Page 147 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
The fence.
Ciaran’s hand on her waist.
His voice, steady as a rock, telling her he wanted neither fear nor love.
Her own foolish hope each time she asked a question that might have freed her, and the way each answer tightened the trap a little further.
Yet here, in the gardens, something in her could breathe again.
Her father did not press her at once. That was part of why she loved him so fiercely. Rory Fraser, Laird MacKenna, could be loud when he chose to, and protective enough to flatten other men with words alone. Yet with her, he often knew when gentleness would do more. He only kept pace beside her with one hand tucked behind his back and the other occasionally brushing her arm as if to make certain she was truly there.
Isobel, for her part, had been quieter than usual all morning.
Ava noticed everything, especially the guilt in Isobel’s voice anytime she spoke and the fact that she seemed to be waiting for her to grow even angrier than she already was.
At last, Rory exhaled lightly enough to leave her room to refuse. “If ye look any paler, I might start to worry ye are a ghost.”
Ava let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “I should have preferred being a ghost. They are at least nae in the habit of arranging weddings.”
His mouth twitched. “A fair point.”
Isobel looked pained. “Again, Ava, I deeply apologize.”
Ava turned to her friend. “I am nae saying it to wound ye.”
“I ken.” Isobel wrung her hands for a moment, then let them fall again. “But I would mend it if I could.”
That softened something in Ava despite herself. “I ken that too.”
Her father glanced between them and wisely did not step into the middle of it. He only nodded before he spoke again. “Then perhaps we can manageamodicum of decorum before breakfast?”
Ava smiled properly at that, small though it was.
They walked on.
The path curved through a stand of green shrubs and opened onto a lower stretch where the morning light lay warm across the soil.
Ava listened as Isobel began speaking. Isobel did not pretend the last days had been fair or ask Ava to be noble about it. That helped more than an apology alone would have.
“I hate that ye feel cornered,” Isobel said quietly.
“Iamcornered,” Ava answered.
“Aye,” Isobel sighed. “Ye are.”
Rory made a low sound in his throat, displeased with the fact, even if he could not sweep it away by force of irritation. “And I dislike any matter that leaves me daughter speaking as though she has been boxed into a wall.”
That touched Ava more deeply than she let show. It meant her father’s love for her was so immediate and without question. He did not need her to argue perfectly or suffer prettily before he took her hurt seriously.
She looked down the path, her eyes settling on the pebbles that shifted beneath her slippers. The garden moved quietly around them, leaves stirring, birds fussing somewhere beyond sight.
It dawned on her then with a strange clarity that what steadied her was not comfort alone. It was the reminder of what she was made of when she was not being pushed from crisis to crisis.
She came from warmth. From affection freely given. From a father who noticed when her voice changed and a friend who, forall her foolishness, loved her enough to grieve the harm she had helped cause.
She was not powerless unless she chose to behave as though she were. While she could not exactly undo the engagement neatly or make Ciaran into a different man by sheer force of offense, she could control how she reacted to the situation.
Nay.
