Clara froze, eyes widening. “Gabriel…”
“One month,” he reminded her softly. “We agreed.”
“One month of honesty. Not one month of... that.”
“That?” he echoed, lips twitching.
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“I truly don’t.”
“Private concerns between a man and woman.”
Gabriel smiled as he innocently asked.
“Private concerns?”
A single month of truthfulness, of comporting ourselves with perfect naturalness, and tender dalliance. Yet the line must be drawn there.”
“And the reason being
“Because I’m not a fallen woman, regardless of what the village tale bearers whisper. And I’d prefer to keep it that way.”
“Even for me?”
“Especially for you.”
That silenced him. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” She said quietly, “that when I leave, I want to know this was real because we chose it, not because desire blurred the edges. I want to leave knowing what we had wasn’t ruined by wanting more.”
Her hand rose, tracing the curve of his jaw with something achingly tender. “Can that be enough? For one month?”
No, he thought. It would never be enough.
“Yes,” he said.
She smiled faintly. “You do not speak the truth…”
“Always.”
Later that evening, the library had become a trap of its own making. Gabriel sat with a book open in his lap, eyes scanning the page without absorbing a single word. How could he, when Clara sat across from him in the firelight, her ankles crossed neatly, her head bent to her novel, every now and then wetting her lips in that unconscious way that made him want to tear propriety into shreds?
They’d maintained their careful distance since dinner,her in her chair, him in his, the fire crackling between them like a chaperone made of flame. But the memory of the garden, of her mouth under his, was a third presence in the room, pressing close, making every breath thick with possibility.
“You’re staring,” Clara murmured, not looking up.
“You’re distracting.”
“I’m reading.”
“Distractingly.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“You make it possible.”
She lifted her gaze then, slow as a caress, and the heat in her eyes made his breath falter. “One month,” she said, the words meant for him but sounding like a reminder to herself.
