Chapter 6 #2
But at the same time, there was some truth to it. It wasn’t as though their connection, as it stood, was premised on the most personal and romantic considerations.
His brows drew together, “I expect you to make a good impression. This is the most important thing for me, do you understand that?”
Augusta considered his words again, “I will try, of course. But you must give me grace if I’m not able to meet your expectations.”
It was the honest answer, and the only one that she could give without over-promising.
“I do not expect you to walk into the room and become her mother today,” he said. “But you’ll have to be patient, of course. She has had very little practice speaking with people outside the household.”
“Is that the case?”
“If you mean to be her stepmother in more than name, you will need to try hard with her. It will take some time, and considerable effort for her to grow fond of you.”
“And you believe I am incapable of that?” she asked. “Is this your way of telling me you doubt me, Your Grace? Because if you have concerns about my character, I would rather hear them plainly.”
“I have concerns about a great many things, Augusta,” he sighed. “Whether you can hold a conversation with a six-year-old is not among them.”
“Then why give me the long warning?” she asked.
“Do you forget how we met? You made a lot of assumptions,” he said, observing her closely now. “Forgive me if I am cautious about how certain you might be that a shy little girl doesn’t like you, after five minutes in her company.”
They stood there a beat too long, the corridor silent but for the rain ticking faintly against a window somewhere above them. Augusta looked away first.
“I am good with children,” she said, quieter now. “Matilda will tell you I have raised her half as much as Charity has. I know how to be patient. I know how to wait until someone is ready to be known, instead of forcing myself upon them.”
“I hope that’s true.” Ronan’s voice had lost its edge.
He knocked twice on the door at the end of the hall, then opened it without waiting for an answer. Sarah sat very straight on the edge of her bed, hands folded in her lap, dark hair braided.
“Sarah.” Ronan’s voice gentled in a way Augusta hadn’t heard from him yet. “This is your new mother, Augusta.”
The girl’s eyes lifted, taking Augusta in from the hem of her traveling dress to the pearls at her throat, and then dropped again to her own folded hands.
“Good afternoon,” she said, very properly.
“Good afternoon, Sarah.” Augusta kept her voice soft, careful not to lean too far into the room, the way one might approach something small and easily startled.
The silence stretched. Sarah’s fingers twisted together in her lap, her eyes flicking once to her father, then back to the folds of her own skirt.
“May I sit?” Augusta asked, gesturing to the small chair by the window, not the bed. “I won’t stay long. I only wanted to see your room.”
The smallest nod came in answer, so slight it might have been imagined.
Augusta crossed to the chair and sat, hands folding in her lap, mirroring the girl without meaning to. “It’s a lovely room. I like the rabbits on the wall.”
“Father had them painted,” Sarah said, so quietly it was almost lost beneath the rain. It was the first full sentence she’d offered, and Augusta was careful not to react to it as though it were a triumph, though something in her chest lifted all the same.
“Did he choose them himself?”
Sarah glanced at her father, as if asking permission to answer. Ronan said nothing, only watched, his expression unreadable.
“The housekeeper chose them.”
Then the girl’s gaze dropped to the pearl ring on Augusta’s finger, and whatever had opened in her small face shuttered again, quick as a door pulled shut.
“I would like to be alone now.” Sarah slid off the bed before either adult could answer, retreating around its far side.
“It’s all right,” Augusta said quietly, rising from the chair. “There’s no hurry at all.”
No answer came. Sarah only stood where she was, half-hidden, watching them both the way a bird watches a hand it hasn’t decided to trust.
Ronan exhaled through his nose. “That will do for today. You should rest. It has been a long day for everyone.”
“I would like to stay a moment longer…”
“No,” he interrupted, “She needs time, and so do you. It’s good if we rest now; I shall see you later in the night.”
He escorted her out of the room and had one of the servants show her to her chambers. Augusta hardly paid attention though; all she could think of was that ‘he wanted to see her later’.
To say she was nervous would be a grand understatement.
Augusta had counted the floorboards eleven times by the time the knock came.
