MY RUIN: In Love With My Step-Uncle-Chapter 25 - Twenty-Five: The Distance

//CLARA//

If life in the 1870s was a movie, I was currently stuck in a period drama directed by someone who hated me.

I sat in the morning room, sunlight glaring off my tea set. Across from me, Aunt Cornelia perched on a settee like a gargoyle in black bombazine, her spine rigid, her attention fixed on her embroidery.

"You’re quiet this morning, Eleanor." Her voice sliced through my thoughts like a scalpel. "Something on your mind?"

I considered, for half a second, telling her exactly what was on my mind. That her nephew’s fingers had been inside me yesterday. That I’d screamed his name against a bookshelf.

Instead, I smoothed my voice into something sweet and venomous.

"You confuse me, Aunt Cornelia." I tilted my head, all innocence. "If I speak, I’m too loud. If I remain silent, you question me. I find myself in a puzzle where every move is the wrong one, and yet you’re the one holding the rulebook. Curious, isn’t it?"

Her eyes narrowed to slits. "Your tongue has grown remarkably sharp. I wonder who has been sharpening it for you."

"No one." I let my smile widen just enough to show teeth. "I simply realized the world doesn’t reward meekness. It devours it. If I’d remained the timid creature you knew, your ruthless society would have eaten me alive before breakfast."

Her lips pressed into that thin, bloodless line.

"And yet here you sit, perfectly intact, in a house that has given you shelter and status. A little gratitude wouldn’t go amiss."

"Gratitude?" I laughed softly. "For what? The roof? The meals? Let’s not pretend this is charity, Aunt Cornelia. Remember, I’m an investment. A merger. A line item in the Guggenheim ledger."

The silence that followed was sharp enough to cut glass.

Then the door opened, and Casimir stepped in, and the moment shattered.

"Auntie." Casimir’s voice was carefully neutral, but his gaze flickered between us, trying to read the temperature of a room that had been boiling over seconds before he entered.

"Is everything alright in here?"

You tell me! I wanted to scream. Your aunt just spent the last ten minutes picking at every inch of my existence, and you waltz in like a block of granite pretending everything is fine?

Instead, I pressed my lips together and said nothing. Let him wonder. Let him read the silence.

"Nothing at all, Casimir." The old hag smiled thinly. "I was just telling Eleanor how much I’m looking forward to the Charity Bazaar this evening. Though she seems a bit... restless."

Restless. Is that what we’re calling it? The inability to sit still because every nerve ending still remembers the shape of my guardian’s hands?

"Eleanor is young." Casimir’s voice betrayed nothing. Absolutely nothing. "Restlessness is to be expected until she is properly settled."

Settled.

Like a debt.

The word landed sharply in my chest. Yesterday I was beautiful ruin. Today I was a problem to be settled.

I opened my mouth to deliver a rebuttal about how the only thing needing settlement was—but Higgins appeared, and I quickly suppressed that thought.

"Mr. Oliver Whitfield, to pay a social call."

The universe, it seemed, had perfect timing.

Oliver walked in like a shot of premium espresso in a room full of decaf. Light tweed, windswept hair, that easy grin that didn’t feel like it was hiding a knife.

"I hope I’m not interrupting," Oliver said, his eyes finding mine. "I thought I’d check if the most interesting woman in New York was taking visitors."

I felt Casimir go rigid at the edge of my vision.

"Mr. Whitfield," I said with a genuine smile. I stood up, moving toward him with an energy that made the room feel smaller. "I’m so glad you’ve come. This room was beginning to feel a bit... stagnant."

"Stagnant is a crime in your presence," Oliver laughed, taking my hand and pressing a kiss to my knuckles—just a beat too long.

When he straightened, I felt the ghost of his lips on my skin like an invitation.

We moved to the drawing room so the old witch could show off Casimir’s latest acquisition from Paris. Oliver admired the painting with practiced charm, then turned that smile back on me.

