Page 97 of The Wedding-Crashing Duchess

“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.

“Do you want to hear all the things that I wish to tell you?”

“When you say it like that,” she said, stuttering again, “well, you make me nervous.”

“That makes two of us.”

“It’s hard for me to fathom that I could make you nervous,” she let out a small laugh. “I mean, you are a Duke, and it is rather unbecoming of you to be nervous about anything.”

“For the time being, I want you to put to rest the assumptions that you have about me,” he told her. She could tell that it was taking a great deal of courage to speak like this.

She had never heard him be so honest before, and it felt like she couldn’t get enough of it.

“Go on, then,” she said to him. “Tell me then.”

“I wanted to tell you that you are kind, even when you pretend to be difficult, and that you have made this house happier in a few weeks than I managed in years. Sarah laughs more now and the servants seem less terrified of breathing too loudly whenever I enter a room. I wanted to tell you that I look forward to dinner because you will be there, which is absurd because I spent most of my life treating dinner as an obligation to be endured, and now I notice when you are late.”

Augusta’s eyes burned suddenly. Ronan did not seem to notice, or perhaps he noticed and had decided not to stop.

“You ask me questions I do not want to answer, and you argue when I give you instructions, and you tell me when you think I am wrong even when everyone else has learned to remain silent, but somehow none of that makes me want you to stop. It makes me want you near me more often, and I have been trying to understand when that happened.”

Augusta pressed her lips together. She knew if she spoke too soon, she might cry.

That would be intolerable.

Ronan’s gaze dropped briefly toward her mouth.

The memory of the previous night passed between them without either needing to mention it.

His voice changed when he continued.

“And I wanted to tell you that last night, when I had my hand around your waist and you looked at me the way you did, I wanted to kiss you so badly that I forgot why I had touched you in the first place.”

Augusta’s heart stumbled.

Ronan stepped closer again, and now there was scarcely more than an arm’s length between them.

“I wanted to kiss you then,” he said, and for the first time his gaze remained on her mouth instead of returning immediately to her eyes. “I wanted to kiss you when you came downstairs tonight, and I wanted to kiss you during that damned dance when you looked disappointed because I could not tell you something every other man in the room had apparently managed to notice.”

Augusta’s pulse thundered.

“And I want to kiss you now.”

She forgot how to breathe.

The garden, the ballroom, the music somewhere behind them, even the faint fear that had sent her spinning around a moment before seemed to disappear beneath the weight of those words.

“Then why are you standing all the way over there?” Augusta asked before her courage could abandon her.