CHAPTER 9
The interviews were a disaster.
Not because the candidates were incompetent, Clara had somehow found the six most qualified servants in Sussex.
No, they were a disaster because Gabriel couldn't focus on anything except the way Clara's tongue darted out to wet her lips when she was concentrating, or how she tucked that one rebellious strand of hair behind her ear every few minutes, or the way her neck curved when she bent to make notes.
Focus, you degenerate, he commanded himself, shifting in his chair for the dozenth time. You're supposed to be evaluating staff, not fantasizing about your housekeeper.
Temporary housekeeper. Temporary everything. She'd be gone in spring, and he'd be alone again, which was what he desired.
Wasn't it?
"Your Grace?" The candidate, a housemaid whose name Gabriel had already forgotten, was looking at him expectantly.
"Yes. Fine. Whatever Miss Whitfield decides."
Clara shot him a look that suggested she knew exactly where his mind had been. "Perhaps His Grace has a question for you, Mary?"
"Can you work without uttering a word?” Gabriel asked.
"I... yes, Your Grace?"
“Splendid. Can you clean without humming, singing, whistling, or any other form of musical expression?"
"Yes, Your Grace."
"Can you pretend I don't exist?"
Mary looked desperately at Clara, who sighed. "His Grace values efficiency and discretion."
"I can be discreet, miss."
"Excellent," Clara said warmly. “We shall convey our decision to you by tomorrow.”
After Mary left, Clara turned to Gabriel. "You're being impossible."
"I'm being practical."
"You're being terrifying."
"Exactly. Terrified servants are quiet servants."
"That's horrible."
"That's experience."
Clara stood, pacing to the window, and Gabriel absolutely did not watch the way her hips moved under her gray dress. "We need these people, Gabriel."
"We don't need anyone."
"You need to appear functional."
She turned to face him, backlit by the afternoon sun, and Gabriel's mouth went dry. The light turned her hair to gold, outlining her figure in ways that gray wool shouldn't allow to do so.
"Next candidate," he said roughly.
The footman candidate was tall, young, and handsome in that bland way that made Gabriel instantly dislike him. Especially when he smiled at Clara.
"Thomas Winters, Your Grace, Miss Whitfield." He bowed perfectly, the wretch.
"Mr. Winters," Clara said, returning his smile. "Your references are impressive."
"Thank you, miss. I pride myself on excellence."
I'll pride myself on throwing you out a window if you keep looking at her in that manner…Gabriel thought viciously.
"Tell us about your previous position," Clara said, leaning forward with interest.
Thomas launched into a story about his time at some earl's estate, and Gabriel watched Clara listen with apparent fascination. She laughed at something Thomas said…laughed...and Gabriel's hands clenched on his chair arms.
"You're dismissed," he said abruptly.
Both Clara and Thomas looked at him in surprise.
"Your Grace?" Thomas said.
"Dismissed. Leave now."
"Gabriel!" Clara protested.
"His voice is irritating."
"His voice is perfectly normal!"
"It's too... cheerful."
Thomas looked between them, confusion evident. "Should I…"
"You should leave," Gabriel said coldly. "Now."
After the bewildered footman left, Clara rounded on Gabriel. “Whatever is the matter with you?”
“I am afraid I entertained a pronounced antipathy toward his person.”
“You do not have a liking for many people.”
"I especially didn't like him."
"Why?"
Because he looked at you. Because you smiled at him. Because I wanted to tear his throat out for existing in the same room as you.
"His shoes were too shiny," Gabriel said.
"His shoes?"
"Suspiciously shiny. Can't trust a man with shoes that shiny."
"That's the most ridiculous thing you've ever said."
"I've said many ridiculous things. That doesn't even rank in the top ten."
"Name one thing more ridiculous."
"Tuesday's cancellation."
"That was Edmund's example."
"Fine. The time I said I didn't need you."
The words hung between them, heavier than Gabriel had intended.
Clara's breath caught. "Gabriel…"
"Next candidate."
"That was the last one for today."
"Excellent!"
"We need to discuss who we're hiring."
"You decide."
"You just dismissed the best footman candidate because of his shoes!"
"Hire someone else."
"Gabriel…"
He stood abruptly, needing distance before he did something unwise like pull her into his lap and show her exactly why Thomas Winters's cheerful voice made him want to commit violence.
"I'll be in the garden," he said.
"It's freezing."
"Good. Maybe it will improve my temperament."
"Your temperament is beyond improvement."
"Then why are you trying?"
"Because…" She stopped, frustration evident. "Because someone has to."
"Why you?"
"Because I'm the only one senseless enough to try!"
