Page 51 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
Ava was so bad at the task that the whole lesson had turned into a quiet battle between thread and will. Worse, what drew him in was not merely the comedy of it. It was the fact that she was entirely herself in it. She was failing honestly and refusing to quit out of embarrassment.
That should not have pleased him. But for some reason, it did.
He stood there longer than he meant to, watching her narrow her eyes at the cloth as though being stern alone might force the next stitch into its proper place.
The sight made the resignation he had felt in the past few days sink in deeper.
She was no longer only a woman he wanted in moments of heat or conflict. She fit too easily into quieter things. A ride. A walk. A lesson at a table by the window. His attention kept finding her there and staying.
Distance, ultimately, did nothing.
The housekeeper finally took the embroidery hoop from her hands with the look of a woman deciding that retreat was necessary before the fabric died. “We shall try again tomorrow.”
Ava leaned back in her chair. “How encouraging.”
“At yer age, me Lady, I was already sewing cuffs.”
“At me age, I was beating Isobel at riding and considered that a far better use of me time. I suppose I have a lot to learn.”
That nearly got him again.
He was still standing there when Hector’s footsteps sounded behind him.
Hector drew to a halt beside him, then glanced past him into the room. Ava had not yet noticed either of them. She was examining the damage, as though trying to decide whether the cloth might recover with some goodwill.
Hector’s mouth quirked up, and Ciaran gave him a warning look.
“What is it?” he asked quietly.
Hector lifted a letter. “Word back from Isla’s father.”
That pulled the moment into order again.
Ciaran stepped away from the door, and the two of them moved a little further down the passageway before Hector handed him the letter. He opened it and read it quickly.
It said what he had expected.Jack had acted alone. There was no wider grievance or planned retaliation. There was also no man waiting to take up the dead fool’s cause. The old matter ended on the wedding ground, in blood, with Jack’s body left behind and nothing more to follow it.
Ciaran folded the letter once and handed it back.
“That settles it,” Hector said.
“Aye.”
And it did.
Jack was dead. Isla’s father wanted no feud. No further threat stood outside the walls, waiting to be identified and managed. Yet the unease in Ciaran’s chest did not ebb.
His thoughts went back, at once and against his will, to the room behind him. To Ava at the table and to the ruined cloth. To the fact that her smile, her frustration, and her presence in the castle now carried more weight than they should.
He had dealt with the kind of danger he knew how to kill. The thing left standing was the one he could neither fend off nor solve.
Ava was in his home now and well in his routine. Every ordinary hour seemed to fix her there more firmly. Riding had not solved it. Duties had not solved it. Even standing outside a door and telling himself not to look had not solved it.
Jack was gone.
The castle was safe.
And Ciaran still felt no peace, because the one danger left was the woman who kept making his life feel more real each day.
