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WE took Lucas’s father and returned to the hotel where we were staying. By the time we made it back, it was well into the night. Lucas ordered his servants to take care of his father. My husband took a bath without grabbing a bite to eat and fell fast asleep. When I decided to go to sleep and stepped into the bedroom, I hesitated to slip into bed with him—perhaps it was best to give him some space. But a hand snuck out of the sheets, grabbed me, and pulled me inside. His body, beat by the sun, was warm to the touch, and I silently soothed my husband.
The next morning, we met up with Lucas’s father again.
The servants had cut the man’s hair, and he wore a tidy shirt and pants. He looked haggard, but his appearance made it clear that he was Lucas’s father. He couldn’t lock eyes with his son and averted his gaze as he awkwardly stood there.
“Did you eat breakfast?” Lucas asked quietly.
“Yeah,” his father replied with a hesitant nod.
Still unable to look at his son, it was plain that his mind couldn’t process his situation. He had no idea how to interact with Lucas. The ocean breeze comfortably blew through the drawing room, and the lovely aroma of the flowers that sat by the windowsill filled the air. Lucas and I settled in on a set of rattan chairs; across the table sat his father, facing the floor while entangling his fingers.
Lucas maintained his silence. In front of his father, he suppressed the feelings bubbling up within his heart and kept his mask of indifference. It seemed both men were desperately searching for a way to start a conversation. When the ice in the tea had started to melt, his father finally opened his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” he said, breaking the silence. “If only I hadn’t been greedy…”
Lucas widened his eyes but pursed his lips and kept his feelings pushed down. He gently asked, “Will you tell me what happened? I’d like to hear it from you.”
“All right. It happened over two decades ago, but it feels like it was just yesterday.”
Lucas remained quiet as his father slowly started to unravel the past. He gave a full account of his happiness and dreariness—how he happened to meet his beloved wife and how they fell deeply in love.
“Your mother was too kind,” he said. “Be it a commoner, if someone was in pain, she didn’t hesitate to lend a helping hand. She would do whatever she could as the daughter of a marquess to provide her aid.”
But her household, House Diascia, had taken sloppy measures for their citizens. Despite poor harvests plaguing the marches, floods, and piracy that loomed on the beaches, the marquess seemed to give no care at all. It became up to their residents to fend for themselves and to fix these issues without any support. As the daughter of the marquess, she volunteered at a convent within the march and taught the bare minimum of literacy to the residents, ensuring that they wouldn’t sign clearly unbeneficial contracts.
“She was beautiful,” Lucas’s father went on. “And she hated corruption and was virtuous. It must’ve been difficult to lead her life. One day, she was dragged into a fuss with some merciless people. Stones were hurled at her, and she got injured. I happened to be docked at a nearby port, so I ran in to save her.”
Matilda had thanked him for his help, but he still couldn’t shake his worries about her. She was the daughter of the marquess, yet had few guards around her; it sent chills down his spine. It implied that her father had hoped she’d get hurt and learn from her actions.
Lucas’s father suggested that she quit her charity work to protect herself. If she truly insisted on continuing, he begged her to only do so while he was around. The two deepened their bonds. Once a month, he would become her personal guard. As time progressed, the two fell deeper in love.
“She didn’t look at me bizarrely despite my Lapisasthan origin,” Lucas’s father went on. “When our ship docked at the port, she stated that we resembled twinkling stars spilling out on the sands. Our yellow hair, which dazzled under the sun, had apparently stood out like a star from the hill she was on. She said I popped out like the North Star and was easy to spot.”
He sounded enchanted as he reminisced about his past and the excitement he must’ve felt back then. But she was the daughter of a marquess. She had no choice but to follow the orders of her house, and the day of her marriage had been set. Her fiancé was a general who served in the Battle of Lionel and had produced excellent results. He was known to be a violent man and often hit those around him; in fact, he had shouted and ordered Matilda, who was still only his fiancée, to quit her charity work at once. He hit her so hard that her cheeks had often turned swollen, and the seashell that she had received as a gift from Lucas’s father had been crushed into smithereens by the general. Matilda wept while apologizing to Lucas’s father.
“To this day, I’m not sure if I made the right decision,” the haggard man said, clenching his fists above his lap. “But I just couldn’t endure it any longer. Even when she was punched so hard, no one came to her aid, and she didn’t even receive first aid treatment from her family. I just wanted to spare her from her wretched fiancé. That was all.”
On the night of a new moon, the two decided to elope. Fortunately, the citizens and servants loved her, and many had helped her flee. The couple headed for Solalitika. Many foreign ships docked in that city, allowing people from all nations to gather there. They wouldn’t stand out. Back then, Solalitika had just lost its use as a military port and wasn’t well-maintained. It had become a den for people engaged in illegal business. The city he knew back then was nothing like what I was now familiar with.
He made that their home and did whatever he could to make a living for his new family. The two lived in a small apartment for working families in the city and led a modest life.
“I was truly happy. And I loved Matilda,” Lucas’s father said. He gazed into the distance, reminiscing about his past, but his expression soon grew dark. “But I was just too young. I thought we were happy, but one day, I saw my wife and only felt despair. She wasn’t wearing a hint of makeup, and her fingertips were cracked from work. When I saw her toiling away at her job while she sold her dresses to make a living, I wondered if I’d made the right decision.”
It seemed Matilda was doing her utmost best to blend in with a different lifestyle, a polar opposite to her days as a noblewoman. She sold all her beautiful dresses, tied her hair up, and worked hard from morning until night. Lucas’s father started to agonize over the choice that he’d made.
“I considered bringing Matilda back home,” he said. “I wondered if that was the best choice for her and would allow her to lead a happy life of wealth. I’d been so spoiled by our days of happiness that I made her conceive a child.”