Chapter 5: 5

Grace closed her eyes tightly. She couldn’t believe that her father caught her like this…

“Grace, is that you over there?”

“…Yes, Father. It’s me.”

Pressing down on her heavily pounding heart, Grace quickly jumped out of the duke’s arms.

The moment Grace stepped to the side for him to see, Kafrenn O’Ellin’s eyes turned livid the moment he saw his daughter dressed in those disheveled clothes.

“What on earth is going on here?”

Grace bit her tongue, trying desperately not to lose her composure here.

“It’s just that…”

But before she could even say anything, the marquis roared out.

“And look at you…! What kind of woman walks around in her nightgown like this?! You’ve taken twenty years of etiquette lessons, and yet you’re throwing it all away here?”

“Father.”

“Quiet! It wouldn’t even be enough if you shut your mouth like the dead, but what ridiculous excuse are you trying to spit out now?!”

And with an ashen pallor that really looked like the dead, Grace dropped her head. Her face looked blue.

Seeing her like this, Lucas’ forehead became wrinkled with very fine lines at the same time.

‘A disaster.’

Evidently enough, this was her fault.

She was in so much of a hurry that she ran out like a fool, and so it was her own fault.

If earlier she wanted to die by drowning herself through a bowl of water, right now, she just wanted to die after biting her tongue and bleeding out.

‘…Idiot.’

Grace had a hunch that today would be a day full of regrets.

On the wrinkled forehead of Marquis O’Ellin was a visibly throbbing vein.

“Regardless of how this is your family’s residence, for you to come out in your nightgown— Ha! If the servants see you like this, what is it that you think they’ll start saying?”

Marquis Kafrenn O’Ellin was an uptight, obstinate man.

“How can a noble household’s daughter act like a wench from the back alleys! How vulgar!”

An old man with deeply-rooted patriarchal values, thinking that a ‘wench’ should just be meek and submissive while supporting men.

To him, Grace was nothing but a daughter whose obedient face wasn’t enough to cover for her shortcomings, which he disliked.

Her face was good enough, but her body was weak, so he found it difficult to marry her off to a good family.

Then, very fortunately, he managed to establish connections with House Blacke again. A connection with that household was also a connection with the crown prince’s side.

All he wanted was to dump Grace onto House Blacke somehow.

At the highest price he could get, to boot.

‘I’ll have to push for the marriage under the pretext of this ridiculous nonsense. I might be able to get a generous dowry for the ‘humiliation’ of an unmarried woman.’

He hid all his slimy innermost thoughts beneath his façade of wrath. He pointed a finger at Grace and Lucas.

Although a marquisate was technically below a duchy in the aristocratic hierarchy, the O’Ellin Marquisate had a long history that was comparable to the Blacke Duchy.

The Blacke Duchy was a founding family of the country as they made many brilliant contributions. These days, however, that household was nothing but a fallen tiger that was now just clinging onto their old honor and power.

And then, here came the rookie who didn’t have any political issues to his name, ascending to the post of the duke.

Marquis Kafrenn O’Ellin felt a surge of contempt as he faced the handsome Lucas Blacke.

There was nothing proper about that pretty face.

To wield one’s pretty looks like that, what a vulgar thing.

And besides that, seeing Grace in that man’s embrace really turned the marquis’ stomach upside down.

It was because of a glimpse of the past that flashed through his mind.

With a cold voice, the marquis spoke.

“Duke Blacke, I’m aware that there are marriage talks between you and my daughter right now, but I don’t understand why an unseemly sight like this should be shown in front of my office—her father’s office.”

Hearing the marquis’ words, Lucas’ eyes narrowed.

He just continued to watch the situation unfold, albeit with such conflict going on in his gaze.

“For you to hold a noble lady in your embrace while she’s in her nightgown—is this or is this not sexual harassment?”

“Father, that’s not it!”

“I said I don’t want to hear it, Grace! Shut it!”

With a pallid complexion, Marquis O’Ellin yelled at Grace at once.

“I did not know that the dignified black horse that’s protecting the country is nothing but a shameless stallion.”

‘Oh God, please.’

Grace was greatly embarrassed.

‘Why is Father being like this?’

Of course, it’s only natural to misunderstand what happened just now—her attire was also certainly not helping—but it wasn’t enough of a dire situation for the duke to be so up in arms like this.

But Grace felt the atmosphere change behind her, where Lucas Blacke was standing.

Heavy and cold, very.

This really turned out to be a big deal.

