Page 28 of The Wedding-Crashing Duchess

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.”