Chapter 28
The storm had not eased by the time Dorian reached Rosemere House.
It followed him incessantly, the wind cutting across the road and rain turning the ground unstable beneath Tempest’s hooves.
He did not slow down once the estate came into view, nor when the lanterns blurred through sheets of water, nor when exhaustion began to edge into every movement that should have been controlled.
He only stopped when there was nowhere left to go.
The front doors of Rosemere House were solid against the night, and he struck them hard enough that the sound carried through the entire entrance hall and beyond.
Once was not enough. The second blow came immediately after, then a third, each one less controlled than the last, until footsteps sounded somewhere inside.
“Open the door,” he called, his voice breaking through the rain rather than rising above it. “Please.”
There were more footsteps, then a pause, and then the locks shifted.
When the door finally opened, Anne stood there wrapped in a robe, her hair loosely pinned and falling in damp strands around her face, as though she had been pulled from sleep rather than waiting for him.
The sight of her did not calm him. It made everything worse.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Rain poured around him while she simply stared at him, as though she could not believe he was real. Then she spoke, her voice quiet but sharpened by confusion.
“Dorian—”
“I am sorry,” he blurted, the words spilling out before he could shape them into anything more controlled. “I am sorry. I should not have come like this. I should not have waited. I should not have let you leave without fighting harder for you.”
Anne’s expression shifted slightly, uncertainty giving way to something more guarded. “What are you talking about?”
Dorian shook his head once, his breath uneven. “All of it. The hesitation. The silence. The moment I let you believe that Lady Vivian meant anything at all compared to what I feel for you.”
He took a step forward, then stopped himself as though he was not sure he had the right to cross the threshold.
“I told myself I was being careful,” he continued, his voice tightening. “That I was thinking of you and that I was trying not to hurt you further. But that is not what it was. It was fear. It has always been fear.”
Anne did not move, though something in her chest tightened as she listened.
Dorian’s hands curled slightly at his sides as he forced himself to continue. “Since Lily died, I have built every important decision around the idea that if I care too deeply, I will destroy it. I let it decide how I speak, how I act, how close I allow myself to get to anything that matters.”
His voice faltered briefly, but he pushed through it.
“And then you entered my life, and I did not know what to do with the fact that I could not keep my distance from you even when I tried.”
Anne’s breath caught faintly, but she said nothing. Dorian looked at her properly then, rain dripping from his hair, realizing that he was not entirely steady on his feet.
“I hesitated because I believed you deserved someone better than me,” he said quietly.
“Someone whole, untouched by what I have become. But I cannot lose you. I cannot stand here and pretend that what I feel is something I can survive letting go of. I love you, and I do not think I will recover from watching you walk away from me.”
The admission hung between them as the rain continued to fall around him, the house behind her utterly still.
Dorian did not move closer. He simply stood there, as though everything he had avoided for years had finally caught up with him in a single moment he could no longer outrun.
Rain still fell in heavy sheets around them, but he barely seemed to feel it anymore.
The storm had stopped mattering the moment Anne appeared in front of him, wrapped in a robe, watching him with a stillness that made every word feel like it might either reach her or destroy what remained between them.
His breath came unevenly as he tried to steady himself.
“You brought life back into that place,” he rasped.
“Not because you tried to, but simply because you exist in it. You made the stables feel like they mattered again. You made Tempest trust people again. You made me start thinking there might be something worth staying for that I had not ruined yet.”
Anne’s expression shifted slightly at that, something uncertain flickering across her face.
Dorian’s hands tightened at his sides, before he dropped to his knees in front of her. Rain soaked through his clothes as he looked up at her, unguarded in a way that stripped away everything he used to hide behind.
“I am not asking you to forget what you saw,” he said, his voice breaking slightly. “I am not asking you to excuse what I did not do well enough. I am telling you that you are the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
Anne’s breath caught, but she did not speak.
“And I would rather spend the rest of my life terrified beside you than safe without you, because safety without you is precisely what I had before I knew you, and I do not want to go back to that life. If you cannot forgive me, I will accept it.
“I will not fight you for something you no longer want. But I will not let you believe for a second that I did not choose you completely the moment I understood what you meant to me. Even when I was too afraid to say it properly. Even when I failed you in the worst possible way. I chose you—I choose you.”
The rain filled the silence that followed, but the aching chasm between them seemed to have shrunk.
For a moment, Dorian remained on his knees in the rain, as though the weight of what he had said had anchored him too firmly to move. The storm continued raging around them, but he no longer registered it, his attention focused entirely on Anne as she stood above him.
He did not expect her to reach for him. But when she did, her hand closed around his arm with firm certainty, and she pulled him up with a strength that surprised him.
“Inside,” she said sharply. “You are soaked through. If you stay out here any longer, you will be ill.”
Dorian blinked once, as though the instruction itself had taken longer to register than anything he had just confessed.
“Anne—”
“Inside,” she repeated, more firmly this time.
He followed almost without thought as she guided him over the threshold and shut the door against the storm. Warmth hit him immediately, but it barely registered. He was still watching her, still waiting for something to confirm whether what he had said had reached her at all.
Voices approached from the hallway, and her mother appeared at the far end, taking in the scene with immediate concern.
