Page 184 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
“Silent Death.”
He did not turn toward it. He never did.
There had been a time when the name had felt useful. He was better off being feared than being pitied, and the silence had always been a comfort. Fear meant they would not stop him for the most unnecessary of conversations. That was goodenough for him. It let him wander the market easily without shy distractions. He had built a life inside that shape well enough.
Now, moving through it again, he felt only the barrenness of it.
Each lowered gaze sharpened the memory of Ava looking directly at him without the sense to be afraid. Each quick step aside made him think of the way she did the opposite, pressing closer when argument or temper drove her to it.
These villagers did not laugh at him. They did not provoke him. They did not demand hours, terms, honesty, or compromise. They gave him exactly what he had once thought safest.
Distance.
The one thing he wanted his new wife to give him.
The irony of it struck him in his core, but he kept going anyway.
He tried not to notice the way the merchants watched him with the same caution as everyone else, respectful and guarded and careful not to presume too much.
He should have found some comfort there, in the predictability of trade and habit. Instead, he found himself measuring everything against the fact that Ava would have made a comment by now, too curious or too amused to leave the silence untouched.
She would have mentioned something about the crowd, the weather. Even the way the stalls in the market were aligned would have warranted a comment one way or the other. He was beginning to see her everywhere, compare her to everything.
Nay, that’s nae good.
He was still thinking about her, even though he didn’t want to, when his eyes caught a star map.It lay half-unrolled across the surface of a stall among practical things, like charts, local drawings, copied routes, and old pieces of paper meant for people who cared about the sky and the land.
The map should have been no more than another object given a cursory glance. Instead, he recognized it at once for what it would mean toher.
The Highlands marked beneath a sky. Lines. Stars. The shape of the heavens spread over the land.
This would be a thoughtful gift. It would be the kind of object she would keepbecauseit would foster her imagination. He knew before he even stepped nearer that Ava would care for it because of the comet and her mother’s dream.
That was what struck him hardest. The speed with which he understood exactly why it would matter to her. He had listened when she spoke. He hadremembered. More than remembered. He had carried the memory with him into the village without even knowing he had done so until it rose before him in paper and ink.
He should walk on. He should keep going and forget this ever happened in the first place.
He did not. Because he couldn’t.
The vendor looked up and straightened at once, uncertain whether to speak first. Ciaran spared him the struggle.
“How much?”
The man looked down at the star map and then back up at him. “Fifteen shillings, me Laird. But for ye, I can?—”
“Nay.” Ciaran raised his hand. “Ye daenae have to do anything for me. ’Tis a fair price.”
The vendor opened his mouth to speak, perhaps to argue his point further. But then he gave a brief nod.
Ciaran paid, and soon, the map was rolled and handed to him. The whole thing was over in moments, quickly enough that thought could not properly intervene. Only once it was in his hand did the full weight of what he had done dawn on him.
He had bought agift. He had seen something in the market, thought of Ava at once, and acted on that thought with the plain certainty of a man already too far gone to claim that it was unintentional.
He almost turned back then. Almost put the thing down on the nearest stall and left it there out of sheer disgust with himself.
Instead, he kept walking.
The rolled map felt too big in his hand, despite its size. It might as well have announced its presence to every person he passed.
