Chapter 22
Anne found Dorian in his study shortly before luncheon, surrounded by several reports from stable managers who seemed incapable of making decisions without consulting him first. Or, more recently, consulting her.
He glanced up when she entered. “You are here.”
Anne stopped beside the desk. “That was an alarming greeting. You sounded relieved.”
“I am relieved.” Dorian set down the letter he had been reading. “One of the trainers has spent twenty minutes attempting to convince me that feeding schedules require three separate meetings.”
Anne winced. She had a feeling that she knew which trainer it was, for she had been arguing with him for days. He refused to listen to a word she said, and even though everyone else did as she instructed, he seemed to think that only Dorian could hold such authority.
“Which trainer?”
“Fletcher.”
“That explains everything.”
“I was hoping you would deal with him.”
“You are the Duke, Dorian.”
“You are considerably more frightening.”
Anne laughed at that, and the sound coaxed a smile from him.
Those smiles had become increasingly dangerous lately. Far too easy, far too warm. They were also entirely too inviting.
She looked away first. “I actually came to discuss something with you if you have a moment.”
The teasing faded at once.
“What is it?”
Anne hesitated. That alone was enough to make him sit back slightly.
For several moments, she studied the papers scattered across his desk rather than looking directly at him. Then, she finally spoke.
“I received a letter yesterday.”
“From whom?”
“My mother.”
The room grew quieter. Dorian softened at once.
Anne hated that he immediately understood why she looked uncomfortable. She had considered not telling him about it, because it should not have mattered at all, but she had been unable to stop thinking about it.
“What did she say?”
“Nothing remarkable.”
The answer sounded unconvincing even to her own ears.
Dorian raised an eyebrow. “Anne.”
She sighed. “She asked whether I might visit.”
“And you are considering it?”
“I am considering ignoring it.”
Dorian looked distinctly unimpressed.
A reluctant smile tugged briefly at her mouth before disappearing again.
“Do you think I should go?” she asked.
She hoped that he would agree with her and tell her not to go, so that she would not feel as guilty about it.
He studied her for a moment. “What do you want?”
She looked away. That was the problem—she did not know, or perhaps she did know and simply disliked the answer.
“I spent weeks angry with her, months even.” Her voice turned quieter. “Perhaps years, if I am being honest.”
Dorian remained silent.
Anne moved toward the window. Outside, the late morning sun stretched across the lawns surrounding Ashford Hall. She had hoped that an early morning ride with Tempest would help, but even that proved fruitless.
“I know she was grieving too,” she allowed. “I know losing my father hurt her as much as it hurt me. Part of me understands that.”
“And the other part?”
Anne exhaled slowly. “The other part remembers feeling alone. When Papa died, everything changed. She withdrew into her own grief, and I… I think we stopped knowing how to reach each other.”
She laughed sadly as the memories resurfaced. “I told myself I did not care, that it was easier that way, but I did care. I cared entirely too much.”
Dorian rose from behind the desk. He crossed the room slowly before stopping beside her near the window. “You should go.”
Anne looked down. “I was afraid you would say that.”
“Because you know it is true.”
She smiled faintly. “Being right is becoming an irritating habit of yours.”
“I am a husband. Irritation is part of my position.”
Anne rolled her eyes.
“Anne.” Something in his voice made her look at him.
“You do not have to forgive everything. You do not have to pretend that nothing happened. You do not have to arrive smiling and announce that every hurt has vanished, but if you want a relationship with her again, someone has to take the first step, which she has. It is now up to you to take the second.”
Anne swallowed. “What if nothing changes?”
Dorian was quiet for a moment. Then he offered a small smile. “What if it does?”
“I dislike optimistic people.”
“You married one.”
“No, I married a reckless man with a terrible reputation.”
His smile widened. “Those things are not mutually exclusive. I am not going to force you to leave or stay, but I will remind you that you spent years regretting things left unsaid with your father.”
Anne’s breath caught slightly. She had only said that to Eleanor.
“How did you know that?”
“Your friend is not particularly good at keeping secrets, not when she thinks it is important that you are helped through something.”
Anne groaned. “I knew it.”
“Anne, you know better than most that time does not always offer second chances. I am not suggesting that you go and insist on making things right, but I am hoping that you will go with an open mind, at least.”
