8. Whats in a Name #2
“All right,” Gabriel said after letting Miles marinate in the critique for a full minute. He patted Miles’s knee. “We’ve indulged my method. I feel fantastic. Let’s indulge yours. Where is the pen? What is The Plan?”
Miles looked at him skeptically. “Really? You want to hear the plan?”
“I am practically trembling with anticipation,” Gabriel lied, fluttering his eyelashes. “Give me the bullet points, Beauchamp. Structure my chaos.”
Miles cleared his throat, sitting up straighter, his equilibrium restored by the invitation to lecture.
“Right. Well. First, the Bureau of Noble Appellations. We go tomorrow morning. We file the petition for the name change. It’s imperative we get ‘Goldmar’ off your legal identity before any more callously addressed missives turn up at our door and you end up burning the inn down in retaliation. ”
“Agreed,” Gabriel said. “And then?”
“Then... the house.” Miles hesitated, gauging Gabriel’s reaction. “You stood your ground today. The manor seemed... subdued after you confronted the apparition. Cowed, even. I propose we use this lull to our advantage.”
Ugh, no. “Yes?”
“We need to clear the bodies,” Miles said softly.
“We can’t have potential heirs viewing a property that smells of six-month-old decay.
And we need to start the inventory to get ready for the transfer.
We’ll stick to the less sensitive areas, the main floors.
Avoid the attic and the... lower level for now. ”
Gabriel looked at his hands. He wanted to never set foot in that place again. He wanted to burn it to the ground and dance on the ashes. But he also wanted to find whatever hoard Madaze had hidden away so he could buy his freedom and bury the past under a mountain of gold.
He was split down the middle, half terrified boy wanting to hide under the covers, half greedy, vindictive survivor who wanted to take everything Madaze had owned and spend it on shoes.
“Fine.” Gabriel grabbed a pillow and hugged it to his chest. “We go back. But we enter with aggressive confidence. If a door slams, I’m kicking it off its hinges.
If a ghost wails, I’m critiquing its pitch.
We are stripping the copper pipes out of the walls if we have to, Miles.
I want everything that isn’t nailed down, and then I want the nails, too. ”
Miles smiled, a relieved, fond thing that made the corners of his eyes crinkle.
“Absolute mayhem. Of course. I wouldn’t expect anything less.
But first, the name change, which will require significantly less mayhem.
What name will you choose? For the title, I mean. You can’t call yourself ‘Not-Goldmar.’”
Gabriel blinked. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. In his mind, the title and everything associated with it was just a problem to be solved, a nightmare to be escaped. The idea of naming it felt oddly...permanent.
“I haven’t the foggiest,” he admitted.
“Well, we need something,” Miles said.
“Lord... Disaster?” Gabriel suggested. “Baron Bad-decisions?”
Miles snorted. “Tempting, but the clerk at the Bureau of Noble Appellations likely has no sense of humor.”
“Fine. Lord Beauchamp.”
The syllable tasted like sanctuary. Beauchamp. It wasn’t just a label; it was a fortress, erasing the bloodstain of Goldmar with something solid and kind. For a second, he just basked in the warmth of belonging to someone who didn’t want to break him.
Then, his face felt suddenly, humiliatingly hot.
He wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole.
He’d just casually appropriated Miles’s family name like a desperate debutante doodling in a diary.
They weren’t married. He’d just laid his heart’s rawest hope on the pillow between them, assuming a right he didn’t have.
He flinched, waiting for the polite rejection .
“My love. I’m sorry, but we can’t.” The words were an immediate, unyielding wall. Of course. How utterly presumptuous of him.
Miles missed Gabriel’s recoil, launching into a rushed explanation, his professor-voice tight.
“The Separation Decrees. A noble house taking the name of a Guild-registered practitioner’s family?
It screams ‘illegal union.’ We’d have clerks from the Bureau sniffing around us before breakfast. No, it has to be new. Something completely disconnected.”
Fuck. The Decrees. He hadn’t even considered what all this mess meant for….
But Miles clearly had.
