Chapter 10 #3
She had spent years learning how to enter a room, how to greet a duchess, how long to maintain eye contact, how loudly to laugh, and how carefully to conceal anything too eager or too painful.
She had considered those lessons protection, and perhaps they had been, yet Ronan spoke of them as though they were bars around a cage whose door had never truly been locked.
He watched her in silence.
“I must admit, Your Grace. You have rendered me speechless,” Augusta said at last.
“Have I? I had not thought it possible.” The faint dryness in his tone restored some of her irritation.
“But do not look so pleased with yourself,” she replied. “I have not agreed with you, and I still think your view is made easier by a title that protects you from consequences.”
“My title creates different consequences, if you can let yourself see things from my perspective.”
She let out a short laugh. His title was one that afforded him privileges that the rest did not get.
“It also allows you to ignore the ones that govern everyone else.”
“Perhaps,” Ronan said. “Although I will say that your willingness to obey every rule did not prevent society from condemning you when you broke one rule. Is it really worthwhile then?”
Augusta’s fingers tightened around her napkin. She hadn’t expected him to call her out in this manner.
“That is enough,” she said abruptly. “I think we should not speak on this further.”
Ronan’s expression shifted, and for a moment he appeared worried that he had caused her any offense. “Augusta…”
“It is my turn to ask a question,” she interrupted. Although she had intended to return to something harmless, the conversation with Sarah rose in her mind. The question left her before she reconsidered it. “Why have you never spoken to Sarah about her mother?”
Ronan became completely still. The change was immediate enough that Augusta knew she had chosen the one subject capable of ending the game altogether.
“That is a rather different question that you’ve asked of me,” he said in a tone that could only be defined as emotionless. “That has nothing to do with what we were discussing.”
She considered him for a moment, and then nodded slowly. “You said that each person may ask any question, and the other must answer.”
“You also said we could refuse one,” he reminded her.
“Are you using your refusal?” She bit down on her lip. She hoped that he wouldn’t.
Ronan looked down at his plate, although he had stopped eating some time ago. “I am considering it.”
“Sarah is curious about her,” Augusta said, and she kept her voice gentler now.
“She asked me what her mother was like, and when I could not answer, I realized that she has probably asked others and received very little. I think it would be good for her to know more, and if I can play a role in making that possible, then I would like to do so. It’s not as though I am overly nosey about these matters, only that I am asking out of concern for Sarah. ”
She didn’t know if the explanation had been required, but it seemed to soften the duke slightly. “She knows that her mother died when she was born,” he answered after a moment.
“She knows how she died,” Augusta replied. “That is not the same as knowing who she was. I am sure that there was a lot of life to her, and Sarah would only appreciate knowing more about it. Little stories, anything really.”
Ronan reached for his glass, then appeared to think better of it and left his hand resting on the table.
“Should you like for me to tell you?” He asked but then didn’t wait to receive an answer. “Eleanor was gentle and quiet. She disliked large gatherings. That is all Sarah needs to know at her age.”
“That sounds like what one might say about a distant acquaintance after struggling to remember her,” Augusta couldn’t help herself from commenting. Surely you must have more to say about her. She was your wife.
She decided to keep the latter half only in her thoughts, not wanting to push him too much for an answer. This conversation already felt more honest than any other one they had ever had before.
“You wanted honesty, and I have given it to you. I am not sure what else you require now.”
“I am only making an observation,” Augusta replied. “And I think Sarah deserves more than two polite qualities attached to a woman whom she will forever know as her Mother. She wants memories, or stories.”
The duke looked back at Augusta, and there was a strange emptiness in his expression. “I do not have any worth giving her.”
“Why not?” she asked, suddenly feeling nervous for what he might say next.
Ronan looked towards the servants standing at the far end of the room, then he gave a brief signal, and they withdrew without question. The door closed behind them, leaving the dining room silent apart from the fire.
“You have pressed for privacy,” Augusta said quietly. “You may as well answer now.”
“I dismissed them so that we would not discuss my first marriage before half the household,” he sighed. “There are things that can only be admitted in the company of those that one trusts.”
You trust me. Augusta felt a bubble of excitement in her stomach. It was very much like Ronan to admit the sweetest of things in moments as tense as this.
He leaned back and looked at Augusta with an expression she had never seen on him before. The certainty that usually defined him had disappeared, leaving something more exposed and considerably less comfortable.
“I do not speak to Sarah about Eleanor,” he said, “since every answer would require me to admit how little I knew my own wife. I do not know how to tell a child that her parents lived beneath the same roof as strangers. Eleanor was frightened of me from the first time we met.”
“She told you this?” Augusta couldn’t help but ask. “She told you that is frightened, to your face?”
“Not directly, no,” he shook his head. “But it wasn’t a difficult thing to gauge. I could tell that she was in her reactions, and how she behaved around me. Not everything has to be said out loud to be known.”
He looked at her then, and she wondered for a moment if he was still referring to his late wife. Still, Augusta did not dare interrupt.
Ronan looked down at his hand. “You know, you speak of propriety, and perhaps she was a perfect example of it. She behaved as she had been taught, smiled when spoken to, agreed with whatever I proposed, and never complained. So, everyone believed the marriage was respectable. I told myself that she was reserved, and that affection might develop once she became accustomed to me, although I made no real effort to help that happen.”
“Did you speak to her about her fear?” Augusta asked. Suddenly, she wondered if this was the reason that he held such strong opinions about the topic of propriety.
“No,” Ronan replied. “How could I? We were never close enough to have a conversation like that. I thought keeping my distance would make her more comfortable, so I left her alone and provided everything she might require. When she seemed uneasy in my presence, I shortened the visit rather than asking what I had done.”
“You may have believed you were being considerate,” Augusta tried to understand.
“I believed many things that allowed me to avoid an uncomfortable conversation,” Ronan shrugged his shoulders.
Augusta studied his face, wondering if there was any regret in how he handled the marriage. She thought of their own marriage, and how he had told her that being friends was the most important thing that they could do.
“You said you made no effort to become friends with her?” she asked, carefully. “Is that right?”
“There is a certain level of familiarity that needs to be developed between two people for them to be friends with one another,” Ronan replied.
“We didn’t have that. All her responses to my questions were well-rehearsed and predictable.
I lacked the patience to search for the person beneath those responses.
When she agreed with me, I accepted the agreement, even when I knew she was probably saying what she thought a wife should say. ”