Chapter 17
Later that morning, Ciaran left the castle as early as he could.
He wanted to feel the ground under his feet, and he wanted it in a way that had nothing to do with Ava. After the brief encounter he had with her in the gardens this morning, the break was the one thing that could bring him back to normal.
He needed something solid to hold on to.
Some semblance of his old life. The village beyond the castle gave him that, or had once.
The path down from the castle, the bend past the lower wall, the familiar spread of cottages and trade and daily labor, all of it belonged to a life older than his marriage. He wanted that older shape back.
He walked as he always had—hands loose at his sides, gaze clear, pace steady enough to suggest neither hurry nor invitation.
He was not there to admire the day. He was there because routine had once made sense of him.
A laird through his own village, seen, obeyed, and left largely untroubled by whatever lived in other people’s hearts.
The village answered him as it always had.
A woman carrying a basket stepped aside too quickly and nearly knocked her shoulder against a post in her haste to give him room.
A pair of boys dragging a sack of grain fell silent the moment they spotted him.
One man by the smithy bowed his head without looking up.
Another turned his attention too quickly to a wagon wheel that did not need such close inspection.
No one challenged him or tried to stop him.
He was used to the respect he got, and he knew all too well that the respect didn’t come out of nowhere.
It had fear sitting underneath it. He could almost hear them murmur his name as he walked.
Of course, he couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it came from, but it followed him very closely, like the wind itself on the back of his neck.
“Silent Death.”
He did not turn toward it. He never did.
There had been a time when the name had felt useful.
He was better off being feared than being pitied, and the silence had always been a comfort.
Fear meant they would not stop him for the most unnecessary of conversations.
That was good enough for him. It let him wander the market easily without shy distractions.
He had built a life inside that shape well enough.
Now, moving through it again, he felt only the barrenness of it.
Each lowered gaze sharpened the memory of Ava looking directly at him without the sense to be afraid. Each quick step aside made him think of the way she did the opposite, pressing closer when argument or temper drove her to it.
These villagers did not laugh at him. They did not provoke him. They did not demand hours, terms, honesty, or compromise. They gave him exactly what he had once thought safest.
Distance.
The one thing he wanted his new wife to give him.
The irony of it struck him in his core, but he kept going anyway.
He tried not to notice the way the merchants watched him with the same caution as everyone else, respectful and guarded and careful not to presume too much.
He should have found some comfort there, in the predictability of trade and habit. Instead, he found himself measuring everything against the fact that Ava would have made a comment by now, too curious or too amused to leave the silence untouched.
She would have mentioned something about the crowd, the weather. Even the way the stalls in the market were aligned would have warranted a comment one way or the other. He was beginning to see her everywhere, compare her to everything.
Nay, that’s nae good.
He was still thinking about her, even though he didn’t want to, when his eyes caught a star map. It lay half-unrolled across the surface of a stall among practical things, like charts, local drawings, copied routes, and old pieces of paper meant for people who cared about the sky and the land.
The map should have been no more than another object given a cursory glance. Instead, he recognized it at once for what it would mean to her.
The Highlands marked beneath a sky. Lines. Stars. The shape of the heavens spread over the land.
This would be a thoughtful gift. It would be the kind of object she would keep because it would foster her imagination. He knew before he even stepped nearer that Ava would care for it because of the comet and her mother’s dream.
That was what struck him hardest. The speed with which he understood exactly why it would matter to her.
He had listened when she spoke. He had remembered.
More than remembered. He had carried the memory with him into the village without even knowing he had done so until it rose before him in paper and ink.
He should walk on. He should keep going and forget this ever happened in the first place.
He did not. Because he couldn’t.
The vendor looked up and straightened at once, uncertain whether to speak first. Ciaran spared him the struggle.
“How much?”
The man looked down at the star map and then back up at him. “Fifteen shillings, me Laird. But for ye, I can—”
“Nay.” Ciaran raised his hand. “Ye daenae have to do anything for me. ’Tis a fair price.”
The vendor opened his mouth to speak, perhaps to argue his point further. But then he gave a brief nod.
Ciaran paid, and soon, the map was rolled and handed to him. The whole thing was over in moments, quickly enough that thought could not properly intervene. Only once it was in his hand did the full weight of what he had done dawn on him.
He had bought a gift. He had seen something in the market, thought of Ava at once, and acted on that thought with the plain certainty of a man already too far gone to claim that it was unintentional.
He almost turned back then. Almost put the thing down on the nearest stall and left it there out of sheer disgust with himself.
Instead, he kept walking.
The rolled map felt too big in his hand, despite its size. It might as well have announced its presence to every person he passed.
Och! Look here!
Here is proof.
Here is weakness.
Here is the shape of a man who once prided himself on cold order and now buys star maps because his wife spoke one morning about a comet and her dead mother.
The villagers still moved aside for him and watched him with lowered eyes. By the time he turned back toward the castle, he couldn’t stop himself from imagining the look on Ava’s face when she eventually saw the map. Even as he reached the castle, all he kept thinking of was her face.
He should have known she would be waiting somewhere near the heart of the castle.
