“It is not about that,” she replied smoothly. “Not directly.”
That made him pause, though he did not turn fully toward her. “I am not in the mood for whatever this is,” he muttered.
Lady Vivian took a step closer, careful in her approach, as though she understood that he was already too unsettled to be easily confronted.
“You are being told the truth in different ways,” she said, “by people who are not as gentle as I am.”
Dorian exhaled slowly, rubbing a hand once over his face before lowering it again. “I do not need interpretations of other people’s opinions.”
“You do,” she corrected softly. “Because you are not hearing the part that matters.”
He finally looked at her squarely. “And what part is that?”
“That the Duchess is safe with you only as long as nothing changes,” she said. “She is not like the women you have been around before. She believes in permanence in a way that makes her vulnerable to men like you. You are already different with her, and you think that is enough. You thinkintentionis enough, but you are still what you have always been underneath everything you are trying to become.”
“That is not true,” he protested.
“It is not an insult,” she assured him. “It is a warning, and it would be best for you to heed it. She deserves safety and a life that does not depend on whether you are having a good day or whether your past decides to catch up with you again.”
Dorian did not respond immediately, and that silence was enough for Lady Vivian to step closer, reducing the space between them to something more personal than conversational.
“You are afraid,” she said quietly.
That was the moment the argument stopped being intellectual and became something far more dangerous. Because he did not deny it quickly enough.
Lady Vivian reached for him then, her hand resting lightly against his arm as if grounding him, as if offering something steady in place of everything he was no longer certain of.
Dorian did not move away immediately, not because he accepted it, but because the exhaustion from the earlier confrontation still weighed heavily enough that his reactions did not come cleanly.
And in that moment’s hesitation, she rose slightly and kissed him.
It lasted only a moment. Dorian did not return it, but he did not stop it at once either, and the lack of an immediate reaction stretched into something that could not be undone once it had been seen.
When he finally stepped back, it was abrupt.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice low and sharp.
Vivian lowered her gaze as though nothing had happened beyond what she intended. But the library door had remained open, and Anne stood there.
She did not speak at first, and for a moment, the entire room seemed to collapse into the stillness of her presence alone. Her expression changed slowly rather than instantly, as though her mind was trying to reconcile what she was seeing with what it understood to be possible.
Dorian moved immediately, his voice breaking through the silence as he stepped forward.
“Anne,” he said too quickly, the word carrying more urgency than control. “It is not what you think.”
He stopped himself because there was nothing he could say that would not first require undoing what she had already witnessed.
Lady Vivian turned slightly toward Anne, a sickly sweet smile playing on her lips. “It is, I am afraid,” she said evenly. “If you are uncertain of that, you need only think of whether or not he stopped it.”
Anne’s gaze returned to Dorian, searching his face desperately, as though she were willing him to contradict her with a single word.
Dorian opened his mouth, but nothing came fast enough to erase what his silence had already done. And in that delay, however brief, everything changed beyond repair.
Anne took two loud, steady breaths before turning and walking out of the room.
Dorian followed after her, calling out her name, but she did not stop. By the time he reached the corridor, she was already moving away from him.
Whether he liked it or not, he had ruined it all.
