Trying to find ways to spend time together wasn't simple, Clara thought as she quickly made her way across the lobby of the Ritz to the Boardwalk entrance. Mrs. Siddons was home from Florida, so going to Richard's was difficult. Clara cared little for her reputation, but she cared a lot about unnecessarily bringing Richard to her father's attention. She was realist enough to know her father's reaction to the idea she was with Richard wouldn't have been pleasant before the coup. Now? Shakespearean in nature, she thought. The last thing she wanted was for her father to decide that Richard was his personal enemy. She had taken a chance that her father would never pick up on the fact she hadn't listed Richard on the overview of men she wasn't in love with. She couldn't bring herself to deny her feelings. Admitting her feelings was a risk, but had gambled on the fact that her father never took her seriously.

Melting into the shadows was now second nature. He stood out of sight, hoping to see her turn into the alley, but not actually believing she would appear. Part of him waited in dread for the day Clara realized what he was and never wanted to see him again. That's when he saw her, wearing the gray coat and hat she wore on the train to New York. She smiled when he stepped out of the shadows into the light, and he took her hands when she gets close and as she leaned up to kiss him he heard her take the little half breath she always did before they kiss.

He breaks away and tells her he has a surprise. She teases him for clues as they walk down the alley toward the road.

Richard looks at her expectantly when they come to the street. At first, Clara just sees the Model T Richard usually drives, but then she realizes this car doesn't have the gouge on the bottom of the passenger door.

"This isn't the same car you usually have," Clara said. He's definitely smiling, she thought. "Richard, did you buy it? That's amazing!"

They both know what Richard having a car meant. Freedom. It was ridiculous, Clara thought, that two adults had to sneak around like errant children. And yet. The fear of what her father was capable of doing worried her. She didn't want to make everything worse; not at this juncture, anyway. At some point, she knew her hand would be forced.

Clara was curled next to him as he drove, but her mind seemed far away. He hesitantly picked up her hand and wondered what was bothering her.

"I had a very odd dinner with my father, even by our standards. He's hired a new, well, Jimmy." Clara said, like she knew what he was thinking. "We started off dinner with Father basically accusing me of having feelings for this man, who I hadn't even noticed until he gave me a speech about how charming Mr. Sleater is, and Margaret fell all over herself recounting all the women currently making fools of themselves over him. I think perhaps they both have feelings for him."

"The Irishman?" Richard asked without thinking. He instantly disliked the idea of the Irishman around Clara. Anyone working as Nucky's bodyguard had total access to their floor of the hotel and to Clara. The ease with which Clara disappeared to spend time with him made him sure that no one was actually watching out for her. She was better protected when he and Jimmy were stationed in the suite. The only time he was sure she was safe was when he was with her, but he knew that he was often so distracted when he was with her that Tommy would be able to get the drop on them. No matter what happened with this war, he knew Jimmy would never hurt Clara. But he didn't feel the same about the Commodore, and God only knew what Capone and some of the others might come up with.

Clara laughed. "Oh, has he charmed as you as well?" As the words come out of her mouth she was hit with a feeling that the circumstances of Richard and Mr. Sleater meeting were hardly pleasant ones. "Of course he hasn't, what a silly thing to say. I was thinking in the car back to the hotel that my father hired this man to fight Jimmy." She was quiet for a moment, pushing back the ever-growing horror at the family fracas she feared was going to end up being fought with Gatling guns.

"Anyway, tell me the plans for the evening," she said, teasingly, even though she knew, because she didn't want to waste one more moment of their time together.

"Mmm. I thought. We could go. Stargazing." He couldn't look at her when he said it, but since Clara answered by leaning over and trailing kisses across his jawline he decided she approved of the plan.

They spread a blanket on the ground when they found a secluded spot. Clara sat, kicked her shoes off, and removed her hat. Richard sat next to her and covered them with the second blanket and sat with his arm behind her after he put his mask with the rest of their things.

"I'm glad you bought the car. One, because I really do enjoy stargazing," Clara said in a very prim voice before switching back to her normal tone, "but also because it worries me that you seem to think you don't deserve things. You deserve to be comfortable and happy, just like we all do."

He didn't know how to answer her. He didn't deserve happiness and comfort. Its why he didn't deserve her, although he can't bring himself to stop being around her.

Clara turned and nuzzled into his neck. She felt his hand work through her hair (she was going through hairpins at an unprecedented rate these days), and when he tipped her head back and kissed her there was no awkwardness or hesitancy. He had learned exactly what she liked over the last several weeks, and it almost felt like he was running a carefully planned assault on her senses. Except quickly she could feel the carefulness they've always had with each other melting away. Richard was lowering her onto her back, and her hands were pulling him down on top of her. She felt more than heard the groan deep in his throat when she wrapped one leg around his. The weight of his body on top of hers was both extraordinary and yet somehow familiar, and it increased her drive to have more of him. She started fumbling with his tie.

For a moment, he thought she was trying to choke him. It brought him back down to reality to realize he was pressed quite firmly against her and it was becoming more obvious with every passing moment. He went still.

