Chapter 10 #2
“My next question,” she said, deliberately changing the direction of the conversation, “is whether you have any pastime activities.”
“I work.”
“That is not a pastime.”
“It occupies my time.”
“A pastime is something one does for pleasure.”
Ronan appeared to consider the distinction. “I ride, and I also fence with Gregory.”
Augusta remembered his injured leg and glanced briefly towards the cane resting beside his chair. “You fence? Does it not cause you pain?”
“Occasionally.”
“And you continue?”
“It’s not that much of an effort,” he shrugged his shoulders as though it was nothing. “I dislike allowing pain to make decisions for me.”
“So tell me more, then. What part of it do you like more?” Augusta held his gaze for a moment, then she asked, “Do you enjoy fencing itself, or do you enjoy defeating Gregory?”
“You ask me a lot of questions,” he sighed. “But nevertheless, I shall try to satisfy you with an answer. I would say that those pleasures are difficult to separate.”
She laughed, and Ronan’s expression softened at the sound.
“That is the first answer you have given that I fully understand,” Augusta said. “I also enjoy defeating people who are overly certain of themselves.”
“I had noticed.”
“Have you? But I would tell you not to sound so wounded. You remain overly certain of yourself despite my efforts.”
“I was not aware that my improvement had become your responsibility.”
“It became my responsibility when I married you.” She smiled at him. “I’m your wife, remember?”
“That is a very broad interpretation of your duties,” he shrugged his shoulders. “More than a wife, I had wanted a mother for my daughter.”
The answer was delivered calmly, although it landed between them with more weight than Ronan seemed to intend. Augusta lowered her gaze for a moment, then she forced herself to return to the game.
“It is your turn,” she said. If there was something about his answer that had bothered her, she didn’t let on. Instead, her expression had resolved into a neutral one.
Ronan watched her, perhaps aware that something had shifted, although he did not comment upon it either.
“What do you do for pleasure?” he asked after a moment, lifting his eyebrows.
“Many things, Your Grace,” she replied with a smile on her face, “I read, I play the pianoforte, I visit my sisters, and I enjoy dancing sometimes...”
“That sounds like a list of accomplishments expected from a lady,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Surely, you must have been taught to enjoy all of these things.”
“They may be expected, although I still enjoy them.”
“What would you do if no one expected anything from you?”
Augusta paused.
In earnest, the question had caught her off-guard.
What would I do if no one expected anything from me? As a lady, this was not something that many had the privilege of pondering.
To further that, she hadn’t expected him to ask her that either. She bit down on her lip, thinking hard about the subject.
“I think it wasn’t your turn to ask me a question,” she replied. She hoped it would be enough to get her out of answering.
He gave her a short laugh. “It doesn’t matter to me. I’ve asked you now, and you must provide me with the answer. That is how this goes.”
She narrowed her eyes at him slightly. “And you’ve decided to amend the rules to your liking?”
“Yes, I’ve realized it is more fun that way, don’t you think?” he met her gaze for a moment, and it caused her to forget everything that might have been running through her mind previously.
How was he able to have that sort of impact on her, she still didn’t know. Tearing her gaze away from him, she fixed it to the ground instead.
“I do not know,” she admitted after a while. “To answer your question, that is.”
“Fascinating,” Ronan leaned back slightly. “You have never considered it?”
She pressed her lips together in a thin line.
“But why bother? There has never been any point in considering it,” Augusta replied.
“A lady’s life is shaped by expectation from the moment she is old enough to enter a drawing room, and one learns what is appropriate before one has enough experience to decide what one prefers.
I wanted a successful debut, a respectable marriage, and a household of my own.
Those desires were not false merely because they were also expected of me. ”
“I did not say they were false.”
“You implied that I have mistaken accomplishments for pleasure.”
“You seem to be missing the point of my question entirely,” he said, sighing. “Sure, these desires are not false for you. To a certain degree, our likes and dislikes are shaped by the society in which we are placed. Denying that would be entirely na?ve.”
