Chapter 16
Augusta had not intended to wander far from the terrace, because even in her present state she remembered Ronan’s warning about the murderer, and she had no desire to prove him right within the same hour by disappearing alone into some dark corner of the garden, yet the air beyond the ballroom was cool and clean after the crush of bodies and candlelight inside, and once she stepped beyond the first row of open doors she found herself continuing along the gravel path almost without thought.
Behind her, music drifted through the open windows in softened fragments, mingling with distant laughter and the occasional burst of applause, while the gardens themselves were illuminated only here and there by lanterns suspended from iron hooks among the hedges.
The effect should have been romantic, and on any other evening Augusta might have admired the shadows falling across the clipped greenery and the silvery sheen of moonlight on the fountain ahead, but she was too occupied with the humiliation of asking her husband whether he liked her dress and receiving an answer that might just as easily have been given to a chair.
The color suits you.
She closed her eyes briefly as she walked, resisting the urge to groan aloud.
It had been foolish to ask.
Worse than foolish, really, because she had already admitted to Charity and the others that she was falling in love with Ronan, and afterward she had spent an entire afternoon entertaining increasingly hopeful interpretations of everything he had done.
He had come to the ball because she was attending, or perhaps because Gregory had offered to accompany her; he had kept his hand at her waist when Gregory complimented her; he had asked her to dance even though he disliked dancing, and then he had spoken to her about the murder with such seriousness that his concern had made something inside her ache.
All of that had seemed meaningful until she had asked one painfully simple question.
Do you like my dress?
And Ronan, after staring at her for nearly the entire evening, had said yes as though she had asked whether he approved of the weather.
Augusta knew it should not matter as much as it did.
Ronan was not an effusive man, and she had known that almost from the beginning; he struggled to say what he felt even when the feeling involved something as uncomplicated as affection for his daughter, so expecting him suddenly to become eloquent about a gown merely because Augusta had spent half the day imagining what he might say had been unfair.
Still, she had hoped. That was the problem.
Hope had made her absurdly sensitive to every glance he gave her, every accidental touch, every moment in which she thought he might be moving toward something more, and now she could not decide whether she had invented half the intimacy between them because she wanted it to exist.
She slowed near a bend in the path, where the hedge grew taller, and the light from the ballroom windows became more distant, and that was when she heard the footsteps behind her.
At first she assumed they belonged to another guest, because the gardens were hardly private and several couples had already escaped the heat of the ballroom, but these footsteps were different in one small and immediately unsettling way: they seemed to slow when she slowed.
Augusta stopped, as did the sound.
For one suspended moment the entire garden seemed to fall unnaturally quiet.
She had agreed not to leave the house alone until they knew more, and although she had argued that a ballroom filled with hundreds of people hardly counted as dangerous, she had nevertheless walked directly away from them and into a dimly lit garden where anyone might follow her without attracting notice.
Wonderful.
Apparently being in love had also made her stupid.
Augusta turned slowly, keeping her hands close to her skirts so she would not trip if she needed to run, and for one terrifying second she saw only the dark outline of a tall man approaching from the shadowed path.
Her heart lurched.
Then he stepped beneath one of the lanterns.
“Ronan.”
The breath left her so quickly that it was almost painful.
He stopped several feet away, his cane planted firmly beside him, and although the lines of his face were more difficult to read in the uneven light, she could see enough to know that something was wrong.
His expression was serious, but not the hard, controlled seriousness he wore when speaking about the investigation; instead, there was an uncertainty about him that Augusta had learned to recognize precisely because it appeared so rarely.
“You frightened me,” she said, pressing one hand against her chest as she tried to steady her breathing. “I heard someone behind me, and after the conversation we just had, naturally my mind decided it must be the murderer.”
Ronan’s face changed immediately. “I am sorry. I should have called your name before following you, and I should also point out that this is precisely why I asked you not to wander away alone.”
Augusta stared at him. “Are you going to scold me now?”
