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Gerald stared at her. She stood in the middle of the greenhouse. Even though she was surrounded by flowers and plants of all different colors, she was more beautiful than any of them. The filtered light shone upon her in a way that made her glow, as though she was an angel standing before him, offering to guide him into everlasting happiness.

“No, perhaps there isn’t.”

“It will end soon enough anyway, then your life can return to the way it was. You won’t have to worry about hosting events like this.”

“I didn’t mean to imply it was a bad thing. I actually quite like it, but yes, I suppose it must end.”

The words hung between them. Gerald noticed the way Clara’s chest rose as she breathed. Her eyes were dewy, and her hands were clasped in front of her abdomen. Her hair was drawn back, revealing her slender neck. Neither the glass nor the open door offered them any privacy. This was not a scandalous moment stolen away from prying eyes. There was no attempt to hide at all, yet it felt private.

It felt intimate.

It felt as though they were the only two people in the world.

“We may find it is harder to end the agreement than it was to begin it,” Clara said softly. The words sounded like broken things as they fell between her lips.

“That would be quite something considering how opposed you were to the arrangement in the first place.”

“My life has been changed by it too, Gerald. And the children… they will miss you.”

“Our arrangement may end, but I never said that I would stop visiting St. Margaret’s.”

“I fear that it would only be confusing,” Clara said. He noticed she didn’t say whom it would be confusing for. Could she possibly mean herself? Was there a chance that all this time she did harbor feelings for him? But then why had she retreated from his kiss?

“Is that not the way of life? I find that I have been confounded by its developments at every turn. Just when I think I have come to understand life’s vagaries, there is thrown up a new element, one that I could never have predicted, and I am forced to examine things anew again.”

“A life spent in study is a life of noble pursuit.”

“Depending on the subject of study, that is,” Gerald replied.

He noticed the way her lips shone. They were inviting, and he could not resist the allure. They were like two petals of a flower peeling away, revealing the sweet nectar. The shade was that of a rose, the deepest red, passionate and ardent. Gerald’s heart thumped.

Did he dare try to kiss her a third time? Would he be charmed or cursed?

In a way, he wasn’t sure he could last another moment without kissing her. The desire was so strong within him that it filled every inch of his body, bubbling having immediately reached boiling point.

Clara did not retreat. If she moved, he would stop, but she simply stared at him, like a flower waiting to be plucked.

“Do you not care how I have suffered? How I have been ruined?” he asked, echoing his words from the previous day. They were prickly things, sharp on his tongue, difficult to utter. They twisted through his throat, and he almost choked on them.

Clara tilted her head to the side. Her eyebrows were drawn together.

“I don’t understand how that can be the case,” she said.

If Gerald hadn’t been so focused on her, he could have laughed. Not because it was particularly funny, but because he failed to see how they could spend so much time together and grow so close, yet she did not see the obvious when it was standing right in front of her.

Perhaps the time had come to declare his feelings, to send them soaring into the world like baby birds and hope that their flight was not doomed.

“Clara,” he began, but just at that moment their privacy was shattered. The housekeeper rapped her knuckles against the greenhouse door and poked her head in. Gerald turned sharply, an aggrieved expression on his face. The perfect moment had been stolen from him and it would never return.

There was no hint of scandal, however. It wasn’t as though they had been caught in a lustful embrace, nor were they standing particularly close together. Gerald still had some distance to traverse. It simply felt as though he was closer to Clara than he actually was.

“The final seating plan is ready to be approved, Your Grace. You did tell me that you wanted to be alerted as soon as possible,” the housekeeper said, her voice taking on a soothing tone as she saw the frustration written across Gerald’s face.

“Yes,” he said, then repeated the word again, a little less harshly. He noticed movement in the corner of his eye. Clara was already leaving the greenhouse, walking by him without looking in his direction. It was almost as though she was in a trance, and how cruel she was! How cold-hearted she must be to leave their conversation unfinished like that.

Gerald’s heart was tumultuous, and he did not understand how she could endure such pain. The only explanation was that she did not feel it herself, but then what did he see in her eyes? What did he sense when he stared at her lips? Why was the air so charged whenever they were in close proximity to each other?

He left the greenhouse, trailing after Clara, with one thought in his mind. He could not be patient like Theodore. He could not go another day without revealing his true feelings. If Clara wished to destroy him then so be it, but it was already tearing him up inside. The truth would either condemn him or free him, but at least he would be done with this inner turmoil.