Page 209 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
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.
The room had gone quiet again, and everything in the tower was exactly where it had been before his father-in-law had climbed the stairs. But for some reason, none of it felt the same. He had been thanked, tested, and measured in the span of a short conversation.
That was the trouble with loving eyes. They saw too much.
By dinner, Ciaran had not found a better solution to the thoughts that continued flooding his mind. He was already at the table when Ava came in with Isobel, and he looked up at once. He had meant to give her no more than the courtesy due any wife entering a room. Instead, he drank her in before he could stop himself.
She was in a bright blue dress, and it fell rather elegantly around her ankles as she walked. He swallowed and turned his eyes to her face. The color in it was so bright that the dim candlelight caught it.
He parted his lips, almost astonished by how sharp she looked that night, but he had barely gotten a word out when he felt Laird MacKenna looking at him. The older man said nothing. He did not need to. Ciaran reached for his cup and kept his face still while Ava took her seat.
The first minutes of dinner passed stiffly. Cutlery clinked against porcelain, and Isobel spoke of the bread. MacKenna asked whether the venison had come from the northern woods, while Ava answered when spoken to and kept her voice level. Ciaran did the same.
Anyone less observant than her father might have thought the meal merely subdued. But her father was no less observant.
Once the first hunger had been satisfied, he set down his knife and cleared his throat. “Ye ken what has been bothering me since the fire?”
All eyes shifted to him, almost as if he were the main authority in the dining hall.
“I have turned the matter over in me head many times, and I can think of nay man with cause enough to set fire to the place.”
“Ye think someone set fire to the castle?” Ava asked, the alarm in her voice clear.
