“The investors arrive tomorrow,” he informed him.
“Yes.”
“And the neighbors will be present by evening.”
“Yes.”
“The success of the race will determine whether confidence in the stables is restored.”
“I am aware.”
Pembroke did not comment further. He did not have to. Dorian was more than aware of how high the stakes were. This was their only chance to prove themselves, and if they failed, he was ruined.
“There will be a great deal of attention,” Pembroke said. “It may be worth ensuring that nothing within the household is unstable at the same time.”
Dorian glanced at him.
Pembroke’s expression remained neutral, but Dorian knew what he meant. He had taken a wife to appear more stable. He could not allow his marriage to be the reason why he was no longer perceived that way.
After a moment, he exhaled slowly and turned back toward the field.
Anne had moved further along the fence line, Tempest beside her as she guided him. The horse responded immediately to her presence, calm and steady in a way that no one else had managed to achieve.
Dorian watched her for a long moment. If she truly wanted nothing more from him than this distance she had created, then perhaps he should feel relieved.
That would have been the sensible reaction, the correct one. Instead, he found himself more aware than ever of how much space now existed where there had not been any before.
Anne threw herself completely into preparing Tempest for the upcoming race. There was a precision to her work that left little room for interruption, and even less for conversation that was not strictly necessary.
She arrived at the stables earlier each morning and remained there until late afternoon, moving between trainer discussions, tack adjustments, and exercise routines with a level of focus that made it clear she had redirected all of her attention away from everything else.
Dorian tried not to mind that. If anything, he was pleased that somebody cared as much as he did for the success of their horse.
Tempest responded to her presence immediately, as he always did. Under her guidance, the horse moved with increasing confidence, his earlier volatility replaced by a steady obedience that even Dorian’s most experienced trainers had failed to achieve alone. There was no question that her influence had been the decisive factor in his recovery.
Dorian noticed all of it. He noticed the way she no longer looked toward him when she entered the stables, as though her awareness of the space now began and ended with the horse she had come to see.
He noticed how her answers had become brief and entirely focused on practical matters. He noticed how she no longer lingered after conversations the way she once had, nor allowed silence to stretch into anything personal or unstructured.
Most of all, he noticed that she had stopped letting herself be drawn to him.
He tried briefly to reintroduce the ease that had once existed between them, offering remarks that might have elicited a sharper response or a faintly amused correction, but she simply responded politely. And that, more than anything, made it clear that something had shifted in a way he could not casually reverse.
He found himself watching her more than he intended to, especially in the quieter moments when she was occupied with Tempest or speaking to the stablehands. He began to recognizehow deliberately she avoided meeting his gaze, how carefully she kept her distance as though it required effort to maintain.
And in time, he began to interpret it in a way that felt almost reasonable, because it was clear that she regretted it.
Whatever had begun forming between them in recent weeks, however unspoken or undefined, she had seemingly decided it had gone too far. Perhaps she saw it as a mistake, something that had blurred the boundaries of what their marriage was meant to be, or perhaps she had realized what he had been reminding himself of all along—that their arrangement was practical, not personal.
The thought should have reassured him. Instead, it upset him. Because if that was true, then her withdrawal made perfect sense, and if it made sense, then there was nothing to challenge.
And so Dorian did what he had always done when faced with something he could not afford to misjudge: he kept his distance, ensuring that whatever ease had once existed between them was no longer something he allowed himself to reach for again.
At breakfast, he kept conversation light and neutral. In the stables, he spoke only when necessary, focusing on training progress rather than anything personal. In the house, he stopped lingering in rooms where she was present for longer than required, and when their paths crossed, he maintained the same restraint she had adopted first.
If Anne had chosen distance, then he would respect it. That was simple enough, practical even. What he did not allow himself to examine too closely was the way the house felt increasingly divided by something neither of them had named aloud. Or the fact that, despite his decision to step back, he still noticed everything she did, and against his better judgment, he still found himself watching.
He did not intend to leave the house that evening. He told himself there was work still to be done in the study—correspondence to review and a dozen small matters related to the approaching race that required his attention more than anything else. And yet, by late afternoon, he found himself outside, walking without clear direction along the quieter paths that led away from the formal gardens and toward the stables.
