Chapter 7
For the first time in a long time, Ciaran felt cornered.
Ava had stood up to him and made her opinions known. Even when she turned around and walked away, all he could think of was her newfound confidence.
Where in God’s name had she gotten that from? How was she able to turn from the woman who would do anything to escape him to the woman who knew exactly what she wanted and how she wanted it?
The thought made him uneasy. Too uneasy, in fact, to look the other way. So he decided to do the one thing he was still capable of—he would not seek her more than was required before the wedding.
The matter was already settled. The vows would be spoken within days. Her conditions remained troublesome, and to begin indulging them before she was even his wife would only encourage the very thing he had no wish to foster. So it would be better to let the week pass in order and silence.
At least, that was what he told himself. It sounded sufficiently practical when arranged properly in his mind. He needed to find a way to preserve structure. Marriage would come soon enough. There was no need to begin its more troublesome obligations early.
So he simply did not seek her out.
If he learned she had taken breakfast in one room, he went to another later in the morning.
If some natural crossing of paths presented itself in the corridor, he altered his route.
He even made sure to keep to business, land matters, and men who needed instruction.
He did not present himself in the gardens or linger where company might make an encounter with her likely.
This was a simple enough strategy. Or at least it should have been, as it required that he see Ava less. However, the consequences of this action stung him much more than he could have imagined. Or even prepared for in the first place.
Every time he thought of avoiding her was every time he thought of her.
He had to anticipate where she might be and remember what she had asked. He also had to account for the possibility of being drawn into talk if he entered one part of the castle at the wrong hour. Even his absence became organized around her.
That fact alone irritated him more as the days passed.
Ava herself irritated him too, though not in the simple manner he might have preferred.
It would have been easier if she had merely been lovely or just troublesome.
Instead, she remained just as sharp and intelligent as he had seen in the auction.
He could still see the look she had given him at the training grounds and the way she had firmly held her own without letting him control her.
Perhaps he should have chosen the crier. He was sure that one would not have caused him as much trouble as Ava Fraser did.
By the time the week drew to its end, the distance he had chosen began to feel different in his own hands. Less like a strategy and more like avoidance.
Tomorrow, she would become his wife. Tomorrow, the space he had preserved so carefully would disappear, and he would no longer have an excuse to avoid her anymore.
Again, this fact did not make him go to her.
He decided to spend the final evening before the wedding as he had kept the rest of the week—work on writing letters requesting for tributes from neighboring lairds and studying maps on his desk. Yet, even with that, he could no longer pretend the effort would prevent what was coming.
Ava remained too present in his mind for a woman he had determined not to let too near. That, more than anything, made the impending wedding feel even more dangerous.
An hour into the night, his door opened without ceremony. Only one person in the castle still entered his private rooms with that particular combination of boldness and irritation.
Ciaran did not turn at once. He knew his sister’s footsteps too well.
“Isobel, what do ye want?”
Isobel’s footsteps stopped. “I want ye to tell me that what I noticed all week isnae true and ye arenae actively avoiding yer bride.”
Ciaran looked up at her, his throat bobbing. “What are ye talking about?”
Isobel stared at him as if his question made no sense. “I am talking about the fact that I didnae see ye with Ava all week. Did something happen?”
Ciaran didn’t respond. Instead, he turned his gaze back to the map on his desk.
“So it is true, then,” Isobel huffed. “Ye have spent the whole week dodging the woman ye mean to wed tomorrow.”
Ciaran kept his gaze on the papers before him for one deliberate moment longer, then set them down.
“If ye have come to lecture me,” he said, “ye may spare yerself the effort.”
Isobel shut the door behind her. “I think nae.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Mind yer own affairs, Isobel.”
She gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Me own affairs? Ava is me dearest friend, and ye are me brother. Ye are to be wed tomorrow, and ye have spent the week acting as though she carries some pestilence ye might catch if ye stand too close to her.”
Ciaran’s mouth hardened. “Take care.”
“Nay,” she said. “I am quite finished taking care. I daenae ken why ye keep treating me like one of yer servants.”
Ciaran exhaled. “That isnae true.”
“Aye. Because in case ye have forgotten, I didnae spend the past decade with ye.”
“Isobel, as ye can see, I am a bit busy.”
“Aye, like ye have been the past few days?”
Ciaran said nothing. He simply did not see the point in continuing this conversation.
Isobel continued to speak anyway, the annoyance in her voice clearer than anything. “Ye asked for a wife, and ye chose one. And now ye cannae even manage the courtesy of being civil to her before the vows are spoken?”
He rose then, less from temper than from the restless need not to remain seated beneath her scolding. “Ye presume too much.”
“Do I?” Isobel folded her arms. “Because from where I stand, ye look very much like a man running from a lass who has done nothing worse than ask ye to treat her as a human being.”
The words landed too close to the mark to be borne with ease.
“She has made demands,” he gritted out.
“Aye, because ye told her she may.”
“That doesnae make the matter yers to meddle in.”
Isobel’s eyes flashed. “It became mine when me friend began looking as though she must choose between pride and despair in this castle.”
He had no answer he wished to give her. Not one she deserved to hear, and not one he meant to confess, so his gaze drifted toward the window.
Light lay soft across the courtyard below as the afternoon had gone mild and utterly bright.
On the grass near the lower path, Ava lay stretched with her face turned up toward the sun, one arm bent near her head and the other flat in the grass.
He could see her full figure from where he stood, doing nothing but basking in the sun.
It felt like a rare thing to see Ava doing nothing. Since she had arrived, all she had done was come up with terms or defy him in any way she could. Now, she was simply there. At ease.
“Ah,” Isobel said softly, her voice bringing him back to the present.
That one small sound pricked deeper than her earlier scolding.
He turned away from the window at once. “Daenae start.”
The corner of her mouth curved, not into a smile, but into something sadder and more knowing. “I wasnae going to say anything.”
“Good.”
“Because ye would hate to hear it spoken aloud?”
His expression cooled. “Ye grow tiresome. I can see where ye got that now. Living in the same castle with her for years has made ye quite the most insistent person.”
“And ye, Brother, continue to grow transparent,” she retorted.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. Then Isobel’s gaze flicked to the window and back again.
“What threatens ye?” she asked, and for once her voice held no accusation. “That she is troublesome? Or that she may fit here too well?”
Ciaran said nothing.
Isobel let out a breath, as if she had expected nothing else. “Ye need nae answer me.”
“Nay,” he uttered. “I daenae.”
She studied him one moment longer, then moved toward the door. “Tomorrow will come, whether ye hide from it or nae.”
He did not stop her.
When she had gone, the room felt too still.
Ciaran remained where he was. He did not turn back to the window. He did not even go down to the gardens. He just remained where he was, determined to enjoy his last moments of true freedom.
Tomorrow, Ava would become his wife. And his refusal to approach her, once so neatly defended as practicality, now felt less like strength than the last stubborn act of a man who knew too well that the walls he had built were no longer standing untouched.
The lass outside the window was holding a hammer, and he needed to make certain she never succeeded in breaking down those walls.