Ava had developed a talent for appearing at the exact moment his thoughts were least fit to meet her. She stood in the corridor just beyond the hall, her back straight, her expression calm enough that anyone passing by might have mistaken the encounter for chance.
Ciaran knew better. She had been looking for him.
Her eyes dropped briefly to his hand. He shifted the rolled map behind his back before the motion could become a question.
“Me Lady,” he greeted.
She raised an eyebrow. “Ye have been avoiding me.”
Ciaran kept his expression smooth. “I have had matters to attend to.”
“So have I.” Ava took one step nearer. “That doesnae change the fact.”
“What matters could ye possibly have to attend to?”
She shifted on her feet, a pink hue briefly tingeing her cheeks. “The lady of a castle has work to do, too. I recall ye saying that, me Laird.”
Ciaran let the silence that followed stretch out. But that silence, once useful to him, only seemed to sharpen her.
“I daenae appreciate it,” she continued. “I daenae like thinking I am doing something to keep ye away from me.”
“I am nae keeping away from ye.”
“Really?”
Ciaran exhaled. “I needed a walk.”
“A walk.”
“Aye. To the market.”
“The market.”
“What is that?”
She folded her arms over her chest, the determination on her face growing further. “What is what?”
“Repeating me words like I am a child.”
“Ye needed a walk to the market. Ye must forgive me if I find that a bit hard to believe.”
“Ye are going to find a lot of things quite hard to believe since ye are now me wife, lass.”
“Aye, I am beginning to see that.”
He should have said something measured and practical then, something about duties, about the village, about the usual burdens of the castle. Instead, he found himself acutely aware of the map behind his back and how close she stood.
“So, ye arenae hiding from me? Look me in the eyes and tell me honestly.”
He stared at her eyes, at the blue flecks surrounding her irises.
“I kent it,” she scoffed.
He could hear the mild hurt in her voice, even though it was clear she made an effort not to show it.
“If this continues,” she warned, “I think I shall visit me father by the end of the week.”
The words landed cleanly. Of course, she had decided that absence might be better than this half-marriage of approach and retreat.
Something inside him tightened so quickly that he almost let it show.
For one reckless second, he wanted to stop her there.
To tell her that she had no notion what effect the very thought had on him.
To put the map in her hands and say, See, I did think of ye.
I did listen. I do carry ye when I never meant to.
Instead, he did what he had always done when the truth came too near the surface—he hid it. He turned just enough that the map disappeared entirely from her sight.
Ava’s gaze sharpened, though whether she had noticed the movement or only the pause around it, he could not tell.
“Well?” she prompted.
Ciaran forced words into his mouth in a bid to show he was unaffected by her decision. “Do as ye think best.”
The answer was poor even to his own ears.
Ava held his gaze for a beat longer. She did not plead or try to argue with him. If anything, her expression cooled a little, as though she had expected disappointment and was annoyed to have been proven right.
“Very well,” she said.
That should have ended it. It did not.
The silence that followed carried too much: her calm decision, the hidden map, the fact that neither of them had said the true thing.
Ciaran knew if he stayed there one moment longer, he would either harden further or break in some direction he did not trust. So he did the safest thing—he stepped back. “I have business to attend to.”
Ava nodded and stepped aside to let him pass.
Ciaran headed to his chambers first and sat on the bed for a few hours.
Why couldn’t he just admit what had happened? Why did he have to be stubborn and adamant about something as mundane as this?
His mind remained crowded with those thoughts until the sky darkened and the usual hubbub around the castle dulled because the servants were trying to prepare for a new day.
When he stepped out of his room, he did not go to the study or even the courtyard. Instead, he climbed the stairs to the tower. The map remained in his hand the whole way, his fingers curled around it tightly like it was some kind of life support.
By the time he reached the tower, he was breathing harder than usual.
He set the map down without unrolling it.
The telescope stood where it always did, by the window. The piano waited further in, dark wood and familiar keys, a thing he had once used for solitude and now reached for because there were no words in him fit for use. Not ones he could trust anyway.
He hadn’t played in a long time. A very long time. But now, with the conflicting thoughts swimming through his head with almost no end in sight, he realized he needed to do something about all of this.
He exhaled and sat at the piano. For a moment, he only rested his hands there, not yet playing, the keys cool beneath his fingers. Then he began.
The music came rougher than he meant to, with too much force in the first few lines, as though the notes had been waiting behind his ribs all day and resented the delay.
He let them go. There was no one in the room to hear what lay in them anyway. Even he couldn’t describe it. They just came out in several words at the back of his mind.
Frustration.
Desire.
Ava.
He played harder, then softer. At some point, the window stood open wider than before, and the night air drifted through the room. The sound carried out over the grounds and down past the floors and into the dark grass and whatever parts of the castle were still awake.
Even as he continued to play, the tunes escaping the keys and drifting through the room, he still was unable to shove all his feelings into a box.
He had fought wars and dealt with several injuries.
He had even come close to death, and yet this strange, fascinating woman was the one battle he simply could not win.
What was it about her?
What was it about Ava Fraser that changed him?