CHAPTER 15
"You're thinking so loudly that I can hear actual words forming in the air above your head, which is quite remarkable considering I'm not even looking at you, though I am intensely aware of every breath you take and the way your body tenses whenever you're about to say something you think might hurt me," Gabriel murmured against her shoulder, his voice rough with sleep and something else that made her stomach clench with want.
The morning dawned gray and oppressive, which seemed fitting given that Clara had spent the night lying rigid beside Gabriel, every nerve ending aware of his proximity while her mind catalogued all the reasons she needed to leave immediately before her rapidly deteriorating self-control shattered entirely.
She had been awake for hours, studying the ceiling with the intensity of someone memorising their last view of paradise before being cast into exile, which was essentially what awaited her in exactly two weeks when this impossible arrangement reached its inevitable conclusion.
"I wasn't aware that my thinking had achieved audible levels, though given the complexity of the situation we find ourselves in, perhaps it's not surprising that my mental processes have become somewhat externalized through sheer force of anxiety," Clara replied, trying to maintain some distance despite the fact that he had, as usual, wrapped himself around her during the night like ivy claiming a wall.
"Your anxiety is entirely justified given that we have precisely fourteen days remaining before you insist on leaving me to preserve some notion of propriety that becomes more meaningless with each passing hour, particularly when we're lying here pretending that we don't both want to abandon every last restraint and lose ourselves in each other completely. "
Clara turned to face him, which was a mistake because his morning stubble and disheveled hair made him look like temptation personified, especially combined with the way his white shirt had fallen open during the night to reveal the scars across his chest that she desperately wanted to map with her mouth.
"We've maintained this boundary for a reason, Gabriel, and that reason becomes more important as our time grows shorter, not less important, despite what our bodies might be demanding with increasingly violent insistence. "
"Our bodies are making entirely reasonable demands that we're denying for increasingly unreasonable reasons, particularly when you consider that I've already offered matrimony, escape to the continent, and various other solutions that you've rejected in favor of this masochistic exercise in self-denial that's driving us both to the brink of madness. "
"Your solutions all involve destroying your life in one way or another, which I refuse to be responsible for, regardless of how much I might want to throw caution to the wind and let you ruin yourself for my sake."
Gabriel rolled on top of her suddenly, bracing himself on his forearms so his weight didn't crush her, but the position put them in alignment that made her breath catch and her hands instinctively grasp his shoulders.
"What if I want to be ruined by you, Clara?
What if destruction at your hands sounds infinitely preferable to salvation without you? "
"That's the kind of dramatic declaration that sounds romantic in the moment but leads to a lifetime of regret when the passion fades and you're left with nothing but the ashes of what you sacrificed," she managed, though her voice came out embarrassingly breathy given the way he was looking at her, like she was water and he'd been wandering in a desert for years.
"You think this is just passion that will fade with time and distance?
You think what I feel for you is some temporary madness that will dissipate once you're gone and I can return to my comfortable misery?
" His hips pressed down slightly, whether intentionally or not she couldn't tell, but the effect was devastating to her already fragile control.
"This isn't passion, Clara, or rather it's not just passion, though God knows that's part of it, this need to touch you, taste you, claim you in every possible way until there's no question of who you belong to. "
"I don't belong to anyone," she protested, though her body was actively betraying her words by arching up against him in ways that made their position even more precarious.
"You belong to me the same way I belong to you, which is to say completely, irrevocably, and with a frightening disregard for the consequences of such belonging in a world that insists we must remain separated by class, circumstance, and society's bloody minded rules about who can love whom."
"Gabriel, we need to stop this before we do something that can't be undone, something that will make leaving even harder than it already is, which seems impossible given that the thought of walking away from you is already tearing me apart."
"Then don't walk away," he said, lowering his head until his lips were barely brushing hers, the almost-contact more arousing than a full kiss would have been.
"Stay with me, be my wife, let me give you everything I have, everything I am, which admittedly isn't much given my scars and moods and general unsuitability for human company, but it's yours if you wish it. "
"You know I can't accept that offer, no matter how desperately I might want to, because accepting would mean watching you lose everything that makes you who you are, your title, your home, your place in society such as it is."
"None of that makes me who I am, Clara. You make me who I am, or at least who I want to be, which is someone capable of more than just surviving behind these walls with my bitter memories and brandy for company."
Before she could respond, there was a knock at the door that made them spring apart like guilty teenagers, Clara scrambling to pull the covers up to her chin while Gabriel rolled away with a groan of frustration.
"Your Grace," Peter's voice came through the door, carefully neutral as always. "Lady Agatha's carriage has been spotted approaching the drive, and she appears to have brought additional guests."
"Of course she has, because apparently my aunt has decided that my torment isn't complete without an audience to witness it," Gabriel said, running his hands through his hair in a way that only made it more attractively disheveled.
"Tell me, Peter, does the additional party happen to include Miss Ashworth looking like a lamb being led to increasingly tedious slaughter? "
"I believe Miss Ashworth is among the party, yes, Your Grace, along with what appears to be Lord and Lady Ashworth and possibly some younger relations, though it's difficult to be certain from this distance."
Clara was already out of bed, grabbing her clothes with the efficiency of someone who'd been preparing for disaster since the moment she'd agreed to this arrangement. "They've brought her entire family? That suggests something more serious than a social call."
"It suggests my aunt has decided to escalate her matrimonial campaign from subtle manipulation to full-scale invasion, which would be admirable if it weren't so terribly inconvenient given that I have no intention of entering into matrimony with anyone except the woman currently fleeing my bedroom like it's on fire," Gabriel said, watching her dress with an intensity that made her fingers fumble with the buttons.
"I'm not fleeing, I'm making a strategic retreat to maintain the illusion that we have any sort of professional relationship remaining, though I suspect that particular fiction has become increasingly transparent to anyone with functioning eyes," Clara replied, trying to pin up her hair without a mirror while Gabriel continued to stare at her with that particular combination of desire and desperation that had become his default expression lately.
"There's nothing professional about any aspect of our relationship at this point, unless you count the wages I'm supposedly paying you, which we still haven't actually discussed in any detail because every time we try to have a practical conversation, we end up pressed against various surfaces trying not to tear each other's clothes off. "
"That's a gross exaggeration of our interactions, though I admit there have been several instances where furniture has been involved in ways its creators probably didn't intend."
"The piano was particularly memorable, especially the way you…"
"Gabriel, you cannot start describing what happened with the piano when your aunt is about to arrive with what sounds like half the county's eligible population in tow, presumably to parade them before you like some sort of matrimonial marketplace."
"Let them parade all they want, because I'll spend the entire time watching you and imagining all the things I'd rather be doing than making polite conversation with people who see my title and overlook my scars, or worse, see my scars as some sort of romantic battle wound that makes me mysteriously intriguing rather than simply damaged. "
Clara paused at the door, looking back at him still sprawled in the bed they'd shared, his expression a mixture of defiance and vulnerability that never failed to make her heart ache.
"You're not damaged, Gabriel, or rather you are, but so is everyone in different ways, and your particular damage happens to be visible while most people hide theirs behind pleasant smiles and social niceties. "
"Your defense of my character would be more convincing if you weren't simultaneously running away from me and the conversation we desperately need to have about what happens when your self-imposed deadline arrives."
"We've had that conversation multiple times, and it always ends the same way, with you offering impossible solutions and me having to be the practical one who points out why they are not feasible.”