“No,” he replied, though his gaze moved over the darkness beyond her shoulder with enough suspicion to make it obvious that he was still thinking about the possibility.
“I am trying very hard not to, because I followed you for another reason, and if I begin lecturing you about murderers, I will probably lose whatever courage brought me out here in the first place.”
That was not something Ronan said. Augusta lowered her hand slowly. “Courage?”
He looked at her for a long moment before glancing toward the ballroom behind them, as though he briefly considered returning to it. “Gregory said something irritating.”
“That hardly narrows the possibilities.”
“He implied that I had handled our conversation badly.”
Augusta’s mouth twitched despite herself. “Ah.”
Ronan drew a breath and shifted his weight against the cane, and Augusta realized with growing surprise that he was nervous.
“I came after you because I do not want you going back inside believing what you clearly believed when you left me, and I know I should have said this before the dance ended, or before we arrived at the ball, or perhaps even before we left the house, but apparently I am capable of thinking several perfectly useful sentences and becoming an idiot the moment I am expected to say any of them aloud.”
Augusta stared at him.
Ronan continued before she could interrupt, perhaps because he understood that if he stopped now he might never begin again.
“You asked whether I liked your dress, and I told you the color suited you, which is possibly the least useful thing I have ever said to anyone, because the truth is that when I saw you coming down the stairs tonight I forgot what I had intended to say altogether. You looked so beautiful that I could not think properly, and instead of telling you that, I stood there staring until you asked whether something was wrong.”
The night seemed to go very still around her.
Augusta had imagined many possible versions of this conversation while she walked through the garden.
Not one had included this.
“You thought I was beautiful?”
Ronan’s brows drew together. “I think you are beautiful.”
The correction sent a ridiculous warmth through her.
He took another careful step toward her, not close enough to touch but close enough that she could see his expression more clearly beneath the lantern light.
“The gown is beautiful too, if that is still important, although I suspect I could have saved myself considerable difficulty by simply saying that earlier, but it was never really the dress that made me stare. It was you.”
Augusta’s heart began beating harder.
She wanted to answer.
Nothing came.
Apparently Ronan’s inability to speak had become contagious.
He seemed to mistake her silence for uncertainty, because his expression tightened slightly. “I know I am saying this badly.”
“You truly are not.”
“I have been rehearsing it since I crossed the ballroom, and none of it sounds the way it did in my head.”
Augusta swallowed. “What did it sound like in your head?”
Ronan looked at her. The question seemed to make something in him settle.
“When I saw you tonight, I wanted to tell you that you looked better than anything I had ever seen,” he said, his voice lower now, and although the words came slowly, they no longer seemed reluctant.
“Then I thought that sounded ridiculous, because comparing you to objects or places seemed insufficient, so I decided I would simply tell you that you were beautiful, and somehow even that became impossible the moment you looked at me.”
Augusta could barely breathe. “You wanted to tell me that I am beautiful?”
“Is that a surprise to you?” he asked without missing a beat.
“I…” She stuttered, blushing. “I am not sure. I’m not quite used to hearing such things from you, and I can never tell how you’re feeling. You already know that you’re adept at hiding what you’re thinking.”
“Maybe I’m not as good at hiding as you think,” he sighed, rubbing his temples. “Do you really wish to know what was going on through my mind?”
“I always wish to know that,” she said in a timid voice. “Any access that you give me inside of your head is one that I value.”
“Then I’ll tell you the events as they unfolded.
” Ronan’s gaze moved over her face before returning to her eyes.
“Gregory complimented you, and I hated that he could say so easily what I had been trying to say all evening, which was unreasonable because he is my friend and he was doing nothing wrong. I still wanted him to stop looking at you.”
Augusta’s lips parted.
“Ronan.”
“I am not finished. You want to hear what goes on in my mind, correct? So let me say, once and for all.”
The firmness of the words would ordinarily have irritated her, but there was something so raw beneath them that she remained silent.
He came one step closer, and her heart began to beat louder than before.