for some reason, that made it worse. Noise, she might have understood. She could hide in the noise. This, however, was low conversation and careful observation.
Women stood in small clusters or beside family members with composed expressions that fooled no one.
Men watched with varying degrees of interest, caution, or calculation.
Clan representatives lingered near the edges, and a few older women sat as if they had come merely to witness the spectacle, though their faces said they missed nothing.
Everywhere Ava looked, she found the same thing—attention disguised as casual ceremony. It made her grow even more uneasy with each passing minute. She kept her chin up anyway so that she looked like she belonged. At least to an extent.
“I cannae believe I let ye convince me to join an auction,” she muttered.
Isobel, beside her, did not appear nearly ashamed enough of herself. “It sounds much worse when ye say it that way.”
“How else is there to say it?” Ava asked without looking at her. “Should I call this a festive gathering of maidens waiting to be calmly inspected?”
The corner of Isobel’s mouth twitched. “Ye arenae being inspected.”
Ava gave her a flat look, then quickly turned her attention back to the room before anyone could catch her looking as rattled as she felt.
The women closest to them were better dressed than she had expected. That should not have surprised her, but it did. They had on silk sleeves and proper wool. Even their ribbons looked like they were taken care of.
Mothers and aunts lingered just far enough away to claim this had all happened naturally. No one wanted to appear desperate. That was the whole trouble.
It was quite fascinating, or ironic at the very least, how no one wanted to participate in this auction until she had agreed and word had gotten around.
Isobel touched her arm lightly. “Yer father was delighted by the idea.”
Ava turned to her at once. “Me father isnae here now, is he?”
The words came out sharper than she had intended, but once spoken, they rang too true to be taken back.
Isobel’s expression shifted at once, warmth sobering into concern, and Ava wished for a moment she had held her tongue. Then she wished it less.
Because it was true.
Her father was not here. His castle was not here.
Bruce was not here, with his absurd barks and reckless little legs.
The safety of being Laird MacKenna’s cherished daughter in a household that knew her moods and welcomed her laughter had been left behind, and in its place stood this room where every corner seemed to make her skin crawl.
Isobel squeezed her sleeve. “Ava.”
“Nay,” Ava said more quietly, though the force remained. “Daenae soothe me with Me father liked the notion. It is a poor comfort when he isnae the one standing here.”
“I didnae mean it so.”
“I ken.”
And she did. That was the difficulty of loving someone. Even one’s heart could not fully harden against them.
Isobel lowered her hand. “Ye arenae meant to be a true candidate.”
Ava let out a breath through her nose. This had all been Isobel’s idea. A way for her to stand as a placeholder, so the people who were actually interested in the Laird could get to him.
“Ye are only here for the auction until he finds someone, that is all,” Isobel repeated, almost in a way to appease her.
Ava nodded. “That is easy enough to say now that I am standing amongst them like one more hen set out for market.”
“Ye are here to lend weight to the gathering,” Isobel said patiently. “To make it seem worthy of attention. It has worked. More women came because word spread that Laird MacKenna’s daughter would attend.”
That struck deeper than Ava liked.
Her presence had done work here. Her name, her father’s name, her place in the world had helped make this absurd thing seem respectable enough that others had stepped forward too.
She hated that she could not even deny it.
“So I have served beautifully as bait,” she muttered.
Isobel sighed. “That isnae what I said.”
“It is enough.”
“Ava, listen to me. This is a good thing. The room is fuller. The choice is broader. That was the point.”
Ava gave a small, humorless smile. “How lovely. I am glad me humiliation has proved useful.”
“Ye arenae humiliated.”
“I am standing in a bride auction.”
“That doesnae mean ye will be chosen.”
At that, Ava turned fully toward her. The low talk in the hall seemed to recede, and all at once, there was only the one question that had been ringing over and over in her head.
“And ye promise yer brother willnae choose me?”
Isobel answered too quickly, “Aye.”
Ava narrowed her eyes. “Do ye?”
“He would never force a woman who clearly doesnae wish it.”
“That wasnae the question.”
Isobel drew herself up a little. “If ye act as though ye have nay desire to be here, Ciaran will see it well enough. He isnae a brute.”
Ava stared at her.
This wasn’t a reassurance that the matter had been cleared up beforehand. All Ava could hear was Isobel’s confidence in how her brother ought to behave, and she wasn’t sure if that was enough.
“So,” she said slowly, “I am meant to trust that if I look sufficiently miserable, yer terrifying brother shall take the hint.”
“He isnae terrifying.”
“There is a reason he has that name.”
“He was named by fools.”
“By many fools,” Ava pointed out. “And some of them may be excellent judges of character.”
Despite the edge in her voice, Isobel almost smiled. It vanished quickly when Ava did not.
“Ciaran has pride,” Isobel said. “He would never choose a woman who made her disinterest plain.”
Ava looked past her for a moment, over the shoulders and turned heads and carefully arranged composure of the hall. The women here were being assessed. Counted. Imagined into futures that might please fathers, clans, or lairds.
Her skin felt too tight with this knowledge, for some reason. The air suddenly felt too thin for her when she looked back at Isobel.
“Why did ye nae simply tell him nae to choose me?”
For the first time since Ava had started panicking, Isobel looked genuinely uncomfortable.
“I couldnae,” she answered after a moment.
“Couldnae?”
“It would have been rude.”
Ava blinked. “Rude?”
“And unkind,” Isobel added, more quietly now.
