"Because?"
"Because someone needs to save you from your own excessive sensibility.”
“I beg to differ.”
"You literally just stood there shirtless like a hero on a windswept moor, brooding about your scars."
“I was but completing my wardrobe.”
“You were posturing for effect.”
"I was not…" Gabriel stopped, because arguing would only prove her point.
“Very well then. However, I shall carry out the task of interviewing them myself.”
"Absolutely not."
“Let me be perfectly clear, I am the master of this estate.”
"And you'll terrify everyone with your glowering."
"I don't glower."
"You're glowering right now."
"This is my normal expression."
“My point exactly.”
She moved closer, and Gabriel had to focus very hard on not backing away. Or worse, moving toward her.
"Gabriel," she said, and the use of his name in this room, with him half-dressed and her looking up at him with thoseimpossible eyes, was nearly his undoing. “Please place your confidence on me.”
How was this possible when my senses are heightened around her? I can barely trust myself not to press her against that door and…
“Very well, continue with whatever you are doing then and I shall return to my papers.”
Clara regarded him with that maddening calm of hers, the kind that made Gabriel feel as though she were peeling back his layers one by one until she found the inconvenient truth hiding beneath, the truth being his entirely inappropriate desire for her.
“Wear the burgundy waistcoat,” she said at last, as though delivering a royal decree.
He lifted a brow. “Why that one?”
“It softens your expression. Makes you appear marginally less inclined toward homicide.”
“I was under the impression it brought out my eyes.”
“Your eyes hardly need assistance,” she said before catching herself, color blooming high on her cheeks.
Gabriel’s lips curved. “No? And what, pray, do they need?”
“They’re already... present,” she managed, flustered. “Perfectly visible. On your face. Where eyes generally reside.”
“How astute of you.”
“I’m leaving now.”
“Splendid.”
