Chapter 11
Ciaran carried her into her chambers, his arms steady around her. Ava, on the other hand, was still trying to come back to herself.
The world behind the door almost seemed foreign. She could hear the noise and the sound of boots moving fast through passageways. She could even hear the distant voices, but it all felt immensely distant.
Inside the room, the air felt completely different.
Ciaran set her carefully on the edge of the bed. Only then did she fully feel the heat still trapped in her body, the tremors that had not yet worked themselves out of her hands, and the sick, slow echo of terror that kept returning in waves.
And worse, there was something else.
Him.
She could smell the blood and sweat on his skin. She could also feel how steadily he moved despite the wound in his shoulder.
The fact that it was Ciaran standing before her, not Isobel, or a maid, or some older woman clucking kindly over her nerves, made the entire thing even more absurd.
“Are ye all right?”
She could not speak because of the overwhelming despair still draped around her. All she could do was nod.
His gaze dropped to the dark stain on the front of her gown. “How about we get ye out of this dress?”
The words struck her so hard that her breath caught.
Speak! Speak, Ava!
A wave of heat rushed straight into her face.
It was absurd.
Her gown was ruined. She knew that. His blood was on it, and she knew that too, but something about the room had become too intimate, too charged by what had happened outside and by the memory of his arms around her, for the suggestion to sound simple.
It suddenly felt impossible to look at him.
He noticed. Of course, he noticed.
Something sharpened in his expression for one dangerous moment, something that made her think he had felt the same charge in the air. Then he cleared his throat and looked at her more clearly. “We need to burn it. Ye cannae keep a bloodstained dress in yer wardrobe forever.”
That only made her blush deepen.
He turned away from her before she could embarrass herself further and crossed to the press where her clothes had been laid out.
He chose another gown and raised it to the firelight, examining it closely as if for something that would prove it was the right choice.
That would relieve her of all the emotions that kept building inside her with each passing second.
“A maid could help me,” Ava suddenly said, her voice sharp.
Ye gain yer voice back, and that is the first thing ye say? Get a hold of yerself, Ava!
“Or Isobel.”
He looked back over his shoulder at her. “Yer wedding gown was ruined because of me.” The words landed more deeply than she had expected. “So I will see to it.”
He came back to her with the clean gown over one arm, and what followed ought to have been no more than a necessity.
He moved slowly and carefully, never once rushing her, though his shoulder had to be a great inconvenience. Although his hands were steady the whole time, she could tell from the way he winced sometimes that this couldn’t be easy for him as well.
His hands were steady on the fastenings, gentler than she had imagined they could be.
Some vague, foolish part of her had thought that a man like Ciaran would be rough by instinct, too strong to know how not to jar delicate things.
Instead, he handled the bloodied fabric as though it might injure her further if he were not mindful enough.
I daenae ken anything about this man at all, do I?
She watched as he pulled the gown down her shoulders with quiet concentration, watching her face more than the fabric as if to catch any flinch she might try to hide.
His fingers brushed her skin now and then, no more than necessity required, yet every touch seemed to leave her more aware than before.
He was only helping her. Only making certain she was not injured beneath the blood. Nothing improper was happening.
Nothing.
Nothing!
So why would her pulse not stop fluttering? What was this feeling underneath the fear and despair?
By the time the ruined dress lay pooled at her feet, Ava could hardly bear her own stillness. She sat in her shift, with her hands folded too tightly in her lap, while he grabbed a clean cloth, wet it, and bent before her.
“I must make sure none of the blood hides a cut,” he explained.
She could only nod.
He knelt close enough that she could feel the heat of his skin in the air between them. When the damp cloth touched her skin, she almost jumped. The water wasn’t exactly cold; he’d just been too careful.
She couldn’t believe this was the same man she’d heard of. The Silent Death.
He cleaned the blood from her arms first, then from the side of her neck and collarbone, his face intent and grave all the while. The room had gone so quiet that she could hear the soft sound of the cloth moving over her skin, the faint hitch of her breath each time his hand steadied her.
She had never imagined that gentleness could make her feel so vulnerable.
The blood itself made everything worse and stranger. What he was wiping from her skin was the mark of what he had taken for her. His own wound.
The thought moved through her in a way she could not yet sort into separate feelings.
The blade was coming for her, and he had stepped in front of her to block it. Shouldn’t all she felt at this moment be gratitude?
At last, desperate for anything that might ease the thickening tension, Ava cleared her throat, the sound almost echoing around her. “Ye ken, ye should have that shoulder seen to instead of fussing over me.”
Ciaran arched an eyebrow. “I thought ye wanted to be pampered. Is that nay longer yer wish?”
The line was light, almost dry, but it shifted the air at once.
Ava looked away so quickly that she nearly hurt her neck with the movement. “That isnae what I meant.”
“Nay?”
She could not answer properly. If she tried, her voice would betray her. Her face already had. She knew it by the heat still burning there.
Ciaran said nothing more, only returned to the task with that same infuriating steadiness, and somehow that restraint was more unsettling than if he had teased her further.
He finished cleaning the last traces of blood from her skin, then helped her into the fresh gown. The clean fabric should have brought relief. Instead, it seemed to hold the warmth of his hands where he smoothed it around her.
Jack was dead. The attack was over. She was not hurt. Yet the center of her attention had shifted completely.
She was still shaken, yes. But she was no longer thinking only of blood and steel and escape. Something new had begun stirring under all of it, tangled and humiliating.
Was it comfort? Gratitude, as she had once thought?
Her body shuddered slightly as the final question settled somewhere in the crevices of her mind.
Was it something else?
When he finished, Ciaran rose to his feet. “There. All done.”
Ava swallowed and gave him a brief nod in response.
