Chapter 23
Ciaran had gone to the tower for silence after leaving Ava’s chambers, but he found none.
The room usually gave him enough distance to think clearly. The telescope stood by the window, and the piano sat closed, its keys hidden.
He had work below, and he knew that. He had come up anyway, bringing with him a ledger he had not opened and a mind that kept wandering where he did not want it.
No matter how hard he tried, he simply couldn’t stop thinking about Ava. Even now, he couldn’t stop thinking about her face and how she had stared at him when he pushed that door open.
He was still trying to get her out of his head when a knock sounded at the door. He turned at once, already irritated with himself for not wanting company and for knowing exactly who stood outside before a word was spoken.
“Come in.”
Laird MacKenna stepped into the room, a small smile on his face.
Ciaran swallowed and watched the older man as he stepped in and closed the door behind him. He still bore the marks of the fire. The skin on his neck and the side of his face were healing slowly but they weren't as bad as they had been the day he arrived.
He moved carefully when he crossed the threshold, and a part of Ciaran almost wondered if he should help him to the nearest chair. Eventually, he found that he did not. The older man moved further into the room, with that small smile still on his lips.
“Laird MacKenna,” Ciaran greeted.
“That sounds far too polite for a room this high,” MacKenna replied. “Have ye a moment?”
Ciaran gestured to the chair by the wall. “Of course.”
MacKenna sat.
Ciaran remained standing for a second, then thought better of it and took the chair opposite him.
MacKenna looked around once, taking in the telescope, the piano, the books—the room in general. A man like him often missed nothing, Ciaran could tell.
“I came to thank ye properly,” MacKenna began. “Ye took us in without hesitation. I daenae forget such things.”
“There was nothing else to be done.”
“There is always something else a man can choose,” MacKenna countered. “Ye chose well.”
Ciaran lowered his head once and then lifted it again. He had no wish to spend long on gratitude. It made him uncomfortable when offered plainly.
MacKenna seemed to know that already.
“Me maids tell me they willnae have much to do here,” he said, glancing toward the window as if remarking on the weather. “Yer people run a tight ship. They say little will change.”
Ciaran looked at him. “Change?”
The older man’s mouth twitched. “Aye.”
The word hung between them with more weight than the remark warranted. Ciaran heard it clearly enough.
MacKenna had not climbed the tower to discuss mops and folded linens. He was speaking of his daughter’s world entering this castle. His servants. His habits. His daughter herself. How much would change. How much would be allowed to.
Ciaran’s voice cooled by instinct. “Is there something ye want altered?”
MacKenna held his gaze with mild interest. “Is that a problem?”
There it is.
Ciaran knew how to answer blunt suspicion, but this was worse. MacKenna was still being kind, and kindness like this required some kind of care in response.
“Of course nae,” he managed to say anyway.
“I am glad of that.” MacKenna nodded. “Ava likes a room to feel lived in. She always has.”
Ciaran said nothing.
MacKenna looked at the piano, then back at him. “How are things going with her?”
Ciaran felt his shoulders tense. The room seemed smaller than it had a moment before. He could have given the truth, but he knew better. Truth in this matter had become a dangerous thing to hand anyone, most of all his father-in-law.
“We’re managing.”
MacKenna sat for a quiet second with one hand resting on the armrest and the other over his side. His face gave little away beyond simple attentiveness. It made Ciaran feel even more uncomfortable than earlier.
“Managing,” he repeated.
“Aye.”
“And is she happy?”
Ciaran kept his face steady with effort. “She has had much to bear lately.”
“That wasnae me question.”
Great.
He looked at the older man and found no accusation there or any look that conveyed some kind of displeasure. “She is safe here.”
MacKenna’s gaze did not falter. “Aye, I ken that already.”
The answer unsettled Ciaran more than open criticism would have.
Safe. That was the ground on which he had meant to stand, yet MacKenna kept looking at him as though being safe alone would never be enough, and both of them knew it.
