Page 25 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
“Isobel, as ye can see, I am a bit busy.”
“Aye, like ye have been the past few days?”
Ciaran said nothing. He simply did not see the point in continuing this conversation.
Isobel continued to speak anyway, the annoyance in her voice clearer than anything.“Ye asked for a wife, and ye chose one. And now ye cannae even manage the courtesy of being civil to her before the vows are spoken?”
He rose then, less from temper than from the restless need not to remain seated beneath her scolding. “Ye presume too much.”
“Do I?” Isobel folded her arms. “Because from where I stand, ye look very much like a man running from a lass who has done nothing worse than ask ye to treat her as a human being.”
The words landed too close to the mark to be borne with ease.
“She has madedemands,” he gritted out.
“Aye, because ye told her she may.”
“That doesnae make the matter yers to meddle in.”
Isobel’s eyes flashed. “It became mine when me friend began looking as though she must choose between pride and despair in this castle.”
He had no answer he wished to give her. Not one she deserved to hear, and not one he meant to confess, so his gaze drifted toward the window.
Light lay soft across the courtyard below as the afternoon had gone mild and utterly bright. On the grass near the lower path, Ava lay stretched with her face turned up toward the sun, one arm bent near her head and the other flat in the grass. He could see her full figure from where he stood, doing nothing but basking in the sun.
It felt like a rare thing to see Ava doing nothing. Since she had arrived, all she had done was come up with terms or defy him in any way she could. Now, she was simply there. Atease.
“Ah,” Isobel said softly, her voice bringing him back to the present.
That one small sound pricked deeper than her earlier scolding.
He turned away from the window at once. “Daenae start.”
The corner of her mouth curved, not into a smile, but into something sadder and more knowing. “I wasnae going to say anything.”
“Good.”
“Because ye would hate to hear it spoken aloud?”
His expression cooled. “Ye grow tiresome. I can see where ye got that now. Living in the same castle with her for years has made ye quite the most insistent person.”
“And ye, Brother, continue to grow transparent,” she retorted.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. Then Isobel’s gaze flicked to the window and back again.
“What threatens ye?” she asked, and for once her voice held no accusation. “That she is troublesome? Or that she may fit here too well?”
Ciaran said nothing.
Isobel let out a breath, as if she had expected nothing else. “Ye need nae answer me.”
“Nay,” he uttered. “I daenae.”
She studied him one moment longer, then moved toward the door. “Tomorrow will come, whether ye hide from it or nae.”
He did not stop her.
When she had gone, the room felt too still.