Miles hadn’t just dismissed the name; he’d had the counterargument immediately to hand. Which meant Miles had already run the calculations. He’d already walked down that aisle in his head, saw the dead end of the Separation Decrees, and hit the same brick wall Gabriel just crashed into.
A sickening mix of shame and twisted longing soured Gabriel’s gut.
He’d unthinkingly, flippantly offered Miles a future that Miles had obviously already been thinking about, and Miles had been forced to hand it back.
They both wanted the same thing—to be legally, publicly bound—and this accursed title made it a crime.
He wanted to violently disintegrate. Leave it to him to take a perfectly good post-coital glow and drown it in reckless, clumsy sentiment. He’d barely caught his breath before ruining the peace with his lack of filter and insurmountable baggage.
Miles stopped. The controlled neutrality of his explanation died as he looked down at Gabriel’s face. He seemed to realize, too late, that his logic had sounded like a door slamming shut.
“Gabby…” His voice softened.
Gabriel rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling shadows. He wanted to burn the Goldmar name. He wanted to bury Madaze’s legacy so deep the worms wouldn’t find it.
Gabriel inhaled slowly in the awkward silence, forcing the air past the tightness in his chest.
Never mind. It would all be a moot point once he gave up the title. He’d make it up to Miles for his verbal fumbling once the barriers had been cleared .
“It needs to be something that sounds permanent but signifies that I am leaving.” Gabriel feebly tried to get them back on track. “Something that sounds noble to the ear but is actually a private joke.”
“What about ‘Phoenix’?” Miles offered.
Bless the man for letting the misstep go. He’d make it up to Miles. He would. The bedrock of who they were to each other was kindness and forgiveness. He still cursed himself for sprinkling vinegar over their sweet dreams for their future, but they would make it right in the end.
“Too dramatic. I’m not rising from ashes; I’m stepping out of a cage.”
“Lord... Freeman?”
“Sounds like a peasant revolt leader. No.” Gabriel closed his eyes, thinking of the manor, and its terrible legacy and the best way to erase it and replace it with something more worthy.
He had no desire to lead the damned place, but he knew out in Rookgate’s countryside district and in its shipyards were decent people who knew nothing about nor cared anything for the Goldmar legacy.
They just wanted to live their lives, like he did.
They deserved a fresh start too. Probably. Maybe.
Actually, maybe quite a lot of them were bastards who deserved a kick in the ass, but who was he to judge?
Gabriel’s mind tumbled words over and over, crunching the syllables between his mental teeth.
He needed a name that served both the people of Rookgate district and his own need to vent his bile.
Something that followed the rules while simultaneously sliding a dagger between the ribs of the Bureau of Noble Appellations.
The sting of Miles’s rejection of Beauchamp—logical, kind, and utterly devastating—still throbbed in his chest. We can’t. The Separation Decrees were a wall they couldn’t climb.
But Gabriel had spent his entire life learning that walls had cracks, and if you couldn’t climb them, you burrowed under them.
He rolled the name around again. Beauchamp. Old language. High diction.
Beau. Beautiful. Fair.
Champ. Meadow. Field.
Gabriel’s mouth curved. It was wicked. It was petty. It was absolutely perfect.
“Fairfield,” Gabriel said into the quiet, testing the weight of it.
Miles shifted beside him. He blinked, and his expression sharpened .
“Fairfield?” Miles repeated, frowning slightly as he analyzed the phonetics.
“Lord Fairfield. Hmm.” He tapped a finger against his chin.
“It’s... functional. A bit pastoral, perhaps.
It lacks the aggressive syllabic weight of ‘Goldmar,’ which is certainly an improvement, but it’s remarkably bland.
It sounds like sheep breeding and sensible crop rotation. ”
Gabriel bit the inside of his cheek, but a snort escaped him. Then another.
“It’s respectable,” Miles continued, warming to the critique, completely oblivious.
“And innocuous. The clerks at the registry won’t blink twice.
It suggests stability. Blandness is a tactical advantage when one is trying to disappear from the public eye.
Yes, I suppose ‘Lord Fairfield’ is a sensible, if uninspired, choice. ”
Gabriel dissolved. He couldn’t help it. The laughter bubbled up from his belly, shaking the mattress, a genuine, wheezing mirth that wiped away the last lingering sourness of his earlier embarrassment.
