Page 182 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
“What can I say?” Ava shrugged. “I had principles.”
Isobel laughed and looped her arm through Ava’s. The warmth of it helped. So did the absurdity of old arguments come back to life with their old certainty.
“And what of the time ye pushed me into the stream?” Ava asked.
“I did nay such thing.”
“Ye did. Ye said if I wished to claim the stone was steady, I ought to prove it.”
“Why did that feel so long ago?”
“I ken. We have lived different lives.”
“That we have.”
They went on like that for a while, from one memory to another, each small story leading naturally to the next. It did not erase the earlier hurt. It only gave it less room for a while. Ava felt herself loosening back into the person she had been before she closed the study door behind her.
By the time they turned back toward the castle, she could breathe without feeling the ache of the morning in her throat.
Then she saw him.
Ciaran stood near the edge of the path with Hector beside him. They were not near enough for Ava to hear their words, but near enough for her to make out the shape of the two men deep in conversation.
Almost like he sensed her presence, his head turned, and their eyes met.
The change in her was immediate and plain. Hope rose so quickly that she almost hated herself for it. One glance, and she was already thinking of crossing the distance between them. Already thinking that perhaps the morning need not end as it had begun. Perhaps she could go to him now, speak to him, and see what would come out of it. Force the day into a kinder shape through sheer will alone.
“I am going to talk to him,” she declared.
Isobel followed her gaze and gave a small nod. “Aye.”
Ava took two steps, then stopped. That annoyed her more than if she had never moved at all.
She knew exactly what it was—a last burst of foolish self-consciousness.
She turned back to Isobel, irritated with herself. “Is there something on me teeth?”
Isobel blinked. “What?”
“Me hair, then. Or me face. Do I look strange?”
A look passed over Isobel’s face that would have become laughter if she had been less kind. “Ava, ye look perfectly fine.”
“Perfectly?”
“As near to it as any of us are likely to come in this life.”
“That wasnae the certainty I wanted.”
“It is the certainty ye are getting.” Isobel reached up and smoothed back a loose strand near Ava’s temple. “There. Now, go before ye invent some new flaw and lose yer nerve entirely.”
Ava gave a short breath that might have been a laugh if her pulse were not suddenly working against her. Then she turned back toward the spot where she had seen Ciaran standing.
Except he was gone.
She stopped so abruptly that the gravel shifted under her slippers.
Hector still stood there, half turned toward the path beyond. Ciaran did not. There was no sign of him except the empty patch of ground where he had stood a moment before.
