CHAPTER 7 #2
They stood there, negotiating their rules across the invisible barrier, both pretending this was sensible and normal and not at all like standing on the edge of that cliff Clara had mentioned.
"“Are there any more arrangements?” Clara asked.
"Yes. No climbing ladders."
“Poppycock!”
“You were within a hair's breadth of expiring.”
"The ladder broke!"
"Because you were climbing it."
"That's not how physics works."
"That's exactly how physics works. Force plus deteriorating wood equals disaster."
"Your ladder was a disaster before I got near it."
"Most things in my life are."
The honesty of it caught them both off guard. Gabriel looked surprised at his own words, and Clara didn't know how to respond without breaking their newly established rules.
"I should go," she said finally. "Check on... something. Elsewhere."
"Yes. Very well. Elsewhere is good."
“Pray excuse me, as I must attend to the making of our supper.”
“I fear I shall have no stomach for it.”
"You will."
"I won't."
"You will, because Mrs. Potter will hear if you don't, and she'll come back and lecture you."
Another silence. The sun was setting outside, painting the clean morning room in shades of gold and shadow. Gabriel looked almost soft in this light, his scar less prominent, his expression less guarded.
"Clara?"
“Yes?”
“I am grateful for the room…for you staying here…”
“You pay me to remain…I am merely fulfilling the terms of our agreement.”
She wanted to talk further but thought it wiser to refrain.
"Dinner will be ready in an hour," she said instead.
"I'll be in the library."
"Brooding?"
"Reading."
“It makes no difference,”
His mouth twitched. “As you wish…I shan’t touch a morsel.”
“It remains to be seen.”
She headed for the kitchen, pausing at the door. "Gabriel?"
"Yes?"
"The rose. Mrs. Potter said it's still blooming ,even in the middle of winter.”
"Impossible things do happen, apparently."
"Is that what we are? Impossible?"
He looked at her across the room, across their invisible barrier, across eight years of hurt and silence. "Yes."
It should have sounded final. It should have sounded like an ending.
Instead, it sounded like a beginning.
Clara nodded and left, heading for the kitchen where she would make something Gabriel would definitely eat, whether he admitted it or not.
Behind her, she heard him finally enter the morning room properly, sit at the piano, heard him begin to play, not a waltz this time, but something else.
Something that sounded like apology and hope and terrible fear all at once.
The music followed her through the house, filling the empty rooms with something that wasn't quite happiness but was closer than anything Ashbourne Hall had felt in years.
She began to cook, humming along to Gabriel's distant playing, Whilst she struggled to banish the recollection of the dance and the alarming proximity of his regard. She tried to hide the unsettling fervor of his voice when speaking her name, a tone that suggested both a blessing and a damnation.
She largely failed, but the soup she made was admirable, and when she brought it to the library later, she found Gabriel had eaten everything Mrs. Potter had brought, the empty plates stacked neatly on his desk did testify that his stomach was quite hollow.
Small victories, Clara thought. It was a small start the present time.
Later that evening, Clara found herself having difficulty to sleep.
This wasn't unusual as she had been struggling with her sleep since childhood.
Her mind had always seemed too busy with thoughts to properly rest. But tonight was different.
Tonight, her restlessness had a specific cause, and that cause was currently playing piano somewhere in the house, with the melancholic notes drifting through the walls like accusations.
She'd taken one of the servant's rooms on the third floor, far from Gabriel's suite as physically possible while remaining in the main house.
It was small but clean, with a narrow bed and a window that looked out over the gardens.
She could see their rose from here, a dark tangle against the wall, and she'd spent an embarrassing amount of time staring at it since she'd arrived.
The piano stopped abruptly, mid-phrase, as if the player had simply given up. Clara waited, counting her breaths, but the music didn't resume.
Go to sleep, she told herself firmly. Whatever he's doing is none of your concern.
Her feet, apparently, disagreed. She found herself padding down the stairs in her borrowed nightgown and wrapper, drawn by a concern she had no desire to examine too closely.
The house was different at night as all shadows and whispers, the portraits on the walls seemed to watch her pass with disapproving eyes.
You shouldn't be here, they seemed to say. You're the help now. Know your place.
But Clara had never been particularly good at knowing her place.
She found Gabriel in the music room, though 'found' suggested she'd been looking for him, which she absolutely hadn't been. He was sitting at the piano, not playing, just staring at the keys as if they held answers to questions he didn't know how to ask.
