//CLARA//

The tension didn’t de-escalate.

If anything, the near-discovery had only fueled the fire. Casimir’s hands were back on me, fingers twisting in my hair, yanking my head back as he slid inside me again. His mouth was everywhere—my throat, my collarbone, the bruises he’d left hours ago. He was covering every inch of me, as if he could weld himself into my soul.

Aunt Cornelia’s voice was still rattling around my skull. Her insults still stinging like a fresh slap on my skin. And Casimir was burning them off with every punishing stroke.

His hips snapped against mine with a violence that felt like a localized earthquake. The bed groaned beneath us, and I bit down hard on the meat of his palm to keep from screaming. I wanted the pain. I wanted the distraction.

I needed something more real than the suffocating corset of lies I wore every morning.

We stayed tangled and sweating, until our breathing slowed.

When he finally pulled out and rolled off me, the sudden absence of his weight felt like a sharp temperature drop. The heat he’d spent hours branding into my skin evaporated into the drafty room. He laid on his back, staring at the ornate molding of the ceiling as if the plaster held the answers to the mess we were making.

"I should go," I whispered, though my muscles felt like overcooked noodles.

"No. Stay here." His voice was flat, commanding. "I want you to stay where I can keep an eye on you."

"Casimir—"

"I don’t know what you are doing, Clara. But for the love of God, do not put yourself in danger." He turned his head to look at me. "Not when I have almost lost you. Not when I already have you. Not when I have already decided that nothing else mattered but you."

I wanted to tell him everything. About Gary. About the real Eleanor, who was nothing more than a memory now, long dead in the embrace of a cold winter.

I wanted to scream that I was just a ghost, a glitch in the timeline who didn’t belong in this century. But the words stayed locked in my throat. I couldn’t bring myself to break the only world I had left.

"I know," I hear myself saying instead.

"No. You don’t."

He was right. I didn’t.

"You’re the air I breathe," I said finally. It sounded stupid coming out. Too much like a line from a bad romance novel. But it was true. "And I know there are a lot of things I have to say to you, but right now... I don’t have the words."

I swallowed hard, looking at the man who had become my only sanctuary.

"Will you promise me that when the time comes, you’ll stay with me?"

He took my hand, pulling my knuckles to his lips, lingering on the finger where his jade ring settled.

"You can take my heart out right now, Clara, and I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t gladly watch you tear it apart and still love you more."

Would he?

The thought of it terrified me.

It was past midnight when I finally gathered the strength to move and creep down the corridor like a thief.

Casimir’s shirt hung past my thighs, sleeves rolled twice. My bare feet were silent on the cold marble. My mind is a mess. My hair was still tangled, my lips still swollen, my thighs still slick from hours we’d spent trying to outrun our reality.

My room was dark when I slipped inside. My knees were shaking. My butt cheeks still stung from where he’d spanked me. But all I could think about was his words. And Gary. And the secret getting heavier in my chest.

He knew I’d been at Grove Street. He was circling the truth and I was running out of places to hide.

The next morning, Hattie found me still wrapped in Casimir’s shirt.

She didn’t ask where my dress had gone or why I smelled like sex. She just laid out a fresh gown, cinched my corset, and pretended not to see another set of fresh bruises on my collarbone.

"Your aunt was looking for you at dinner," she said quietly.

"What did you tell her?"

"That you had a headache and went to bed early." She fastened the last button. "She wasn’t pleased."

"Thank you, Hattie."

She met my eyes in the mirror. "Please be careful, Miss."

I didn’t know how to answer that.

Three weeks passed in a blur of careful lies and watchful eyes.

I moved Gary to a flat near the edge of the city. A place so forgettable even the mailman probably got lost. I checked on him twice a week, funneling money for food and supplies, terrified he’d do something stupid.

He was still jumpy.

"I can’t do this forever, Clara." Gary said during one of my visits, huddled in a threadbare armchair that smelled of dust. "I can’t just hide."

"You don’t have to hide forever. You just have to stay alive until I figure out who Elias Russell really was," I said, sounding more confident than I felt.

"I want to go back to our time," he whispered.

I tried to give him a comforting smile, but even my own reflection in the cracked mirror on the wall looked brittle.

"We will, Gary."

"You’re willing to leave Casimir if ever?"

That was the question that kept me awake at night, even in the arms of the man himself.

I couldn’t answer it.

The banns were proclaimed on a Sunday.

The words echoed through the vaulted ceilings of St. Patrick’s Cathedral with finality.

Bartholomew Vanderbilt and Eleanor Thorne, to be married in five days.

Aunt Cornelia sat in the front pew, practically glowing. Casimir stood at the back, hands clasped behind him, eyes fixed on the altar like he was imagining it in flames.

We will find a way, I told myself, the words becoming a mantra as I knelt on the cold stone. I fixated on a single, stubborn loose thread on my silk glove. I’d been picking at it since the carriage ride, unraveling it, millimeter by millimeter, until the expensive fabric was fraying at the seam.

Casimir and I will find a way out of this.

I just had to keep pulling until the whole thing came apart.

Eleanor’s birthday arrived without any celebration I could claim as my own. The foundation established by Prince Felipe’s generosity was the only place I felt like I could breathe.

The foundation occupied a converted townhouse on the better side of the city. The bright rooms filled with women learning trades, children playing in supervised safety, the smell of bread and soap lingered in the air.

Casimir had arranged the visit himself, his hand finding mine every time we felt like no one was watching, his thumb tracing patterns on my palm that made it impossible to think straight.

By the time we reached the back corridor, a narrow hallway lined with supply closets and empty classrooms I couldn’t take it anymore.

I pulled him into the nearest door. A storage closet. Brooms, mops, the sharp scent of lye soap. He didn’t ask questions. His mouth was on mine before the door clicked shut, his hands already pushing up my skirts, already finding me wet and ready.

"You have to be quiet," he murmured against my throat. "Unless you want to explain to the children why their patron is getting fucked in a storage closet."

Then he was inside me, one hand over my mouth, the other braced against the wall. The sounds of the foundation continued on the other side. The children laughing, women talking, the clatter of dishes from the kitchen.

No one knew. No one could know.

It was quick. Dirty. Desperate. Perfect.

He kissed me when it was over, slow and soft, completely different from the fucking.

"Happy birthday," he murmured.

I laughed. It came out breathless.

"You’re impossible."

"You love it."

I didn’t deny it.

"We should get back," he said.

"I think we should."

Neither of us moved for a long moment. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Then I smoothed my skirts, fixed my hair, and walked out of the closet like nothing had happened.

Casimir followed a few seconds later, looking too pleased with himself.

No one looked at us. Or if they did, they had the good sense to pretend otherwise.

We drifted back into the foundation’s main room as if we’d never left. I paused to admire a child’s drawing, while he examined a sewing machine with sudden, intense interest. The afternoon light slanted through the windows, warm and forgiving.

After a while, we found ourselves by the window. Casimir’s hand found mine. Hidden by the folds of my skirt.

"Your parents would have been proud," he murmured as we watched a young mother learn to sew, her infant sleeping nearby, oblivious to the world. "Of what you’ve become."

The omission sat between us like a live wire.

I’m not her, I wanted to say. I’m not Eleanor. I’m from a time where none of this exists.

But I just said, "I’m not doing good enough."

For a few hours, I almost forgot about the wedding. About Bartholomew. About the clock ticking down to a life I didn’t want.