Anne stared out across the grounds for several moments before finally speaking. “If I go and it ends badly, I will blame you.”
“Naturally.”
“If she irritates me, I will also blame you.”
“I accept that risk.”
“If the entire visit becomes unbearable—”
“I will still be blamed. I will accept that.”
Anne glanced at him. His expression was entirely sincere, and the sight of it made her laugh.
Dorian smiled. “There she is.”
Anne shook her head. “You are impossible.”
The warmth between them lingered. Then, after one final moment of hesitation, she nodded.
“Very well, I will go.”
Relief crossed Dorian’s face so quickly that she almost missed it. Almost.
“I think,” he said quietly, “you will be glad that you did.”
For reasons she could not entirely explain, hearing him say it made her believe it might actually be true.
* * *
Anne arrived at Rosemere House later that afternoon with a heaviness in her chest that had little to do with the carriage ride and everything to do with the fact that she had not stood on the doorstep willingly in a very long time.
The house looked unchanged. That somehow made it worse. The door opened before she could force herself to turn back.
“Your Grace,” the housekeeper greeted, sounding both surprised and carefully polite, as though unsure whether the visit was an attempt at reconciliation or a catastrophe.
“I have come to see my mother,” Anne announced.
The housekeeper hesitated briefly before showing her inside.
Her mother was waiting in the drawing room. She was not sitting as she once might have, but standing near the window as though she had been expecting that moment for hours and was still uncertain whether it would actually arrive.
“Anne.”
The name landed awkwardly in the space between them.
“Mother,” Anne replied after a pause.
Neither moved for a moment. The silence was not hostile exactly, but it carried the weight of everything neither of them knew how to begin repairing.
“I received your letter,” Anne said finally.
Her mother gave a small nod. “I hoped you would come.”
That simple admission seemed to make everything more complicated.
Anne set her gloves down carefully on the nearest chair, buying herself time. “It was… certainly unexpected,” she admitted.
“I imagine it was.” Another pause followed, then her mother gestured toward the seating area. “Will you sit?”
Anne did, though the movement felt cautious, as though she were stepping into a conversation that might shift under her at any moment. The fire crackled softly, and outside, carriage wheels rolled distantly along the street.
“I did not know whether you would come,” her mother said.
“I almost did not.”
That elicited a tired sigh from her mother, reluctant understanding rather than surprise. “I would not have blamed you.”
The honesty unsettled Anne more than any defensiveness might have. She studied her mother for a moment, noticing things she had either ignored or refused to see before: the slight strain around her eyes and the absence of any attempt at elegance that once seemed effortless.
“You wrote as though nothing had changed between us,” she said carefully.
Her mother’s gaze briefly flickered away. “That was not my intention.”
“But it is what you asked for.”
Her mother lowered herself into the chair opposite, slower than Anne remembered. “I did not know how else to reach you. I thought… I thought distance would have given you some time.”
Anne let out a quiet, humorless breath. She would have been cruel if she had not noticed the weariness in her mother’s eyes. The more she looked at her, the more she wondered if she had always been that way and if she had simply missed it.
“It gave me distance and little else,” she replied.
Her mother folded her hands tightly in her lap.
“When your father died,” she said after a moment, “I did not know how to function within the household anymore. I could not keep the stables, not in the way your father had. Everything began slipping faster than I could control. People were waiting for decisions I could not make quickly enough.” Her gaze dropped briefly. “I was frightened.”
The admission sounded almost odd in her voice.
“That is not an excuse,” she added quickly. “It is only the truth.” Then she exhaled heavily. “Selling Tempest broke something in me as well.”
Anne’s breath caught slightly. Her mother noticed.
“I know how much he meant to you,” she said quietly. “He meant the same to me in a different way.”
Anne’s fingers tightened faintly against her skirt. “You never said that.”
“I could not,” her mother admitted. “Not then. I told myself it was necessary, and that survival sometimes demanded choices that felt like cruelty, even when they were not meant to be.”
Anne’s voice came out quieter than she had intended. “Was it necessary?”
Her mother hesitated. “I believed it was.”
The distinction mattered. Anne could feel it.
