"The drive is about forty minutes," Aidan says.
His voice is low. Unhurried. He's sitting close enough that I can feel the warmth of him along my left side, but he's not touching me. Giving me space the way he gave me space in that elevator in Prague, right before I kissed him and set fire to my own carefully constructed plans.
I don't think about the elevator.
"Fine," I say.
Silence settles between us. Not uncomfortable, exactly, but loaded. The kind of silence that has texture. Weight. I stare out the window and watch the city thin into suburbs and the suburbs thin into something greener, and I'm aware of him beside me the entire time. Every breath. Every shift of his shoulder against the seat.
"You don't have to do that," he says after a while.
"Do what?"
"Sit like you're waiting for a blow."
My jaw tightens. "I'm not."
"You are. Your shoulders are up by your ears and your hands haven't unclenched since you got in the car." A pause. "I'm not going to hurt you, Tanya."
"I know that. “It comes out sharper than I’d intended and I quietly chastise myself. Now is not the time to lose composure…
"Do you?" he asks.
I turn to look at him for the first time since we got in the car. He's watching me, but his expression isn't what I expect. He is looking at me with a quiet, steady attention that feels like being seen in a way I haven't consented to.
"I know you're not going to hurt me," I say carefully. "That doesn't mean I'm comfortable."
Something shifts in his expression. A softening I almost miss. "I know. And I'm not asking you to be. Not yet."
Not yet.Like comfort is inevitable. Like it's only a matter of time before I stop holding myself together in his presence and let something slip.
I turn back to the window.
He doesn't speak again for the rest of the drive. But when we turn off the main road onto a private lane lined with old oaks, he leans forward slightly, and I feel the shift in him. A settling. The way a man looks when he's coming home.
The Orlov estate appears through the trees, and it's not what I expected.
I expected something like my father's house. Cold. Immaculate. Designed to impress and intimidate in equal measure. What I see instead is a sprawling main house in weathered stone, big enough to be imposing but softened by climbing ivy and warm light in the windows. It looks lived in. The kind of place where people actually exist rather than just occupy space.
Aidan opens his door and steps out, then turns and offers me his hand. I take it because there's nothing else to do, and I step out onto the gravel in my ridiculous gown with my ridiculous veil still pinned in my hair.
“We won’t be in the main house, we’ll be staying in the stables,” Aidan says as I stand beside him. “Don’t worry, they are renovated. Not had a horse in them since I was a kid.”
"I wasn't worried," I say, and it comes out with the faintest edge of my usual composure.
The corner of his mouth lifts a fraction and then settles back, like he's decided smiling would give too much away. Instead, he gestures toward a path that curves away from the main house, through a low stone wall and across a stretch of lawn bordered by old hedgerows.
We walk in silence. My heels sink into the grass with every step and I gather the train of my gown in one hand to keep it from dragging. Aidan doesn't offer to help. He just shortens his stride to match mine and keeps his hands in his pockets. The quietnessbetween us feels different out here. Less loaded. More like the kind of silence that exists between two people who haven't figured out how to talk to each other yet.
The stables come into view and I stop walking.
They're beautiful.
The original structure is still visible in the bones of the building. The long, low roofline. The wide doorway that must have once been for horses. The stone walls are the same weathered gray as the main house, but everything else has been transformed. Large windows where stalls used to be, glowing warm from lights inside. A slate path leading to a wooden front door. What looks like honeysuckle grows along one wall, not yet in bloom, but green and tangled and alive.
It's not a stable. It's a home. A real one.
"I did most of the renovation myself," Aidan says beside me. "Took about two years."