“Ye should be right as rain before the day ends,” he added, his voice clear. Then he turned as if to leave, or at least as if the matter of her troubles had been settled for the moment.
Ava saw the growing stain on his shoulder and stood at once. “Nay.” Ciaran looked back at her as she crossed to him before her nerves could begin protesting her actions. “Sit down.”
One eyebrow rose. “That sounds uncommonly like an order, me Lady.”
“It is one.” The boldness of it startled her less than it should have. “Millie taught Isobel and me nae to let a man keep bleeding all over the floor while pretending it is nothing. Sit.”
For the first time since he had brought her into her chamber, something like real surprise flashed across his face. Then it shifted into that quiet, unreadable interest he seemed to reserve for the moments when she ceased behaving as he expected.
“Aye?” he said softly.
“Aye.”
He might still have refused if she had sounded timid. Perhaps that was why she kept her chin up and her voice steady.
She would not sit there warm and clean in a fresh gown while the man who had bled for her shrugged off his wound as though his body belonged to no one.
At last, he lowered himself onto the edge of the bed.
Ava went to fetch what she needed: cloth, salve, clean bandages, water not yet gone cool in the basin. Her hands shook only a little, enough that she could steady them by the time she turned back.
When she came to stand before him again, the room felt smaller than before. For some reason, something about her choosing to do this made her body heat up.
“Millie trusted ye with all of this?” Ciaran asked as she set the basin down.
“Millie trusted me with whatever I could be made to learn before me attention wandered,” Ava replied. “It turns out blood is quite a persuasive teacher.”
That almost coaxed a smile from him. Almost.
She moved carefully to his side and began unfastening his plaid. Even that simple act made her pulse jump.
He sat very still while she loosened the fabric and drew it back enough to expose his wound. She had seen blood before, but not this. Not like this. The cut was red and angry, the skin around it taut and darkened.
The sight steeled her resolve because this was what he had taken for her.
“How does it feel?” she asked, forcing calmness into her voice.
He glanced down once. “I have had worse.”
Of course, he has.
The answer irritated her. “That isnae an answer.”
“It is the only one ye need for a shoulder wound.”
Ava scoffed and dipped the cloth in water. Then she wrung it gently and began to clean away the dried blood around the edges. He did not flinch, though she felt him hold his breath each time the cloth passed too close to the most sensitive part of the wound.
“That is what ye get for being cocky,” she muttered.
“I have been called worse.”
“That, at least, I believe.”
He did not answer, and the silence that followed felt completely different.
She was too aware of the feel of his skin beneath her hands and the disciplined stillness with which he let her tend to him. She was also too aware of the fact that if she lifted her eyes just a little, she would be far too near his face. So she kept them on the wound.
“That isnae what I meant about people calling ye worse than cocky.”
His voice, when it came, was lower. “Something tells me that is exactly what ye meant.”
“Nay.” Ava laid the cloth aside and reached for the salve. “I meant, how does it feel that it happened again?”
He went very still. The silence shifted at once and sharpened.
Ava pressed on, because stopping now would only make the question look like cowardice. “Me father told me about the attack at yer brother's wedding. I imagine that must have been terrible. Then to have to relive it again—”
His hand closed around her wrist. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to stop her. Then he tugged.
Ava gave a startled breath as he drew her closer between his knees, the basin and bandages forgotten for the moment. She braced her free hand against his chest to steady herself, his nearness almost overwhelming.
“But it didnae happen again,” he said, the words leaving his mouth with fierce certainty.
She looked at him. “What?”
His grip tightened a fraction on her wrist, as though to hold the point in place between them.
“It didnae happen again.” His voice had gone flat in the way she now knew was more dangerous than anger. “Jack is dead. Ye are here.”
The force of his answer stripped the room bare.
Not his pain, then. Not his shoulder. Not even, in the deepest sense, his past repeating itself. The thing that mattered to him was that she had lived where another bride had not.
Ava’s breath caught.
He looked up at her, his gaze open and sincere. “It is very important to me that ye ken that. It didnae happen again. I would never forgive meself if something happened to ye.”
The words landed with such bluntness that they might have cut.
“I wish I could bring him back,” he continued, almost unaware of the effect his words had on her. “Only so I might kill him again for even making ye think ye were unsafe for a moment.”
A shiver went through her, and he felt it. She knew he felt it because his gaze dropped at once to her mouth and then returned to her eyes, dark and intent.
“Have I scared ye?” he asked.
Ava should have lied then, or softened, or looked away long enough to recover some sensible distance. But she had come too far for lies, and what moved through her was not fear alone. It was shock, yes, and the aftertaste of violence.
She shook her head. “Nay.”
The word came out quiet but true.
His eyes held hers for another beat, then he nodded. “Good.”
The silence after that seemed to pulse.
Ava did not know whether she leaned first or whether he did. She only knew that his hand slid from her wrist to the back of her neck, the touch removing the last thin thread holding her in one place. He drew her down the final inch and kissed her.
His fingers curled into her hair, while his other hand found her waist and pulled her in until the solid heat of his body was pressed against her, and she stopped trying to think of any reason why this should stop.
He tasted of wine and something else that was entirely him. She kissed him back with a desperation that made her breathless. Her hands found the front of his shirt, and she held on.
His lips moved against hers like a man who had decided and fully intended to see it through, and when his tongue brushed hers, she exhaled sharply and pressed closer still, her fingers twisting in his shirt.
Her back met the bedpost, even though she did not remember moving. His lips dragged from her mouth to the corner of it, then to the line of her jaw. The hand in her hair tipped her head back with a gentleness that was somehow worse than force would have been.
She felt his breath against her throat, warm and deliberate, and then his mouth found the curve of it.
Her eyes closed. Her grip on his shirt went slack. Every sensible thought she had gathered over the past hours dissolved entirely.
What in God’s name are ye doing?