“Has it not? He was always difficult, but lately there has been talk of responsibility and stability. All good things,” another male voice argued.
So there are two men with her.
“Dorian Blackwood, responsible?” Lady Vivian scoffed. “How very optimistic of you.”
The first man chuckled. “Well, you do know him better than most, Lady Vivian.”
“I know him well enough,” she replied.
Anne felt something tighten in her chest. She willed herself to walk away, but she could not move.
“He always goes through phases,” Lady Vivian continued. “He is deeply devoted, but only as long as the subject captures his attention.”
A brief pause followed. Anne could picture her smiling.
“This,” Lady Vivian added, “is simply the current one.”
“And what do you think of the Duchess?”
“The Duchess,” she said thoughtfully, “is quite fortunate in many ways.”
“Fortunate?”
Lady Vivian’s reply came easily. “She has arrived at exactly the right time in his life to be taken seriously. That is not insignificant, but Dorian has never been a man who remains in one place for long.”
Anne’s hands balled into fists at her sides.
“Is that to say that you believe this marriage is temporary?” the second man asked.
“I believe,” Lady Vivian said in a conversational tone, “that men like Dorian Blackwood are rarely changed by a lady. They are entertained briefly, then they revert to their true selves.”
“And what becomes of the wife?”
“The wife adapts,” she replied. “Or she does the more intelligent thing and finds herself a lovely little home by the sea and lives alone on an allowance. They have a choice in the matter, in that sense.”
Anne remained very still, listening to the ease with which the words were said, the lack of cruelty required for them to hit their target.
“I have known Dorian long enough to understand what people often misunderstand about him,” Lady Vivian added. “He does not belong easily to anyone, and when he is drawn to something, it is rarely permanent.”
The first man gave a soft laugh. “You speak as though you were once very close to being one of those things.”
Lady Vivian did not answer immediately. But when she did, her voice carried the faintest hint of amusement. “People like Dorian are not difficult to get close to,” she said. “They are difficult tokeepclose.”
A pause followed, lighter now, the conversation drifting to the men’s wives.
Anne stepped back slowly from the corridor, feeling as though she had been intruding on their home rather than the other way around. Her gloves felt tighter than they should have. She adjusted them, then she turned and walked away, as though she had simply chosen a different route.
That evening, everything changed without warning.
Tempest collapsed during training. One moment, he had been moving through his exercises as expected, his stride strong and responsive under the supervision of the stablehands; the next, he faltered sharply, stumbling as though the ground itself had shifted beneath him.
The change was so sudden that for a brief second, no one reacted at all, as if the sight had not yet registered properly.
Then the stables erupted into chaos. Voices rose immediately, overlapping in confusion and alarm. One of the trainers shouted for assistance while another rushed forward to steady the horse, only to be nearly struck as Tempest lashed out in panic. His breathing had already become ragged, his eyes wide with distress as he fought against something unseen that no soothing voice or familiar touch seemed able to reach.
Anne was moving before she fully processed what she was seeing. She pushed through the line of startled stablehands without hesitation, ignoring the calls behind her, her focusnarrowing on Tempest. The moment she reached him, she placed her hands firmly against his neck, speaking his name in a low, steady voice that cut through the surrounding panic.
“Tempest,” she said sharply, then again, softer, more controlled. “Look at me.”
