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“You clearly didn’t want to hear from me, or the rest of the seven. Lord Seaton is the only friend of yours I know who is actually…well…”

“Happily married,” chuckled Spencer. “But who had been a selfish arse and almost lost everything important to revenge?”

“Well…” Lucien gestured with many circles of his hands. “Yes. Exactly.”

“You once saved the woman I love,” said Spencer as he looked at Dorian, who actually felt glad to see him. And, although he’d never say it out loud, he agreed with Lucien. He wouldn’t listen to his six friends because they were all…corrupted. Some even worse than him.

But Spencer wasn’t. He had gotten his life back together.

Dorian sat straighter. Mrs. Knight, who appeared out of nowhere, handed him a glass of water.

“One of the few items of glassware that are left in the house,” she said.

He drank the water without protesting, enjoying the cool, soothing comfort that it brought to his sore flesh.

“Explain to me,” said Spencer as he moved from crouching to sitting on the white gravel. “What were you thinking?”

“I didn’t think,” Dorian said. “Well, I did think. I wanted to destroy the glasshouse. My rage started there.”

Lucien stood with his arms crossed over his chest. “When he was a child, his father trapped him in there for days. He finally broke through the glass, cutting his wrists and suffering much blood loss in the process.”

“Good Lord,” said Spencer.

Dorian breathed through his ragged, scratchy throat. He looked around. He was so glad he hadn’t destroyed Patience’s garden.

Or the glasshouse, which still stood intact, even though her plants had been burned.

He’d buy her new ones. A jungle of new plants if that was what she wished.

Though he didn’t expect her to forgive him.

“I—” he said with a coughing breath. “I was a fool.”

“You can’t go on like this,” said Spencer softly. “Take it from another fool. You and I…we’re similar. I, too, was consumed by rage, by thoughts of vengeance against the man who had me press-ganged. I, too, lost the woman I loved when I chose revenge and destruction over my love for her. You were there, you know. It was only by surrendering and deciding to change my stupid ways, to be a better man, to forever abandon my rage and my pride and my destruction that I was able to be good enough for her. To be happy.”

Dorian stared at him. Yes, he had been there when Spencer had fought with his enemy, had achieved his goal. Only to give it up completely for Joanna, the woman he loved.

He’d witnessed Spencer fall apart and be saved by love, and knew he was now a happy man.

“You’re right,” he said. “I know I must become better for her. But I—I don’t deserve her. I never will. I—” He swallowed hard and leaned closer to Spencer. “I killed her brother in a duel.”

This wasn’t exactly the full truth, but it would seem too dramatic to say he murdered her brother, and this wasn’t the time to explain the details to his friend.

Shock froze Spencer’s face for a few moments. He nodded and looked at Lucien, whose raised eyebrows and grim expression said, I know. It’s bad.

Then he stared into the distance. “But you love her?”

“I do,” Dorian croaked out. “I love her more than anything.”

He should have spent precious moments with her, telling her how much he loved her, making her smile brighter, making her the happiest woman alive. He should have confessed to her about John, told her the whole truth, dropped his defenses, and surrendered. How silly it all seemed now that his life had almost ended.

Him fighting against himself. His love for her. Running away from her.

When all along he should have run towards her. It was her love that showed him he could be better.

“You have to decide if your love is stronger than your wrath,” said Spencer.

Dorian looked at the glasshouse, which now emanated only a weak, dark stream of smoke. The footmen and the maids were taking a well-deserved rest by the house, wiping their foreheads. He wondered distantly why his beast was not raging, why he did not want to take the ax and destroy the rest of the glasshouse.