“So then?” she lifted her eyebrows. “If you are cognizant of this, then what is the point of your question?”
“The point is that I don’t believe that there are only society’s expectations,” he maintained. “I would be interested in knowing who you would be, if there was no audience to judge you.”
She considered his words for a moment.
“There is always an audience,” Augusta said. “Even when no one is present, one hears the lessons that were repeated throughout childhood, and one knows what would be said if one behaved differently.”
Ronan’s fingers moved over the stem of his glass. “That sounds exhausting. Don’t you think so? Being constantly watched or assessed.”
“It is called propriety, and without it there would only be chaos. It is rather important.”
“You don’t have to tell me what it is called,” he replied. “But surely you can admit to yourself, and me, in the privacy of this conversation that maintaining propriety at all times is rather exhausting.”
Augusta looked at him with growing annoyance. She didn’t understand what the point he was trying to make was. Surely, as a duke, he knew about propriety better than anyone else.
“Propriety prevents people from behaving selfishly whenever the impulse strikes them,” she said. “It creates order, and it allows strangers to understand how they should treat one another without testing every boundary first.”
“Sure, yes. That is the respectable version of it that society tells us,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
“And you say that there is another version that exists?” she asked, her annoyance turning into some manner of curiosity now.
“Of course there is. We shouldn’t be so na?ve as to not see it. Sometimes, under the guise of propriety, people feel as though they are given the license to be cruel,” Ronan replied. Augusta simply stared at him to continue.
“A man may ruin another family while speaking politely, and a woman may humiliate someone with a smile. Meanwhile, everyone praises their manners. I would rather deal with open dislike than spend an evening surrounded by people who conceal contempt beneath compliments.”
She nodded, knowing that he had made his point. But of course, no conversation between them could pass without some form of debate.
“I understand what you mean,” she replied. “But that does not mean all courtesy is false.”
“You’re making sweeping statements on my behalf.
I did not say it was,” Ronan replied. “I said that society mistakes performance for character, and propriety is often the costume used for that performance. A man who bows at the correct moment is considered respectable even if he is dishonest, while a woman who laughs too loudly is judged without anyone asking whether she is kind.”
Augusta stared at him, unsettled by how directly his argument struck at rules she had spent her life obeying.
“You cannot dismiss every convention simply because some people misuse it,” she said. “Without standards, people would behave however they pleased, and those with the least consideration for others would cause the greatest harm.”
“Standards should concern conduct that harms others,” Ronan replied, “not whether a woman eats a second cake, whether a man refuses to attend a ball, or whether two people speak without arranging every sentence into something harmless. Society concerns itself most intensely with matters that do not deserve judgement, while ignoring cruelty when it arrives wearing the correct coat.”
“You speak as though manners possess no value at all,” she said.
“They possess value when they arise from consideration,” Ronan said, his voice remaining controlled even as the conviction behind it deepened.
“They become tiresome when they exist only to satisfy observers. I thank a servant since he has done something for me, and I speak respectfully to a tenant since his rank does not make him less deserving of respect, yet I will not pretend to enjoy a gathering merely to reassure the hostess, and I will not flatter a man whose company I despise so that society may call me agreeable.”
It was clear to her that this was a view that he had spent considerable thought pondering over. It would be difficult to challenge him any further, but at the same time, she knew that it was something that he was allowed to do. She could never imagine herself holding the same views so openly.
“You have the freedom to be disagreeable,” Augusta replied. “Most people do not.”
“Most people possess more freedom than they use,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
“That is an arrogant thing to say,” the words slipped out of her mouth before the had the chance to stop them.
For a moment, she wondered if he was going to get angry to her for saying that. After all, it was against that very propriety that she was arguing in favour of to accuse someone of his standing to be arrogant.
But to her surprise, he didn’t seemed bothered by it at all.
“Perhaps,” Ronan said. “Yet I have watched people surrender their judgement to gossip and then complain that society has trapped them, even though society is nothing more than other frightened people repeating the same rules to one another.”
Augusta opened her mouth, then closed it again. For once, no immediate answer presented itself.