CHAPTER 7 #3
The words hung between them, an offer and a challenge and something else, something tender that neither wanted to name.
"You?" Gabriel asked, and there was something almost like hope in his voice.
“I’m excellent at living,” Clara said, chin tilted in that infuriating, irresistible way of hers. “I’ve survived poverty, abandonment, stolen boots, and your employment. I daresay I am tolerably proficient in the matter.”
Gabriel’s mouth curved. “Those are all terrible things.”
“And yet,” she said, softly defiant, “I survived them.”
“Through sheer stubbornness.”
“A valid survival technique.”
“It’s not living well, though.”
“It’s living,” she countered, eyes glinting. “That’s the first step.”
The air between them felt thick, and too close.
Gabriel’s reply faltered somewhere behind his ribs as his gaze dropped, first to her lips, and then to the way her hand rested in his.
When had that happened? He didn’t remember reaching for her, only the sudden awareness of skin against skin.
Her hand was smaller, cooler, the faint tremor in her fingers betraying that she felt this too.
“This is breaking the rules,” he said quietly, his thumb brushing the edge of her knuckles before he could stop himself.
“Which rule?” Her voice was low, curious, like she wanted to hear him say it.
“No touching.”
“You’re correct.” But she didn’t move. If anything, her fingers tightened slightly around his, the faintest pressure that felt like a dare.
He should have pulled back. He knew that. He knew the danger of this, the peril of letting want bleed into something visible, but she was too close, and the scent of her faint floral soap was entirely overcoming his senses.
“We should stop,” he managed, though his thumb was still tracing circles over the soft skin of her wrist.
“We should,” she echoed…and yet her body leaned toward him in an inviting manner.
The fire snapped softly in the grate, the only sound in a room that had somehow become unbearably small.
Her pulse fluttered beneath his touch, rapid and alive, and Gabriel found himself staring at her mouth again seeing how her lower lip quivered slightly when she was fighting what she wanted to say.
“Clara?” he said, barely above a whisper.
“Yes?”
“I am truly pleased you are here.”
The words left him rough and unguarded, too full of meaning. Her eyes lifted to meet his, wide and luminous, and for a long, dizzying moment she didn’t speak. Then her lips parted, just enough for a shaky breath to escape.
The simple honesty of it made her chest tight. "Even though I'm a disaster who climbed your wall in stolen boots?"
"Especially because of that."
"That doesn't make sense."
"Nothing about this makes sense."
"No," Clara agreed. "It doesn't."
They sat there on the piano bench, hands linked, watching the moon travel across the sky through the tall windows. The house creaked around them, settling into itself, and somewhere in the walls, mice or possibly rats went about their nocturnal business.
"I should go back to bed," Clara said eventually.
"Yes."
"This is inappropriate."
"Wildly."
"We're going to regret this in the morning."
“I believe so.”
But still, neither moved. It was as if the night had created a bubble around them, a space where rules didn't apply and they could just be Clara and Gabriel, not employer and employee, not duke and commoner, just two damaged people finding comfort in each other's company.
"One more song," Clara said. "Then I'll go."
"Something happy?"
"Something real."
Gabriel positioned his hands on the keys and began to play. This time, Clara recognised the melody, it was an old folk song, something their mothers might have sung to them as children. Simple, sweet, completely at odds with the dark drama of their situation.
Without thinking, Clara began to hum along. Then, quietly, to sing:
"In the garden where roses grow wild, where the summer sun makes lovers mild, there I'll meet you when stars appear, and whisper secrets none shall hear..."
Gabriel's playing faltered. "You can sing."
"Don't sound so surprised."
"Earlier, you sounded like a cat being murdered."
“That was contrived.”
"Indeed?"
"To make you play."
He shook his head, but he was almost smiling. "You're intolerable."
Clara continued, her voice soft in the darkness.
"In the garden where time stands still, where the moonlight bends to lovers' will, there I'll hold you till break of day, and promise things I shouldn't say..."
Gabriel joined her on the last verse, his baritone rough but true.
"In the garden where roses die, where winter comes and lovers cry, there I'll find you in spring once more, and tend the love we planted before."
The last note faded into silence. They sat there, the echo of the song between them, both remembering different mothers, different times, when life had been simpler and gardens were just gardens, not metaphors for everything lost.
"Your mother had a beautiful voice," Gabriel said quietly.
"You remember."
"I remember everything about that time. It was the last period of my life when I was genuinely happy."
"That's not true."
"Isn't it?"
"You were happy at Eton. Your letters, before they stopped, were full of adventures."
"I was pretending."
"You were happy during that last summer. Before you left."
"I was saying goodbye."
"You didn't tell me that."
"I couldn't."
"But you knew?"
"I knew something was ending. I didn't know it was everything."
Clara extracted her hand from his carefully. "It wasn't everything."
"Wasn't it?"
"We're here now."
"Yes, in my crumbling estate, with you as my servant by contract, and I, a maimed hermit hardly suitable for public view. A wretched destiny, to be sure.
“It is barely the ending.”
“Nor is it the beginning…”
“Then, to what, then, are we condemned?”
Gabriel considered. "A middle. The messy, complicated middle where nothing is clear and everything hurts but somehow we keep going anyway."
"That's disheartening."
"That's life."
"Your life, maybe."
"As opposed to your life of stolen boots and desperation?"
"I prefer to think of it as borrowed boots and determination."
"You're impossible."
"We've established that on more than one occasion.”
"It bears repeating."
They lapsed into silence again, but it was comfortable now, like they'd cleared something between them, even if neither was quite sure what.
"Gabriel?"
"Mmm?"
"Tomorrow, I want to start on the gardens properly."
"They're frozen."
"I can still clear dead growth, plan for spring."
"There might not be a spring."
"There's always a spring."
"I meant for us. You. Here. This arrangement is temporary, remember?"
"Until spring. That was the agreement."
"And then?"
"Then I leave, and you go back to brooding alone in your dusty house."
"Sounds delightful."
"Doesn't it?"
They both knew they were lying, but sometimes lies were easier than admitting the truth, that spring would come too soon, that temporary was already feeling too permanent, that leaving was going to hurt in ways neither wanted to contemplate.
"I really should go," Clara said, standing this time.
Gabriel caught her wrist, gentle but firm. "Wait."
"Gabriel…"
"Thank you. For tonight. For... listening."
"You'd do the same for me."
"Would I?"
"You already have. That first night. You saved my life."
"That was basic human decency."
"From you? That's practically a miracle."
He almost smiled again. "Go to bed, Clara."
"Will you? Sleep, I mean?"
"I'll try."
"Goodnight, Gabriel."
She made it to the door before turning back. He was still sitting at the piano, silhouetted against the window, looking like a gothic novel's fondest dream.
"The song," she said. "Your mother and mine. They knew each other, didn't they? Before."
"They were friends. As children. Like us."
"What happened to them?"
"Life. Matrimony. Class divisions. The usual things that destroy friendships."
"But the song survived."
"Songs always survive. It's people who don't."
"We're surviving."
"Barely."
"Still counts."
She left then, before the conversation could circle back to dangerous territory. But as she climbed the stairs to her room, she could hear him playing again, their mothers' song, over and over, as if he was trying to remember something or forget something or possibly both.
In her narrow bed, Clara stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about Gabriel's hands on the keys, or the way his voice had sounded singing with hers, or the fact that in a few months, she'd have to leave.
Until spring, she reminded herself. That's all. Just until spring.
But spring, she was beginning to realise, was both too far away and far too close.