CHAPTER 9 #2
“Because I’m selfish,” he said, at last turning to face her fully.
The fading light caught the planes of his face, the tension in his jaw.
“Because I have spent eight years attempting to erase you and failed miserably. Because you stumbled back into my life bordering on death’s door, and wearing boots that were not yours, and somehow managed to make me feel alive again for the first time since coming home from the war…
because I know you will leave and I know I cannot claim you, but I cannot stop wanting you nonetheless. ”
Clara's eyes were bright with what might have been tears. "This isn't fair."
"Nothing about this is fair."
"I can't stay."
"I'm not asking you to."
"Then what are you asking?"
Gabriel considered. What was he asking? For time to stop? For class differences to disappear? For his scars to vanish and his soul to relieve himself from the pain he lived each day?
"Nothing," he said finally. "I'm asking for nothing."
“You do not speak the truth.”
"Always."
She reached up, her fingers hovering near his scarred cheek, not quite touching. "What if I want to give you something anyway?"
"Clara…"
"One month," she said. "We have one month to make you functional. After that, I leave. But for one month..."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying the rules are already broken. We've touched, we've almost kissed, and we’ve said things we shouldn't. What's the point of pretending otherwise?"
"The point is protecting you. Your reputation…"
"Is already ruined. The point is protecting you."
"From what?"
"From hoping for things that can't happen."
Gabriel laughed, bitter and short. "Too late for that."
“Then what precisely are we doing?” Clara demanded softly, her breath clouding in the frigid air. “This wretched dance…circling each other as if we’re strangers, pretending not to feel what we both so clearly do?”
“Being sensible,” Gabriel said, though the words felt hollow the moment they left his mouth.
She gave a low, incredulous laugh. “When, exactly, have either of us been accused of sensibility?”
He might have answered, but her tone, half teasing, half pleading, robbed him of wit. She was right, of course. Neither of them had ever been sensible about anything, least of all each other.
“What is it exactly that you want? you want, Clara?” he asked at last, his voice roughened by the weight of too many unsaid things.
She hesitated, as though speaking her desire aloud might conjure something dangerous.
“I want...” She drew a steadying breath.
“I want one month where we stop pretending. One month where we are simply Gabriel and Clara, not duke and housekeeper, not master and servant…just ourselves. One month of honesty before I have to leave and we never see each other again.”
“That sounds remarkably like torture.”
“It sounds like freedom.”
He huffed a quiet laugh that wasn’t amusement. “It amounts to much the same thing, upon occasion.”
She smiled then, small and sad and breathtaking. “Not mutually exclusive, I suppose?”
“Never.”
The wind stirred again, carrying a spray of snow that sparkled briefly in the lantern light before melting away. Clara shivered, her thin shawl was no match for the cold. Without hesitation, Gabriel opened his coat and drew her against him, wrapping the heavy wool around them both.
“This is certainly against the rules,” she murmured, her voice muffled against his chest.
“Feels like a lifetime ago.”
Her laughter was soft against him. “Time moves strangely around you.”
“Time moves strangely around us.”
She tipped her head back, her gaze searching his face, every flicker of emotion laid bare between them. “One month, Gabriel. Can we have that?”
He should have said refused, and stepped away and rebuild his barriers to protect what was left of his dignity… and hers. But then she looked at him the way she had when they were young, when hope had still been a luxury they could afford, and the word slipped from him before reason could catch it.
“One month,” he said quietly.
“No more rules?”
“No more rules.”
“We’ll regret it.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“It will hurt when I leave.”
“Unbearably.”
“Then why…”
He kissed her.
The world seemed to tilt and fall away. It wasn’t a careful or polite kiss; it was everything they had denied themselves for years, had finally come to life.
The press of his mouth against hers was fierce, unrestrained, the culmination of every stolen glance and silenced heartbeat.
Clara gasped softly, then met him with equal urgency, her fingers curling into his shirt as though she might anchor herself to him.
She tasted of tea and winter air, of defiance and home. His hand slid into her hair, tangling in the soft strands, while the other traced the curve of her back, drawing her closer until there was no space left between them, no distance, no titles, no rules. Only them.
This, Gabriel thought dazedly, was what he had been missing all along. This exquisite conviction possessed him, and by it, the rest of his days were instantly cast into the shade.
When at last they broke apart, both were breathless. Clara’s lips were flushed, her eyes wide and dark with the kind of longing that made his pulse stutter.
