Page 81 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
Ciaran knew how to answer blunt suspicion, but this was worse. MacKenna was still being kind, and kindness like this required some kind of care in response.
“Of course nae,” he managed to say anyway.
“I am glad of that.” MacKenna nodded. “Ava likes a room to feel lived in. She always has.”
Ciaran said nothing.
MacKenna looked at the piano, then back at him. “How are things going with her?”
Ciaran felt his shoulders tense. The room seemed smaller than it had a moment before. He could have given the truth, but heknew better. Truth in this matter had become a dangerous thing to hand anyone, most of all his father-in-law.
“We’re managing.”
MacKenna sat for a quiet second with one hand resting on the armrest and the other over his side. His face gave little away beyond simple attentiveness. It made Ciaran feel even more uncomfortable than earlier.
“Managing,” he repeated.
“Aye.”
“And is she happy?”
Ciaran kept his face steady with effort. “She has had much to bear lately.”
“That wasnae me question.”
Great.
He looked at the older man and found no accusation there or any look that conveyed some kind of displeasure.“She is safe here.”
MacKenna’s gaze did not falter. “Aye, I ken that already.”
The answer unsettled Ciaran more than open criticism would have.
Safe. That was the ground on which he had meant to stand, yet MacKenna kept looking at him as though being safe alone would never be enough, and both of them knew it.
Ciaran’s hand closed around the arm of his chair, then loosened. “I do right by her.”
“I believe ye mean to.”
That was as close to a rebuke as the older man had come, and it was mild enough that another ear might have missed it. He rose eventually with more care than speed. Ciaran stood as well.
MacKenna adjusted the cuff at his wrist and gave the room another cursory glance, as if filing it away with everything else he had learned since coming under this roof.
“I am glad we will have time to get to ken one another better,” he said. “And I look forward to dinner.”
The line sounded pleasant. It was also a promise. The conversation would continue. The watching would continue.
Nothing said in this tower had closed the matter. If anything, it has only shown what Laird MacKenna needed to watch out for, now that he would be staying here for a while.
Ciaran didn’t know what to feel about that, but he managed to keep himself steady anyway.
“As do I,” he returned, his voice on the verge of breaking.
That, at least, was partially true. He looked forward to dinner in the same way a man might look toward a bridge he must cross with uncertain footing beneath him.
MacKenna moved to the door, then paused with his hand on the latch. “She is a brave lass,” he said without turning. “Daenae mistake that for leniency.”
Ciaran nodded and watched as the man stepped out of the room. He, on the other hand, remained where he was.
