Chapter 15
Ronan had spent the better part of the afternoon telling himself that attending the Hetherford ball was a perfectly ordinary decision, because Augusta was his wife and she intended to go.
Of course, accompanying one’s wife into society hardly required an explanation.
Still, the argument became considerably less useful the moment he heard the rustle of skirts above him and looked toward the staircase.
Augusta was descending slowly, one hand resting upon the polished banister while the skirts of her dark green gown whispered over the steps, and Ronan, who had been prepared for almost every inconvenience the evening might offer, discovered that he had not prepared himself for her.
The color was richer than anything he had seen her wear before, deep enough to make her eyes seem brighter and her skin warmer.
He did not move when she reached the final step, nor did he immediately remember that a gentleman generally offered some form of greeting when his wife appeared before him dressed for a ball, because there was something about Augusta tonight that seemed both entirely familiar and startlingly new.
She looked beautiful. There was no argument about it.
Augusta waited for several seconds before looking down at herself, and when she lifted her eyes again, there was uncertainty beneath her amusement.
“You have been staring at me since I came downstairs, and although I would ordinarily be flattered by such attention from my husband, you are making me suspect it.”
“There is nothing dreadful about it,” Ronan replied, though the words sounded woefully insufficient even to him, and when Augusta continued to watch him as though she expected rather more than that, he found himself wishing that commanding a regiment of servants, confronting negligent stewards, and intimidating solicitors had somehow prepared him for telling one woman that she was beautiful. “The gown is fine.”
Her brows rose. “Fine?”
Ronan immediately knew he had made matters worse, but Augusta’s mouth had already begun to curve, and there was enough amusement in her eyes that he could not tell whether she was offended or merely entertained by his incompetence.
“I did not mean fine in the sense that there is nothing remarkable about it; I meant that there is nothing wrong with it,” he paused and then let out a sigh, “and since that explanation is clearly not improving matters, perhaps we should simply leave before I say something even less useful.”
Augusta laughed softly, and the sound eased some of the pressure inside his chest while somehow creating another kind altogether.
“I think that may be wise, although I shall remember this conversation the next time you accuse me of avoiding a straightforward answer. I have rarely seen a man work so hard to say almost nothing.”
Ronan offered her his arm before she could continue, partly because the carriage was waiting and partly because he needed something practical to do with himself, but the solution proved imperfect when Augusta slipped her hand through his arm and came close enough that he could feel the warmth of her beside him.
Since the night outside the dining room, when he had placed his hand around her waist and very nearly forgotten every promise he had made about patience, he had become unpleasantly aware of every small contact between them, and tonight even the pressure of her fingers against his sleeve seemed designed to remind him of thoughts he had no intention of examining while standing beneath the eyes of half the household staff.
They crossed the entrance hall together, and Augusta, apparently far more composed than he was, glanced at him with a smile that made him wonder whether she knew precisely how much trouble she was causing him.
“You are standing closer to me than usual,” she observed quietly, and although there was nothing accusatory in her voice, Ronan felt the ridiculous urge to step even nearer simply because she had noticed.
“The hall is crowded,” he said. “I have reason to.”
Augusta looked around at the nearly empty entrance hall, where a footman stood beside the door, and another waited several yards away near the drawing room. “Is this what you consider empty?”
Ronan gave her a narrow look. “I am not trying to argue with you.”
“You don’t need to.”
Her smile deepened as they stepped outside, and Ronan, who had spent years disliking people who seemed able to read what he had not chosen to say, found that Augusta’s increasing ability to do precisely that bothered him considerably less than it should have.
A thought occurred to him. He didn’t have the most experience with this sort of stuff, but surely this is what flirting was.
God. He had never really expected himself to flirt with her. But it seemed to come rather naturally now.
The carriage ride passed without incident, though Ronan remained conscious of her sitting opposite him with the green skirts spread neatly around her.