“I thought that saying such a thing outright would mean admitting too much. It would mean telling him the gathering needed help. That women were appearing because I pushed and persuaded and wrote letters and begged for favors, nae because his prospects improved on their own.”
Ava could only look at her. The flaw in the plan, already visible, widened like a crack through ice.
“Please, he is a feared warrior. I am certain his pride would have taken it,” she said.
Isobel winced a little. “I spared him the humiliation.”
“At the expense of mine?”
“Ava—”
“I daenae like this, Isobel. I daenae like this at all.”
Isobel opened her mouth, then shut it again. Her silence answered better than words.
Ava smoothed her hands over her gown. From a distance, perhaps she looked composed enough. Inside, her earlier panic was hardening into something more definite.
All the assurances Isobel could offer rested on hope, on pride, on her brother’s supposed decency, and on the belief that a man Ava had never met would behave exactly as they wished him to.
The hall seemed smaller than it had moments ago.
Ava drew one careful breath, then another, keeping her face still as more murmurs rose around them. She stood where she was, since leaving at this moment would definitely draw eyes and questions, the very sort of attention she most wished to avoid.
Yet remaining had become its own humiliation. The hall pressed at her from all sides, and the whole gathering felt immensely pretentious and ceremonious.
And she was right in the middle of it.
She had known that already, of course. But knowing something and feeling it settle into her body were not the same misery.
Isobel watched her with growing concern. “Ava.”
Ava kept her gaze on the hall. “I heard ye the first twenty times.”
“Ye need to relax.”
“I am all right,” she responded, almost snapping.
She was standing in a bride auction because she had trusted affection, foolishness, and a plan built on hope.
The absurdity of it might have been funny if it had not involved her own skin.
A woman across the hall adjusted the fall of her shawl and turned slightly as two older men passed by. Another stood beside what looked like an aunt, smiling too carefully. A third kept her gaze lowered with such rehearsed modesty that Ava wondered whether she had practiced it in front of a mirror.
For some reason, the sight heightened her wariness. She was among them, whether she liked it or not.
Seen as one of them.
An auction bride.
Ugh!
Beside her, Isobel lowered her voice. “I will introduce ye to some of me cousins after this ends.”
Ava turned then, because that at least deserved the respect of a direct look. “As yer brother's new wife or yer friend?”
A hint of guilt flickered across Isobel’s face, brief and sincere.
That sincerity made the whole thing more maddening, not less. Ava did not doubt her friend’s heart. But she doubted her judgment, which was far less useful.
“Again, Ava, I truly believe me brother would never trap a woman,” Isobel said. “He would never humiliate ye.”
Ava held her gaze. “Ye believe that.”
“Aye.”
“And I daenae ken him at all. I daenae even ken what he looks like. ”
Isobel drew breath as if to argue again, then let it go. Perhaps she had finally understood that no amount of certainty borrowed from sisterly devotion could settle the nerves of a woman asked to trust The Silent Death.
Ava looked away first.
There was nothing to be gained now by circling the same fear until it swallowed her whole.
She could not leave without making a spectacle of herself.
She could not wring a promise from the air.
She could not undo the past two weeks and return to the safety of her father’s study before this ridiculous plan had grown bones.
So she did the only thing left to her: she straightened. She needed to be prepared for anything.
Her shoulders rolled back beneath her gown as she lifted her chin a fraction and schooled her features into something calmer and less easily read. If she must stand in this place, she would not look eager, nor frightened enough to gratify the hall, nor soft enough to invite pity.
Bruce would have barked at that thought, she suspected. Her father would have kissed her temple and told her to come home. Neither comfort was available.
Isobel noticed the shift in her posture. “Do ye need some ale?”
“The last thing I need is ale,” Ava replied. “Meeting yer brother is hard enough while sober.”
That almost earned her a smile. “Ye need nae make a performance of it.”
“I daenae,” Ava said. “It comes naturally.”
Isobel opened her mouth to speak, when the sound of footsteps rose behind them.
They were not loud, and that was the first strange thing about them.
Unlike the other ones Ava had heard since she stepped into the hall, they sounded firm and determined.
Like they never needed to be loud in the first place.
She could tell it also surprised the other attendees because everyone fell silent and froze. Even Isobel’s breath seemed to catch.
Ava’s body understood before her thoughts did, and the private space between the two women vanished at once. Everything they had said, every fear and every slow effort at composure, was suddenly exposed to reality.
Isobel opened her mouth to speak. “Ava, I…”
The words faded as Ava turned and saw him.
For one suspended moment, nothing in her mind aligned. She had expected severity, perhaps ugliness, perhaps some grim and weathered face that matched the stories told of the Silent Death. She had expected a man who looked like a menace in a bad way.
What she had not expected, and what no one—not even Isobel—had prepared her for, was the most handsome man she had ever seen in her life.
Her eyes remained on him, almost involuntarily. He looked arresting and formidable. He had broad shoulders, dark hair, and a face strong enough to alter the room by appearing in it.
There was something marked in him too, something dangerous, and Ava knew it had something to do with the scar around his neck. It looked too sharp to have been caused by an accident.
He looked handsome and utterly dangerous at the same time.
Ava felt her breath catch in her chest. Every thought she had had over the past weeks about the Silent Death had now gathered into one living figure before her.
Standing there under the watchful hush of the hall, she knew with sharp certainty who the man was.
This was Ciaran Nairn.
This was the Silent Death.