Chapter 24
Later that evening, Ciaran shut the study door behind him and reached for the whiskey before he took off his gloves.
He poured some into the nearest cup and downed half of it in one gulp. The liquor burned cleanly down his throat, but it didn’t help afterward.
His body remained keyed up, and his mind remained fixed where he did not want it. Ava’s hand in his at dinner. Ava’s waist under his palm. Ava looking up at him while her father watched from across the table.
He set the cup down harder than he had meant to.
The study should have steadied him. It usually did. The sight of papers, ledgers, and wax was usually enough to clear everything else from his mind. Those things had served him well for years. He could come in here, shut the door, and become only what he needed to be—a laird with decisions to make.
Tonight, however, the room offered no such respite.
He sat back in his chair and pressed his palm flat against the front of his trousers.
He was already hard. He had been since the dance, since her hand in his, and since her face tilted up to him in the candlelight.
The leather was tight against him, and the pressure of his own hand made his jaw clench.
He began to move his hand slowly, his mind drifting once again to moments involving Ava. Her waist under his palm, the scent of her neck when he stood close enough to catch it. The sound she made in the tower with her head tipped back and her fingers curled into his hair.
He worked himself through the leather, his breath coming heavier and the ache growing more pleasurable.
He gripped the armrest with his free hand and let his thoughts grow more heated.
He was thinking of her hands on his shoulders and the way his name had broken in her mouth.
He pressed harder, moved faster, and felt the grain of the wood bite into his palm.
His hips bucked, and his breath came in through his nose and out unevenly.
Then, a knock sounded at the door.
Quickly, he adjusted himself and looked up. Hector walked in without waiting long enough to be invited, which told Ciaran exactly how visible his unrest had become.
Hector shut the door behind him and took one look at the bottle on the desk. “That bad?”
Ciaran reached for the cup again. “Did ye come for anything useful?”
Hector leaned one shoulder against the door. “I came to see whether marriage had finally bettered ye. It appears it has only made ye thirstier.”
Ciaran drank and said nothing.
Hector’s mouth twitched. “A husband needs nae sit alone fighting himself in a study.”
Ciaran shot him a look. “Choose yer next words carefully.”
There was no real heat in the warning. Hector noticed that, too. His expression stayed much too calm.
“Aye,” he said. “That bad, then.”
Ciaran turned away and set the empty cup down. The fact that his brother could walk in, make one crude observation, and land so near the mark put him in a black mood at once. He had not even managed to carry himself like a man in control of his own body, let alone his own marriage.
Hector pushed off the door and stepped further into the room. The lightness dropped from him in small increments.
“So I was thinking,” he started. “Now that we have Laird MacKenna here, this would be the time.”
Ciaran did not ask what he meant. He knew.
“If an annulment is what ye still want,” Hector continued, “better to speak while the old man is under our roof than wait and make a bigger mess later.”
The words settled heavily.
Ciaran looked at the whiskey bottle, then past it to the wall, almost absentmindedly.
The matter had lived in his head as a threat, an answer, a road kept open because he had feared what his marriage was becoming.
Spoken this plainly, with Ava’s father only one floor away, it took on harder edges. It became an act. A conversation.
It suddenly became something with consequences.
He did not answer.
Hector waited a moment, then asked the only question left. “Ye still want it, daenae ye?”
Ciaran knew what a clean answer should sound like. Yes. Without hesitation. Yes, because this marriage had gone too far in directions he had sworn to avoid, and because liking Ava had become a danger he had no wish to feed.
However, the answer did not come cleanly.
He heard the pause before he spoke. Hector heard it, too.
“Aye,” he muttered. “Of course I do.”
The words were sharp enough, but the conviction in them had already thinned.
Hector did not move.
Ciaran continued speaking anyway. Now wasn’t the time to remain silent. “The old man has been through enough. His castle is ash. His skin is burned. His people are under me roof. He deserves peace for a few days before anyone puts more strain on him.”
The explanation sounded orderly while he said it. He believed it… until the last word left his mouth and the whole thing stood exposed for what it was. Delay.
Hector’s expression did not change. That made it worse.
“A few days,” he repeated.
Ciaran’s jaw tightened. “Would ye have me raise it now? Tonight? Shall I ask for his daughter to be sent back while the smoke is still in his hair?”
“Nay.” Hector shook his head. “I’d just have ye say what ye mean and stop wasting her time.”
The room went quiet.
Ciaran felt the weight of that more sharply than any accusation. Hector had not called him a liar. He had not needed to.
He poured another measure of whiskey and left it untouched. “What I mean,” he said, “is that this isnae the moment.”
Hector watched him. “Aye.”
Ciaran hated that response. He had meant to keep one thing steady in all of this.
