Page 110 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
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 didnotwant her.
He had come for her.
He didnotwant 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.”
