“Honey,” he said, his voice muted. “I always thought that. Even when I didn’t really know you.”
For some reason, that small acknowledgement pierced her heart with sorrow.HerGabriel had always been in there somewhere, perhaps not even so very deep down. But he wasn’t hers anymore, and he hadn’t been for such a long time.
She cleared her throat as he resumed brushing her hair. “Those scars on your hands,” she said. “The ones you don’t know how you got. I do.”
“Claire,” he said, “you don’t owe me—”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “But it’s…cathartic, I think. There’s just been so many things that I’ve never let myself think about because it hurt too much.” Her breath hitched in her chest. “I can’t imagine what it must be like tonotknow something about myself. To have lost such a significant portion of my life. I might notoweit to you, but…you deserve to know what I can tell you. It’s not so very much. Only a few months. But at least it’s something.”
“It’s everything.” He fanned her hair over her shoulders, spreading out the freshly-untangled strands to dry. And while it did, she talked. She told him everything she could remember, every thought that had crossed her mind, every walk they had taken, every midnight rendezvous, every kiss and smile and precious moment that had comprised their courtship.
They talked first in a fragile sort of way, voices hushed as if any sound above a murmur might break the spell woven around them. As the night wore on, it was like the years were stripped away, the pain of the past relieved, and it became more reminiscence, more nostalgia, than reciting memories. She surprised herself by laughing. He surprised her by crying. And by the time she finally fell asleep, well into the early morning hours, she found herself more at peace than she had been in years.
∞∞∞
“I can’t believe you did that,” Claire said, shaking her head as she gently plucked thorns from his ruined hands. Her fingers were deft and sure, agile in a way that suggested a certain proficiency with a needle. Of course she was not a lady born; she did not while away her hours in the genteel pursuit of embroidery. But she had told him that the mending frequently fell to her, and she had learned to be swift with her needle to get the task over and done with.
“I had to,” he said. “You heard him crying. I couldn’t have left him there.” The sting of the briars had been worth the pain. Claire had looked at him with luminous eyes, brimming over with hero worship. The rescued kitten, a tiny orange scrap of fur, had been cleaned up and sent to the kitchens for a saucer of cream.
It had taken some doing to sneak the both of them into Newsom Manor, and it would take still more to make a clean escape. But it had been worth the risk. Nothing could blight his happiness. Not the sting as Claire smoothed some terrible-smelling salve onto his wounds, not the inevitability of facing his father’s unholy wrath.
The Duke of Bridgewater would never approve of Claire. She was a common girl, without the impeccable lineage that the duke’s impossibly high standards would demand.
But she loved him. He’d seen it her eyes today, and it was a gift he would never willingly surrender.
He had found the woman he was going to marry, and her name was Claire Eliza Hotchkiss. And she was perfect just as she was.
∞∞∞
“Oh, Gabriel,” Claire sighed, her face tragic. “It cannot last. You must know that.”
“Of course it’s going to last.” Gabriel reached for her hand, seizing her fingers in his. “Claire, I’m asking you to be my wife.”
“No one will ever accept me,” she said. “I’m nobody. You—you’re supposed to marry a lady, someone who can trace her noble lineage back for generations.” In the moonlight her hair glowed silver, highlighted with streaks of honeyed gold.
“I don’t care about that,” he said, refusing to relinquish his hold on her fingers. “If I had wanted a lady, I would have chosen one. I wantyou.”
She wavered, torn between hope and doubt. “You’ll be marrying beneath you,” she said. “No one will ever let you forget it.”
“No,” he said. “I’ll be marrying so far above me. And I’ll make certain everyone knows it. And even if no one understands, even if we never find a place within society, we’ll have so much more than that, Claire. We’ll travel, and raise a family, and we’ll be so bloody happy. I’m not opposed to a quiet life in the country, if that’s where life takes us. So long as it’s with you.”
She pressed her lips together to still their trembling. “You have to be sure,” she whispered. But she was going to say yes. He could feel it in his blood, and a thrill of triumph seared through his veins.
“I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life,” he said. “Say yes, Claire.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh—yes. Yes. So long as you’re sure.”
He gave an exultant shout, swinging her up in his arms, and whatever trepidation she had had melted beneath the glow of his adulation. He had never been so happy in the whole of his life—but he would be, always, forever. So long as he had Claire.
∞∞∞
Their wedding day fell just a week after Claire’s twenty-first birthday. Gabriel hadn’t wanted to run the risk of the local parish informing his father of his plans, so he’d gone away to London to obtain a special license. It had been a costly endeavor, but well worth the money. There were no banns to be called, no obligatory church wedding between the hours of eight and noon—just him and Claire and the vicar of the Greenbriars parish, outside the scope of his father’s influence, standing before the hearth in the private dining room of the Rose and Crown Inn.
They had a room for the week. It wasn’t much of a honeymoon, all things considered, but traveling farther afield than England would have to wait until Napoleon was routed at last. But a week was at least enough time to leave no doubt that they had been well and truly married, and his father would simply have to accept it.
Claire’s hand in his, warm and reassuring, had distracted him to such a degree that he had stumbled through his own vows and heard little of hers but the clear and nearly giddy tone of her voice.
The vicar, a small, elderly man who looked more like a mischievous elf than a man of the cloth, peered over the rims of his round spectacles at Gabriel, cleared his throat, and inquired, “My lord, have you the ring?”
