MY RUIN: In Love With My Step-Uncle-Chapter 24 - Twenty-Four: Damaged Goods

//CLARA//

Through the gap in the fabric, I watched Aunt Cornelia sweep into the room. She looked around with the sharp eyes of someone searching for something to criticize.

"Close the door, Casimir. This is a private conversation."

He obeyed rigidly.

"What is it?"

"It’s about that girl." Aunt Cornelia’s voice dripped with disdain. "Her behavior is becoming impossible to ignore. Do you have any idea what she was wearing at that picnic? How she carried on with Mr. Vanderbilt? It was embarrassing. Absolutely embarrassing."

"She’s young. She’s still grieving—"

"She’s uncontrollable." She cut him off. "Just like her mother. Marian was the same way. Wild, inappropriate, and had no sense of decorum. It’s clearly in the blood. The question is whether it can be trained out of her before she ruins us all."

I pressed my hand over my mouth behind the curtain and imagined, in vivid detail, exactly how satisfying it would feel to yank that perfectly arranged gray hair until she apologized for every word leaving her mouth.

Wild and inappropriate? I’d show her wild.

Casimir’s jaw tightened. "You will not speak of her mother that way."

"Oh, spare me your chivalry." She waved a dismissive hand. "I’m only stating facts. The girl needs discipline. Iron discipline. And instead, you’ve given her free rein to run wild. She follows you around like a lost puppy, did you know that? It’s unseemly. People are starting to notice."

"People notice what they’re told to notice."

"Don’t be naive." She stepped closer. "If this continues, Mr. Vanderbilt will lose interest entirely. And then where will we be? She’ll be damaged goods, and you’ll be stuck with her forever. Is that what you want?"

Behind the curtain, my hands curled into fists. Damaged goods. As if I was some spoiled cut of meat that needed to be sold before the expiration date stamped on my forehead.

I wanted to storm out and claw her eyes out for the simple crime of existing, but mostly for reducing every woman who’d ever lived to a price tag on a marriage contract.

The only value a woman has is whether a man wants to purchase her. Is that what she really believed? Is that what she’d told herself her entire miserable life to justify becoming the bitter old spider she was today?

I bit my tongue so hard I tasted copper and imagined, in vivid detail, all the ways I would prove her wrong. Starting with making sure her precious Vanderbilt contract ended up shredded into confetti at her feet.

Oh, just you wait, you dusty old raisin.

"Eleanor is my ward. My responsibility. I will handle her as I see fit."

"Clearly." Aunt Cornelia’s eyes flickered toward the curtain—just for a moment. I held my breath. "See that you handle her appropriately. Before someone else decides to intervene."

She moved toward the door, then paused.

"One more thing. That carriage accident you’re so obsessed with. Have your investigators found anything, or are they still taking your money for nothing?"

Casimir’s voice turned to ice. "They’re still working."

"Working. For weeks." Aunt Cornelia’s tone suggested she found the whole endeavor tedious. "If there were anything to find, surely your investigators would have found it by now. Perhaps it’s time to accept that some things are simply accidents and move on. No matter how much we wish it were otherwise."

The door closed behind her.

Silence.

I waited behind the curtain, counting my heartbeats like they were the only thing keeping me from screaming. Thirty. Forty. Fifty. When I was reasonably certain the old bat had waddled back to whatever cave she crawled out of, I emerged.

Casimir stood in the middle of the room with his back to me, frozen in that golden light like a statue of a man who’d just committed a crime and was deciding whether to flee or burn the evidence. The tension in his shoulders told me he was still deciding.

"Casimir?"

He turned, and the look on his face hit me somewhere in the chest. He wasn’t the man who’d just had me sobbing against a bookshelf. He wasn’t quite the granite guardian either. He was something in between—conflicted and utterly human.

It made my heart ache in a way his fingers hadn’t managed.

He crossed to me slowly, and I knew that walk. I’d seen it before. At the Gnarled Oak. After the hedge maze. The walk of a man putting me back together after we’d fallen apart.

His hands found the laces of my dress and began to fasten them, his fingers trembling but gentle. I watched his face while he worked—the set of his jaw, the way his stormy eyes refused to meet mine. He was doing that thing again. That noble, infuriating thing where he protected me from himself.

"You should go to your room," he said quietly. "Tidy up. We have dinner soon, and I don’t want them to raise suspicions."

The words were practical. Necessary. They cut deeper than anything Aunt Cornelia had said.

"Casimir, look at me."

He didn’t.

"Casimir."

His hands stilled on my laces. For one breathless moment, I thought he might actually do it. Might meet my eyes. Might pull me close and tell me that woman’s poison meant nothing, that we were worth the risk, that he wasn’t going to push me away again.

Instead, he finished the last fastening and stepped back.

"Go, Clara. Please, I beg you."

I wanted to argue. Wanted to grab him by that perfect jaw and force him to see what I saw—that this was real, that we were real, that Aunt Cornelia’s words were just the bitter spit of a woman who’d never been wanted like this.

But I saw it. The guilt settling into his bones like frost. The weight of us pressing down on his shoulders. The fear in his eyes that he was failing me by wanting me too much.

So I nodded. Turned. Walked to the door.

At the threshold, I paused.

"The axle," I said quietly, my hand on the door handle. "That wasn’t an accident. Someone out there wants you dead. And I’m going to find out who."

I turned back just enough to catch his eyes.

"And when I do, they’re going to wish they’d never heard your name."

I didn’t wait for his response. Didn’t trust myself to hear it.

I walked out and closed the door behind me.

The hallway was empty, golden light still streaming through the windows and painting everything in warm hues that felt utterly wrong for the coldness settling in my chest. Like the universe was mocking me. Look how beautiful everything is while you fall apart.

I made it to my room, locked the door, and leaned against it, pressing my hand to my racing heart.

My dress was crooked. My hair was a disaster. My lips were still swollen from his mouth, my skin still burning where he’d touched me. And between my thighs, I could still feel the ghost of his fingers. The way he’d worked me until I forgot my own name.

I was alone. And I was still aching.

I crossed to the window and stared out at the gardens, at the oblivious world going about its business, at the golden light that had no idea what had just happened in that study.

This is what we are now, I thought. Stolen moments and sudden stops. Heat and then cold. His fingers inside me and then his hands fixing my dress, then nothing.

I should feel angry. Frustrated. Cheated.

Instead, I felt something worse.

I’d do it all again. Every interrupted second. Every almost. Every time he pulls away.

Because when he doesn’t—

I closed my eyes.

God, when he doesn’t.