“Well,” she said, her voice unsteady but threaded with reluctant humor. “That was... reckless.”
Gabriel managed a faint smile. “I prefer the term inevitable.”
He kissed her again, softer this time, savoring the way she melted against him, the little sound she made when he nipped at her lower lip.
"Gabriel," she gasped. "We're in the garden."
"So?"
"Anyone could see."
"Everyone's gone home. It's just us."
"Still…"
He kissed her neck first…slowly, deliberately, as though reacquainting himself with the idea of touch. His lips brushed that spot just beneath her ear, the one that had always undone her. Clara shivered, her breath catching in the cold air that suddenly felt too thin.
“One month, you said,” he murmured against her skin.
“Yes, but…oh.” Her protest dissolved into a breathless sound as his tongue traced a languid path along her throat. “That’s not fair.”
“Nothing about this is fair,” he said, voice low, threaded with hunger.
“Gabriel…”
“Say my name again.”
“Gabriel.”
“Again.”
“Gabriel,” she whispered, then again, softer, “Gabriel, Gabriel.” Each repetition was interrupted by a kiss…his temple, the rough line of his jaw, the faint scar on his cheek, the corner of his mouth.
He caught her face between his hands, eyes dark. “Is that enough?”
“Never enough.”
“You possess an insatiable desire.”
“When it comes to you? Entirely.”
She drew back just enough to see him clearly, their breath mingling in the winter air. “What are we doing?”
‘I believe we are engaging in the art of kissing passionately.”
“I meant in a larger, more consequential fashion.”
“Living, Clara," he declared simply. "For one month, we shall truly live.”
“And thereafter, when our time is up?”
“Thereafter holds no claim upon us. There is only this moment.”
But he was smiling…a true, unguarded smile that softened everything hard about him. Clara reached up, fingertips grazing his lips as if she scarcely believed it.
“I’ve missed that,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Your smile.
“This is your doing.”
“My doing?”
“You make me forget to be properly miserable.”
“How terribly inconsiderate of me.”
“Dreadfully so. I have an image to maintain.”
“As a brooding recluse?”
“As a terrifying duke who does not, under any circumstances, smile at his housekeeper.”
“Certainly doesn’t kiss her in the garden.”
“Absolutely not. That would be scandalous.”
“Shocking, even.”
“A great mercy it is not to be so,” he concurred.
“Indeed, a most fortunate circumstance,” she agreed, and then bestowed a tender and deliberate kiss upon him, until all other thoughts and concerns were utterly banished from their minds.
By the time they found themselves back inside, enveloped by the warmth of the closed doors, Clara’s lips were swollen and her hair had fallen loose and swirled down over her shoulders.
Gabriel felt both a sense of triumph and defeat as he looked into her eyes.
Clara broke the silence suddenly.
“Dinner? Shall I commence preparations?”
‘I have no appetite.”
“This is no surprise as you never do…”
“Ah! But I do have an appetite…But it is not food that I desire.”
Clara froze, eyes widening. “Gabriel…”
“One month,” he reminded her softly. “We agreed.”
“One month of honesty. Not one month of... that.”
“That?” he echoed, lips twitching.
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“I truly don’t.”
“Private concerns between a man and woman.”
Gabriel smiled as he innocently asked.
“Private concerns?”
A single month of truthfulness, of comporting ourselves with perfect naturalness, and tender dalliance. Yet the line must be drawn there.”
“And the reason being
“Because I’m not a fallen woman, regardless of what the village tale bearers whisper. And I’d prefer to keep it that way.”
“Even for me?”
“Especially for you.”
That silenced him. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” She said quietly, “that when I leave, I want to know this was real because we chose it, not because desire blurred the edges. I want to leave knowing what we had wasn’t ruined by wanting more.”
Her hand rose, tracing the curve of his jaw with something achingly tender. “Can that be enough? For one month?”
No, he thought. It would never be enough.
“Yes,” he said.
She smiled faintly. “You do not speak the truth…”
“Always.”
Later that evening, the library had become a trap of its own making.
Gabriel sat with a book open in his lap, eyes scanning the page without absorbing a single word.
How could he, when Clara sat across from him in the firelight, her ankles crossed neatly, her head bent to her novel, every now and then wetting her lips in that unconscious way that made him want to tear propriety into shreds?