CHAPTER 16
He found her exactly where he'd expected, standing before their rose, which had chosen this moment to bloom with what seemed like deliberate irony, pink and gold petals unfurling despite the lateness of the season.
"I told them all to leave," he said, approaching slowly, not wanting to startle her. "Well, Edmund helped by mentioning that he had documents suggesting Lord Ashworth might have been involved in some questionable financial dealings, which expedited their departure considerably."
"Was he?"
“One might safely venture to say so. He has a truly arduous genius for exposing the slightest speck of dust on the reputations of those who give me the greatest fatigue.”
Clara didn't turn around, but he saw her shoulders relax slightly. "Your aunt?"
"Threatened legal action, social ruin, and various other catastrophes before sweeping out in a cloud of purple indignation."
"And the Ashworths?"
"Gone, though young Thomas asked me to tell you he thought you were brilliant, and Penelope left you a note that I'm afraid to open because her handwriting suggests either excitement or plans for some miscreant act.”
That drew a small laugh from Clara. "She's an interesting girl."
“She is, I daresay, a creature of sentiment unfortunately bound by the necessity of a purely mercenary family rather much like a certain acquaintance of mine, I believe.”
“I assure you, I am utterly devoid of such romantic notions.”
“Yet here you stand, amidst this most desolate of gardens, addressing a solitary rose, one which we ourselves grafted as mere children. I reason it is quite beyond dispute that you possess a decidedly romantic disposition.”
She finally turned to face him, and he could see tears tracking down her cheeks. "Thirty five hundred pounds, Gabriel. Do you understand what that means?"
"That you're wealthy enough to tell me to take my leave and live comfortably for the rest of your life without needing anyone's charity or employment?"
"That I could have been free years ago if my father hadn't lied. That I endured years of servitude, humiliation, desperation, all for nothing."
Gabriel moved closer, aching to touch her but respecting her need for space. "Not for nothing. It brought you back to me."
"That's a lovely sentiment, but…"
“I assure you, it is not a flight of sentiment, but the plain and unvarnished truth.
If you'd had your inheritance, you would never have come here.
We would never have found each other again.
I'd still be dying slowly in my self-imposed prison, and you'd be.
.. I don't know, probably wedded to some appropriate gentleman who didn't deserve you. "
“Otherwise, I should have been a well-propertied spinster, residing in a picturesque cottage by the coast working on my pretty garden.”
“A mere fortune shall not alter my affections.
I was prepared to join my hand to yours when you possessed nothing of consequence, and I am equally ready to do so now that providence has bestowed upon you such prosperity.
I shall remain prepared to make you my wife, whether you face the complete loss of your wealth on the morrow, or should you acquire another vast inheritance by the week's end.”
"But it changes things for everyone else. Your aunt can't object on grounds of fortune hunting anymore."
"She'll find other grounds. My aunt has a remarkable capacity for objection."
"The ton might actually accept me now."
"The ton can still go hang themselves. I don't care about their acceptance."
"You should care. You're a duke."
"I'm a man in love with a woman who keeps trying to martyr herself for my own well-being, which is both admirable and incredibly frustrating."
Clara moved to sit on the old garden bench, the same one they'd shared as children.
"I don't know who I am anymore, Gabriel.
This morning I was a housekeeper planning to leave in two weeks to protect your reputation.
Now I'm an heiress who's been betrayed by her father and proposed to by a duke in front of multiple witnesses. Pray, allow me a moment as it is a great weight of information.”
Gabriel sat beside her, taking care to maintain some distance.
"You're still the woman who climbed my wall in stolen boots during a snowstorm."
"Borrowed boots."
"You're still the person who looked at my scars and saw me, not the damage."
"Your scars are part of you."
"Exactly. They're part of me, but they're not all of me, and you're the only person who's ever understood that distinction."
They sat in silence for a moment, watching their impossible rose bloom in the winter air.
"What did you mean earlier, about having your solicitors draw up matrimonial settlements?" Clara asked.
"I meant that if you wed me, your money remains yours. I have enough wealth of my own, I don't need or want your inheritance. It should be yours to do with as you please."
"That's not how matrimony works."
"It's how ours would work."