“I’m excited to see everyone tonight,” she said after a moment. “Charity and Duncan have promised to attend. Maria and Stephen would probably join them, too.”
“Mhm.”
“Are you even listening to a word I am saying?”
Ronan absorbed only half of what she said because each time she turned her head toward the window, the pearls at her throat shifted softly against her skin and drew his attention somewhere it had no business lingering.
“I’m answering you,” he shrugged his shoulders. The last thing he wished to do was tell her that she was having any sort of impact on him.
“You seem more distracted tonight,” she said, worry suddenly clouding her tone. “Is something bothering you?”
“Bother is not the word I would use,” he muttered under his breath, causing her eyes to widen further.
“Then what is it?” she pressed. For some reason, she had resolved not to let the matter go. But it was no use, of course.
He was not going to give her a straight answer.
“I think you’re spending your energy on all of the wrong things, Duchess,” he said to her. “I would suggest you focus on the night ahead, and not so much on what I’m bothered about.”
She shot him a look.
“It concerns me very much what you are bothered about,” She folded her arms in front of her. “So, please. Stop being so cryptic.”
By the time they reached the Hetherford residence, the street outside was clogged with carriages, and guests were already moving steadily.
Ronan had expected the crowd to irritate him, and it did, but what he had not expected was the instinctive satisfaction he felt when Augusta took his arm again and remained close to him as they entered, as though the pressure of hundreds of strangers around them gave him permission to keep her nearer than what was required.
The ballroom itself was a blaze of candlelight and color, with crystal chandeliers scattering light over mirrors and polished floors while the orchestra played from a raised gallery at the far end, and the hum of conversation rose and fell around them in waves.
Augusta paused for a moment as they entered, not because she appeared overwhelmed but because she was taking everything in with the ease of a woman who had spent years learning exactly how to move through rooms like this, and Ronan realized that although he had seen her in drawing rooms and at dinners, he had never watched her fully occupy the society for which she had been trained.
That thought should not have bothered him, but it did.
Not because she seemed happy, because he liked seeing her happy more than he intended to admit, but because men were already looking at her, and Ronan found himself suddenly understanding why some husbands developed reputations for disliking society.
He had never sympathized with such men before, assuming that any gentleman foolish enough to marry a beautiful woman ought to accept that others would notice her, yet now, with Augusta beside him and half the ballroom apparently in possession of functional eyesight, his earlier judgment began to seem uncharitable.
Augusta glanced sideways at him as they moved farther into the room. “You have been here less than three minutes and already look as though you regret every decision that brought you through the door.”
“Once again, I would urge you to not pay so much attention to me.”
It was easier that way, anyway.
They found Charity and Duncan near one of the tall windows, where Maria and Stephen had already joined them, and the warmth of the greeting that followed immediately reminded Ronan that Augusta’s circle of friends and family had expanded into something large and complicated long before he entered it.
Charity embraced her sister with obvious affection, Duncan greeted Ronan with enough amusement in his expression to make Ronan suspicious, while Maria took Augusta’s hands and stepped back to admire the dress.
“You look beautiful,” Maria said warmly. “That color was made for you, and I hope whoever selected it has already been sufficiently praised, because I would have dragged you back into the shop myself if you had arrived in pale blue again.”
Augusta laughed. “Charity chose the color, Alethea chose almost everything else, and Temperance spent half the morning trying to turn me into a public scandal, so the final result is this.”
Charity smiled. “Temperance wanted scarlet.”
“She also wanted a neckline that would have caused Ronan to abandon the ball before we arrived.”
The words slipped out lightly enough, but Augusta seemed to realize what she had said almost as soon as Ronan’s attention dropped, quite involuntarily, toward the neckline in question.
It was perfectly respectable, which did nothing to stop the memory of her standing close to him in the dining-room doorway from returning with unhelpful clarity, and when he looked back at her face, the faint color in her cheeks told him she had noticed exactly where his gaze had gone.