He was still standing there when Hector’s footsteps sounded behind him.
Hector drew to a halt beside him, then glanced past him into the room. Ava had not yet noticed either of them. She was examining the damage, as though trying to decide whether the cloth might recover with some goodwill.
Hector’s mouth quirked up, and Ciaran gave him a warning look.
“What is it?” he asked quietly.
Hector lifted a letter. “Word back from Isla’s father.”
That pulled the moment into order again.
Ciaran stepped away from the door, and the two of them moved a little further down the passageway before Hector handed him the letter. He opened it and read it quickly.
It said what he had expected.Jack had acted alone. There was no wider grievance or planned retaliation. There was also no man waiting to take up the dead fool’s cause. The old matter ended on the wedding ground, in blood, with Jack’s body left behind and nothing more to follow it.
Ciaran folded the letter once and handed it back.
“That settles it,” Hector said.
“Aye.”
And it did.
Jack was dead. Isla’s father wanted no feud. No further threat stood outside the walls, waiting to be identified and managed. Yet the unease in Ciaran’s chest did not ebb.
His thoughts went back, at once and against his will, to the room behind him. To Ava at the table and to the ruined cloth. To the fact that her smile, her frustration, and her presence in the castle now carried more weight than they should.
He had dealt with the kind of danger he knew how to kill. The thing left standing was the one he could neither fend off nor solve.
Ava was in his home now and well in his routine. Every ordinary hour seemed to fix her there more firmly. Riding had not solved it. Duties had not solved it. Even standing outside a door and telling himself not to look had not solved it.
Jack was gone.
The castle was safe.
And Ciaran still felt no peace, because the one danger left was the woman who kept making his life feel more real each day.
CHAPTER 16
Early the next morning,Ava thought she could do him the favor this time around and be the first to appear. So she walked to his study and stood outside with one hand still lifted from the knock, and tried to compose herself as much as she could.
Now that they had settled into the one-hour-a-day arrangement, perhaps she had made enough of an impression to keep herself invaluable.
It was only a conversation. A few minutes. Some sign that the distance of the past days had an end she could see.
“Come in.” His voice carried through the door in the same even tone he used for everything.
Ava opened it just enough to look inside. He was sitting at his desk, with papers spread before him, his attention already fixed on them again.
“Me Laird,” she greeted.
“Ava.” He glanced up once, his eyes narrowed. “I am busy.”
The words were plain enough.
She might still have crossed the room if he had sounded merely distracted, but the look on his face stopped her. It was controlled.Closed off.
She didn’t need him to speak for her to know she was the very last thing he was expecting.
