Chapter 31
By the time they reached the castle, Ava’s whole body hurt. It hurt even more when Isobel rushed forward and enveloped her in a warm hug.
“Oh, thank Christ, ye’re alive!”
“Isobel, I daenae think she can withstand that now.”
“Ava,” Isobel whispered, pulling back and looking at her friend.
The discomfort on Ava’s face seemed to say more than words would have. Isobel, still relieved, got the hint anyway and stepped aside.
“Come with me,” Ciaran whispered, and they resumed walking again.
The morning sky was turning into a greyish blue, and the sun would be out any moment from now.
Ava’s wrists burned where the rope had rubbed her skin raw, and her shoulder ached from the force of being caught and dragged back from the cliff. Clumps of dirt clung to the sides of her gown, and her hands would not stop shaking, no matter how tightly she clasped them.
Men were moving everywhere around her, and horses stamped in the yard. Voices rose, then dropped when they saw her. Someone opened the door before she reached it.
She did not look at anyone until Ciaran steadied her at the threshold. His hand closed around her elbow with care.
That touch, more than anything, nearly undid her. She could still hear him. She could still hear the hard certainty in his voice when he had said she meant nothing.
She knew why he had said it. She knew he had saved her life with the same mouth that had cut her open. Knowing, however, did not heal the hurt.
“Ava.” His voice was rough. Her name sounded as though it cost him.
She made herself meet his eyes anyway. The expectation in them made something break inside her, but she was still overwhelmed. Now wasn’t the time to address that.
“Thank ye,” she mumbled.
His grip tightened slightly, as if he meant to say more.
She could not bear to hear it then. Not in the hall, with the scrape of boots still punctuating the morning silence.
The last thing she wanted was to bear him explain anything.
She wanted a hot bath first and then the oblivion of slumber.
She had been through a lot. The last thing she needed was another thing for her to deal with.
So she stepped out of his hold.
“I am very tired.”
She did not wait for his answer. She went up the stairs with one hand on the rail and her head bent against the wave of dizziness that assaulted her.
“Me Lady, yer father will want to—” a maid called behind her as she climbed the last steps.
“I will see him later,” she called back without stopping.
By the time she reached her room, her breath was coming too fast. She shut the door, turned the key in the lock, and then stood still in the center of the room until the silence pressed in around her.
Then she began to cry.
She bent over as if someone had punched her in the stomach and covered her mouth with both hands because the sound wanted to come out ugly. The room blurred, and her knees weakened. She caught the bedpost before she could fall.
He had saved her.
He did not want her.
He had come for her.
He did not want her.
The truths beat against each other until she could not tell which hurt more. He could say all he wanted, that he had done it to save her, but the other thing was true. He had asked for an annulment before any of this happened. Why should a near-death experience change anything?
She wiped her face hard, crossed to her wardrobe, and opened it with shaking hands. She pulled out a traveling dress first, then another. A trunk stood at the end of the bed. She dragged it closer and began folding.
She packed whatever she could—stockings, dresses, shawls, and some of the combs she had brought from home. By the time the knock came, she had half-filled the trunk and soaked the front of her dress with tears.
“Ava?” Isobel’s voice called.
Ava did not answer at once.
The knock came again, then her father’s quieter voice followed it. “Lass.”
She crossed the room and opened the door.
Isobel took one look at her and then past her into the chamber. Her eyes fell on the trunk, the dresses thrown across the bed, and the open drawers. “What are ye doing?”
Ava stepped aside and let them in.
Her father moved more slowly than Isobel, clearly still shaken by the panic of this morning. He looked around the room and then at her face, and something in his own tightened at once.
“I am leaving,” Ava announced.
Isobel stared at her. “Leaving where?”
“To me mother's castle. Castle MacLeod.”
“Nay.” The answer came so quickly it might as well have been a slap.
Ava turned back to the trunk and laid another folded dress inside it because if she looked too long at either of them, she might lose the firmness she had only just found. “Aye.”
“Ye cannae simply say aye as if that settles it,” Isobel snapped. “What happened out there? What did he do now?”
