Page 238 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
Ava did not answer at once.
The knock came again, then her father’s quieter voice followed it. “Lass.”
She crossed the room and opened the door.
Isobel took one look at her and then past her into the chamber. Her eyes fell on the trunk, the dresses thrown across the bed, and the open drawers. “What are ye doing?”
Ava stepped aside and let them in.
Her father moved more slowly than Isobel, clearly still shaken by the panic of this morning. He looked around the room and then at her face, and something in his own tightened at once.
“I am leaving,” Ava announced.
Isobel stared at her. “Leaving where?”
“To me mother's castle. Castle MacLeod.”
“Nay.” The answer came so quickly it might as well have been a slap.
Ava turned back to the trunk and laid another folded dress inside it because if she looked too long at either of them, she might lose the firmness she had only just found. “Aye.”
“Ye cannae simply say aye as if that settles it,” Isobel snapped. “What happened out there? What did he do now?”
Ava shut the trunk lid halfway and pressed both palms against it. “I am going to me Castle MacLeod, and I will ask Da to help me secure the annulment.”
The room went still.
Her father was the first to move a moment later. He took a chair rather than crowd her, as if he already understood she would bear comfort from him only if it did not pin her down.
“Ava.”
She shook her head. “Please, Isobel, daenae ask me to stay.”
Isobel came closer. “I am going to ask exactly that until ye come to yer senses.”
Ava laughed once, the sound thin and wrong. “Me senses are the only thing that brought me here.”
“After today?”
“Nae only after today.”
That gave Isobel pause for a moment.
Ava drew a breath that scraped her throat. “I cannae do this anymore.”
Her father said nothing. He only watched her with that grave steadiness that had made her tell him the truth since she was little.
She forced herself to say it plainly.
“It wasnae only the cliff. It wasnaeonlywhat happened there. It was everything before it, too. The distance, and then the kindness, and then the distance again. Wanting me, then retreating. Speaking of an annulment, then acting as though I ought to understand without being told anything. I have tried, Isobel. I have tried so hard.”
The tears came again, but she did not stop them this time.
“I stayed when I could have gone. I stayed again when he gave me cause to leave. I tried to understand what sort of man he was, what he meant, what he feared, what he wanted from me. I have tried hard enough already.”
Isobel’s face had turned red with anger. “That great idiot.”
Ava closed her eyes briefly. “Please, daenae try to defend him.”
