"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.