“Anne, what is going—Your Grace! Are you well?”
“Not now,” Anne said quickly, not turning away from Dorian. “Please. Give us a moment.”
Her mother hesitated, looking between them, but Anne did not waver. After a brief pause, she withdrew, the sound of her footsteps fading down the corridor.
Anne studied Dorian for a long moment, as though assessing the reality of him standing there, soaked and exhausted and no longer hiding anything from her. Then she reached for his hand and did not let go as she led him through the house. They did not speak while they walked.
The silence between them felt different, though Dorian did not understand why that was. He had never quite been able to read her, and while he wished that he had, he also had to admit that it was one of the most thrilling things about her.
She ushered him into a smaller room away from the main hall and closed the door behind them, shutting out the noise of the estate and the storm alike. For a moment, she simply stood there, still holding his hand, as if she were gathering everything she had not yet allowed herself to say.
Dorian did not move. He did not speak. He only watched her, waiting. When she finally did speak, her voice was quieter than before but steadier.
“I did not come back here thinking I would see you like this.”
Dorian’s throat tightened slightly. “I did not come here thinking I would survive you not hearing what I have to say.”
Anne’s fingers loosened slightly around his, but she did not let go. “I have been trying,” she said slowly, “to make myself believe that leaving you was the only way to stop myself from falling into something that would break me.”
Dorian closed his eyes briefly, but he did not interrupt.
Anne continued, her voice tightening just a little. “And I kept telling myself that what I saw in that room was proof I was right, and that you would always hesitate when it mattered most. I told myself I could not love someone who already believed they would fail me.”
Dorian opened his eyes again, staring at her intently.
Anne’s grip tightened on his hand slightly. “But I have been here alone, and I have not stopped loving you.”
“Anne—”
She shook her head once, stopping him. “Let me finish.”
He fell silent immediately.
Anne took a breath, steadying herself. “I did not leave because I stopped wanting you. I left because I was terrified of what wanting you meant, and because I thought if I chose distance first, I would not have to lose you in a way I could not manage.”
Her gaze lifted to his, unflinching in a way that was new.
“But I have realized something: leaving you did not make the feeling go away. It only made it sharper, and it made me feel lonelier.” She stepped closer without letting go of his hand.
“And I cannot keep pretending that what is between us is something I can simply decide not to feel.”
Dorian did not speak. He only looked at her as though waiting for permission to believe what he was hearing. Anne did not look away, and neither of them moved to let go.
The ensuing silence did not break immediately. It settled around them in the small room, heavy but no longer hostile, as though the air itself was adjusting to the fact that neither of them had walked away.
Dorian still held her hand, seemingly afraid to let go. Anne studied him for a moment longer before speaking again, her voice quieter but steadier than it had been since he arrived.
“What are you going to do about Lady Vivian?”
The question did not come with an accusation. It came with something more careful, as though she needed to understand what kind of man she had chosen to stand beside before she could fully remain there.
Dorian’s expression tightened slightly at the mention of that damned woman’s name. He did not look away, though the change in him was immediate, the grief and anger and clarity all resurfacing at once beneath the exhaustion.
He would never see Lady Vivian again, nor would Anne, no matter how important her family was to his business.
His business meant nothing if it jeopardized his marriage, and so the choice was quite simple.
“I will not allow her to do this again,” he said slowly, choosing each word with care. “I will make sure she never does it to anyone else again.”
Anne did not respond immediately. She watched him carefully, searching his face as if trying to understand where the promise ended and his intention began.
Dorian continued before she could misread him. “What she did to you, to me, to everything between us was not careless. It was deliberate, and I will not let it remain unchallenged. She might think that she can do as she pleases, but she is wrong, and I am going to ensure she knows that.”
“Are you suggesting that we ruin her?” she asked carefully.
“We are going to stop her,” Dorian clarified, his voice hardening. “Permanently. Legally, if I have to. She will not be given another opportunity to interfere in anyone’s life the way she interfered in ours.”
Anne held his gaze for a long moment, recognizing the line he was drawing and what it cost him to stand on it.
“Holloway was also involved, but he will not escape the consequences either,” he continued. “I will not allow it. Your mother might well be furious about it, but I cannot say that I care. She did this to you, after all.”
The words were simple, but they carried finality.
“I do not want you to be consumed by revenge.” Anne’s voice lowered slightly.
“It is not revenge,” he said. “It is simply the consequences of their actions.”
A pause followed.
Anne looked down briefly at their joined hands before looking back up. “You rode through the storm to tell me that?”
Dorian held her gaze. “I came because I could not stay away any longer and pretend that fear was a good enough reason to lose you.”
Anne’s breath caught faintly, though she did not look away.
Outside the room, the house was quiet, the storm still battering against the windows, but inside there was no longer the sense of despair that had followed them for days.
“Then do it properly,” she demanded.
Dorian frowned slightly. “Do what?”
“Whatever you are going to do,” she said. “But do not do it while thinking you are already losing me.”
Dorian did not answer immediately, but something in him shifted at her certainty, as though it reached him more deeply than anything he had prepared to say. Then, slowly, he nodded.
“I am not losing you,” he murmured.
And he truly believed that.