But he did not loosen his hold. He could still feel the tremors in his hands, still feel the echo of the ride, of the rain, of every memory that had driven him there in the first place, and yet none of it mattered anymore because she wasalive and well,breathing softly against him.
“I thought—” He broke off, his throat closing up.
Anne pulled back just enough to look at him, her eyes wide in confusion. “What did you think?”
He should have answered. He should have said something rational, or perhaps laughed it all off and said that it was nothing and that he would rather take her back home to recover.
Instead, his control shattered.
Before she could speak again, he pulled her back in and kissed her.
There was nothing careful about it, no restraint or distance. He kissed her with the full force of everything he had spent months refusing to name, everything he had buried under duty and avoidance and grief he had never properly learned how to set down.
Fear still lingered in him, but it collided with something else, something that had been building quietly in every shared look, every argument, every moment he had told himself meant nothing when it had begun to mean everything.
Anne froze for only a heartbeat. Then her hands curled into his coat, not pushing him away.
Dorian exhaled sharply against her mouth, as if something inside him had finally stopped holding back. When he finally broke the kiss, it was not because he wanted to. It was because he had to breathe.
He did not move far, not enough to create distance or to pretend it had not happened. His forehead hovered near hers, the rain still cold against his skin.
“I should not have done that,” he said, his voice low, rough in a way that had nothing to do with the weather.
Anne’s breath was unsteady, her eyes searching his as though trying to understand what had shifted between them in the span of a single moment.
“No,” she countered softly, shaking her head, “you should have.”
Dorian already knew that something in him had broken and would never go back to how it had been before.
CHAPTER 24
The drive back to Ashford Hall felt different in a way neither of them dared to examine.
Anne sat opposite him, as usual, yet neither of them spoke, for both were aware that one careless word might disturb whatever fragile thing had budded between them.
Dorian kept looking at her when he thought she would not notice, though she noticed each time and said nothing at first, partly because she was still trying to understand what had happened and partly because she was not entirely certain she wanted to interrupt it.
Eventually, she broke the silence, unable to ignore it any longer.
“You are staring at me again.”
“I am not.”
Anne studied him for a moment longer before leaning back slightly in her seat, caught between amusement and suspicion.
“You rode through a storm because of a mild fever,” she said. “And now you are sitting there as though I might disappear if you look away for too long.”
Dorian exhaled slowly, as though weighing whether honesty would make things better or worse, before deciding it did not particularly matter. A faint smile tugged at his mouth, though his eyes did not fully leave her this time.
“I suppose I have behaved somewhat unreasonably.”
“Somewhat,” Anne repeated, as if testing out the word.
The carriage trundled on in a steady rhythm, the thud of hooves against wet ground filling the space between them, but even that familiar noise could not return things to how they had been before.
By the time they reached Ashford Hall, servants were already waiting at the entrance. Dorian stepped down first before turning around to offer her his hand. She took it, and his fingers lingered around hers for a fraction longer than was necessary before he released her.
Inside the house, the day unfolded in its usual pattern of movement and responsibility, with breakfast served, reports delivered, and stable matters already demanding attention. YetDorian did not remain in his study as he normally would have. Instead, Anne found him in the stables long before anyone else arrived.
