Page 87 of The Wedding-Crashing Duchess

She still did not know what would happen. But for the first time, admitting the feeling did not make her want to run from it.

Temperance suddenly held up a scarlet silk beside her face. “Last chance.”

“No.”

Temperance sighed. “You are hopeless.”

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.