She had changed into her nightgown an hour ago, had let her maid brush out her hair and leave her be, and since then there had been nothing to do but walk the length of the room and back, over and over.
Married. A wife. A stepmother to a girl who wouldn’t look at her twice.
How had her life changed so quickly?
The knock, when it finally came, was two short raps, and Augusta’s whole body went still.
“Come in,” she said.
The door opened slowly, and Ronan stood in the frame a moment before entering, his eyes finding her across the room.
Something in his expression flickered, hesitated, as though he’d expected to find her already abed, or already asleep, or anything other than standing in the middle of the room looking as though she might bolt.
Augusta’s breath caught. She took an involuntary step back, toward the window, toward nothing at all, and she saw him notice.
“What,” Ronan said, “is wrong with you now?”
“Nothing.”
“I am not going to hurt you,” he said. “I have no intention of doing anything to you tonight, or any night, that you do not wish. Whatever you may believe of me, Augusta, I am not a monster.”
She should have let it go. She was tired, and it was late, and there was nothing to be gained from provoking a man in her own bedchamber at this hour. But something in the way he’d said it scraped against a nerve already worn thin by the day.
“Perhaps I look at you that way,” she said, “because I am not yet convinced I’m wrong.”
“Excuse me?”
Suddenly, she could not stop herself from blurting out the words.
“I saw a man in the rain that night, standing over a body, holding that cane. The very same cane you set against my wall a moment ago. And the next morning, a woman was found dead at the Merrigold estate, not a mile from where I stood. Everyone told me I was wrong. The constables told me I was wrong. You told me I was wrong. But I know what I saw, Your Grace, and no wedding vow has changed that. So forgive me if it takes more than your word to convince me I imagined a murder.”
“You’re not afraid of me,” he said slowly, as if working it out even as he spoke it aloud. “You’re afraid there’s a murderer walking free in England, and you married him.”
For a moment Ronan only looked at her, and then something in his face eased, and the corner of his mouth lifted in what was very nearly a smile.
It transformed him entirely, softened the hard lines of his jaw, warmed the black of his eyes, and Augusta felt her own face heat in response before she could stop it, furious with herself for noticing at all, tonight of every night.
“Every woman who has ever been frightened of me in this house,” Ronan said, “has been frightened for herself. My temper, or my scowl. You are the first to be frightened for the safety of England.” He shook his head slightly, as though still deciding what to make of her. “It is, I confess, a novel experience.”
Augusta pressed her lips together, unwilling to let herself be charmed out of a grievance so recently and so righteously held. “That does not answer my concern.”
“There is no reason for you to trust me immediately. We are strangers to each other, whatever the law now calls us, and I would think less of you if you handed over your trust simply because a ring sits on your finger.” He paused, his gaze steady on hers.
“As for the rest, I have no need of an heir at present. None at all. You need not lie awake wondering whether tonight is the night I come to collect on that particular duty. We have years ahead of us, if you want them. There’s no need to rush toward anything neither of us is ready for. ”
Whatever Augusta had braced herself to hear, it was not this, and the relief that moved through her was so sudden and so complete that she felt almost light-headed with it. “You mean that?”
“I am not in the habit of saying things I don’t mean.”
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it, and Ronan’s eyes flicked to her face at the sound of it, something unreadable passing behind them.
“What I would like,” he went on, quieter now, “is for us to be friends, before we are anything else. I have a daughter who needs a mother more than I need a wife, if I am honest with you, and I would rather you and Sarah find your way to each other in your own time than have either of you forced into affection neither of you feels yet. The same is true for us.”
“Is it?”
“Take things slowly,” Ronan said. “Learn what there is to know of each other, in your own time. That’s all I ask.”
The relief that moved through Augusta was so sudden she nearly smiled before she meant to. “That is... more than fair.”
“I have little use for a wife who resents me. Sarah has far greater need of a mother than I have of anything else.” He watched her a moment, something almost gentle in it. “So let us start simply. Dinner tomorrow evening, just the two of us.”
“I can agree to that.” Her smile came easier this time.
“Goodnight, Augusta.”
“Goodnight.”
He inclined his head and let himself out, the door clicking shut behind him.