Chapter 4
That night, Ava did not sleep.
She just lay flat beneath the blankets with her eyes open, staring into the dark until the chamber felt smaller than its walls.
The day kept returning in pieces. The hall. The line of women. Isobel’s face. Ciaran stepping forward with that infuriating calmness, as if nothing in the world could surprise him, wound him, or even give him the slightest bit of trouble.
She hated that he had been casual about this whole thing. In fact, that was probably the part she hated the most.
Being chosen had been bad enough. Being handled as though the choice required no more than a touch beneath her chin and a few plain words was worse.
But being dismissed after it, left to swallow his decision alone while he carried on as though he had settled some minor business, was what had lodged like a thorn under her skin.
He had not looked ruffled. Not even a little bit.
He had not looked like a man who had just laid claim to a woman.
He had looked certain. Like he had chosen a tunic for the day, and no one else could sway his decision.
Ava clenched the blanket in both fists and closed her eyes. It did little to nothing for her. The room remained warm, the mattress soft, and the blankets heavy. The candle had long since gone out, and only a thin strip of moonlight filtered through the windows.
It should have soothed her, but instead it felt neat and settled and hateful. Almost like nature itself was mocking her for being so gullible.
She turned onto her side, then onto the other. Then onto her back again.
Idiot.
She flung one arm over her eyes, then yanked it away when the gesture gave no relief.
Her father was not there. Had he been present, he would have laughed the affair into pieces or fought it into ruin. He would not have stood by while some laird chose his daughter with the same calm practicality he might have used for cattle or land or horseflesh.
But her father was not there, and she had only herself, her temper, and the memory of Ciaran looking at her distress as if it changed nothing at all.
That was what made the stillness unbearable.
At first, she only wanted to get out of bed. Then she wanted to get out of the room. A few breaths later, that was no longer enough.
She sat up so quickly that the blankets slid into her lap.
No, she had no concrete plan. She knew that perfectly well. She had not packed a bag. She had not stolen food. She had not bribed a groom, or hidden coins, or marked a road in her head. She was not running toward freedom in any sensible form.
She only knew she could not stay where she was and wait for morning.
“I cannae do this,” she whispered to herself. To the air. To no one in particular.
The next morning would bring looks from people and questions she was definitely not ready to answer. She would be expected to stand there and endure it. To submit with dignity. To act as though she had a part in choosing what had been chosen for her.
Nay.
“I must get out of here.”
The answer came so hard and clean inside her that she was moving before she had fully registered it.
She pushed off the bed and crossed the room barefoot, snatching up her gown. The cold struck her skin at once and woke every part of her. She dragged on her stockings, shoved her feet into her shoes, and tied the laces with her fast-moving, tireless fingers.
She did not bother with her hair beyond pushing it back from her face. Her pulse fluttered in her throat, and her breath came shallow as she swung on a thick cloak. Still, she went on.
She was doing this.
She was really doing this.
When she opened the door, the passageway beyond lay in darkness and silence.
It was such an odd view because she had seen what it looked like during the day.
It looked like it belonged to the life of the castle.
Servants passed with folded linens and trays, doors opened, and voices rose and fell.
Now, it felt like another place entirely.
It was all cold edges and dim corners. Even the scrape of her shoe sounded too loud.
She stepped out anyway and pulled the door nearly shut behind her. She then waited to see if anyone had heard that. When no sound came, she moved.
She swallowed as she navigated the bends in the passageway and hurried down the narrow back stairs.
She kept to the darkest parts where she could, only dodging the few lamps still left burning low.
One time, she stopped so sharply her teeth clicked together, certain she had heard someone stir nearby.
But nothing followed. No door opening or voice calling out to see who was there.
She waited a few moments to catch her breath before she kept going.
The further she went, the more the need to move took hold of her.
She thought no farther than the next step, the next corner, the next lock.
She had no great design in mind. She only knew she was no longer lying meekly in bed, waiting to be carried toward tomorrow and paraded around the castle as the Laird’s new wife.
The Laird’s new wife.
Something about those words struck her so hard that the unease in her belly grew a notch too high.
At the outer door, she paused long enough to listen.
Nothing.
She eased it open and slipped outside.
The cold hit her at once, clean and sharp after the stuffy air of the castle. The smell of the earth rose around her, and the night spread wide on every side.
She took one breath, then another, and started across the grass at a quick pace that soon became a run.
Her skirts caught at her legs, and the hem dragged through the dirt, but she didn’t stop.
Hell, she barely noticed. The loch lay ahead, a dark shape under the sky.
Along one side of it ran the low fence she had marked earlier in passing.
It was too small to matter much by day, but now, in darkness and haste, it became the nearest boundary between here and somewhere else.
That was all she needed from it.
Somewhere else.
Her shoes slipped once on the wet grass, but she caught herself and kept going. The cold air stung her cheeks, and a loose strand of hair blew into her mouth. She spat it aside and ran harder. By the time she reached the fence, she was panting, her chest tight, her hands cold.
She seized the top rail and hauled herself up.
Her skirts dragged and bunched, and the wood felt slick beneath her palm. She hauled herself higher with stubborn effort, one foot searching for purchase. She had just managed to get one leg over when she heard footsteps behind her.
Measured footsteps. Like the ones she had heard back in the hall.
She froze.
Nay.
The sound struck her at once—a hard, cold drop from her throat to her belly. Before she even turned, she knew.
Slowly, still caught awkwardly on the fence, she twisted her head and looked back over her shoulder.
Ciaran stood a little way behind her.
The darkness blurred the grounds, the loch, the trees, but not him. He watched her with nothing but curiosity in his eyes and his arms folded.