"You're very confident I'm going to say yes."
"I'm very hopeful you're going to stop being noble and self-sacrificing long enough to realise we're meant to be together."
"Even with the scandal it would cause?"
"Especially with the scandal. My life has been utterly tedious for three years now. A spirited scandal, I dare say, is precisely the tonic I require to effect my proper re-entry into society.”
"Gabriel, be serious."
"I am being serious. I've never been more serious about anything in my life. I love you. You love me. We now have the means to live comfortably regardless of whether society accepts us or not. What other obstacles are you going to throw up to keep us apart?"
Clara turned to look at him fully. "What if I'm pregnant?"
The words hung in the air between them like a thunderbolt.
Gabriel's mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. "Are you?"
"I don't know. Maybe. We haven't exactly been careful about sharing a bed, even if we maintained that one boundary."
"But we didn't…"
"There are degrees of intimacy that can have consequences even without the final act, Gabriel. Surely they covered that in your education?"
"They covered the theory. The practice has been somewhat limited."
"Limited to me, you mean."
"Limited to you, yes. Only you. Always you."
Clara stood, pacing in front of the bench. "If I am…pregnant, I mean…it changes everything."
"It changes nothing about how I feel."
"It changes the timeline considerably. We couldn't wait for a proper courtship or for society to adjust to the idea. We'd have to be wedded immediately."
He stood, catching her hands to still her pacing.
"Clara, I would wed you tomorrow if you'd let me.
Tonight, if I could arrange it. The only reason I haven't already dragged you to Scotland is because you were ever insistent upon decorum and the preservation of strict boundaries all of which we have, I must confess, been spectacularly remiss in maintaining.”
"Those boundaries were for your protection."
"I don't need protection from you."
"You need protection from yourself and your tendency toward grand gestures that you might regret later."
"The only thing I regret is the eight years we lost because I was too much of a coward to fight for you then."
"You were a child then."
"I was old enough to know I loved you and young enough to let that love go because someone told me I should."
Clara pulled her hands free, wrapping her arms around herself. "What if I say yes and you wake up one day and realise you've made a terrible mistake? That you've saddled yourself with a wife who doesn't fit your world, who embarrasses you at social functions, who…"
"Please..." Gabriel's voice was firm. "You're doing it again, creating problems that don't exist, imagining futures where I somehow become a different person who doesn't love you. That's not going to happen."
"You can't know that."
"I can, because I've already lived without you and it nearly killed me. I'm not going through that again."
"Gabriel…"
"No more arguments. No more what-ifs. No more noble self-sacrifice.
" He dropped to one knee right there in the garden, pulling out a ring that Clara recognised with a gasp.
"This was my mother's. She would have loved you, by the way.
She had very strong opinions about people who wedded for anything other than love. "
“In what manner did this come into your possession?”
"I've been carrying it for three days, waiting for the right moment, but you keep finding new reasons to refuse me, so I'm going to keep asking until you run out of objections."
"Gabriel, get up. Your knee is in the mud."
"I don't care about the mud. Clara Whitfield, you impossible, stubborn, wonderful woman, will you be my wife? Not because it's practical or proper or socially acceptable, but because I love you and you love me and life is too short and uncertain to waste on what other people think?"
"You're going to ruin your trousers."
"I'll ruin all my trousers if it means you'll say yes."
"Gabriel…"
"Say yes, Clara. Will you, for a single moment, permit your heart to overrule your head? Dismiss your thoughts and grant me your affirmation!”
She looked down at him, this proud, scarred man kneeling in the mud of their childhood garden, offering her everything despite the chaos it would cause, and felt her last defense crumble.
"Yes," she whispered.
"What was that? I'm not sure I heard…"
"Yes, you impossible man. Yes, I'll wed you and cause scandal and probably ruin your life in a dozen different ways."
"You'll improve my life in a hundred different ways," he corrected, sliding the ring onto her finger before she could change her mind. "Starting with making me actually want to live it again."
He stood, pulling her into his arms, and kissed her with all the desperate passion they'd been suppressing for weeks. When they finally broke apart, both were breathing hard and Clara's careful hairstyle had been thoroughly destroyed.