Dragon Age One Shots

Regency Cullen 16

He finds her in the gardens, her legs demurred to the side as she sits upon the stone bench beside a low line of shrubbery. The sides of her bonnet hide away her warm cheeks as she thumbs through a book, but he's taken in by her nose and the profile of a smile curling up her glistening lips.

He can't do this.

Before Cullen can take a step to flee for the sea, Gwen glances up from her book and the smile deepens. Cullen sweeps the top hat off his head at the lady's presence. His long curly hair knotted back by a single ribbon of navy blue, trembles in the breeze. There's a chill creeping off the ocean that Cullen cursed for three weeks. Now, it blows the scent of jasmine and the brush of her curled ebony hair towards him.

Gwen wraps a hand to her head, holding the bonnet in place as she smiles, "Good evening."

"To you as well, my Lady," he smiles at the beautiful woman waiting for him. Slowly, her eyes dart to the other addition to their meeting whom James found for him. "Mrs. Wynne," Cullen bobs his head to the widow with a pile of needlecraft in her lap. She faces away from the pair on the other side of the shrubbery, but her hard eyes drift over the stumbling man clinging to his cane for life.

"Aren't you rather old to require a chaperone?" she sniffs, clearly unimpressed with his need to stick to the rules.

"I assure you, I have no intentions to..." Cullen begins, but Mrs. Wynne waves him off.

"Do as you like. As long as I have daylight, I don't mind." And with that, she resumes her embroidery, her yellowed teeth chewing a piece of thread in half.

Cullen walks towards the lovely woman seated before him and asks, "May I?" The smile and nod warm his heart and he eases onto the bench beside her. If he were in his study or in a parlor surrounded by men, Cullen would lean back, stretch his leg out for comfort, and groan. But he's on edge, his back straighter than a mast as he fumbles with his hat.

"My lady..." he begins, the small talk fading as she swivels to him.

A single eyebrow perks up, Gwen asking, "My lord?"

"Your family," he gasps out, clinging to the first in five topics James insist he broach. It is clear in an instant that he choose poorly, as Gwen shifts away to stare at the garden.

"What of them?"

"Do you..." Cullen shifts on his seat, wishing he hadn't worn the pinching cravat for this. "Do you write to them often?"

"No," her bonnet shakes in a hard negative and a sigh raises her shoulders. "My mother died when I was a child, and my father passed a few years back."

Oh. And he pulled that from her on their first meeting. Stupid! "I'm so sorry for..." For bumbling into a traumatic topic without recourse. In castigating himself, Cullen's tongue runs away with him. "So that must be why you're a governess instead."

Her green eyes narrow, her head swiveling fast to his, "Instead of what?"

"Married," he tries to wave a hand around to emphasize this entire charade. A single snort comes from their silent chaperone, but her head's bent down into the needlework as if she's paying no heed to his crashing.

Gwen stretches her neck, her body twisting further from his. "My father would have allowed never done such a thing. He'd have lost too great an asset."

For her kindness? Her wit? Possibly her cooking skills, not that a future Duchess would be required to know as such. And there you go putting the cart five leagues before the horse.

Silence falls between them, the awkward kind that feels of sandpaper rubbed over your body. Gwen stares straight ahead while Cullen routinely fumbles with his hat. How did this go so wrong so quickly? It was a calm breeze to speak to her when she was the Governess, when propriety and expectations didn't weigh upon his tongue like a lead weight.