With one leg flung over the fence like a child caught stealing apples, Ava saw with sickening clarity exactly how this must appear.
Great. Just great.
A part of her wanted the ground to swallow her up at that moment. She would even manage a lightning strike or fire from the gentle evening breeze. Anything was better than the humiliation that seemed to pull hard from the dredges of her chest.
Anything.
He looked at her once, from the precarious angle of her position to the white-knuckled grip she still had on the wood.
“Looking for something?” he asked.
The quiet dryness of his words made humiliation flare hotter in her face.
“Nay.”
“Aye,” he said, as if considering the matter fairly. “This seems the natural posture of a woman entirely at ease.”
She glared at him, which would have carried more force if she had not been trapped on the fence like a badly caught goose.
He did not mock her further. That was somehow worse. He merely stepped closer and opened his arms.
He didn’t even ask her to come down or anything. He just remained quiet. Almost like he knew she would either accept his help or remain there, making a greater fool of herself.
Ava hated that he had made himself the only sensible answer in the moment.
For one wild second, she considered attempting the jump anyway, but the fence was slick, the ground on the other side invisible in the dark, and the memory of his calm face somehow made her recklessness look even more childish than it already was.
“I daenae need…” she began, swallowing.
His expression did not change.
The words died on her tongue. She muttered something ungracious under her breath and let herself shift toward him.
He took hold of her carefully, one hand steady on her waist, the other braced to guide her down. The movement was simple and ought not to have unsettled her the way it did. Yet the instant her weight settled into his arms, her whole body became aware of things she would rather not have noticed.
Things she wished she hadn’t noticed.
The heat of his body in the cold air, the firmness of his hands. The quiet, controlled ease with which he managed her, as though lifting flustered women down from fences at midnight was part of his ordinary skill set.
It was practically intolerable.
More intolerable still was the fact that her own body registered him.
He set her on the ground with maddening steadiness, and only then did he let go.
“Ye should be more careful,” he said. “Ye could have hurt yerself.”
Ava stared at him.
That was it. No demand to know whether she meant to disgrace him. No fury at finding his chosen bride attempting escape. Only concern, as if the chief problem with the evening lay in the risk of her breaking an ankle.
For some reason, that unsettled her even more than his anger would have.
She drew herself up, though the closeness of his body still lingered annoyingly on her skin. “Are ye sure ye daenae want another bride?”
The question came out before she could make it sound cooler and less hopeful.
One of his eyebrows lifted. “Ah, of course,” he said. “I should take the one who almost fainted at the mere sight of me.”
The absurdity of it broke through the tension before she could stop it. A startled giggle escaped her. It was small and mortifying and real.
“Well,” she drawled, “maybe nae that one.”
For the space of one breath, the night changed.
The loch remained black behind them. The air still bit at her cheeks. Yet something in the space between them loosened just enough to feel dangerous.
At that moment, they were no longer the Laird and his unwilling bride. They were a man and a woman in the dark, speaking with ease neither of them had expected in the first place.
Then, almost like they were both made aware of that fact at the same time, the tenderness vanished.
His mouth set again. “Ye’re mistaken, me Lady.”
Ava narrowed her eyes. “About what?”
He looked toward the loch for a moment, then back at her, and when he spoke, his voice held the same blunt calm with which he had first chosen her.
“I daenae want a wife who fears me.”
Her breath eased a fraction.
“But neither do I want one who cares for me.”
The words landed so cleanly that she almost missed their force at first. Then they struck her all at once.
“What?”
“I thought ye understood that much already.” His tone remained just as level. “I chose ye because ye didnae seem eager. Ye didnae look as though ye wished for softness from me. That suited me.”
Ava could only stare at him as the night grew colder.
“This is to be a marriage of convenience,” he continued. “A practical one. Ye need nae fear that I expect foolish devotions or tender nonsense. After producing an heir, we may live mostly separate lives.”
Ava felt the words strike her very core.
He had looked at her and found her ideal precisely because he believed she would neither love him nor require love from him. As though she might be placed into a cold arrangement, used for its purpose, and left to settle quietly like furniture assigned to a room.
“So that is why ye chose me?” she asked. “Because I seemed convenient for emptiness?”
His gaze sharpened slightly. “Because ye seemed sensible.”
“Nay,” Ava said, heat now rising through the hurt. “Daenae make it sound like it is a good thing. Ye mean that I looked like a woman who might ask nothing and feel nothing, and therefore make little trouble.”
“That isnae what I said.”
“It is what ye meant.”
She could hear the force gathering in her own voice and did not stop it. Let him hear. Let him know she was not some quiet vessel to be filled with his arrangements and shelved.
His jaw ticked once. “I meant that I believed ye capable of a practical marriage.”
“Practical,” Ava scoffed, taking one step nearer despite every sensible instinct urging retreat. “’Tis quite the fancy word for loveless.”
“Call it what ye want,” Ciaran said. “But these are me terms.”
Ava exhaled as loud as she could, ignoring the stinging cold. “Yer terms, huh?”
He said nothing in response.
A bright idea came to her then. Her lips curled into a smile as she folded her arms and stared straight at him.
“If those are yer terms, then I have conditions of me own as well.”
For the first time since finding her at the fence, something like interest moved across his face. It was closer to amusement than surprise. “Aye?”
“Aye.”
He regarded her for a moment that felt longer than it should have. Then, with that same infuriating calm, he nodded. “Ye may set them tomorrow. Inside a warm castle. I willnae have me bride catch her death before the wedding.”
Ava’s heart gave a hard, ugly thud.
Before the wedding.
As if she needed the reminder.
He spared her no time to recover from it before he spoke again. “It will be next week.”
The words closed round her like a metal fist, and she stood very still.
The wedding was in a week.