Isobel opened her mouth to speak, perhaps to protest, but then she seemed to think better of it. Now wasn’t the time.
“All right,” she said, and they both turned in the direction they had come from.
CHAPTER 17
Later that morning,Ciaran left the castle as early as he could.
He wanted to feel the ground under his feet, and he wanted it in a way that had nothing to do with Ava. After the brief encounter he had with her in the gardens this morning, the break was the one thing that could bring him back to normal.
He needed something solid to hold on to. Some semblance of his old life. The village beyond the castle gave him that, or had once. The path down from the castle, the bend past the lower wall, the familiar spread of cottages and trade and daily labor, all of it belonged to a life older than his marriage. He wanted that older shape back.
He walked as he always had—hands loose at his sides, gaze clear, pace steady enough to suggest neither hurry nor invitation. He was not there to admire the day. He was there because routine had once made sense of him. A laird through his own village,seen, obeyed, and left largely untroubled by whatever lived in other people’s hearts.
The village answered him as it always had.
A woman carrying a basket stepped aside too quickly and nearly knocked her shoulder against a post in her haste to give him room. A pair of boys dragging a sack of grain fell silent the moment they spotted him. One man by the smithy bowed his head without looking up. Another turned his attention too quickly to a wagon wheel that did not need such close inspection.
No one challenged him or tried to stop him.
He was used to the respect he got, and he knew all too well that the respect didn’t come out of nowhere. It had fear sitting underneath it. He could almost hear them murmur his name as he walked. Of course, he couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it came from, but it followed him very closely, like the wind itself on the back of his neck.
“Silent Death.”
He did not turn toward it. He never did.
There had been a time when the name had felt useful. He was better off being feared than being pitied, and the silence had always been a comfort. Fear meant they would not stop him for the most unnecessary of conversations. That was goodenough for him. It let him wander the market easily without shy distractions. He had built a life inside that shape well enough.
Now, moving through it again, he felt only the barrenness of it.
Each lowered gaze sharpened the memory of Ava looking directly at him without the sense to be afraid. Each quick step aside made him think of the way she did the opposite, pressing closer when argument or temper drove her to it.
These villagers did not laugh at him. They did not provoke him. They did not demand hours, terms, honesty, or compromise. They gave him exactly what he had once thought safest.
Distance.
The one thing he wanted his new wife to give him.
The irony of it struck him in his core, but he kept going anyway.
He tried not to notice the way the merchants watched him with the same caution as everyone else, respectful and guarded and careful not to presume too much.
He should have found some comfort there, in the predictability of trade and habit. Instead, he found himself measuring everything against the fact that Ava would have made a comment by now, too curious or too amused to leave the silence untouched.
She would have mentioned something about the crowd, the weather. Even the way the stalls in the market were aligned would have warranted a comment one way or the other. He was beginning to see her everywhere, compare her to everything.
Nay, that’s nae good.
He was still thinking about her, even though he didn’t want to, when his eyes caught a star map.It lay half-unrolled across the surface of a stall among practical things, like charts, local drawings, copied routes, and old pieces of paper meant for people who cared about the sky and the land.
The map should have been no more than another object given a cursory glance. Instead, he recognized it at once for what it would mean toher.
The Highlands marked beneath a sky. Lines. Stars. The shape of the heavens spread over the land.
This would be a thoughtful gift. It would be the kind of object she would keepbecauseit would foster her imagination. He knew before he even stepped nearer that Ava would care for it because of the comet and her mother’s dream.
That was what struck him hardest. The speed with which he understood exactly why it would matter to her. He had listened when she spoke. He hadremembered. More than remembered. He had carried the memory with him into the village without even knowing he had done so until it rose before him in paper and ink.
He should walk on. He should keep going and forget this ever happened in the first place.
