“You are not usually here when I arrive,” she remarked, approaching him.
“I know,” he replied.
“And yet you are here now.”
“I decided I was needed here.”
Anne raised an eyebrow. “In the stables?”
“In your vicinity,” he corrected.
She shot him a look, but he remained focused on Tempest as he spoke, one hand resting briefly against the horse’s neck with an ease that had become increasingly natural.
“You are safe,” he said. “And I owe that gratitude to Tempest. I owe him a lot, actually.”
“I was safe before.”
“Yes,” he agreed after a moment. “I know that now, but at the time, I was unsettled by it all.”
The admission lingered between them longer than either acknowledged.
Dorian found Anne watching him more closely than usual, as if she were trying to understand what exactly had shifted so much in such a short time.
“You are still unsettled,” she noted.
“I am fine. I am adjusting; that is all.”
“To what?”
His gaze flicked toward her briefly before returning to the horse. “To the idea that I may not want things to stay as they were before.”
The answer was quiet but absolute, and it left a different silence in its wake.
Anne looked down for a moment before speaking again, more softly than before. “That is not a bad thing. In fact, I would be inclined to agree.”
Dorian’s expression shifted slightly, something guarded passing behind his eyes before he smoothed it away.
He left his work more often than usual, appearing in rooms where Anne was without any clear reason beyond being there, and she found herself less surprised each time he did.
In the corridors, his hand would brush briefly against her back as she passed, not enough to stop her but enough to register, and when he handed her papers or documents, his fingers would linger slightly longer than necessary before withdrawing.
Anne did not pull away. If anything, she adjusted to it, as though testing whether the new closeness would hold or disappear the moment she acknowledged it directly.
Later, when the house finally settled and they retired to their rooms, Dorian remained standing near the door to her chamber longer than necessary.
Anne stopped just inside, turning back to look at him. “Are you not coming in?” she asked.
“I should not,” he replied after a pause.
“You have not stopped following me all day,” she pointed out. “I do not see why that would change now.”
“That was not intentional.”
“Was it not?”
He could not help but smile at that.
“I will fix it,” he said.
