Chapter 17
Dominic couldn’t breathe as he stormed, as if in a dream, down the hallway.
The reality of the conversation was slowly dawning on him.
What had he done? What had he done? What had he done?
The thought churned through him.
He had pushed, and he had forced, and he had tried to make her his, and yet she had resisted. She was denying his deep wish that she be his and only his. His to protect.
She didn’t want to be protected. That thought thundered through his head over and over again.
And his logical brain knew that he was being an utter fool, a terrible fool.
That what he had said was monstrous, impossible, that everything he had asked of her was against who she was, that he was the most selfish person in the whole world.
Yet he had done it anyway.
He couldn’t stop himself. It was like there was something that had stalked out in him from his childhood and taken hold of him.
The intensity of the loss of his parents had crushed everything he’d worked for.
In that moment, had not been able to risk losing her. Not for anything. Not for anyone. Not even for herself. He needed to keep her to himself. Safe.
And, oh God, how he hated himself for that selfishness. It was thick and dark, and it doused him like a coat that couldn’t be torn from his skin.
Worse, he couldn’t just rescind what he’d done. He could not go back in her room, look at her, pale and delicate, which she was not, upon her bed and say it was all perfectly well, and that she should do exactly as she pleased, and he would not stand in her way.
He couldn’t do that because to do that was to risk not just her, but his entire well-being and his sanity.
He knew that. He knew that if he went and told her that she should live life exactly as she wished that his mind might break.
Because the idea that the only person that he had loved besides his father and mother might be taken away from him was impossible to bear.
He staggered into the study, looking for the grog tray, knowing it wasn’t the answer and yet feeling that the only thing he could do for himself right now was to anesthetize himself, to make the feelings stop, to make the thoughts stop, to just escape into another world where he did not have to contemplate the fact that he had just ruined everything.
Ruined it all with a few words that he had not been able to swallow. Words that he knew made no sense. But it didn’t matter if they made sense or not. He had spoken them, and he had meant them.
“Dear boy, you look terrible. Are you ill too?”
He startled, whipped round, and spotted the dowager duchess, who was sitting by the fire with a blanket over her legs, a handkerchief in her hand, and a cup of tea by her side. She coughed and brought the handkerchief up to her mouth.
“Are you ill?” he asked, another wave of worry crashing over him. For he didn’t just care about Celia. To his ever-growing horror, he realized he cared about all the Briarwoods. How could he keep them all safe?
“Yes, unfortunately.” She sniffed. “Whatever was going around the theater last night and the East End got half of us. At my age, it’s more annoying than it should be.”
He took a step towards her. “Did you see the doctor?”
She rolled her eyes and tugged her blanket a bit tighter over her limbs. “Why in God’s name would I see the doctor, dear boy? It will pass.”
“How do you know that?” he demanded.
She paused, picked up her tea, then shrugged. “I don’t actually, but I’m going to trust it.”
He swallowed. She was older. Illnesses were very serious in the elderly and his heart tightened. “What if you’re…?”
She blinked, confused, and then she gave him the oddest of looks. “What? Dying?” she asked.
And then she threw back her head and started to laugh. Laughed so intensely she coughed. “It is a terminal risk at my age, boy. Every time I go to sleep, I risk dying.”
He stared at her, shocked by her words.
“Are you so very afraid of death, young man?” she asked factually before she took a soothing sip of tea.
“You? You have seen so much death, haven’t you?
Ah,” she said softly as if she was truly understanding.
“You are afraid of it. You are very afraid of it. Not for yourself…but being left behind by it.”
He winced and looked away.
“She’s going to be fine.”
“Celia?” he asked.
The dowager duchess murmured her ascent. “Yes, she always is, you know, my boy.”
“But what if she’s not one day?” he blurted.
There was a long pause.
“And what if she’s not?” the dowager repeated.
He nodded, desperate for someone to understand him. “What if she goes to the East End and she catches something there and she comes back and—?”
“Oh, my dear boy, I am so sorry for what happened to you,” she cut in. Though she was sympathetic, she was clearly unwilling to let him carry on in this. “I find I have to say this to far too many people, but your fears are really rather silly.”
He jerked back and looked at her. “I beg your pardon.”
“Apologies. My age makes me terribly blunt. I know that I don’t have a great deal of time left for this world, so I’m not going to waste it on idle chatter.
You are staring into the abyss of your own misery right now, and you are standing at a crossroads.
I can see it on your face, and I think you already tried to go down the wrong road, didn’t you? ”
His mouth tightened.
“Ah, yes, you did,” she breathed. “There’s still time, you know. You can go back.”
“I don’t think I can,” he ground out. “I think I’ve destroyed that path. I think I have broken the road or burned the bridge or whatever you want to call it.”
“That’s only in books and stories,” she said pointedly. “I don’t think it’s ever too late. Not really. Not if you can wake up in time. But I have something to say to you if you’re so very afraid of losing Celia and for something as trifling as an illness.”
“It’s not trifling,” he growled, shocked by the force of his own feeling. “It is not trifling to lose someone when—”
“Listen, my boy,” she cut in, not with impatience but with intensity.