"Can't sleep?" she asked from the doorway.
He didn't startle, apparently, he was getting used to her appearances too. "Sleep is for people without regrets."
"Everyone has regrets."
"Not everyone has mine."
"No, they have their own. Regret isn't a competition, Gabriel."
"Isn't it?" He finally looked at her, and she wished he hadn't. In the moonlight, with his guard down, he looked devastated. "Because I'm fairly certain I'm winning."
"At regret?"
"At everything terrible."
Clara entered the room properly, her bare feet silent on the carpet. "You're being dramatic."
"I'm being honest."
She sat on the piano bench beside him, careful to maintain several inches of propriety between them though it wasn't enough. She could still feel the warmth radiating from his body, with the familiar smell of brandy and bitter herbs that seemed to cling to him.
"Play something," she said.
"I was playing."
"You were slaughtering innocent notes. Play something properly."
"I don't know anything proper."
"Then play something improper."
His hands hovered over the keys for a moment, then began a melody Clara failed to recognise. It was both beautiful and terrible, like watching something break in slow motion.
"What is that?" she asked.
"Something I wrote."
"You compose?"
"I arrange my nightmares into musical form. It's very therapeutic. Also completely useless."
"It's beautiful."
"It's noise."
"Beautiful noise."
“That is a most contradictory notion.”
“And you are a very walking contradiction.”
"That doesn't even make sense."
"You don't make sense. A duke who dismisses his staff. A soldier who hides from the world. A musician who calls his compositions noise."
"A beast who pretends to be a man."
Clara turned to look at him properly. "You're not a beast."
"The mirror suggests otherwise."
"Mirrors lie."
"Mirrors reflect."
He stopped playing. "You should go back to bed."
"So should you."
"I don't sleep."
"Ever?"
"Not well. Not for long. Not without..." He trailed off.
"Nightmares?"
"Memories. Which are worse than nightmares because they actually happened."
Clara wanted to touch him, to offer comfort, but their rules stood between them like a wall. "Tell me about them."
"Why?"
"Because sometimes speaking terrors aloud makes them smaller."
"These won't get smaller."
"Try anyway."
Gabriel was quiet for so long she thought he wouldn't answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was carefully neutral, as if he was reading from a report.
"There was a cavalry charge. June 18th, 1815. Waterloo. Perhaps you've heard of it."
"Gabriel…"
"We were supposed to break their lines. Simple plan. Charge, break, retreat, repeat. Except the mud was deeper than expected. The horses could not proceed and thus we were without defence.” We were sitting targets.
" His hands clenched on his thighs. "I watched men I'd served with get cut down like wheat. Boys…young boys…”
Clara did touch him then, she defied the rules as her hand covered his clenched fist.
"My commander's horse was shot and as a result was he was trapped beneath it. The French were advancing. I went back for him." Gabriel laughed bitterly. "Heroic, they said later and gave me a medal. But it wasn't heroism. I should have perished there.”
"But you didn't."
"No. Just my face." He touched his scar unconsciously. "Sabre cut. The French officer was probably aiming for my throat, but his horse slipped in the mud. Small mercies."
"That's not a small mercy. That's survival."
“That is good fortune, certainly.”
His ruined face reflected in the dark window as he looked around the room.
“I have a title I never wanted, an estate that's falling apart, a face that frightens children, and a soul that's..." He stopped.
"That's what?"
"Broken. Irreparably."
"Nothing is irreparable."
"Some things are."
"Name one."
"Death."
"That's not broken, that's ended. Different things."
"You and your…"
"Different things, yes. But I'm right." She squeezed his hand. "You're not broken, Gabriel. You're wounded. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Broken things can't heal. Wounded things can."
"I'm not healing."
"Because you're not allowing yourself."
"Because I don't deserve to."
"According to whom?"
"According to the men who lost their lives while I lived. According to the families who lost sons and husbands while I came home with nothing worse than a scarred face."
"That's not how it works."
"Isn't it?"
"No. Survival isn't a betrayal of the dead. It's a responsibility to live well enough for both of you."
"I'm not living well."
"No," Clara agreed. "You're not. You're barely living at all."
"Then what's the point?"
"The point is that you could. Live well, I mean. If you chose to."
"I don't know how anymore."
"Then learn."
"From whom?"
"From me."