Page 48 of The Wedding-Crashing Duchess

“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 naïve.”

“So then?” she lifted her eyebrows. “If you are cognizant of this, then what is the point of your question?”