A Season for Honour

Chapter 15

Later that morning, when Alex had eventually returned to the Dower house, he lay awake in bed, while her words echoed in his mind. 'No one is beyond redemption,' she had said to him only a few hours ago, 'you just have to find the strength inside yourself to change.' But, did he have it within himself the will to make that change? He had tried to break free from the past after Waterloo. He had thought that returning to London and his family would have given him the determination and the chance to transform back to the man he once had been. However, he had started drinking heavily and had begun to partake in the seedy amusements that London had to offer. And, it had not taken him long to fall back into the bad company he had associated with when he was in Brussels.

He felt ashamed of himself when he thought about what he had done when he had been in Brussels. Up until then, he had lived a somewhat rackety lifestyle, but he had been careful not to harm anyone else. However, when he arrived in Brussels, during the build-up to the battle of Waterloo, all that changed. He had joined a gentleman's club that he soon found out catered for his baser side. The club was run by a gentleman, Major Ellington, who had also been a cavalry officer. Alex, after losing the rest of his depleted fortune that his father left him, soon racked up debts on the gaming tables. He owed Major Ellington a small fortune that he could not repay. Alex had thought that Ellington had been very generous when he had come to a mutual arrangement with him. All he had to do, when he did not have any regimental duties, was collect unpaid debts from the club's clients who reneged on their payments. However, it soon became apparent that he was expected to do much more than just collect money.

Alex soon became immune to the initial waves of guilt he had felt when he had had to intimidate and terrorise the men in debt to Ellington. He was also aware that Ellington was manipulating him, but by now he was so deeply involved in his world of vice, that he could not break free from its hold. He was rarely sober, and he had even begun to smoke opium to ease the powerful feelings of self-loathing that he felt. All he had managed to do, was replace one source of guilt with another, and this had left him feeling empty and very alone.

On his return to London, after the fiercest battle he had ever witnessed, he had tried to avoid Ellington, who had also returned to the capital after the battle. He had wanted to break free from the man's control, but his lifestyle and the people he associated with, had made that impossible. It was not until Ellington's sudden and unexpected disappearance, that he had finally managed to break free.

If only she knew the depts of depravity he had sunk during those months in the lead up to the battle of Waterloo and since he had returned to London. She would certainly change her mind and think that he was beyond redemption. How could anyone, who had done the things he had done, ever change? He remembered thinking in the gallery, during their fencing lesson, "can a leopard change its spots?" Can someone far worse than a rake or a libertine change his dissolute ways? It was a question he was not certain he would ever be able to answer.

After Tarragona, when he had killed his friend and had returned a hero, he had begun to have terrible dreams in which he had relived the ghastly incident over and over again in painful detail. Initially, he had started to drink to dull those painful memories. He was not a hero and he despised the way in which he was treated by his friends and colleagues. He had deserved to die in the place of Adams, he should not be living the life of a hero.

He quickly discovered that the more he imbibed, the more erratic and debauched his behaviour became. His close friends, disgusted by the sudden change in his conduct, soon distanced themselves from his depraved behaviour. Despite trying to block out the traumatic memories with drinking, he could not shake off that feeling of guilt.

He had, on numerous occasions, refused his family's help, and during his time in Brussels, he had lost the last of his substantial inheritance he had acquired upon the death of his father. Could he now reverse all those years of damage? Could he really change and become the person he had been before his capture?