“You fight for causes, and she knows the risks of that, and you know the risks of hers now. But when you are on your deathbed, and you have protected her, and she has been protected by you, will she be happier for it, giving up her work to keep your fears at bay?”
He winced. “No,” he said without hesitation.
“And why won’t she be happy?” the dowager challenged.
His insides twisted. “Because I will have stopped her from being herself.”
The dowager sat a little straighter. “And will she die anyway?”
“Yes,” he whispered, pain slipping through him.
“Say it again,” she demanded softly.
“Yes,” he ground out. “She will die anyway.”
The dowager nodded. “So you have a choice, my boy. We all die. It is only a matter of when. But if you betray yourself and do not live as who you are, and you do not let her live as who she is, then you will have to live with that, and every day will be a misery, and every day will be a betrayal, and every day will be pain.”
The dowager continued on relentlessly, “And you will have to look at yourself in the mirror and live with that. Knowing that she lived a long, safe life, having cut a part of herself off to content you. So the question is, do you want the two of you to risk dying sooner but having lived truly and faithfully and without betrayal, or do you want to live to be old and frail and full of self-regret and recrimination and die anyway? I promise I know which is worse.”
He sucked in a sharp breath.
“Indeed,” she continued softly, as if she could see what the future could hold, like some specter from one of Shakespeare’s plays.
“I know what I would choose. I have lived many, many years, and I do have regrets, but I will tell you this right now, young man. I do not ever wish to choose the sort of pain that would come from betraying myself, the constant conversation that would be in my head over that. You think that keeping her safe will make you happy? I promise that it will be the greatest misery of all. Now go,” she said. “Go and do what you truly want.”
He stared at her for a long moment. Her words rushed through him. Somehow, like with one of the specters in Shakespeare’s plays, her words landed, waking him from his horrible dream.
“Thank you,” he breathed. “Thank you. I am so afraid…”
“Good,” she said, her eyes bright with hope and tears. “That means you are alive.”
And then without another word, Dominic’s feet began to take him away from the grog tray, away from escape, away from the dowager duchess, back down the hall, back to the room where he’d shared so many happy hours with Celia, and where he had just ruined it all.
He hesitated at the door, that child in him, that strong part, that voice that had clawed him into darkness, yelled, clamored, demanded that he not go in, that he remain strong, that he break her and make her see that safety was the only thing that was worth having.
But the dowager’s voice was stronger now.
He could keep Celia safe for years, but he would watch the light go out of her. And that would be the greatest misery in the world. If he could but make himself continue to understand that and hold that, he would survive somehow.
Quietly, he slipped back into the room.
She was sobbing on the bed. The sound racked the room. Tears slipped down her cheeks, and that did something to him almost as terrible as the fever.
When she spotted him, she wiped her tears away. “My answer has not changed,” she declared. “Please go if you think it has. I need to mourn what could have been in private.”
“Can you forgive me?” he blurted.
“Forgive you for what?” she asked, her voice shaking.
“For being a little boy who thought that…” His voice died off. He closed his eyes, thinking of the dowager, but in that moment, he suddenly thought of Michael Baker. That young boy who had warned him about obsession and the dangers of Hamlet’s folly.
And for the first time in his life, he knew he wanted to be like that boy. Tested but undaunted. Self-aware, strong, determined to stare at the abyss and not be broken by it.
Dominic squared his shoulders and admitted, “For being a child who thought I could control you and control the world like I could a toy, as if you were a plaything, as if I could make you do whatever I wanted, as if I could make the world do as I wanted. Celia, we are but leaves in the wind in this life. I know that. But the way I love you is frightening. I never thought to feel this way. And so I want to hold tight to you and never let you go. But I know that won’t work, not really, not truly, and I cannot make you miserable as I was miserable.
Last night something overtook me, and it was so frightening that I was willing to throw everything away to push it back.
But I know now that I have to go into that abyss.
I have to face it, but I don’t want to go there unless you are beside me. ”
He sucked in a breath, his whole body suddenly feeling as if a weight had been lifted and something unlocked within as he said, “The abyss is always there, isn’t it?”
She stared at him, stunned, and then she held her hand out to him.
“Yes,” she whispered. “The abyss is always there. The darkness, the pain, the suffering. The children in the East End have taught me that. Their lives are an ever-continuing wheel of pain, of loss, of sorrow, and yet they laugh, Dominic. They smile and they still dare to try. So that’s what we must do.
We must smile and we must laugh and we must dare to try, and we must never give in. ”
“I cannot promise you that I will not—”
“I don’t want you to promise me anything,” she rushed. “Only that you will love me, and I will love you.”
Relief spiraled through him, and he felt as if he had shed something, something akin to a prison. For the first time in years, he felt…hope. And he didn’t feel like a fool for feeling it.
He strode to the bed then, sat upon it, and pulled her into his arms. “I almost threw everything away,” he said.
“People throw things away all the time,” she returned, “because they cling to thinking that they can stay safe. But there is no safety in this life, Dominic. There is only love. So choose love. Choose it with all your heart. It is the greatest act of rebellion. And you’re the one who told me that love of one’s fellow man is the only answer.
The great answer. So let us live by that. ”
He pulled her to him tighter, and he kissed her. He kissed her deeply, with his soul, with his will, with all his love, because now he knew there was nothing to fear.