There was a long pause, then footsteps retreating. At the door, Edmund's voice drifted back: "You know, Gabriel, playing the beast only works if you don't care about the beauty dying in your arms."
The door closed with a decisive click.
Gabriel's body was vibrating with tension. Clara could feel his rage in every rigid line of him.
"You can stop pretending now," he said coldly. "I know you're awake."
Clara opened her eyes. “Edmund seems quite amiable.”
“Edmund is deficient in sense.”
"He's your friend."
"I don't have friends."
“That is quite evident.”
They glared at each other, or rather, Clara glared at the wall while feeling his glare boring into the back of her head.
"This changes nothing," he said finally. "You leave tomorrow."
"Today," Clara corrected. "I leave today."
"You can't even stand."
"Watch me."
She tried to pull away from him, to stand, to do anything other than remain in his arms like some pathetic dependent. Her body had other ideas. The moment she tried to move, pain shot through her feet, her legs, everything. She made an undignified sound and fell back against him.
“You willful, unreasoning simpleton,” he muttered, but his arms came around her again, steadying her.
"Let me go."
"So you can collapse and crack your head open on my floor? I think not. I've had enough blood on these carpets."
The casualness with which he said it made her stomach turn. "Gabriel…"
"Don't." The word was sharp, final. "Don't you dare pity me."
"I wasn't…"
"You were. You are. Poor scarred Gabriel, hiding in his castle, probably mad from the war, definitely drinking too much. That's what you're thinking, isn't it?"
“I find you possess a most detestable nature, I confess.”
He made a sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn't been so bitter. “I will grant it is plain truth.”
They sat in miserable silence, two people who'd once been everything to each other now trapped in the roles of reluctant savior and unwanted burden.
“I shall repay you,” Clara said suddenly. "For the food, the shelter. Once I find work, I'll…"
"With what references? What connections? Who's going to hire a woman who came to a duke’s estate in a state of profound prostration? With nothing but a pair of stolen boots on her person?”
“I will find a solution.”
"No," he said slowly, as if an idea was forming. "No, you won't."
Something in his tone made her skin prickle. "What do you mean?"
