Perhaps even more so.
“Me Laird,” she said, changing tack with visible effort, “please.”
Ciaran felt a few gears click into place in his head, even though he did not have the full picture yet. He had already gathered enough from the hall to know there was something beneath the disorder. Her panic. Isobel’s guilt. The timing of it all. None of this had sprung up naturally. A game had been played somewhere.
At last, Ava drew breath. “I am Isobel’s dearest friend.”
“I ken that.”
“She asked me to come.”
His gaze did not move.
“She said,” Ava continued, and now the words came out with the strained force of something she hated saying, “that if I stood here, others would come too. That the gathering would seem more respectable. Better attended. More worthy. I wasnaemeant…” She faltered, then forced it out. “I wasnae meant to be chosen.”
There it was.
Everything in the hall clicked in place at once. The fuller room, the guilt on Isobel’s face when Ava had protested. They had set a boundary around the event and expected him to remain obediently within it without ever being told such a boundary existed.
He felt something in him cool further.
Ava watched him, obviously reading some change in his silence.
“I didnae mean harm,” she said quickly. “I only meant to help her.”
“I daenae care.”
The words cut across hers with enough force that she stopped.
He uncrossed his arms and stepped nearer, not fast, not threatening in any loud manner, but with a certainty that made her back meet the door before she seemed to realize she had moved.
“I daenae care for yer faults,” he said. “Nor yer excuses. Nor the little scheme ye and me sister cooked up.”
She stared up at him, color gone thin beneath her skin.
“I didnae come here seeking love,” he added. “I came to choose a wife.”
Her breath caught.
“And I have made me choice.”
“Me Laird, please,” she whispered, but the plea had changed now. “Ye need to pick someone else—yehaveto pick someone else.”
That interested him less than the truth she had already given him.
She had stood in his hall, played her role in a game meant to move other women into place, and assumed herself safe from consequence because no one meant for her to be touched by the outcome.
It was the most foolish idea ever, and he had no reason to reward it with retreat.
“Ye shouldnae have played such dangerous games,” he said.
Her fingers tightened against the wood behind her.
Then he gave her a look that said she was going nowhere.
“Now ye’re mine.”
CHAPTER 4