"Are you okay?" Clara asked, worried she had done something wrong.

Richard rolled off her and sat up. Clara's heartbeat sped up for a a different reason.

"I don't. Mmm. Want to scare you."

"Well you are now because I don't know what's wrong." Clara replayed the last few minutes in her mind. "Did I hurt you trying to get your tie undone? That was far trickier than I thought it was going to be."

"Mmm. No," Richard wondered if it were possible that he was actually going to die of embarrassment.

Clara frowned, and then she figured it out. A moment later she realized she wasn't sure how to broach the subject either. She looked over at him. He was sitting with the damaged side of his face next to her. If they can't see each other this conversation might be slightly more bearable, she thought.

"This is all new for me, Richard. I've..." her voice broke and she forced herself to go on. "I've been with someone before, but it was hurried and during the war and. Well. It's different with us, because we've been friends for so long. You were one of my favorite people in the world before there was anything physical between us, and we seem to be in agreement that we are going to take our time? But I'm not a young girl. I know how...men work."

Richard stared straight ahead, forcing his mind not to picture Clara with someone else. They were friends, he thought, but that's why it was so important he didn't hurt her. Gillian Darmody's words were never far from his mind. "Someone told me that. Because of your mother. You are scared. I don't ever. Want to be. The reason you are scared."

Clara exhaled audibly. Fuck, she thought. She wasn't ready for this conversation. "I'm not scared of sex. I'm scared of turning into my mother. Richard, I think of her as being this sad woman who most days, once I started school, never even changed out of her nightgown. But that's not who she was. She went to college. She stayed when my father left. She taught school in Newark, even though her parents and my father were against it. She defied her father when she married mine. It's not that I'm afraid of miscarriages or even..." her voice cracks, "what happened with my brother. I mean, I don't want those things to happen, obviously. But I don't want to lose me, not like my mother lost herself.

"But that doesn't mean that I don't want..well, you. And eventually, I do want us to have children. But not until our lives are not...this. No wars, no body guards, just boringly normal. And until we get there, well, it's 1921 not 1821. There's precautions we can take."

Damn it, Clara thought, and felt heat rise in her face. She hadn't meant to admit all of that so baldly.

Richard picked up her hand. He wanted to live with Clara in a Sears Catalog House (he read the new catalog of houses each year with the same ferocity with which Clara read novels), come home to see her writing at her desk, a dog asleep in front of the fireplace, and the sound of children playing upstairs. Not long ago it all just seemed like a fantasy, but now Clara was saying she wanted him. She wanted a normal life and children. With him. But first, she just wanted him.

It didn't make talking with her about any of this any easier. "Once we. Start. It's hard for me. To talk. So I can't ask if you. Are okay. Mmm. Or if what I'm doing. Is okay."

Clara nodded. "Well, I trust you. We can always talk before, and if I'm not okay with something during I'll say something. And you have to let me know, too." She was quiet for a moment. "Do you have anything with you?"

It takes him a moment to work out what she's asking. He had thought about it, but it seemed presumptuous. And there was no question of taking chances. Knowing Clara as well as he did, he knew that having a feeling of control over when and how she decided to have children would help her cope. A surprise pregnancy, especially when their lives were in so much turmoil, would damage her terribly.

The story of Clara's mother horrified him from the first time she told him. He loved Clara's spiritedness. The idea that it could dissipate like her mother's was terrifying.

"No," he said.

"We could do other things," Clara said softly, before turning around so her back was facing him. "You'll have to unbutton my dress."

His hands shook, but he started working the small gray buttons loose. As her back emerged, he remembered how she trembled when he touched her back while they kissed. He leaned forward and kissed the top of her spine. Clara gasped and grabbed his leg, so he started working his way down until her dress was completely unbuttoned.

"My bra," Clara managed to get out. He tried, but fumbled badly. There were so many tiny hooks. Clara finally reached back and unhooked it, and then laid back across his lap.

Clara watched him pull the front of her dress down. His face was completely serious, and reminded her of something. He was looking down at her like he was seeing something he had thought about a lot but never expected to see, and Clara realized it was the exact same face he made when he first saw the dinosaur fossils at the museum. She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from giggling, and she felt a rush of affection for him. But when his hands started tracing around her torso she forgot about giggling.

Then, anyway. Their level of enthusiasm greatly outweighed their level of experience. Richard removed his own tie, but Clara broke a nail trying to unbuckle his belt. He got in a hurry trying to detach a stocking from her garter belt and almost took out part of his good cheek when the garter snapped unexpectedly.

There were also a lot of moments that went right. Richard had been looking at her legs since sat on that bed at the bordello, and getting to finally take her stocking off was a thrill. Clara had been fighting an urge to kiss his neck since at least October and was happy to indulge. Just being able to touch each other after so many months of pent up desire was amazing.

Finally, they both lay boneless and breathless curled around each other under the blanket. Richard thought he should pile their coats on top of them and help Clara back into the bodice of her dress; Clara thought she should take out the candy bar she had in her purse and split it with him. Instead, they fell asleep in a content pile.