Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
“ A hh, here you are. Looking about as miserable as you ought to, I might add.”
Dorian started and looked up. Lucien was standing in the entrance to the billiards room of White’s, his hands crossed in front of his chest and a sour look on his face. Behind him stood Anthony, looking slightly more amused.
“Yes, here I am,” Dorian slurred, reaching for the whiskey that he’d set on the side of the billiards table. “S-so what?”
“So you look as if you had spent the whole night drinking under a bridge,” Lucien said.
“Well, I haven’t,” Dorian tried to say with some indignation, although it was difficult when he couldn’t quite stand up straight or even see correctly; everything had become strangely blurry. “I’ve been here all night!”
In fact, for what seemed like the past hour, he’d been trying to hit the damn ball with his billiards cue, but he couldn’t manage to strike it. No matter how many times he tried, the ball kept eluding him. Maybe it was moving? But no, balls couldn’t move… could they?
“You’re sloshed!” Lucien said, his eyes narrowing.
“Of course I’m sloshed,” Dorian retorted, turning back to the billiards table and squinting at the ball that kept eluding him. “Why wouldn’t I be? My wife has left me.”
“I heard,” Lucien said dryly from the door. “Although isn’t that what you wanted all along?”
“I don’t know,” Dorian said, trying to repress a hiccup as he lifted his cue back into place and leaned over the table. “I don’t know.”
“Stop playing billiards and look at me!” Lucien snapped. He strode into the room and snatched the cue right out of Dorian’s hands, making him squawk angrily and glare at his friend.
“Hey! I’m using that!”
“You’re just trying to distract yourself from all the egregious mistakes you’ve made of late,” Lucien snarled. “And I’m here to talk you out of making the worst one you ever will.”
Behind Lucien, Anthony came to sit on the end of an armchair. He had a curious look on his face, as if he were enjoying watching what he was sure would be a great showdown.
“What are you talking about?” Dorian snapped. “What mistakes?”
“The mistake of letting my sister go!” Lucien cried, throwing his hands up as if this were very obvious. “To say nothing of marrying her when you knew you couldn’t give her a family.”
Dorian’s throat went dry, and he blinked at his friend. “She told you that?”
“She told us everything,” Lucien said. “She sent us a letter explaining that you had married her out of a sense of duty, but that you had not told her you would not have a family with her, that you had made a vow to your father promising to never have a child.”
Slowly, Dorian nodded. “Yes, it’s all true,” he said. “But you always knew I did not want children. You knew I did not want to marry. Surely you suspected that this was the reason behind it.”
“Of course I suspected it had something to do with your father,” Lucien said impatiently. “But never for a moment did I believe you would be so stubborn and so foolish as to throw away a good woman because of some silly vow you made to him years ago! Never for a moment did I think you would choose vengeance over the happiness of someone you care about--someone who loves you with all her heart.”
Dorian felt his heart flutter with hope. “She said that?”
“She didn’t have to,” Lucien said scornfully. “It is painfully obvious to anyone who has spent time around the two of you that she is desperately in love with you. So tell me, point blank, man to man: do you love Leah?”
Dorian’s heart was in his throat. Even in his drunken haze, he could feel the momentousness of this moment. Never before had Lucien spoken to him with so much openness. Never before had so much been at stake between them.
“Of course I love her,” he said at last, his voice so low it seemed to scrape the floor. “But that is exactly why I cannot have a family with her.”
“Oh, don’t give me that!” Lucien turned away, a disgusted look on his face. It felt as if everyone in his life was tearing Dorian’s heart into pieces--now he could add his best friend to the list. “If you love a woman, you choose to be with her and make her happy. It is as simple as that. I did not always realize this, but once I did, it has made my life infinitely better. So now I’m going to teach it to you: do not throw her away, Dorian. If you do, you will regret it forever.”
“I’m too broken!” Dorian shouted, banging his hand down on the billiards table. “Don’t you understand that, Lucien? You have known me all my life. You know how miserable I have been all these years. Underneath the rakish character, underneath the witticisms and amusing stories, underneath the smiles and easy social grace, there have been so many years of darkness. I cannot bring that darkness into her life as well.”