Ava shut the trunk lid halfway and pressed both palms against it. “I am going to me Castle MacLeod, and I will ask Da to help me secure the annulment.”
The room went still.
Her father was the first to move a moment later. He took a chair rather than crowd her, as if he already understood she would bear comfort from him only if it did not pin her down.
“Ava.”
She shook her head. “Please, Isobel, daenae ask me to stay.”
Isobel came closer. “I am going to ask exactly that until ye come to yer senses.”
Ava laughed once, the sound thin and wrong. “Me senses are the only thing that brought me here.”
“After today?”
“Nae only after today.”
That gave Isobel pause for a moment.
Ava drew a breath that scraped her throat. “I cannae do this anymore.”
Her father said nothing. He only watched her with that grave steadiness that had made her tell him the truth since she was little.
She forced herself to say it plainly.
“It wasnae only the cliff. It wasnae only what happened there. It was everything before it, too. The distance, and then the kindness, and then the distance again. Wanting me, then retreating. Speaking of an annulment, then acting as though I ought to understand without being told anything. I have tried, Isobel. I have tried so hard.”
The tears came again, but she did not stop them this time.
“I stayed when I could have gone. I stayed again when he gave me cause to leave. I tried to understand what sort of man he was, what he meant, what he feared, what he wanted from me. I have tried hard enough already.”
Isobel’s face had turned red with anger. “That great idiot.”
Ava closed her eyes briefly. “Please, daenae try to defend him.”
“I am nae defending him. I am deciding how best to kill him.”
That almost coaxed a broken smile from Ava. Almost.
Her father leaned forward in his chair. “Lass, if this is truly what ye want, then ye will have a place to go.”
The support in it nearly undid her more than anger would have.
“It is,” Ava said, even though the words hurt. “Because if I stay now, I shall only humiliate meself further. I cannae go on being wanted in one breath and rejected in the next.”
Isobel made a furious sound and turned away, then back again. “Ava.”
Ava’s throat tightened. “I ken.”
“Nothing I can say can stop ye, can it?”
“Nay.”
Her answer did not waver. That was how Ava knew it was real. She’d had enough.
She looked down at the half-packed trunk, at the open drawers, at the dresses laid out on her bed. Her father rose carefully from his seat and came to stand beside her. He did not touch her at first. He only looked at the trunk and then at the bed and then at her face again.
“Then we shall get ready to leave,” he said.
Isobel muttered a curse under her breath.
Ava pressed both hands flat to the trunk lid and nodded once.
For the first time since Ciaran had walked into her life, she stopped waiting for him to choose her and chose instead to leave before he could hurt her again.
Ciaran didn’t know exactly when his hands began to shake, but he only noticed it when he closed the study door behind him.
He hated that most because it was so small and so visible. Blood on his sleeves, he could ignore. Mud on his boots, he could ignore. But a hand that would not stay still, that was too much.
He crossed straight to the sideboard and poured whiskey without measuring. All he could see now, as the drink burned down his throat, was Ava’s face on the cliff.
He drank again.
There was always one thing he looked for in his study—refuge and distance from others that made him revert to his old self, the Laird and thinker everyone seemed to know and respect.
Here, he was the man who could put feelings aside long enough to decide what needed to be done next.
He stood with the cup in his hand and tried to fit himself back into that shape.
Nothing was coming to his mind. All he could register was the fact that Ava was alive and the vile man who had tried to take him down was dead, just like several others who had tried before him.
Ava would hate him for a while. Perhaps longer.
Perhaps forever.
The thought lodged in his chest like iron, and he tried to adjust to whatever that would look like. It was better to be resentful and alive than dead at the bottom of a cliff. Better wounded by words than buried.
He held onto that because the other truth was worse.
The other truth was that when he had seen her over the edge, something inside him had turned so feral that the rest of his life had dropped away. There was no caution or annulment or any other form of noble release. Only Ava.
He drained the glass and set it down too hard.
He was about to grab the bottle again when the door flew open and Isobel came in without knocking.
Uh-oh.
Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair had begun to come loose from its pins. She looked like someone who had run here with anger keeping pace beside her.
“Ye giant fool.”
Ciaran turned slowly. “Get out.”
“Nay.”
He grabbed the bottle because if he looked at her any longer, he would have to acknowledge the force of whatever had brought her to him. “I am in nay mood for whatever this is.”
“Good.” She stepped further into the room. “I am in a worse one.”
He poured himself another glass. “Say what ye came to say.”
“She is packing.”
The glass struck the sideboard before he realized he had set it down, and for one second, he only stared at her.
“Who?”
Isobel’s face contorted in disgust. “Daenae insult me by pretending ye have enough women under yer roof to be uncertain which one I’m referring to.”
The shock moved through his chest and throat and left both tight. “Ava?”
“Aye, Ava.”
“Where?”
“To her mother's castle.” Isobel folded her arms. “She intends to leave and pursue the annulment, since ye seem determined to make that the only clear thing in her life.”
Ciaran looked away from her and back at the sideboard.
The whiskey sat between them. The room had shrunk. He could hear his own breathing.
The thought of Ava hating him forever returned suddenly, and his mind told him that he couldn’t bear it if they remained under the same roof. This was her inadvertently solving a problem for him.
Eventually, he cleared his throat and forced himself to speak evenly. “Then perhaps it is for the best.”
Isobel made a furious sound in the back of her throat. “For the best?”
He took up the glass again. “She is hurt. She has every right to be. Distance will let the matter settle.”
“The matter.”
He did not answer. He drank instead.
“She nearly died today,” Isobel hissed. “She was dragged to a cliff and almost thrown off it, and she came back to this castle only to pack. Because of ye.”
He kept his voice even with effort. “If she leaves, she will be among her own people. There will be peace there.”
“There would be peace for ye too, I suppose.”
He looked at her then. “Daenae.”
“Daenae what? Say what is so damn obvious?” She took a step toward him. “Ye keep wrapping yer cowardice in good manners and thinking ye are being wise, but I see right through ye, Ciaran. I always have.”
He set the glass down again. “Enough.”
“Nay.”
“Isobel—”
“I have watched her stay when any other woman would have left. I have watched her try to understand ye when ye barely understand yerself.”
His jaw clenched.
Isobel’s eyes flashed. “She thanked ye for saving her life and went upstairs to pack. Do ye understand what sort of hurt it takes for a woman to do that?”
He did understand. That was the problem. He understood too well and still reached for the same rotten shelter.
“She will have a better life away from me.”
Isobel stared at him as if he had spoken in madness. “Ye truly believe that helps.”
“It is true.”
“Nay.” Her voice cut hard. “It is easier. That is all.”
He said nothing.
“She loves ye, ye idiot.”
The room went still.
The words hit him with such force that for one raw second, he could not breathe properly.
He had known it in fragments, in glances, in surrender, in the way Ava stayed. Hearing it from another mouth stripped all mercy from it.
Isobel saw the blow land and did not soften it.
“And ye clearly love her,” she continued. “Anyone with eyes can see it. Yet here ye stand, drinking and thinking that allowing her departure makes ye noble.”
That was it. He’d heard enough.
He moved before he had made the choice. He crossed the room, caught Isobel by the elbow, and dragged her toward the door. She jerked against him in protest.
“Unhand me.”
“I have heard enough.”
“Ye have heard the truth, which is why ye cannae bear it.”
He yanked the door open and pushed her into the passageway. She rounded on him, furious, steady, and far too right.
“Ye are far more stupid than I thought,” she spat.
“Thank ye for yer stunning contribution, Sister,” he responded and then shut the door in her face.
The sound cracked through the study, and silence followed immediately.
Ciaran stood with his hand still on the latch, breathing hard, the shame and anger and fear all knotted so tightly inside him that he could not separate one from the other.
On the other side of the door, Isobel’s footsteps retreated slowly. She did not bang on the panel or shout through it. For some reason, that made the silence even worse.
At that moment, it dawned on him that he had really stepped in it this time around. And there was no coming back from this.