"You're not senseless"
"I'm here, aren't I? Trying to civilize a man who just rejected a perfectly qualified footman because his shoes were too shiny?"
"Would you prefer I tell you the real reason?"
"Yes!"
Gabriel moved closer, backing her against the window. Not touching…never touching…but close enough that she had to tilt her head back to maintain eye contact.
"I dismissed him," he said quietly, dangerously, "because he looked at you."
"Everyone looks at me. It's how vision works."
"He looked at you the way I'm not allowed to look at you."
Clara's breath hitched. "How... how do you look at me?"
Like you're water and I'm dying of thirst. Like you're sunlight after years of darkness. Like I want to map every inch of your skin with my mouth.
"Like someone I can't have," he said instead.
"Gabriel…"
"Hire whoever you wish," he said, stepping back. "Except Thomas Winters and his suspicious shoes."
He left before she could respond, before the look in her eyes could break his resolve, before he could give in to the desperate need to taste her lips just once.
Just once, he thought, striding toward the garden. As if once would ever be enough.
Their rose…because he couldn't think of it any other way had apparently decided that winter was merely a suggestion. Despite the frost, despite the general death surrounding it, the cursed thing was blooming with enthusiasm that bordered on aggressive.
Gabriel stood before it, hands shoved in his pockets, glaring at the pink and gold blooms as if they'd personally offended him.
"Showing off, are we?" he asked the rose. "Look at me, thriving against all odds, proof that beautiful things can survive neglect and time and terrible circumstances?"
The rose, obviously, didn't respond.
"She's going to leave," he told it. "In spring. She'll fix me just enough to satisfy Aunt Agatha's requirements, and then she'll go find some position somewhere far away, and I'll be alone again. Which is what I want. What I've always wanted."
The wind rustled through the garden, making the rose bob as if disagreeing.
"Don't look at me like that. You're a plant. You don't have opinions."
“Conversing with roses now, are you?” Clara’s voice floated to him from behind, light and steady but threaded with something he couldn’t quite name. “I had always understood that sort of behaviour to be the first sign of madness.”
“The first sign,” Gabriel replied without turning, “was allowing you across my threshold.”
“No,” she said, her tone softening. “The first sign was you catching me when I fell.”
“I ought to have let you strike the ground.”
“No,” she murmured, stepping closer, “you oughtn’t.”
She came to stand beside him then, close enough that he could feel the faint warmth of her presence and yet, deliberately, she did not touch him.
“It’s absurd,” Clara said at last, her gaze fixed on the stubborn little rose before them. “A bloom in winter, defying frost and reason alike.”
“Roses,” Gabriel said quietly, “are notoriously stubborn.”
“Must be why we chose it.”
“We were children,” he answered, a trace of old bitterness creeping in. “We chose nothing. We simply grafted two ill-matched things together and prayed it would take.”
Her mouth curved faintly. “Seems to have done.”
“Has it?”
Clara turned her face to him then, and for an instant her eyes were as sharp as pins. “Are we still speaking of the rose?”
“What else could we be speaking of?”
“Us.”
“There is no us.”
“No,” she agreed after a pause, her voice low, almost lost to the garden. “There isn’t.”
They stood in silence, the impossible rose holding itself upright in the dying light as though it might outlast the season by sheer will alone.
“I have chosen Mary to be in your services.” Mary,” Clara said at last, the words falling like pebbles into still water. “And Susan for the carriage, and young Peter for the footman’s post.”
“Not Thomas?”
“Not Thomas.”
“Very well. His shoes were absolutely ridiculous.”
“His shoes were perfectly respectable.”
“His shoes were an outrage to leather and good sense.”
“You’re absurd.”
“You’re beautiful.”
The words slipped free before Gabriel had the chance to cage them. Beside him Clara went very still, her breath drawing in as though she’d been struck.
“I beg your pardon,” he said quickly, the formality of the phrase doing little to steady him. “That was improper.”
“Yes.”
“Contrary to the rules.”
“Yes.”
“I ought not to have spoken.”
“Probably not.”
“But it remains true.”
“Gabriel…”
“You are,” he pressed on, his voice roughened, “beautiful. Not in the vulgar way of the Season’s darlings with their rehearsed smiles and symmetrical curls.
You are beautiful…” He faltered, then gestured toward the rose.
“Like that. Unexpected. Defiant. Impossible to ignore even when the world around you has gone cold.”
“You mustn’t speak so.”
“I know.”
“It makes everything more difficult.”
“I am aware.”
“I’m leaving when the spring comes.”
“Indeed.”
“Then why…”