Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
T ell me you want it too.
Of course it was what Dorian wanted. He wanted a real marriage with her more than anything else in the world.
Or at least, he wanted it more than almost anything else in the world. And as he gazed down into his wife’s eyes, he realized, with a hollow thud, that he could not give her what she wanted.
He tensed, and he knew she felt it right away. She blinked, and her thumb tightened against his cheek. She shook her head slightly, as if to say, Don’t do this, but it was too late. Liliana’s face blazed in front of him. All the ways he had failed her. His father’s face was next. All the promises he had made. He couldn’t renege on those now; not when he was finally and truly being tested.
Dorian moved away from his wife, releasing his hand from her jaw and pulling out of her grasp. His whole body had gone stiff, and he knew his expression had darkened; that he had become as remote and imposing as the mountains of Europe .
“I can’t,” he said stiffly, not quite meeting her eyes. “That is the problem. I cannot have a family. I cannot have children.”
“What are you talking about?” Leah asked, her lips parting slightly as she stared at him.
“I cannot have children,” he repeated gruffly.
“I know you have said in the past that you do not want children,” she said slowly, shaking her head as if she didn’t understand. “But that was when you didn’t believe in love or in marriage! But Dorian, we are clearly in--”
“This is not about you or our feelings for one another,” Dorian said, cutting her off. He couldn’t bear to hear her make any romantic declarations. Not now. “It is about a vow I made a long time ago.”
Leah stared at her, her mouth fully agape now. “What is heaven’s name are you talking about?” she demanded at last, her tone suddenly as cold as his own. “What vow? To whom?”
“To…” Dorian glanced up at the portrait above him, then back at her. “To my father.”
A silence filled the study. Leah folded her arms across her chest. “Your father?” she repeated, incredulous. “The man who treated you, your mother, and your sister terribly? You are more concerned with a vow made to that man than the vow you made to me when you married me? Or do you not remember the words of the ceremony? First, It was ordained for the procreation of children. Do those words mean nothing to you? And your promise to fulfil them to me?”
“You don’t understand,” Dorian said miserably, turning away from her.
“Then make me understand!” She cried, grabbing his hand and turning him back around to face her. “Why did you make your father a vow that you would never have children? ”
“Because it was all he wanted of me!” Dorian shouted. “It was all he wanted of my mother, and it drove her to her death, to be unloved and unwanted! I was nothing to him but an heir, a future duke that would make other dukes. And because that’s how he treated my sister as well! He gave her no choice in whom she was to marry. She was nothing but a breeding mare to be sold off to the highest bidder--the man with the most money and the highest title. So he forced her to marry the most vile, despicable man I have ever met, even though she begged him not to, even though she hated him. I will never forget the night before her wedding! Her tears, the way she prostrated herself before him and begged him, and his words to her: you have no purpose other than to bear great men. With Lord Ramsey, you will do so. ”
Dorian was shaking now; shaking with rage. Leah had stilled, and she was watching him with a calm but apprehensive expression. He knew he was shouting, and he hated to shout, but it wasn’t at her. It was the memories he was unearthing; memories he had buried so deep inside of him that he hoped they would never come up again.
“And so she married this vile, despicable man, because my father gave her no choice! Because women so rarely have any choice in who they marry, because we men treat them as if they are nothing, as if they are our property, with their own wants and desires. And she…” He couldn’t quite see straight anymore. A fog was clouding his eyes. Was it tears? Rage? Grief? “And shortly after her wedding, she killed herself.”
An emptiness settled over the room. More empty than silence.
“She drowned herself,” he murmured. “And it was all my fault. I should have protected her. I should have saved her. I should have stopped my father. But I didn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. She died, and it was all my fault.” He looked up at Leah. Through the fog, he could see her, reaching for him, placing a hand on his arm, her eyes full of tears, her expression soft and understanding.
“All I could do was swear to my father that he would never get what he wanted--from either of his children,” Dorian whispered. “She was dead, she couldn’t pass on his line. And I swore I would never father a child, either. That I would let his line die with me.”
Leah said nothing for a long moment. He could feel her hand on his, but his eyes had once more fallen to the desk.
“I am very sorry to hear all of this,” she said at last, her voice the tiniest of whispers. “I wish with all my heart that I could take away all this pain, that I could go back in time and change things so that you did not have to know such heartbreak.”
“Thank you,” he murmured. His throat was suddenly dry, and he found it difficult to speak.
“I’m very sorry about your sister,” she continued. “But I don’t understand why it has to mean that you won’t have a family of your own.”
“I told you,” he said, a little impatiently. “I made a vow to my father that his line would die with me for what he did to Liliana.”
Slowly, Leah removed her hands from his. She was gazing at him with sympathy, but also confusion. “But… he is dead,” she ventured at last. “He will not know if you have broken your vow.”
“But I would know,” he said at once. “I would know I had betrayed Liliana and allowed my father to win.”
She stared at him incredulously. “Don’t you think he is ‘winning’ when you continue to let him ruin your life? Don’t you think the best way to defeat him would be to live a good, happy life, with a woman you adore, and to raise children you treat with nothing but love and support? Wouldn’t that be a better way to ensure that his legacy dies forever?”
“No, I obviously do not think that,” Dorian said, feeling his anger beginning to rise again. How can she still not get it? “My father only cared about passing down his name. By refusing to participate in that, I make his worst fear come true.”
“He is dead!” She repeated, more loudly this time. “He fears nothing! He is in the ground! And when you continue to live a life in service to hurting him, you are living as if you are already dead as well! I am offering you a different kind of life: one where you can be happy, alive, and full of joy. But no, you care only for the past, for the promises made to a dead man who never loved you, rather than for a woman who—who does love you.”
If Dorian’s throat had been dry before, it was nothing to how dry it became now. She loves me? She had implied it earlier, but now, to hear those words, his ears filled with a strange buzzing. He had not thought himself worthy of such a thing… But here she was, standing in front of him, begging him to give up everything he had held dear for so long, and all because she loved him.
“I cannot just abandon the vow I made,” he whispered. “It is who I am . To ask me to give it up would be to ask me to become a different person.”
“Don’t you want to be a different person?” she asked desperately. “Don’t you want to be someone who lives a happy life?”
“I want to be the kind of person who doesn’t break his vow and who makes sure his sister’s death wasn’t in vain.”
Her jaw tightened, and he saw a flicker of something in her eyes that looked dangerously close to hatred. “You’re not giving your sister’s death meaning by refusing to have children with me,” she snarled. “You are only making yourself unhappy and ruining my life.”
The words felt like a slap across the face. He said nothing, just allowed them to fill him with pain.
She drew herself up, raising her chin defiantly as she glared down at him. “You say that you despise how your father took away your sister’s choice, that he treated her like nothing more than a breeding mare. But you are taking away my choice as well, Dorian. You are making all the decisions for me as to what my marriage will look like--and all because you are too caught up in your past. I don’t think you are like your father, but I think you have become so lost in your quest for vengeance that you are becoming dangerously close to behaving like him.”
Dorian’s lips parted. He wanted to tell her no, that it wasn’t possible, but he could see the truth in her words. He had taken away her choice by marrying her without telling her what it would entail.
“At least if you had left me to be a widow, it would have been my choice,” she said. “This feeling, of having that choice taken from me, of having my future decided for me by you, is far, far worse.” She shook her head. Her anger seemed to have melted away, replaced with a deep sadness that was somehow worse.
“I cannot do this anymore. I am returning to the country, just as you planned, but it is my choice to do so. I do not want to see you ever again. That is also my choice.”
And she turned and walked out of the study and out of his life--forever.