Page 172 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
With one loud exhale, she took it.
They began walking in silence, their steps punctuated only by the gentle breeze surrounding them. The castle stood behind them in all its ordinary morning business, servants moving in and out, smoke rising, men crossing the yard with purpose.
Ciaran led her beyond the more public parts of the grounds and onto a path that opened into quieter stretches of land where the air felt cleaner and the world less crowded by eavesdropping walls.
At first, they spoke of nothing that mattered.
He pointed out the boundaries of the estate with the concise clarity of a man who knew every field, rise, and path. Ava listened and answered where it was called for.
The farther they moved, the more the walk itself seemed to loosen something within them.
Indoors, Ciaran’s reserve could fill a room until it felt like another piece of furniture, heavy and impossible to shift. Out here, with open fields on either side and the sky above them, that same reserve sat differently. It was less oppressive and more like something she could feel comfortable in.
He still spoke little, but when he did, there was less effort in it. He sounded more natural discussing a slope that turned marshy in poor weather than he ever did standing rigid in a chamber trying to pretend he was not affected by her.
Ava found that quite pleasant. It wasn’t the most obvious thing in the world, but it wasn’t too subtle either. It helped her realize that she needed to stop bracing for his silence and finding a way to fill it.
The path before them twisted around a rise and opened into a broader stretch where the morning lay clear and mild across the grass. Ava tipped her head back without thinking, taking in the expanse of sky above them.
Ciaran noticed. “What is it?”
She lowered her gaze again. “Nothing.”
He made a quiet sound that suggested he didn’t believe that, but he didn’t press her.
Ava hesitated. It would have been easy enough to let the moment pass. To return to neutral things. Yet the morning had become too still for pretense, and something about the openness around them made speaking feel less dangerous than it might have back inside the castle.
What did she have to lose anyway? She might as well open her mouth.
“Me ma used to tell me that a comet would return one day,” she said slowly, surprised by how stable her voice sounded.
Ciaran glanced at her, though he did not interrupt.
“She spoke of it when I was very young,” she went on. “As if it were the most certain and marvelous thing in the world. It wasnae even like she kent precisely when it would come, but she believed the heavens were vast enough to hold such returns, whether we saw them or nae.”
The words sounded stranger out loud than they had in her own mind all these years. Still, now that she had begun, she did not want to stop halfway and leave it sounding like childish nonsense.
“I have always wanted to see it, ye ken,” she murmured. “And it isnae just because it would be beautiful, though I daresay it would be. But because it feels…” She paused, searching for the right words. “Because it feels like keeping faith with her.”
That made him look at her properly.
Ava kept looking ahead, suddenly aware that she had stepped somewhere far more personal than she intended when the walk began. Yet retreating now would only make it worse.
“She dreamed of it,” she said. “And I think some part of me has held onto the dream becauseshedid. Like letting it go would mean I had let go of more than some random bright thing in the sky.”
The path crunched softly beneath their shoes, and the wind rustled the grass.
She let out a quick, self-conscious sigh.“I ken. Saying it out loud… it sounds quite foolish, does it nae?”
“Nay,” Ciaran replied, his voice unwavering.
Ava looked at him then. His face was still composed, but his attention had changed. Sharpened, perhaps. Or deepened. She did not know how else to describe it other than to say that he was listening in a way that made her feel the words had weight once spoken.
“Ye see, me ma wasnae exactly the easiest person to relate with. She often got lost in her own world.”
“Really?”
“Aye. She had her own way of speaking about things,” Ava said more quietly. “She could make anything sound like the very best thing in the world.”
