"Because it's part of you. Because I want to understand."
"It's not a pleasant story."
"I don't need pleasant. I need true."
So he told her. About the mud and blood. About holding dying men while they called for their mothers. About the surgeon who'd stitched his face with shaking hands and whiskey breath. About the fever that followed, the infection, the certainty he would die.
"But you didn't," Clara said, her hand finding his.
"Part of me did."
"Which part?"
"The part that believed in glory and honor and all the specious talk of honour and glory with which they ply you before dispatching you to be slain.”
She shifted closer, and Gabriel pulled her against his side, her head on his shoulder. The sensation was one of improper familiarity, yet it felt precisely what was desired.
"Tell me about Bath," he said.
"What is it you wish to learn?”
"Your life there. Before."
"It was..." She paused. "Lonely."
"You had your aunt."
"My aunt had her own life. I was an obligation she accepted out of duty to my deceased mother."
"And after she passed?”
" I discovered duty doesn't extend beyond the grave. Her friends wanted nothing to do with a penniless relation. The families I applied to for governess positions wanted someone with proper references, not scandal."
"What scandal?"
Clara was quiet for a moment. "The daughter of the house where I worked made certain accusations when I refused her father's advances. Said I'd been trying to seduce him. The factthat I refused him was not of importance, the accusation was enough."
Gabriel's arm tightened around her. "His name."
"Why?"
"So I can destroy him."
"You can't fight all my battles."
"His name, Clara."
"Lord Pemberton."
Gabriel went very still. "The same Lord Pemberton whose house party I attended instead of seeing you that Christmas?"
"Small world."
"I'll ruin him."
"You'll do no such thing."
"Clara…"