Miles propped himself up on one elbow. “I don’t see what’s so amusing. You asked for a name. I am evaluating the name. Is there a hidden joke about sheep I’m missing?”
“Oh, Miles,” Gabriel gasped, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “You brilliant, oblivious man. Use that expensive education of yours. Translate it.”
Miles stared at him. “Translate... Fairfield?”
“To the Old Tongue,” Gabriel prompted, grinning like a cat who’d just knocked the cream pitcher off the table. “Go on.”
Miles narrowed his eyes.
He froze.
His mouth opened, then snapped shut. He looked at Gabriel, his eyes widening.
“Beauchamp,” Miles whispered.
“Fairfield,” Gabriel corrected, his voice dropping to a purr. “See? Perfectly legal. Entirely respectable. Just a bland little name for a bland little lord.”
Miles sat up fully, the sheets pooling around his waist. “You... you can’t simply translate my surname and sneak it onto the patent of nobility.”
“Watch me,” Gabriel said, the laughter fading into a fierce, simmering satisfaction. “The Crown says I can’t have you. They say Lord Goldmar cannot bind himself to a mage. They want to dictate what name I carry. ”
He reached out, tracing the line of Miles’s jaw, enjoying the roughness of the stubble there.
“I hate the title, Miles. You know I do. I want to shed it like a snake sheds a skin that’s become too tight.
I want to sell the house, pay the debt, and run back to Briarleigh so fast I leave scorch marks on the road.
” Gabriel’s thumb brushed over Miles’s lips.
“But as long as I am forced to wear this wretched nobility, even if it’s only for the weeks it takes to dismantle it, I will not let them tell us who we are. ”
Miles stayed very still, his gaze intensifying, turning dark and focused.
“If I cannot take your name openly because of their laws,” Gabriel leaned in close, “then I will steal it for the registry. I’ll sign every official document, every deed, every renounceable claim as Lord Fairfield.
I want every crusty bureaucrat in the Scriptor’s Ward to call me by your name, and none of them will ever know. ”
Miles let out a long, ragged breath. The shock on his face melted into something softer.
“That is,” Miles said, his voice thick, “incredibly subversive.”
“I thought you’d like it.” Gabriel smirked, feeling the tension in his own chest finally unspool. “For a man who follows the rules, you do have a certain appreciation for malicious compliance.”
“It’s not just compliance,” Miles said. He took Gabriel’s hand, pressing a kiss to the pulse at his wrist, his eyes never leaving Gabriel’s. “It’s defiance. It’s writing our story in the margins of their ledger in invisible ink.”
“Exactly.” Gabriel relaxed into the pillows, feeling lighter than he had since the messenger arrived. “So? Lord Fairfield of Rookgate. Do we bear it?”
“We bear it,” Miles agreed. He pulled Gabriel’s hand down to rest over his heart, the beat strong and steady beneath the warm skin. “And frankly, the thought of Palthor addressing you by my name, however translated, does things to me that are... arguably unprofessional.”
A distinct, heavy tightness coiled in his groin, different from the desperate need of earlier. This wasn’t about forgetting. This was about remembering who they were. “Oh? Do tell.”
“It makes me want to file a very different sort of petition,” Miles murmured, moving over him, his weight a heavy, grounding blanket much better than the wool one.
“It makes me want to ensure that the Lord Fairfield is thoroughly, comprehensively claimed. Prior to any bureaucratic stamping, of course. ”
Gabriel hooked his leg over Miles’s hip, pulling him down until their chests brushed. “I think that sounds like a distinct administrative necessity. We wouldn’t want any confusion about ownership.”
“None whatsoever,” Miles murmured against his lips.
The kiss was slow, devoid of the frantic panic that had driven them earlier.
It tasted of forgiveness and conspiracy, of a secret shared in the dark.
Gabriel melted into it, his hands sliding into Miles’s hair to deepen the contact.
There were still monsters in the attic and wolves in velvet coats waiting for them in the morning, but tonight, in the quiet rebellion of a borrowed name, they had won.