“I never wished to remarry,” her mother continued. “Despite what others assume.”
Anne looked up, wondering if she was among those others.
Her mother met her gaze steadily. “I did not want another husband, but I saw no other way to protect what remained of our future.”
Anne looked away. For a moment, she felt the old anger rise again. Her mother had never once consulted her. If she needed help, she could have done so. Instead, she had made every decision for her and changed her life without asking for her permission.
Anne had been furious about it at the time, and part of her still was. But underneath it all, something else had begun to shift. Understanding did not erase the hurt; it only complicated it.
“I do not know what I am meant to do with this,” she said.
Her mother nodded faintly, as though she had expected that answer. “You do not have to decide anything today. I am only glad you came.”
Anne did not respond immediately because, despite everything she had felt walking into the room, despite everything that had once felt unbridgeable, she realized something uncomfortable had begun to change.
It was not forgiveness, not yet at least, but the beginning of seeing her mother as someone more complicated than the person she had resented for so long. And that, somehow, was harder than anger had ever been.
Later that afternoon, while the conversation still lingered between them, her mother finally let a flicker of something lighter enter her expression.
“You know,” she said, studying her with reluctant amusement, “for all the distance between us, you have managed something rather extraordinary.”
Anne frowned slightly. “I have?”
Her mother’s gaze softened as it moved briefly to the window, as if she were considering how best to phrase it without sounding sentimental. “You have married a duke.”
“That is not something I did alone.”
“No,” her mother agreed, a small smile forming on her lips. “But I suspect very few ladies marry a man who makes them so very happy. I can see it in you.”
Anne stiffened slightly. “That is an exaggeration.”
“It is an observation,” her mother replied simply. “And I was never particularly fond of romance, so you may trust that I am not indulging in it lightly.”
Anne looked down, unsure whether to dismiss it or examine it too closely.
“I do not know what exactly has changed in you since you left here,” her mother continued, “but I can see it. And I think you are not the only one who has been altered by it.”
The comment lingered too long for her liking.
Eventually, the conversation drifted to smaller things, more practical matters, as though both were careful not to press too hard on what had just been said.
It was only later that evening, after dinner, that Anne felt it begin.
At first, it was only fatigue, a heaviness behind her eyes she assumed came from travel and emotion and the long day itself, but as the evening wore on, the fatigue deepened into something less manageable, a faint heat beneath her skin and a weakness in her limbs that made even standing feel slightly wrong.
Her mother noticed it before she admitted anything.
“You are flushed,” she noted sharply, reaching for Anne’s wrist as they stood near the fireplace. “Have you been unwell?”
“I am fine,” Anne replied automatically, though even she heard the lack of conviction in her own voice.
“You rode in cold weather today,” her mother said. “You always did this when you were younger, pretending you were unaffected by the temperature until your body decided otherwise.”
Anne attempted a protest, but it came out weaker than she had intended, the sound dissolving into a breath she did not entirely trust. Her mother guided her gently but firmly toward the sofa.
She was surprised that her mother remembered something so personal about her. She had never once thought that her mother noticed her at all.
“No arguments,” her mother declared. “You are staying here.”
“I cannot impose—”
“You are not imposing,” she interrupted, already calling for the housekeeper. “You are ill, and I am not allowing you to return to Ashford Hall in this condition. The Duke would not forgive me.”
Anne opened her mouth again, then closed it when another wave of exhaustion washed over her, leaving her more unsteady than she cared to admit.
“You will stay for several days if necessary,” her mother added, her tone leaving no room for negotiation. “At least until you are properly recovered.”
Anne hesitated. A dozen objections formed and faded almost immediately, none of them strong enough to overcome the simple fact that she did feel unwell. But then she nodded, albeit reluctantly.
“Very well.”
Her mother’s expression softened at once, as though that single concession had eased something she had been holding tightly for years.
“Good,” she replied. “Then you will rest, and for once, you will not argue with me about it.”
Anne managed a faint, tired smile. “I make no promises,” she murmured.
But even as she spoke, she was already being guided to the quiet comfort of the guest room, the world around her beginning to blur at the edges in a way she could no longer quite control.
Her mother was at last acting like a mother.
She only wished it had happened years before.