“What are you talking about, Dorian?” Anthony asked, his interest suddenly piqued. “What darkness? I have never known seen it .”
Dorian laughed bitterly. “Well, I have hidden it from you well, my friend,” he said. “Lucien saw through me, but I suppose you did not. All those trips abroad, all those times when I wrote to you that I was running around Paris with a new lady every night, I was really drinking myself into oblivion in some dingy bar in Marseille, hoping that someone might pick a knife fight with me and end it all. Or when I said I was in Athens attending plays and balls every night, I was in fact on a small Greek island, living alone in a tiny cottage, teaching myself to cook and drinking until I could remember nothing. That is what my life has truly been this past decade. This is the person that I don’t want to bring into Leah’s life. This is the person that I don’t want ruining her.”
A long silence greeted this. Anthony looked fully convinced. He was eyeing Dorian with a mixture of shock and pity. Dorian knew that look. He’d seen it on the faces of many housekeepers who had come into his rented accommodations to find him asleep on the floor, a bottle of whiskey next to him. Although it wasn’t easy to see reflected back to him in his friend’s eyes.
But when Dorian looked at Lucien, he was surprised not to see sympathy, but annoyance.
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?” Lucien snapped. “That you have wasted your life away in drunken binges across Europe? Is that how you are honoring your sister’s death? By killing yourself? If you ask me, you are dishonoring her death by wasting away your life . You had a freedom she never had. And instead of using that freedom to live fully and well--to perhaps even help other young ladies from following in her footsteps--you are squandering it.”
Dorian felt himself flush--both with anger and shame. “I did try to help another young lady not follow in her footsteps,” he pointed out. “That’s why I married Leah! So that she would not be forced to marry a vile man who would make her miserable and even drive her to her death .”
“You are the one making her miserable,” Lucien spat. “Yes, you are not as evil as Lord Dubois. But what you are inflicting upon her is a unique pain: you love her, but you are choosing to hurt her anyway. I think that is far worse than hurting someone you don’t love.”
Dorian’s hands curled into fists, but it wasn’t that he wanted to hit Lucien. If anything, he wanted to hit himself.
“I’m not sure I even believe you,” Lucien continued after another moment. “You say that you want to protect my sister from yourself, but it isn’t about that, is it? It’s about protecting yourself from her! You are terrified that she will find out the truth about you, that you have been slowly killing yourself these past ten years, that you have been throwing away your life. And you’re sure that if she learns about your drunken rampages, that she will not love you anymore. This is about rejecting her before she can reject you--about safeguarding your heart because you’re terrified you are unlovable.”
“W hy would I be lovable?!” Dorian shouted, so loudly that the candles rattled in their candelabras, their lights flickering around the small room. He slammed his hands down on the table, all his rage and frustration finally overflowing. “Why would I believe I could be loved by someone as perfect as Leah when my own father couldn’t love me? When I failed my sister? When I have become nothing but a wretched lout? She deserves so much better than me, Lucien! Don’t you see that? She loves someone who doesn’t exist, who is just a front trying to cover up all the pain and darkness within ! And once she realizes who the real me is, she will no longer love me, and then I will truly have nothing.”
There was another long silence as both Lucien and Anthony took in his outburst. Then Lucien let out a long, slow breath. For the first time since he’d entered the room, he looked less angry; less aggressive. He even looked a little empathetic as he stared into Dorian’s eyes.
“This is what love does, my old friend. It humbles us. It forces us to show our lover the worst and darkest sides of ourselves and to ask them to still love us regardless. Yes, it will be the hardest thing you ever do, opening yourself to Leah’s love. But it will also be the best thing you ever do.” Lucien leaned forward. “Don’t let her go. Because if you do, her heart will harden against you, and then by the time you finally wake up and realize what you have done, it will be too late.”
Dorian knew that his friend was right. But as he gazed in his eyes, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. For too long, he had thought of nothing but vengeance. For too long, he had believed himself unworthy of love. And for too long, he had believed the only way to redeem himself was through breaking his father’s line.
It was too late for him.