Chapter 20
Ciaran helped Ava up from the floor with steady hands, and she came into his arms easily. Her cloak had slipped loose at one shoulder, and her hair was still mussed from his hands.
He had done that. He had wanted it and done it with full knowledge.
The knowledge sat in him like a wound.
He set her on her feet and kept his hands on her a second longer than was needed. Then he let go and stepped back.
The tower had gone quiet as the piano stood open and the bench sat crooked. His breathing had still not evened out, but neither had hers. He looked at her and saw the softness still alive in her face, the warmth, the openness.
He could not stay inside it.
He crossed to the bench, set it straight, and closed the fallboard, gathering control in those small motions. His marriage was supposed to have shape, distance, and rules that kept him safe from himself. He had just destroyed all three with his own hands.
Ava watched him.
He felt her gaze on his back and hated that he was already withdrawing from her while her body still carried the proof of how close he had been. He hated it because it was cowardly. He hated it even more because he could not stop.
When he turned back, she was standing where he had left her, one hand at her throat, her nightgown pulled closed. He knew that look in her eyes. She had learned him too well in so little time.
He forced his voice into order. “I should see ye back to yer chamber.”
Her gaze did not leave his. “If ye like.”
He led her down from the tower in silence.
The castle was deep in sleep, and their steps on the stairs sounded too loud. Even the light had dimmed, as most of the candles had been snuffed out. Only a few remained at the end of the passageway, enough to light the path and do no more.
His shoulder brushed the stone wall once when the bend narrowed, and the brief pain there almost helped. It gave him something to feel, even if not for long.
At her door, he stopped. Ava turned to face him, and the candlelight from within spilled across the threshold and caught the color still high in her cheeks.
He should have kissed her again. He should have stayed. He should have done anything that matched what had just happened between them. Instead, he cleared his throat and looked down at the floor. “Good night.”
“Is that it?” she asked, her voice as soft as his.
He looked up from the floor. “I daenae ken what else to say.”
Ava held the door, but did not move to close it. “Well, ye could tell me after what happened tonight that ye arenae going to disappear tomorrow morning.”
The question struck cleanly because it carried no surprise in it.
She knew what he was. She knew what he was about to do. She asked anyway and gave him one last chance to be better.
He looked at her and answered with the only truth he had. “I probably will.”
The words hung in the air.
Her face tightened, though she kept her back straight and her voice level. “Then goodnight, me Laird.”
He left before he could say anything worse.
Training should have helped him the next morning. It had always helped before. Steel, motion, men who expected clear orders and gave them back in discipline. He had built himself inside such things for years. A sword in hand, a target before him, and the body usually remembered what to do.
Today, however, his body obeyed poorly.
Hector came at him fast from the left. Ciaran should have blocked the blow at once. He was late by half a beat and paid for it with a crack of wood against his forearm. Pain splintered up to his elbow. He cursed and turned too hard into the next pass.
Hector lowered his practice sword. “What in God’s name was that?”
“Again,” Ciaran grunted.
Hector gave him a long look, then lunged at him once more.
Ciaran met the first blow, missed the second opening, and overcommitted to the third badly enough that Hector had to step back to keep from taking the point in the ribs.
“Enough,” he said.
Ciaran’s jaw locked. “I said, again.”
“And I said, enough.” Hector drove his practice sword into the dirt and folded his arms. “Ye are fighting like a man who has left half of his wits in his bed this morning.”
That hit too near the truth to ignore.
Ciaran turned away, dragged a hand over his face, and tried to force the yard back into focus. It should have been simple, but nothing in it was.
Hector stepped closer. “What is going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Aye, and I am a priest.”
Ciaran said nothing.
Hector waited patiently. He had become very good at that. Too good.
The yard around them held nothing but the usual noise.
Eventually, Ciaran exhaled and looked across the set of mountains on the horizon. “I want out of this marriage.”
Hector blinked. “I’m sorry?”
Ciaran exhaled. “Ye heard me.”
Hector folded his arms across his chest. “Did ye hear ye?”
Ciaran sighed. “This isnae a joke, Brother. I need to find a way to annul this marriage without starting a war with our oldest ally.”
Hector gaped at him. “What?”
Ciaran kept his eyes on the far mountains because looking at his brother while saying it made the whole thing sound even madder. “Again, Hector, ye heard me.”
“Why?”
Ciaran opened his mouth to say something about politics, timing, incompatibility, household order, any lie that sounded practical enough to stand upright. What came out instead was the truth.
“Because I wasnae supposed to like her, for God’s sake.”
The yard seemed to grow still around the words, though the men at the edges kept moving. Hector did not answer.
Ciaran could hear himself breathing. He felt the fury of the confession in his own chest.
Like her. That was his dilemma.
He didn’t just desire her. He actually liked her.
He liked riding beside her. He liked hearing her laugh.
He liked the way she spoke back, stayed, asked for more, and looked at him as if there were still a man under the name everyone else used.
She didn’t see him as the Silent Death, and that right there was the problem.
She saw him as a man. He couldn’t deal with that. He couldn’t face the vulnerability that would come with dealing with a woman who treated him as a human being and expected the same from him.
“Now isnae the time for ye to grow mute, Hector,” he scoffed.
Hector’s face gave away very little, which made the waiting worse.
Ciaran was about to say something harsh, perhaps to shut the matter down before his brother could answer at all, when movement at the far end of the yard caught his eye.
Hector saw it as well and narrowed his eyes. “Wait, is that—”
“Aye,” Ciaran responded before he could finish.
