Page 51 of The Highlander's Auctioned Virgin
“Aye. ‘Tis Laird MacEnroe,” the man continued.
Ciaran looked at him like he had gone crazy, like none of the things he said were coherent. But for some reason, they were. The man seemed incredibly sharp-witted. Perhaps too much for his young age.
“When I heard the man was hanged upside down and ye made a few cuts on his head so he bled to death, I kenned I had to meet ye someday.”
Ciaran said nothing again. A part of him was certain that the man would eventually grow bored with the silence.
“I thought the man deserved a more brutal death, daenae get me wrong. He burned a castle that was filled with only women and children. I think he deserved nothing but pain until the very end, but what ye did… what ye did was as crazy as it got.” The man let out a chuckle.
“Oh well,” Ciaran spoke for the first time that night. “I initially wanted to light a fire under him and watch his skin burn to the bone. It would only be fair, ye ken. But I thought dying of blood loss was slower and more painful.”
“Oh, good.” The man placed a hand on his chest. “For a minute there, I thought ye didnae speak more than two sentences at once. I daenae ken if that would have made ye more or less scary.”
Ciaran stifled a chuckle, and silence descended between them. The cold night wind blew beyond the fences, rustling the leaves.
“As much as I admire ye—and this is a lot, in case ye cannae already tell—I daenae ken if ye’re the kind of man me sister needs at the moment.”
Ciaran went still.
A braither.
Of course. No wonder the man was able to stand his ground while speaking with him. That explained everything. It seemed to be a family trait—looking at danger in the face.
Ciaran turned to him, his eyes widening. “Ye’re Elinor’s braither?”
“I will never admit that in public, but aye. Jackson.”
“Why nae?” Ciaran asked, his eyes narrowed.
“Ye do ken who ye’re marrying do ye nae? She's a hellion.”
Ciaran fell silent, still trying to process the fact that he had been talking to Elinor’s brother the entire time.
“Has she said anything about yer past? Ye ken, being a killer and all of that?”
Ciaran scoffed.
Only about a few hundred times.
“She has mentioned it once or twice, aye,” he muttered instead.
“Look. She might think she kens what she wants, but I—well,wethink she might be in a state of shock.”
“Shock?”
“Ye ken, from her previous marriage. Only a woman in shock would go from being the widow of a man like… Laird MacAdair to deciding to get married to someone like ye.”
Ciaran grimaced.
“Nay offense,” Jackson continued, gesturing to him, “but ye ken how it is, her being me sister and all.”
Words formed on the tip of Ciaran’s tongue, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get them out.
“Dinnae get me wrong, I would drink ale with ye any day,” Jackson clarified. “I would even travel across the Highlands with ye. But ye will have to forgive me if I am a bit averse to the idea of a man like ye marrying a woman like Elinor.”
The last words lingered in the air for a while.
A woman like Elinor.What could that possibly mean? Was she hiding something from him? Something he should have known about before the wedding?
