For the first time since she had known him, he looked like a man with nothing left hidden.
Anne felt her chest tighten. He had chosen honesty. He had chosenher.
He met her gaze, but he did not move toward her. She understood why.
He had fought for her. He had been through the storm and had spoken every truth he had spent years avoiding, and he was leaving the next step entirely in her hands.
The realization hit her so hard it nearly stole her breath. He was waiting, not because he doubted her but because he respected her enough to let her choose freely.
She moved before she could talk herself out of it.
Eleanor’s eyes widened slightly as Anne crossed the floor with sudden purpose. Dorian’s expression shifted into startled confusion as she reached him, but he barely had time to inhale before she grabbed the front of his coat and pulled him down toward her.
Then she kissed him.
It was not gentle. It was not careful. It was everything she had held back for too long. She poured it all into the kiss with enough force to make him stumble half a step before instinct took over.
His hands moved immediately, one wrapping around her waist and the other rising to her face, as if he needed to be certain that she was real. Then he kissed her back with a desperation that matched her own, every last wall between them collapsing at once.
Anne barely cared that anyone was watching them. She barely cared that her mother and half the household could walk in on them at any moment. When they finally broke apart, both of them were breathing hard.
Dorian stared at her as though he still could not believe what had just happened. Her hands remained clenched in his coat.
“You absolute fool.” Her voice trembled slightly, though her gaze never wavered.
A breathless, disbelieving laugh escaped him.
Anne’s eyes suddenly stung with tears she had been holding back for far too long. “I love you too,” she whispered.
The words shattered something in Dorian. Anne saw it happen—the disbelief, followed by relief. His forehead dropped to hers, and he closed his eyes, his breathing slightly unsteady.
“You have no idea what hearing that does to me,” he said roughly.
Anne’s grip loosened, before her hands slid up, cupping his face. “Then I will spend the rest of my life showing you.”
Dorian opened his eyes. Whatever he saw in her expression seemed to undo him entirely. When he kissed her again, it was softer but no less intense. It carried none of the desperation from earlier.
Behind them, Eleanor let out a long breath.
“Well,” she said dryly. “I did say I was right.”
Despite everything, Anne laughed.
Dorian laughed too, the sound rough and disbelieving and freer than she had ever heard it.
For the first time in what felt like forever, nothing stood between them. And Anne planned to make the most of it.
CHAPTER 30
Dorian would have preferred to be anywhere else but the Devonshires’ garden party, but Anne had insisted they could not avoid society entirely, not after everything that had happened.
He kept close to her without making it obvious: a hand on her waist when they moved through groups, a brief touch to her back when introductions required politeness, and an instinctive awareness of every direction she might be approached from.
Anne did not seem uncomfortable with it anymore. If anything, she moved closer to him whenever the crowd thickened, as though she had already decided there was no point in pretending that distance was necessary.
They were halfway through a conversation with a local baroness when the tone of a nearby group shifted sharply enough to catch Dorian’s attention.
“Have you heard what became of Lady Vivian Marlowe?” a woman asked, her voice low.