Ava was running toward him, and she looked… upset. He could also tell that whatever she was upset about wasn’t ordinary. She was moving too fast, with no care for her dress or the men in her path. Her face was pale, and her breath was breaking before she even reached him.
Something inside him locked tight. He was already moving when she stumbled on the uneven ground near the practice ring and caught her before she fell.
“Ava.”
She clutched at him with one hand and thrust a folded paper at his chest with the other. Her whole body was shaking. He could feel it in the light grip of her fingers and the press of her against him.
“A fire,” she panted. “Me father. Our castle.”
Ciaran took the note and read it quickly.
“A fire on Fraser lands,” he read aloud, the words coming out of him in sheer disbelief. “The damage is severe, and the situation of Laird MacKenna is unknown.”
Ava made a sound in her throat that would have become a sob if she had allowed it.
Ciaran folded the note once and handed it to Hector without taking his eyes off her. “Ava. Ava.”
“They daenae ken what has happened to me father—”
“Ava, I need ye to calm—”
“He could be anywhere.”
“Ava—”
“Oh, Good God, he could be dead. I cannae—”
“Ava!”
The yard fell into silence. He had never raised his voice in a decade. Even doing it hurt his vocal cords, and he tried his best not to let it show.
“Listen to me,” he continued anyway, ignoring the shooting pain in his throat. “We are going to get through this. Yer father will be fine.”
He didn’t wait for her to respond; he just turned to Hector.
“Gather six men now,” he ordered. “Take the fastest horses. Ride straight there. Find Laird MacKenna. Find out who lives, who is hurt, and whether the fire is out. Send word back the moment ye have it.”
“Aye.”
“And take waterskins, bandages, and blankets. If the roads are blocked, clear them. If they need men digging, ye dig.”
“Aye.”
Hector was already turning to bark orders, and the men in the yard sprang into motion around them. The sound of boots striking dirt cut through the air.
Ciaran kept Ava close enough until he felt she could stand on her own. Even then, he did not fully let her go.
“Listen to me,” he said. “They will ride out now. We will ken more soon.”
“I want to go with them.” Her answer came at once, as if she had been holding it in from the moment she began running.
Ciaran looked at her fully then. Her eyes were wild with panic. Her face had gone rigid from the effort of staying upright and speaking plainly.
He knew exactly what she wanted.
Her father.
Her home.
The place that had held her whole life before him.
He also saw the road in his mind, a terrified woman riding alone, the chance of smoke still rising, timbers fallen, men panicked, the cause unknown. His body answered before thought had fully formed.
“It isnae safe, wife. Ye’ll stay here.” The words came out harder than he had intended.
He heard that too late. Ava heard it at once.
Her lips parted in disbelief. “Stay here?”
“Aye.”
“Me father may be hurt.”
“I ken that.”
“Then I am going.”
“Nay.”
The force of the word stopped her for a beat, but it did nothing to calm her. The fear in her face sharpened into anger.
Ciaran could see the exact moment when he lost the ground he should have held more carefully.
“But me father—”
He cut her off because the thought of her on the road was already too much. “Yer father isnae yer protector anymore. I am.” He heard his own voice and still did not stop. “And ye will obey me.”
The yard had gone quieter around them. His men continued carrying out orders, but Ciaran knew with a grim clarity that every person within earshot would remember that line.
Ava stared at him. The hurt on her face landed harder than her anger had.
“Are ye being serious?”
“Ava—”
“Ye have become me protector?”
“Ava, ye must understand—”
“What? Because ye have become me husband, me father is suddenly useless? Worthless?”
Ciaran felt the truth of that and kept going anyway, driven by the same fear that had ruined his judgment the moment she had arrived. “I said, ye’ll stay here.”
Her chin lifted. “Ye daenae get to command me out of this, Ciaran.”
He felt a pang in his chest at the mention of his name. “That isnae what I am doing.”
“It is exactly what ye are doing.”
He almost mentioned the road, the danger, the smoke, the possibility of whatever had caused the fire still waiting there.
He almost gave every practical reason that made his refusal right.
However, none of those reasons changed the fact that she was looking at him as if he had shut a door in her face when she most needed him to open one.
Hector rode past then with the first of the men, the clip-clop of horses’ hooves breaking through the tension between them.
Ciaran stepped back half a step and kept his voice level. “Ride hard and send me word.”
Hector nodded once and led the men out.
Ava did not look after them. She looked only at Ciaran.
For one second, he thought she might say something worse than anything she already had. Something final. Something he could not take back into himself later and explain as fear. Instead, she drew a tight breath.
“I came to ye because I thought ye might be on me side and let me go,” she said quietly. “I suppose I was wrong.”
She turned and walked away before he could answer.
He did not stop her or call out her name. He stood in the middle of the yard and watched her go with her shoulders stiff and her steps too quick to be calm. She did not look back once.
The men around him returned to work by degrees, and practice resumed ever so slowly. But he remained where he was.
He still believed he had made the right decision.
Sending her into danger would have been madness.
He would make the same decision again if forced.
The road was uncertain. The cause of the fire was unknown.
He had men for speed, strength, and search.
She had none of the things that would make that ride safer.
But he had handled the delivery rather poorly.
The realization settled in him ever so slowly as he closed his hand around empty air where the note had been.
A few minutes ago, he had stood here confessing to Hector that liking his wife was already too dangerous. Now, he had proof of the danger that started to grow inside of him.
Fear for Ava did not make him gentle. It made him controlling. He reached for authority the moment vulnerability became unbearable.
And she had felt the difference immediately.
Something told him, through the clang of wooden swords and screams of the men around him, that this wouldn’t be the last time.