Living With Regrets

Lucien was reading a book while the wireless played some music and a glass of scotch lazily swirled in his hand. Matthew had already gone to bed and Charlie was working a late shift. Jean sat on the sofa opposite him with her knitting. The clicking of the knitting needles had quieted, causing Lucien to realize that his lovely fiancée had abandoned her yarn.

He glanced up and saw her staring at him. "Jean? Everything alright?" he asked.

She was frowning with deep concentration. After a long pause, she finally spoke. "When did you know you wanted to marry me?"

The question seemed to come from nowhere but was evidently plaguing her quite a bit. "Oh. Well…I'm not sure. I didn't think I'd ever want to marry anyone ever again, but you certainly changed my mind."

"And when was that? When I left for Adelaide?"

"Well…"

"After that?" she pressed.

At that point, Lucien put his book down and crossed the room to join her on the sofa. He took her hand in his, stroking the back of it gently. "What's going on, Jean?" he asked softly.

"I want you to answer my question, Lucien," she snapped, taking her hand away from him.

Her reaction prompted him to get a bit heated. "Why does it matter? I asked you to marry me and you agreed and we're going to be husband and wife for the rest of our lives. Is it really so important when I decided I wanted it?"

"Please tell me," she begged quietly.

There was a strange sorrow in her gray-green eyes that tore at his heartstrings. "It's a difficult question to answer."

"Why?"

"Because I think there's a difference between having a fantasy of being with someone and making the conscious choice to make that fantasy into reality. Not all dreams are meant to come true and sometimes taking that step is more difficult than merely allowing the fantasy to stay as it is. When I, in reality, wanted to get a ring and plan to propose to you, was only about a week after you got home from Adelaide. It was Frank Carlyle, actually, who convinced me. That once you know, why waste time? And I'd certainly wasted enough time not being with you, Jean. So I suppose it was after Adelaide that I decided," he explained.

She swallowed hard. "And the fantasy? The first idea that you might imagine me as more than your housekeeper? When did that start?"

Lucien frowned this time. "I don't think I should tell you that."

"Why ever not?"

"I don't think the answer will make you like me very much," he replied with a rueful smile.

Jean just regarded him with a look of confusion and disbelief.

He sighed, "Alright, the first time I ever thought about what it might be like to be married to you was when that rock and roll singer was killed, Bobby Lee. We sang together at the piano while you were folding sheets. And then a day or so later, you were playing the record and dancing around the parlor while you dusted. And it all just gave me a fantasy of coming home to my wife singing and dancing while she did housework, how we could share those moments of domesticity and I could take you in my arms and dance with you and kiss you and fall asleep beside you and how wonderfully…wonderfully intimate it could all be. That was the first time I'd thought about it."

Jean didn't reply. She just stared unseeingly in shock. Tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away. Lucien could see the wheels turning in her mind, and he was at a loss to know what sort of thoughts filled her head in this moment. Eventually her lips began to move and barely audible sound issued forth. Lucien could only catch a few words here and there. He was rather certain she said 'coward' and 'waste' a few times.

He placed a hesitant hand on her arms. "Jean?"

Her eyes snapped into focus at him and the tension in her body softened. "I'm sorry, Lucien."

"What are you sorry for, my darling?"

"I am glad you told me that. But I'm just reminded of how foolish I was. How I buried my head in the sand for so long, denying how I felt about you and forcing myself to keep as much of a distance between us and away from that intimacy as I could. I thought that being strong for you was the best thing I could do. But in doing that, I wasted so much bloody time! I was too much of a coward to admit to the clamoring of my heart, too bogged down by the laws of the Church and the rules of propriety. And to know that all the way back then you had first thought of what it might be like for us to be married, to know that it way my own cowardice that kept us apart for so, so long after that…" She let out a shaky breath. "I suppose there are just countless regrets I have to live with."

"You shouldn't regret keeping your distance from me, Jean. You did the right thing," he assured her.

"Did I? Or did I spent far too much time being less happy than I could have been? Lucien, I think I may have loved you from the moment I stood in front of Sergeant Hannam with Christopher's gun. But I refused to allow myself to see it."

He reached out and grasped her arms, wanting to shake the sense into her. "But Jean, don't you understand? The way you kept your distance, the way you showed me care without placating me, the way you stood up to me and forced me to see the truth of myself, all of that made me better, made me struggle to prove myself worthy of asking for your hand. You met me as a broken-down drunk who didn't give a thought to anything or anyone. Back then, all I wanted was to be the smartest man in the room every day and to drown myself in whiskey every night to make the screaming in my head stop torturing me. Jean, even if I could have been capable of properly loving you then, I don't think we could have come through it. Quite honestly, I don't think I would have survived if you'd allowed me to continue down that path."

Lucien could see Jean was desperately trying not to cry. He pulled her into his arms and stroked her hair as she fell apart in his embrace.

He murmured softly, "I know you live with many regrets, and so do I, but please don't let any moment of our time together be included in that. I certainly don't. I love you with all my heart, but I couldn't have loved you then the way I do now. It's all worked out precisely the way it needed to."

Eventually Jean settled down and pulled away from him, wiping her eyes. Without a word, she took his face in her hands and gave him a gentle, lingering kiss. Lucien could feel everything in her kiss: her love for him, her forgiveness of the both of them, and the promise of a life going forward without being plagued by their regrets.