"Clara…"
"One month," she said. "We have one month to make you functional. After that, I leave. But for one month..."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying the rules are already broken. We've touched, we've almost kissed, and we’ve said things we shouldn't. What's the point of pretending otherwise?"
"The point is protecting you. Your reputation…"
"Is already ruined. The point is protecting you."
"From what?"
"From hoping for things that can't happen."
Gabriel laughed, bitter and short. "Too late for that."
“Then what precisely are we doing?” Clara demanded softly, her breath clouding in the frigid air. “This wretched dance…circling each other as if we’re strangers, pretending not to feel what we both so clearly do?”
“Being sensible,” Gabriel said, though the words felt hollow the moment they left his mouth.
She gave a low, incredulous laugh. “When, exactly, have either of us been accused of sensibility?”
He might have answered, but her tone, half teasing, half pleading, robbed him of wit. She was right, of course. Neither of them had ever been sensible about anything, least of all each other.
“What is it exactly that you want? you want, Clara?” he asked at last, his voice roughened by the weight of too many unsaid things.
She hesitated, as though speaking her desire aloud might conjure something dangerous. “I want...” She drew a steadying breath. “I want one month where we stop pretending. One month where we are simply Gabriel and Clara, not duke and housekeeper, not master and servant…just ourselves. One month of honesty before I have to leave and we never see each other again.”
“That sounds remarkably like torture.”
“It sounds like freedom.”
He huffed a quiet laugh that wasn’t amusement. “It amounts to much the same thing, upon occasion.”
She smiled then, small and sad and breathtaking. “Not mutually exclusive, I suppose?”
“Never.”
The wind stirred again, carrying a spray of snow that sparkled briefly in the lantern light before melting away. Clara shivered, her thin shawl was no match for the cold. Without hesitation, Gabriel opened his coat and drew her against him, wrapping the heavy wool around them both.
“This is certainly against the rules,” she murmured, her voice muffled against his chest.
“Feels like a lifetime ago.”
Her laughter was soft against him. “Time moves strangely around you.”
“Time moves strangely around us.”
She tipped her head back, her gaze searching his face, every flicker of emotion laid bare between them. “One month, Gabriel. Can we have that?”
He should have said refused, and stepped away and rebuild his barriers to protect what was left of his dignity… and hers. But then she looked at him the way she had when they were young, when hope had still been a luxury they could afford, and the word slipped from him before reason could catch it.
“One month,” he said quietly.
“No more rules?”
“No more rules.”
