"Try."
"I'd rather spend the time finding a solution."
"There isn't one."
"There has to be."
"Gabriel…"
"What if I gave it up? The title, the estate, everything?"
"You can't abdicate a dukedom."
"I could disappear. To be formally presumed deceased.”
He pressed a kiss to her shoulder. "I won't accept impossible."
"You'll have to."
"Never."
"Gabriel…"
"Hush. Sleep. We'll argue about impossibilities tomorrow."
But neither of them slept for a long time, both aware of the days slipping away, of the inevitable approaching like a storm they couldn't outrun.
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 byyou, 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 harderthan 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."
