Page 146 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
He had looked at her and found her ideal precisely because he believed she would neither love him nor require love from him. As though she might be placed into a cold arrangement, used for its purpose, and left to settle quietly like furniture assigned to a room.
“So that is why ye chose me?” she asked. “Because I seemedconvenientfor emptiness?”
His gaze sharpened slightly. “Because ye seemed sensible.”
“Nay,” Ava said, heat now rising through the hurt. “Daenae make it sound like it is a good thing. Ye mean that I looked like a woman who might ask nothing and feel nothing, and therefore make little trouble.”
“That isnae what I said.”
“It is what yemeant.”
She could hear the force gathering in her own voice and did not stop it. Let him hear. Let him know she was not some quiet vessel to be filled with his arrangements and shelved.
His jaw ticked once. “I meant that I believed ye capable of a practical marriage.”
“Practical,” Ava scoffed, taking one step nearer despite every sensible instinct urging retreat. “’Tis quite the fancy word forloveless.”
“Call it what ye want,” Ciaran said. “But these are me terms.”
Ava exhaled as loud as she could, ignoring the stinging cold. “Yer terms, huh?”
He said nothing in response.
A bright idea came to her then. Her lips curled into a smile as she folded her arms and stared straight at him.
“If those are yer terms, then I have conditions of me own as well.”
For the first time since finding her at the fence, something like interest moved across his face. It was closer to amusement than surprise. “Aye?”
“Aye.”
He regarded her for a moment that felt longer than it should have. Then, with that same infuriating calm, he nodded. “Ye may set them tomorrow. Inside a warm castle. I willnae have me bride catch her death before the wedding.”
Ava’s heart gave a hard, ugly thud.
Before the wedding.
As if she needed the reminder.
He spared her no time to recover from it before he spoke again.“It will be next week.”
The words closed round her like a metal fist, and she stood very still.
The wedding was in a week.
CHAPTER 5
The next morning,Ava walked down the garden path between her father and Isobel with the sting of the night before still fresh.
Her father had arrived late last night after her attempted escape, and now, she wondered if she needed to tell him about it.
The sky was pale and clear above the walls, and the morning mist still clung to the grass beyond the gravel paths. The air also smelled of damp leaves, wet soil, and the faint sweetness of late flowers. Somewhere further down the slope, she could hear a gardener call to another in a low voice.
The way everything felt so casual helped more than she would have expected.
She had not slept much. What little sleep came had been broken and thin, and she still felt rubbed raw by memory.
The loch.
