Page 59 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
Why couldn’t he just admit what had happened? Why did he have to be stubborn and adamant about something as mundane as this?
His mind remained crowded with those thoughts until the sky darkened and the usual hubbub around the castle dulled because the servants were trying to prepare for a new day.
When he stepped out of his room, he did not go to the study or even the courtyard. Instead, he climbed the stairs to the tower. The map remained in his hand the whole way, his fingers curled around it tightly like it was some kind of life support.
By the time he reached the tower, he was breathing harder than usual.
He set the map down without unrolling it.
The telescope stood where it always did, by the window. The piano waited further in, dark wood and familiar keys, a thing he had once used for solitude and now reached for because there were no words in him fit for use. Not ones he could trust anyway.
He hadn’t played in a long time.Averylong time. But now, with the conflicting thoughts swimming through his head with almost no end in sight, he realized he needed to do something about all of this.
He exhaled and sat at the piano. For a moment, he only rested his hands there, not yet playing, the keys cool beneath his fingers. Then he began.
The music came rougher than he meant to, with too much force in the first few lines, as though the notes had been waiting behind his ribs all day and resented the delay.
He let them go. There was no one in the room to hear what lay in them anyway. Evenhecouldn’t describe it. They just came out in several words at the back of his mind.
Frustration.
Desire.
Ava.
He played harder, then softer. At some point, the window stood open wider than before, and the night air drifted through the room. The sound carried out over the grounds and down past the floors and into the dark grass and whatever parts of the castle were still awake.
Even as he continued to play, the tunes escaping the keys and drifting through the room, he still was unable to shove all his feelings into a box. He had fought wars and dealt with several injuries. He had even come close to death, and yet this strange, fascinating woman was the one battle he simply could not win.
What was it about her?
What was it about Ava Fraser that changed him?
CHAPTER 18
The music reachedAva before she started to question what it was and where it came from.
At first, she thought some servant had left a door open and sound was drifting oddly through the stone. Then she sat up in bed and listened again. It was too clear for that.
A piano.
This was real playing. Low at first, then fuller, the notes carrying through the sleeping castle with a steadiness that made her whole body go still.
Ciaran.No other person would dare play the piano in the castle this late at night. It had to be him. And if it was him, from the way the music carried, she knew exactly where it was coming from.
She pushed back the sheets. There could not be many people in the castle who would sit at a piano this late and play like that, and only one of them had a tower.
Ava rose before she could stop herself. She wrapped a cloak around her nightgown, thrust her feet into her slippers, and opened her chamber door with care.
The passageway beyond lay dim and quiet, one lamp burning low at one corner. Farther off, the castle had settled into the silence that came only when the fires burned down.
The music went on.
She followed it.
With every step upward, the sound grew clearer. Something about how private it felt pushed her forward for some reason. A part of her wondered if she would have even heard it if she’d fallen asleep early.
Ciaran did not exactly strike her as a man who made a habit of putting his mind into art. She knew, as she climbed, that she should perhaps leave it alone. Whatever was in the tower had likely been sought for solitude, not company.
