Chapter Twenty
“Ahh, 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 easysocial 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.