Ciaran’s hand closed around the arm of his chair, then loosened. “I do right by her.”
“I believe ye mean to.”
That was as close to a rebuke as the older man had come, and it was mild enough that another ear might have missed it. He rose eventually with more care than speed. Ciaran stood as well.
MacKenna adjusted the cuff at his wrist and gave the room another cursory glance, as if filing it away with everything else he had learned since coming under this roof.
“I am glad we will have time to get to ken one another better,” he said. “And I look forward to dinner.”
The line sounded pleasant. It was also a promise. The conversation would continue. The watching would continue.
Nothing said in this tower had closed the matter. If anything, it has only shown what Laird MacKenna needed to watch out for, now that he would be staying here for a while.
Ciaran didn’t know what to feel about that, but he managed to keep himself steady anyway.
“As do I,” he returned, his voice on the verge of breaking.
That, at least, was partially true. He looked forward to dinner in the same way a man might look toward a bridge he must cross with uncertain footing beneath him.
MacKenna moved to the door, then paused with his hand on the latch. “She is a brave lass,” he said without turning. “Daenae mistake that for leniency.”
Ciaran nodded and watched as the man stepped out of the room. He, on the other hand, remained where he was.
The room had gone quiet again, and everything in the tower was exactly where it had been before his father-in-law had climbed the stairs. But for some reason, none of it felt the same. He had been thanked, tested, and measured in the span of a short conversation.
That was the trouble with loving eyes. They saw too much.
By dinner, Ciaran had not found a better solution to the thoughts that continued flooding his mind.
He was already at the table when Ava came in with Isobel, and he looked up at once.
He had meant to give her no more than the courtesy due any wife entering a room.
Instead, he drank her in before he could stop himself.
She was in a bright blue dress, and it fell rather elegantly around her ankles as she walked. He swallowed and turned his eyes to her face. The color in it was so bright that the dim candlelight caught it.
He parted his lips, almost astonished by how sharp she looked that night, but he had barely gotten a word out when he felt Laird MacKenna looking at him. The older man said nothing. He did not need to. Ciaran reached for his cup and kept his face still while Ava took her seat.
The first minutes of dinner passed stiffly. Cutlery clinked against porcelain, and Isobel spoke of the bread. MacKenna asked whether the venison had come from the northern woods, while Ava answered when spoken to and kept her voice level. Ciaran did the same.
Anyone less observant than her father might have thought the meal merely subdued. But her father was no less observant.
Once the first hunger had been satisfied, he set down his knife and cleared his throat. “Ye ken what has been bothering me since the fire?”
All eyes shifted to him, almost as if he were the main authority in the dining hall.
“I have turned the matter over in me head many times, and I can think of nay man with cause enough to set fire to the place.”
“Ye think someone set fire to the castle?” Ava asked, the alarm in her voice clear.
He raised his hand almost in a way that told her to relax. “That is the thing. I cannae think of anyone who would do that.”
Ciaran nodded. “Then it might well have been an accident.”
“Aye.” MacKenna took a drink. “A stupid one, perhaps.”
Isobel drew a breath.
Ava’s hand tightened briefly on the stem of her glass. “At least nay one died.”
MacKenna looked at her for a second, then gave a short nod. “Aye. That alone deserves gratitude.”
“It deserves more than gratitude,” Isobel said, seizing the opening with the speed of a woman determined not to let grief dominate an evening. “It deserves music. Or dancing. We used to do worse for far less when we were younger.”
MacKenna’s mouth twitched. “We did, indeed. Though I am too tired to make a fool of meself tonight.”
“That is a disappointment,” Isobel tutted.
“I leave foolishness to stronger legs.” He turned his head toward Ciaran. “Ye, however, have nay excuse. Daenae sit there glowering and ruin yer wife’s mood with it.”