If he could not stop wanting his wife, he could at least keep hold of the fact that wanting her was a mistake and that there remained a way out before his want grew into something far worse. Now, even that ground had shifted.
He had still said he wanted an annulment. He had said it aloud again. He had not lied entirely. Yet every reason he gave for postponement exposed the real weakness. He wanted time. He wanted room. He wanted to use the old man’s presence as a shield against his own failure to act.
Hector drew a little closer to the desk and rested his hand against the back of a chair. “She matters more than ye planned.”
Ciaran gave a humorless breath. “That was clear enough the moment I opened me mouth, was it?”
“It was clear before that.”
He said nothing as the bottle stood between them and the cup waited beside it. The study held the smell of whiskey, ink, and the cold air seeping in through the cracks in the window.
Hector looked at him for one beat longer, as though deciding whether to press harder or change the topic. Then he cleared his throat. “There’s something else ye should ken.”
Ciaran looked up. “What?”
“We still have nay names.” Hector folded his arms. “Nay one in MacKenna lands saw enough to suspect a hand behind it. Nay one has come forward with quarrels worth the risk. But the men I sent back felt watched on the road.”
The study went still.
“Watched how?”
Hector shrugged once. “Nay sight clear enough to chase. They only said they felt like they were being watched and everything was too quiet.”
Ciaran’s hand tightened around the cup.
That was worse than a poor suspect. A known enemy could be met. A hidden one required guesswork and long nerves. He thought of his father-in-law arriving burned and the dog under the chair at dinner.
“Who reported it?”
“Two guards separate from each other,” Hector replied. “I asked them apart. They told it the same.”
Ciaran released the cup. “Double the watch tonight. I want two men on each path, nae one. Change them faster so nay one grows dull because they stood too long.”
Hector nodded. “All right.”
“Also, make certain nay gate is opened after dark without me permission or yers. If anyone sees movement beyond the trees, I want it followed and reported.”
Hector nodded again. “Aye.”
“And spread word around the castle. Nay wandering after supper. Nae the servants, nae the guests—nay one.”
“MacKenna will dislike that.”
“He can dislike it under me roof while he stays alive under it.”
That caused the briefest twitch in Hector’s mouth, though Ciaran knew better than to call it humor.
“Have the men check the stables twice before first light. I want every horse counted. If someone is watching us, he may fancy taking one before long.”
“Aye.” Hector pushed off the chair and turned toward the door, then paused with his hand on the latch. “Ye can order guards. That part still comes easy.”
Ciaran gave him a flat look. “Get out.”
Hector did, though he left with far too much understanding in his eyes.
The study door slammed shut, and silence returned.
Ciaran remained sat where he was for a few moments and listened to the faint sounds of the castle settling beyond the walls. He had done what could be done for now. More men. More eyes. More caution around the castle. That part was simple.
He poured more whiskey. The first swallow burned, but the second sat warm and useless in his gut.
Someone might be watching the roads, and a threat just might be lurking behind the walls. Yet all he could think about was the feel of Ava in his arms at dinner. He had held her under her father’s gaze and wanted to keep holding her long after the music had given him the chance to let go.
He took another drink and cursed himself for remembering it in such detail. The study had not steadied him. Even the whiskey did not dull him. Every path circled back to the same place—Ava’s face.
He drank again as the room remained tight around him.
He could not even tell which answer he wanted anymore. Silence or Ava. Distance or the right to keep taking her hand when a room watched. An end to their marriage or another hour beside her that would undo him further.
The mind could not hold both without strain, and his had become all strain these last days.
Then the piano blared from the tower, and he froze with the cup halfway down to the desk.
What the—
The sound was appalling.
It sounded like the wrong keys were being struck with enthusiasm and very little mercy. Like one chord was slamming into the next, and a run climbed upward and collapsed in the middle.
“Who in God’s name is that?”
He stared at the ceiling as another cluster of notes followed, worse than the first, cutting through everything. There was only one person in this castle reckless enough to play the piano that badly.
“Ava,” he muttered.
A third attempt rang out, this time with a pause in the middle, as if she had stopped to consider whether the instrument was broken or merely bad.
Ciaran put the cup down very carefully.
He ought to have stayed where he was. He had enough work.
He had spent the whole evening proving to himself that going to her was exactly what he should stop doing.
Then she struck the same wrong note three times in a row, each one more certain than the last, and the sound reverberated through the study like a challenge.
He was moving before the last one died down.
The door flew open under his hand. The passageway beyond lay dim and quiet, and somewhere above him came another dreadful attempt at playing. Somehow, no matter how hard he tried to avoid her, Ava had found yet another way to drag him back toward her.
And once again, he went.