"Then why are you holding my hand?"
He seemed to realise what he was doing and dropped her hand immediately, stepping back. “That is enough for now. You've seen the gardens. Which, as I have said, are beyond resurrection. Go back inside before you freeze."
“I have not yet satisfied my curiosity in viewing it.”
"Yes, you have."
"You don't get to decide when I have finished."
"I'm your employer. I get to decide everything."
"You get to decide what I clean and when. You don't get to decide what I think or feel or hope for."
"Hope." He said it like it was a foreign word. "What could you possibly hope for here?"
"Spring," Clara said simply.
"Spring?"
"Things grow in spring. Even withered and worn things sometimes surprise you." She looked directly at him. "Even boys who turned into beasts sometimes remember they were once capable of kindness."
He flinched as if she'd slapped him. "I was never kind."
"You were. You were kind and funny and clever and…"
"Stop."
"…my best friend in the entire world until you decided I wasn't worth…"
"Stop."
"…even a proper goodbye…"
"I said stop!" The words tore out of him, raw and ragged. He turned away, hands fisted at his sides. "You don't understand."
"Then explain it to me."
"My father…" He stopped, shook his head. "It doesn't matter."
"It does to me."
"Why? Why does any of it matter now? We're different people. You're my employee. I'm your employer. That's all we are."
"If that's all we are, then why are you out here? Why did you follow me? Why do you watch me when you think I'm not looking?"
"I don't…"
"You do. You watch me as if you're trying to solve a puzzle or as if you are waiting for me to disappoint you. Or ..." She trailed off, unable to voice what else his looks might mean.
"Such as…" His voice was dangerously low, with the smooth, unnerving quietude that precedes a great storm.
“Pray, dismiss it from your thoughts.”
“No. You shall conclude your statement. Like what, precisely?”
Clara lifted her chin, meeting his gaze directly despite every instinct screaming at her to run. "Like you're trying to remember what we used to be to each other."
The silence stretched between them, strained to the utmost. Gabriel's scar stood out white against his flushed face, and Clara had the absurd urge to touch it, to smooth away the pain she could see etched in every line of him.