The line came sweetly, but it was also a push. Ava knew it. Ciaran saw that in the quick look she gave her father. He could have refused. He could have claimed he had something to do or was simply tired. Instead, he rose.
The room fell quieter as he crossed to Ava and held out his hand. “Me Lady.”
She looked down at his hand and back at his face. The flush in it was clearer than anything now.
“We daenae want to keep these folks waiting now, do we?”
For one beat, she only looked at his hand. Then, almost reluctantly, she placed her fingers in his palm. The contact sent a jolt through him at once.
He pulled her to her feet and led her into the small open space near the fireplace where Isobel had already begun a low, teasing tune under her breath. MacKenna leaned back in his chair to watch with the expression of a man who had arranged exactly what he wanted and meant to enjoy the result.
Ciaran put his hand on Ava’s waist, and she rested hers on his shoulder.
The first steps were proper enough. Measured.
Easy to explain. The kind of dancing one might do to satisfy family and pass a few minutes warmly.
Then Ava looked up at him, and her face tilted toward his in candlelight with all their private history still alive beneath the surface.
“Ye might try smiling,” she said softly.
“I am dancing. Is that nae effort enough?”
A faint smile touched her mouth. “Me father thinks ye can do better.”
“Yer father thinks many dangerous things.”
“He thinks ye brood too much.”
“He is correct.”
“That is the first sensible thing ye have admitted all day.”
He almost smiled and checked it too late. Ava noticed, and her fingers shifted against his shoulder just enough to make him aware of every place they touched.
Around them, the room had gone still in that quiet way where people stopped speaking because they had found something more interesting to watch. Isobel continued humming, and Laird MacKenna watched over the rim of his cup.
Ciaran should have released Ava at the first turn that allowed it.
He did not.
The dance went on. Her body moved easily with his, familiar now in the ways that mattered most to him and least to anyone else in the room. He knew the shape of her waist under his hand and the scent at the side of her neck when he stood this close.
He knew how quickly memory could turn simple contact into desire, and that was the last thing he wanted.
Not here.
Not before everyone.
Ava’s gaze did not leave his. “Ye are holding me rather tightly, me Laird.”
His grip loosened a fraction and remained too firm. “Complain if ye mean it.”
“I am considering it.”
“Do so quickly.”
“And disturb yer focus? Nay, thanks.”
That drew a breath from him that was nearly a laugh and nearly something else.
Before he could fully take in the moment, a shrill voice burst from the doorway. “Get off me, ye wicked creature.”
The spell broke at once.
Bruce shot into the room in a blur of legs and delight, with Mrs. Patmore half stumbling behind him and trying to rescue the hem of her gown from his paws. He barked madly, circled once, and launched himself at the nearest person.
Ava dropped from Ciaran’s hold at once and sank to the floor just in time to catch him. “Bruce!”
The dog nearly climbed into her lap whole. He licked her chin, her hand, the front of her dress, then turned and barked at the housekeeper as though inviting her to join the game.
“He isnae aggressive,” Ava said through laughter. “He only likes people too much.”
“That is precisely the problem,” Mrs. Patmore sniffed, trying and failing to recover her dignity.
Isobel laughed openly, while MacKenna looked one breath from doing the same.
Ciaran crouched beside Ava without thinking. Bruce, delighted by more company, pushed his blunt head into Ciaran’s hand. Ciaran stroked the rough fur between the dog’s ears while Ava steadied the little beast against her dress.
For a moment, they all sat under MacKenna’s warm gaze, laughter at the table, Bruce on the floor, Ava at Ciaran’s side, the scent of supper permeating the air, and the memory of her body against his still fresh in his hands.
When the laughter faded and the evening began to settle again, Ciaran rose with the others and let the moment pass outwardly. However, it did not pass in him.
All that lingered in his mind was the memory of the dance and Ava in his arms under her father’s watchful gaze.
Great.
As if he didn’t have a lot to deal with already.