She had never imagined that gentleness could make her feel so vulnerable.
The blood itself made everything worse and stranger. What he was wiping from her skin was the mark of what he had taken for her. Hisownwound.
The thought moved through her in a way she could not yet sort into separate feelings.
The blade was coming for her, and he had stepped in front of her to block it. Shouldn’t all she felt at this moment be gratitude?
At last, desperate for anything that might ease the thickening tension, Ava cleared her throat, the sound almost echoing around her. “Ye ken, ye should have that shoulder seen to instead of fussing over me.”
Ciaran arched an eyebrow. “I thought ye wanted to be pampered. Is that nay longer yer wish?”
The line was light, almost dry, but it shifted the air at once.
Ava looked away so quickly that she nearly hurt her neck with the movement. “That isnae what I meant.”
“Nay?”
She could not answer properly. If she tried, her voice would betray her. Her face already had. She knew it by the heat still burning there.
Ciaran said nothing more, only returned to the task with that same infuriating steadiness, and somehow that restraint was more unsettling than if he had teased her further.
He finished cleaning the last traces of blood from her skin, then helped her into the fresh gown. The clean fabric should have brought relief. Instead, it seemed to hold the warmth of his hands where he smoothed it around her.
Jack was dead. The attack was over. She was not hurt. Yet the center of her attention had shifted completely.
She was still shaken, yes. But she was no longer thinking only of blood and steel and escape. Something new had begun stirring under all of it, tangled and humiliating.
Was it comfort? Gratitude, as she had once thought?
Her body shuddered slightly as the final question settled somewhere in the crevices of her mind.
Was it something else?
When he finished, Ciaran rose to his feet. “There. All done.”
Ava swallowed and gave him a brief nod in response.
“Ye should be right as rain before the day ends,” he added, his voice clear. Then he turned as if to leave, or at least as if the matter of her troubles had been settled for the moment.
Ava saw the growing stain on his shoulder and stood at once. “Nay.” Ciaran looked back at her as she crossed to him before her nerves could begin protesting her actions. “Sit down.”
One eyebrow rose. “That sounds uncommonly like an order, me Lady.”
“Itisone.” The boldness of it startled her less than it should have. “Millie taught Isobel and me nae to let a man keep bleeding all over the floor while pretending it is nothing. Sit.”
For the first time since he had brought her into her chamber, something like real surprise flashed across his face. Then it shifted into that quiet, unreadable interest he seemed to reserve for the moments when she ceased behaving as he expected.
“Aye?” he said softly.
“Aye.”
He might still have refused if she had sounded timid. Perhaps that was why she kept her chin up and her voice steady.
She would not sit there warm and clean in a fresh gown while the man who had bled for her shrugged off his wound as though his body belonged to no one.
At last, he lowered himself onto the edge of the bed.
Ava went to fetch what she needed: cloth, salve, clean bandages, water not yet gone cool in the basin. Her hands shook only a little, enough that she could steady them by the time she turned back.
