Gabriel tasted it. His expression was answer enough.
“How is it you have managed to preserve your existence?” Clara asked, bustling around the kitchen with the efficiency of someone who'd been taking care of herself for years.
"Spite, mostly."
“That perfectly accounts for the matter.”
She made proper tea, finding fresh leaves in a tin behind something that might once have been bread but had evolved into its own ecosystem. Gabriel watched her work with an intensity that should have been uncomfortable but instead felt familiar, like being ten years old and aware that your best friend wasmemorizing your movements for reasons neither of you could articulate.
"Here," she said, setting a cup in front of him.
He sipped, his eyes widening slightly. “I find this remarkably palatable.”
They drank their tea in companionable silence, the kitchen warming around them as the ancient range finally remembered its purpose.
"My father," Gabriel said suddenly, "…believed you were a distraction."
Clara waited, sensing this was important.
"He said I spent too much time in the gardens. Too much time writing letters. Too much time thinking about things that didn't matter to my future."
"I didn't matter?"
"You mattered too much." Gabriel stared into his tea. "He could see it, even if I couldn't. Or wouldn't. He said if I didn't cut ties with you, he'd make sure your father lost his position. He had that power as he owned half the mortgages in the county, including your father's house."
Clara's cup rattled as she set it down. "He threatened my family?"
"He threatened everything. He gave me the ultimatum, that I could either be a duke or your friend…not both. He threatened to ruin your father, evict your family and make sure that you would never find decent employment anywhere…”
"So you chose to protect us by abandoning me?"
"I chose to be a coward who convinced himself he was being noble."
"Gabriel…"
"I told myself you'd be fine. You were always so strong, so clever. You'd forget about me, find better friends, and that you would find a husband, some decent man who could give you a proper life." He laughed bitterly. “Alas, you arrived half-perished upon my doorstep, owing to my extraordinary inability to protect you with any competence, even with distance intervening.”
Clara absorbed this, turning it over in her mind like a puzzle piece that explained the picture but didn't excuse it.
"You could have told me," she said finally. "In a letter. You could have explained the circumstances to me.”
"What would you have done?"
She considered lying, then decided against it. “Doubtless, some act of great drama and folly. Such as defying your father to his face, or perhaps absconding to join a crew of buccaneers.”
"Buccaneers?"
“I had acquired an interest in buccaneers that summer.”
“Indeed. As I recall.”
They were smiling at each other now, small, tentative smiles that felt dangerous and necessary all at once.
"I truly am sorry" Gabriel said. “For the entirety of my conduct.”
"I know."
"Can you forgive me?"
