Page 82 of Trapped with the Vicious Highlander
“The other women are quite worried, Ava.”
Ava was unable to keep her thoughts to herself any longer. She told them everything that transpired between her and Brodrick. Every entangled moment, every time he made her laugh, every single time he stared at her from across the room. And her friends listened intently.
“Ye need to go back,” Sarah declared when Ava finished her story with a watery sniffle.
“I agree,” Elizabeth piped up. “From what ye’ve just told us, this man clearly loves ye. Ye need to go back to the castle and tell him how ye feel.”
“I can’t,” Ava whispered, looking down at her lap. “He deserves better than some plump Englishwoman.”
“I have told ye several times to stop looking down on yerself, have I not?” Sarah berated, her voice coming out harsher than Ava had ever heard it.
“I agree as well. Look, this Laird clearly loves ye for who ye are and what ye look like. The least ye owe him is an explanation. And letting him know yer feelings as well.”
And then the dread that had coiled in the pit of Ava’s stomach snapped. She felt it at that moment. She knew what she needed to do. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but it had to be done.
Part of her already knew she was going to do this—go back to Castle MacDunn and lay everything out in the open to Brodrick. She just needed a little push, which her friends had more than given her.
“And ye are far from just a plump Englishwoman, Ava,” Elizabeth added, almost like an afterthought. She reached for Ava’s hands. “Ye, my friend, are an alluring, curvy vixen from London.”
That coaxed a laugh from Ava, who let the realization sink into her bones. She needed to leave at first light the next day. She needed to go back to the castle.
And she needed to settle this with Brodrick once and for all.
CHAPTER24
Brodrick grabbedthe wine glass and downed its contents. It had been a day since Ava left the castle, and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Everything reminded him of her. The table, the walls of his study, the candlelight. He couldn’t stare at the moon for long without thinking of the intimate moment they had in the courtyard.
Had he made a mistake? Had he been too stoic and proud to admit his feelings? All he told Ava was not to leave. But maybe if he had tried harder, if he had managed to speak to her, to let her know that he had fallen in love with her, she would have stayed.
That thought alone made his heart squeeze painfully.
The study door creaked open, and Darach stepped inside, a tense look on his face.
“M’Laird,” he called. “Some of the men are hopin’ to speak to ye.”
Brodrick didn’t look up at him. “Who?”
“Blake Mason and a few other men.”
“I will speak to them later. Tell them I am quite busy now.”
“M’Laird—”
“I didnae stutter, did I?”
Darach nodded and stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him, leaving Brodrick to his thoughts once more.
Several questions plagued his mind. Should he have let her go? Should he have confessed his love for her early on? Should he saddle a horse and ride nonstop to the orphanage?
His mind wouldn’t stop assessing scenarios and his heart wouldn’t stop pounding in his chest.
He didn’t like this. He was never one to deal with uncertainty and fear of the future, but now here was, knee-deep in it. He hated every second of it. He hated every second without Ava.
Without her familiar scent, her sharp words, and her sharp green eyes, everything felt odd and different. So different that he couldn’t believe he had been living before Ava came into his life.
The door opened again, and Brodrick threw his head back in despair. “Darach, did I nae just say?—”
“I cannae find her,” Flora’s voice cut him off, forcing him to snap his head back down and look straight at her.
