Page 91 of The Wedding-Crashing Duchess

She was quiet for several measures, her fingers tightening faintly around his as she considered the possibility. “I had not thought about it that way. I kept wondering whether I had seen enough to identify him, and then everything became confused once I saw your cane, but I never really considered what I might have looked like from his position.”

“That is why I do not want you leaving Ravenhill alone for the time being,” Ronan said, and when she immediately looked at him, he continued before she could mistake the request for an order. “I am not telling you that you cannot visit your sisters or go shopping, but I want someone with you, whether it is a maid, a footman, one of your friends, or me. I would rather feel foolish about unnecessary caution later than discover that we should have been more careful now.”

Augusta studied him, and Ronan prepared himself for the argument he expected, because she disliked being told what she could and could not do almost as much as he disliked explaining himself. Instead, she surprised him by nodding slowly.

“All right. I will not go anywhere alone until we know more, and before you look so astonished, I am perfectly capable of recognizing when your concern is reasonable. I do not particularly enjoy the idea of arranging my movements around a murderer I cannot even identify, but I enjoy the possibility of encountering him again considerably less.”

Ronan felt some of the tension leave him. “I expected you to argue.”

“But I simply decided against it. Occasionally marriage requires one to make tremendous sacrifices, and tonight I have sacrificed the pleasure of disagreeing with you.”

His mouth almost curved. “You make it sound heroic.”

“But am I wrong?” she teased. “You know fully well that both of us have a penchant for arguing, and therefore me letting it go is surely a remarkable act.”

He shook his head.

It was funny. Their arguments now did not grow too heated; instead they would sometimes just blossom into playfulness. It was something that only knowing each other better had allowed them to achieve.

And it was nice, he thought to himself.

Comfortable, even.

The music carried them into another turn, and for a short while the conversation gave way to movement, although Augusta’s earlier distraction had returned. She was looking at him now rather than beyond his shoulder, but there was something uncertain in her expression, as though another question had been waiting beneath the discussion of the murder and had not yet found its way out.

Ronan noticed it because he noticed almost everything about her now. “What is it? You are thinking about something else.”

“I don’t know what to do when you give me this much attention,” she smiled at him. “Do you really wish to know what I am thinking?”

Ronan was not one to blush, but the way that she had said the words, he might as well have.

“If you’re willing to tell me,” he replied in a nonchalant tone.

“There is one thing that I have been wondering…”

Go on then.

When she spoke again, the question was quieter than he expected. “Do you like my dress?”

Ronan froze, and Augusta felt it immediately.

The answer should have been the easiest thing she had asked him all evening, because he had been thinking about the damned dress from the moment she appeared on the staircase.

He liked the color, the way it fitted her, the way the green made her eyes seem brighter, and more than any of that, he thought she was beautiful enough in it that he had spent the evening resenting every man whose attention remained on her for longer than a second.

All he needed to do was say so. Instead, the words crowded uselessly behind his teeth.

Augusta looked up at him, waiting.

Ronan felt an unfamiliar kind of panic. “Yes,” he managed at last.

Her expression changed.

It was small enough that another person might have missed it, but Ronan had spent too much time studying her face lately not to recognize disappointment.

“Yes?” she repeated, and although she tried to smile, the effort was obvious. “Well, I suppose that answers the question.”

Ronan immediately attempted to repair it. “The color suits you.”