Page 42 of The Highlander's Twisted Deal
“I’ve certainly never seen anything like this,” Elsie admitted. “I mean, perhaps Keep MacCarthy had a healer’s chambers like this, but we never saw the inside of it.”
Ava snorted. “As if Laird MacCarthy or his wretched faither gave a damn about the health of their people.”
Elsie stiffened at the mention of the old Laird MacCarthy, and Ava immediately felt guilty. She reached out and took her hand.
“It’s all right, Elsie,” she said softly. “That cursed old Laird cannae hurt ye now.”
Elsie smiled wryly. “Aye, I ken, but I still cannae forget.”
“I’m sorry I mentioned him.”
“Dinnae be sorry. I’m nae the person that I was back then. Now,” she said, making her voice brisk and changing the subject, “let’s hear about this Laird McAdair, then, shall we? I saw him talking to Marin earlier. The boy seems happy and settled here—Niamh sought him out right away and asked him if he was happy. He said that he was.”
Ava felt color rising to her cheeks. The curse of all redheads. She turned her back, pretending to fiddle with a nearby pestle and mortar.
“The Laird’s a wretch,” she said casually. “Stupid as rocks and far too arrogant for his own good. Still, he’s kind, and his word means something. That’s why I stayed here for so long. That’s why ye are here.”
Elsie was watching her closely. “Marin seems to adore him.”
“He’s nae a bad man,” Ava said carefully. “Just, as I said, arrogant. He fancies himself.”
“Aye, perhaps. With looks like that, ye cannae blame him, though.”
A memory popped up in the back of Ava’s mind of Callum’s lips spreading into a smile, pressed against the side of her neck as her back arched up off the mattress. She bit her lip until she tasted copper, remembering the white-hot surge of pleasure that had rolled through her. It was like nothing she’d ever felt before.
Clearing her throat, Ava turned away, not wanting to meet Elsie’s eyes, at that moment. “He’s handsome enough,” she said lightly, “but looks arenae everything.”
“Nay, I suppose nae,” Elsie conceded. “Strange that he picked ye to be his pretend betrothed, do ye nae think?”
“I dinnae think it’s strange,” Ava snapped. “I think we make a very believable couple.”
She immediately wished she hadn’t said that. Avery believable couple? What sort of thing to say was that?
Ava was jerked out of her thoughts by laughter. She turned incredulously and found Elsie with her hand over her mouth, smothering soft chuckles.
“What’s so funny?” Ava demanded.
“Nothing, nothing, I… oh, Ava, ye are such a fool at times.”
Ava bristled. “A fool? Thanks.”
“I didnae mean it in a bad way.”
“Oh, ye meant to say that I was a fool in a good, complimentary way. Of course, me mistake.”
Still giggling, Elsie looped her arm through Ava’s, drawing her over to one of the large, circular windows set in the side of the wall, overlooking the courtyard.
“Dinnae be so prickly,” Elsie soothed. “There, do ye see them? Marin says he works there every morning.”
Below the window were the stables, far down enough that the people and horses looked tiny. Ava spotted Marin at once, the youngest one there, smoothing the nose of a beautiful bay horse, and offering it a piece of apple.
But it wasn’t Marin who caught her eye. It was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a head of messy dark hair fighting its way out of a queue. The man was speaking quietly to Marin, showing him how to feed the horse, how to brush it down.
Callum, of course.
The pain in Ava’s heart caught her by surprise. It was an ache, not necessarily unpleasant but certainly uncomfortable. It was a pressure, one that longed for her to go down to Callum right then and there, just to be near him. Just to touch him, to hear him talk, to tell him about her adopted sister and her mother.
Swallowing hard, Ava moved back from the window. “I’m glad Marin is settling,” she said lightly.
