Thanks for all the support so far, despite my lengthy absence! Onwards…
Two
Over the omelettes, she notices that he keeps stealing glances at her. Once, it's a coincidence, twice, she might be imagining it, but three times, she sets her knife and fork down on her plate and gives him a wry smile.
"Have I got something on my face, Owen?" she half laughs, and his cheeks flush a slightly pinker shade.
"Just thinking… I could never quite believe it would come to this…"
She frowns slightly, like she's not quite sure what he's saying.
"You… me…" he smiles, "…breakfast in our own tiny little place… everything in the future ahead of us…"
She tilts her head slightly, the smile still on her lips. "That future where we have no idea what's going to happen?"
He laughs, and takes her hand. "The very same… The you bit was the most important bit of me being blown away by where I am… we'll find something, somewhere, we'll figure it out…"
Her smile widens, as she realises maybe she needs the reassurance more than she's letting herself think.
"It's you and me, now, just you and me…"
As she hands Owen the frying pan to towel dry, she frowns slightly.
"I've never actually cooked proper food." She sighs, half grimacing at her own antiquity, being one of the women of almost forgotten traditions, living in big houses with staff cooking for them and little to no everyday skills. "Mother had me take a class in decorative baking-" she says the words with such disdain, "-before realising I was never going to take to it, and I was much more suited down at the stables, with dressage and gymkhana lessons…"
He smiles mischievously. "So you're asking me for cooking lessons?"
She shrugs, looking slightly abashed, flushing slightly, the shame surrounding her sheltered, almost caged upbringing taunting her again. "Please." She breathes, and noticing the catch in her voice, the look in her eyes, Owen's smile softens.
"I can do that." He smiles. "I'm nothing special, I don't have a huge fancy repertoire or anything, it's just the basics, really… good, simple food…"
"Sounds perfect."
She looks so hopeful, so grateful and almost childlike in that moment he sets the dry frying pan down on the counter and wraps his arms around her, burying his face in her hair.
"I love you." He half grunts, the eloquent romantics half sticking in the throat of the sailor, the stable hand, the man that never dreamt himself worthy of a Dearing girl. "So damn much."
He feels her smile against his shoulder.
They take a walk along the river that afternoon, and Claire slips her hand into his with such ease for a fraction of a second he has another moment of pure disbelief.
"One of your people might see us… we're not far enough away from the Dearing estate to go unnoticed yet, we-"
She pulls him slightly closer to her, wrapping her arms around his and lacing his fingers with those of her other hand, but she raises an eyebrow.
"They're not my people anymore, Owen." She scoffs, "When I decided to pack it all up into one suitcase and run away into the sunset with you… they stopped being my people. You can guarantee Mother's already put me on whatever blacklist she can imagine up, I'm nothing but an embarrassment to the Dearing family, and the worst we'll get is a disapproving glance…" her frown drops into a smile and she looks up into his eyes, "…and anyway, I'm marrying you, one of these days. You'll have to get used to being seen with me."
That low, rumbling chuckle she loves so dearly. "One of these days… we need to figure out where we're going, what I'm going to do… you're right, I'll have to look outside your mother's social circles for stable work… we'll have to go far enough away that no one's heard of the Dearing scandal…"
She snorts with laughter, "I don't think it will be as far away as you think… Mother's living in the old world… things are changing faster than she'd like and there aren't as many people like her anymore… we're taking over, the new generation…"
He squeezes her hand lightly and pulls her slightly closer to him. "The new generation where one of these days no one is going to even blink at a girl from a respectable family and the dirty stable hand, fresh out of the Navy…"
Her giggles flutter away from them with the wind.
They find some sort of bizarre, almost temporary feeling balance of normal, they slip into it with such ease it is almost like they've always been there. But time is ticking around them, and the hours turn into days and they can't keep playing house in the flat that they only have four more days worth of rent paid for, and not even a cent hard earned to their names, just the wad of dollar bills Karen had given her. A gift from back when she was getting misty eyed at the true nature of her own husband and the love story she had seen playing out between the youngest Dearing sister and the Grady boy back when they used to tear after each other in the gardens of the estate.
