“But she would have been here all the same. Her brother is getting married.”
That coaxed the smallest smile from Ava. “Aye, she would have.”
Isobel adjusted the fall of Ava’s gown one final time and came around to face her. Her eyes were bright, though whether from worry, lack of sleep, or emotion, Ava could not tell.
“Ye are beautiful,” she complimented.
Ava let out a faint breath. “That sounds ominously like something said before a sacrifice.”
“Ava.”
“I ken,” she said softly. “Forgive me.”
A knock sounded at the door. Before either of them could answer, it opened, and her father stepped inside.
Everything within her shifted at once.
Rory Fraser usually filled a room not only with his size—though he had that too—but also with the warmth of his presence. This morning, however, he came in more carefully than usual, as though he knew the question he carried might bruise if set down badly.
He looked at her for a long moment.
“Well,” he said, his voice gentler than she had expected, “there is me lass.”
The words nearly undid her.
She was doing this.
She was really doing this.
Why in God’s name was she doing this?!
Isobel moved aside at once, giving him her spot without being asked. He came to stand before Ava and rested one broad hand on her shoulder.
“How are ye feeling, lass?”
The care in his voice was so obvious that lying would have been impossible anyway.
Ava opened her mouth to offer something light and failed before the first word formed. Her throat tightened.
Her father’s face softened further, and that finished what little strength she had left for pretense.
“Yer mother would be proud to see ye today,” he said quietly.
That cracked something open inside her.
“Would she, though?” she asked, her voice cracking on the words. “I’m about to marry a man who wants nothing to do with me. A man who wants this marriage just for the sake of convenience and nothing else. If she were alive, I doubt she would even want to witness this.”
Silence followed, and a while after, Ava broke it. She was preparing to arrive at the altar anyway. It wouldn’t hurt to make all her grievances known now, especially to her father and best friend. The truth, she had found, never stopped at one sentence. It came out in waves and waves.
“He doesnae want love,” she continued. “He doesnae want closeness. He wants a wife the way a man wants a lock on a door, something useful and fixed in place, and I am meant to stand before everyone and smile as though that is enough. I daenae even ken what place I will have in his life beyond what herequires of me, and yet today I am to bind meself to him before God as if none of that matters.”
Her father’s hand tightened on her shoulder, his own way of showing that he had always been there for her and would always be.
Ava looked down, ashamed now of the tears pressing hot behind her eyes.“I can bear fear better than this. It is the coldness of it I cannae bear. The uncertainty. Please forgive me. I daenae ken where all of this is coming from.”
No one interrupted her. Even Isobel stayed still, her face contorted in grief and guilt and something like helpless love.
Then Rory bent a little so she could not avoid his eyes.
