No one stopped him when he took Tempest out.
The storm had fully broken by the time he left the estate, wind driving the rain hard enough to blur the world ahead into indistinct shapes. The ride to Rosemere House quickly became difficult, but that was not going to stop him. Nothing was going to stop him.
Anne’s face stayed with him throughout, not as an idealized version of what he wanted, but as she had been in the doorway, shattered and searching for the certainty he had failed to give her quickly.
That image did not weaken his resolve. It sharpened it.
For the first time since Lily’s death, he understood that losing someone did not happen only because of tragedy. It also happened when someone was too afraid to say what they truly wanted, and when they were more willing to lose everything thatmattered to them than risk what they wanted being the first to walk away.
And he had already done enough of that.
By the time Rosemere House appeared through the rain, Dorian was soaked through and breathless from more than the storm. He did not slow down when he reached the gates. He did not wait for permission or for his arrival to be announced. He rode straight toward the house with the certainty that if he hesitated again, even for a moment, he would lose Anne forever.
This time, he would choose differently, even if it cost him everything he had.
CHAPTER 27
Rosemere House felt colder than Anne remembered.
She told herself it was the weather, but the truth was simpler than that, and she avoided naming it for as long as she could. She had come back with her dignity intact, or what remained of it, and nothing else.
She tried to appear as though nothing had happened, even when her mother saw her and asked her why she looked so afraid. She spoke when spoken to, and answered her mother politely, though she avoided the questions that she did not know how to answer.
It did not matter that she had left. She loved Dorian. That did not cease with distance. It simply became more persistent, more humiliating, because nothing of what had happened in Ashford Hall had erased it.
She found her mother in the sitting room shortly after breakfast, seated by the window with a teacup that had gone untouched long enough for the surface to lose its warmth. Her mother looked up as she entered, and something in her expression shifted immediately, as though she had already been waiting for her.
“You have been avoiding me,” her mother said gently.
Anne closed the door behind her before replying, “I have been trying to think.” She crossed the room slowly and sat in the chair opposite her before continuing, her hands resting in her lap in a way that felt too controlled to be natural. “I do not know what I am supposed to do with what I feel.”
“Then start by saying it out loud.”
Anne hesitated, then exhaled. She felt like a five-year-old forced to confess to mischief. “I left him.”
“I know,” her mother replied. “The house knows, too, but that does not tell me why.”
Anne’s fingers tightened slightly against her sleeve. “Because I saw something that made me think I was wrong to trust him. Even before that, I could feel him holding back, like he was always standing at a distance even when he was close.”
Her mother frowned slightly. “Men do that. They are all filled with pride, and it takes time for them to look past it.”
“This was different,” Anne insisted. “It was fear.”
The room fell quiet for a moment.
Her mother leaned back slightly in her chair, studying her. “Fear of what?”
Anne’s voice wavered, though she forced herself to continue. “He is afraid of becoming the reason I regret him.”
“And do you believe he would?”
“I do not know what I believe anymore.”
A pause followed, and then her mother spoke more softly. “You are grieving.”
Anne let out a short, strained breath. She did not know why she expected her mother to understand. Her mother had never understood her, and that would never change. Of that, she was certain, even though it killed her. There had been so many times when she had needed her mother but had not found her there.
“I know what grief feels like. This feels different.”