We fell into effortless conversation. The new opera house. A disastrous hunt in the Berkshires that left me laughing, my head tilted back, my hand brushing his arm. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

From across the room, the silence turned murderous.

I didn’t need to look at Casimir to feel his gaze burning. I caught his reflection in the pier glass. He hadn’t moved. His jaw was so tight I thought he might crack the porcelain cup he was holding.

When Oliver finally left, the atmosphere turned toxic. I needed air that didn’t smell like Aunt Cornelia’s smelling salts.

I headed for the stables.

The walk across the grounds was a blur, but the moment I stepped into the barn, my nervous system finally stopped screaming.

There was no one in here. Perfect.

I headed straight for Amber’s stall. The mare whinnied softly. I reached out, my fingers tangling in her mane. Her presence felt like a balm compared to the ice back in the manor.

I was leaning my forehead against her neck when the heavy thud of the stable door told me I wasn’t alone anymore.

"The drawing room wasn’t enough? You have to haunt me here, too?" I didn’t turn around.

"You left without an escort." His voice was closer than expected.

"I’m in the stables, Casimir. Not a dive bar in the Bowery." I finally turned, my back hitting the wooden slats of the stall.

He was standing there, still in that devastatingly tailored charcoal suit, too close, looking like a man who was holding back a landslide with his bare hands.

"It isn’t safe," he rasped.

"Safe? I’m in a dress that costs more than a small house, living in a mansion with a woman who wants to lobotomize me with a needle, being guarded by a man who refuses to look at me after he—"

I stopped, the words catching in my throat. "Safety is a myth, Casimir. We both know that."

"Clara."

He stepped in, his hand flying up to the stall door beside my head, pinning me.

"Don’t—"

"Don’t what? Don’t remind you that you’re a hypocrite?"

I pushed against his chest. He didn’t budge. "You spent the morning treating me like a ghost. You called me restless and young like I was a problem to be managed."

"I am trying to protect you."

"From what? From this fucking society? From yourself?"

I let out a sharp, jagged laugh.

"You run railroads. You own most of the city. You sign papers that decide the fates of thousands. And yet you can’t manage the one thing that actually matters."

I tilted my head.

"That sounds dumb, really. But what do I know? I’m just the orphan you inherited from your half-brother. The obligation you never asked for. The responsibility you can’t wait to hand off to someone else."

I looked him dead in the eye, my voice dropping to a dangerous edge. "If I’m such a burden—uncle—why don’t you sign the merger now and be done with it?"

"It’s... complex," he said.

It was the most pathetic lie I’d ever heard. He sounded hollow, like he was reading from a script for a play he hated.

"It’s a transaction, Casimir. You do them every day before breakfast."

I leaned in until my nose brushed his, daring him to look away.

"Let me simplify it for you—" my voice dropped to something lethal. "Sign that paper, and I’m his. His to touch. His to keep. Not yours."

I let the silence stretch, let him feel every word land. "So was yesterday just a warm-up? A little test to see if you can still feel?"

His jaw worked, a vein pulsing at his temple. He was vibrating, every muscle coiled with agonizing restraint.

"I am trying to keep you from ruin, Clara. Can’t you see that?" He was inches from my mouth, his breath hot and ragged. "If I take what I want—if I take you the way I want—there is no going back."

"You’ve already ruined me!" I screamed it, the sound muffled by the hay. "Stop pretending this is about my virtue. You’re scared that if you let yourself have me, you won’t be master of your little empire anymore."

We stood there, breathing each other’s air. His hand twitched. His thumb hovered a fraction from my lower lip. Not touching. Just letting me feel the heat, the promise he was denying us both.

"Go back inside, Clara," he whispered, sounding like he’d been dragged over broken glass.

My eyes burned. I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

I lifted my chin. My vision swam, but when I spoke, the word left my mouth like poison.

"Coward."

Just that. Just one word. It was barely a whisper, but it landed like a blade between his ribs.