That third morning, after Owen's taught Claire how to cook a few things, Claire's written and posted a letter explaining her side of the story to Karen, and they've christened every surface that is possible to lay on, sit on or lean against in the flat, Claire spots something.
"You still want to work with horses?"
Owen looks up from the plates that he's scrubbing. "Huh?"
She points to a rectangle in the bottom left hand corner of a page near the back of the newspaper.
"There's a stud farm… a way away, over near Greenville… they urgently need a groom who will take on young racehorse training responsibilities… no experience required."
He leaves the plate in the sink and steps over to read over her shoulder. He can't quite help the smile that's teasing the edges of his lips.
"They want to see any potential candidates before the weekend… Claire, take a gamble with me one more time?"
For a moment, her heart thumps in her ears. She narrows her eyes, apprehension darting through her, and for a second she wonders if she'll ever know what's going to happen the next day again, with the same steady, boring repeatability she always knew in what's become a distant previous life.
She gives him a smile, trying to mask her uncertainty. If there's one thing this man deserves, after everything, it's her belief in him. "It's not like I have a whole lot of security if I don't gamble, is it?"
He gives her a dry chuckle. "I bunked on one of the ships in the Navy with a sailor from Greenville… he went back when I went back… if we could find him I'm sure Lowery would put us up for a few nights until we found a place, got a first week's pay…" he takes a deep breath, and she can't help smiling, because it's as if he still doubts she'd follow him to the end of the earth and back again. "…let's go to Greenville, Claire. It's far enough away from your mother's social circles for us to build our life again, and I could get this job… and even if I don't, they might know other stables or estates with stables around that might be looking for some labour… We need to get out of here, and just thinking about how we need to won't help us get there…"
"Iris was born in Greenville." She muses.
Owen frowns. "Huh?"
"Iris. The housekeeper on the Dearing Estate. She grew up in Greenville. We used to talk… she used to come and dress me and do my hair when I was younger, and then as I got older she'd always make sure she was dusting my room when I was in there…"
The look on Owen's face she's never quite seen before. For only a moment, it looks like blind sympathy. Like he's trying and failing to quite understand her childhood, and thanking God that his wasn't alike. She doesn't really like it, it only drives the wedge in further, that wedge constantly reminding her how worlds apart they really are on paper.
"She always said it was lovely in summer. We could go to Greenville."
As she folds the last of her clothing into the suitcase – that same old suitcase she'd dragged out of the wardrobe in the mansion on the Dearing estate – only six days and a whole lifetime ago – the mixture of feelings rising in her takes her breath away. With one inhale, one passing thought, she's terrified of flitting, yet again, into the complete unknown, with nothing but the man who she has come to know as the only constant in her life beside her. And in the next breath, with that thought taking hold, she looks around the tiny, cramped and untidy bedsit that hasn't even been her home for a week, she feels suddenly nostalgic, and like she's loathe to leave. Because despite only being six days, being nothing like the world she was used to, the pristine tidiness, its achievement hidden from the eyes of the residents, a lack of reality that she now sees, this is the first home she's ever chosen.
Admittedly, choosing this home has more to do with the man in the kitchen packing up their plates and bowls, and less to do with the décor, or the lack of basic facilities, but it's still the place she's felt the most at home, her whole life.
And she won't ever forget that.
Fastening the suitcase with a little sigh, she skirts one last glance around the bedroom.
Her life seems to suddenly consist of tiny suitcases, leaving places and never looking back, and last glances. And as Owen clatters around with their few kitchen utensils, she realises she wouldn't have it any other way.
That's a wrap on chapter two! Was pretty much all sickening fluff, that one, but I did dare to touch on the underlying angst that is still very much in both their minds despite their home made happily-ever-after. That will rear its ugly head again, never fear! Would love to hear what you think of this chapter, constructive criticism welcome!