Her father’s words must have provoked him.

Did her father not know just how terrifying this man was?

“Marquis, I did not know that you were such a crude nobleman that you’d flap your tongue first without checking the facts first.”

And just as she had expected, Lucas Blacke’s tone as he retorted against the marquis.

He also did not hide his contempt for the other man.

“What did you— What did you say just now? Crude?”

Looking down, Lucas icily glared right into the marquis’ eyes.

“You are the head of a well-renowned household, and so I was expecting that you’d be such a great father towards the Lady, but apparently I thought wrong.”

“Ha! Are you insulting me? You’re the one who made a mistake here, you! You must be looking down on our family, Duke!”

‘My, my.’

Lucas scoffed as though he had clicked his tongue.

Not wanting to confront the marquis like this anymore, he raised one hand.

“Stop.”

“W-What are you—!”

“I came here because you had something to discuss with me, but let’s pretend that the appointment never existed. I don’t wish to talk to you any longer, Marquis.”

Lucas turned away without hesitation.

“So are you looking down on me right now?”

Bristling with fury, the marquis nonetheless asked back.

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Hearing this loud of a voice would usually make any young aristocrat flinch.

However, Lucas neither flinched nor gave a reaction at all.

Lucas did not answer the marquis. Instead, he glanced at the person beside him for a moment. At Grace.

Her jewel-like eyes, which glimmered like topazes[1], quivered heavily.

He admitted it to himself.

Grace thought of Lucas favorably.

However, with the way he was being insulted as a black-hearted man like this, he wasn’t going to put up with this.

‘…What a shame.’

His blue eyes and her purple eyes met in the air.

Gazing into her confused purple eyes, it felt to Lucas as if there was a fire being stoked inside him.

The straight-forward eyes looking directly back at him without blinking… they were so goddamn pretty.

He found it a shame that they shared not more than a few words between them.

‘…It’s ruined.’

He sighed and turned away, holding back these words as though he was chewing on them.

As he left the O’Ellin residence, his steps felt incredibly heavy.

 

* * *

 

‘…No!’

Staring blankly at Lucas’ wide back as he was descending the stairs, Grace came back to her senses as if she’d been struck by lightning.

‘I don’t know what’s going to happen if I let him go like this…!’

That murderous look he gave her at the end.

Ahhh, it looked as if he was going to slit her father’s throat sooner or later.

That’s what she implicitly felt, especially with his final sigh.

‘Oh, no, no, no.’

Grace’s mind easily recollected the way Lucas had cut a man’s fingers before. And in her imagination this time, he was cutting her father’s fingers.

No matter how estranged her relationship was with her father, she couldn’t possibly let something like that happen.

‘T-The look in his eyes just now was brutal enough that it seemed like he wanted to slash even a person’s neck.’

And obviously enough, that person was going to be someone from her family.

‘I need to stop him.’

As she belatedly got herself together, Grace hurriedly ran down the staircase.

“Where are you going, Grace?!”

“Please wait, Father.”

Grace ran down the round staircase. She was already out of breath.

Her lungs felt so stuffy that it felt to her like they would swell and go up her chest.

After running for a long time, she distinctly felt a metallic taste coming up to her throat.

‘Damn frail body!’

While vowing to take better care of her health without fail this year, she raced towards Lucas with all her might. She saw him as he was about to climb into the carriage on standby at the front door.

“Your Excellency! Wait a minute!’

Did he just hear her urgent voice?

Lucas Blacke was already about to get into his carriage, but he stopped where he was.

Then, he turned around slowly. There she was, running towards him.

His sharp eyes opened wide in surprise.

Regardless of what happened just now, Grace ran up to Lucas and gasped heavily as she spoke again.

“P— Plea— Please wait! Huuk, huuk! H-How is it even, huuk, possible to walk this fast, huk!”

It was her first time to ever run this much.

She bowed forward, dizzy in a way that she had never experienced before.

She wanted to throw up.

“Goodness… Please breathe slowly. Slowly now.”

Lucas caught her staggering figure and helped her breathe.

“Don’t talk for now, please. Just focus on breathing, in and out now. Yes, like that.”

“Huu, haa. Huu…! Haa!”

While she was catching her breath, Grace glanced up and came face to face with Lucas.

She thought that he would be mad right now, but fortunately, his expression didn’t look as brutal as she was expecting.

By the time that she could barely speak again, Grace straightened her back and stood taller.

Throughout that time, Lucas Blacke waited patiently without rushing her.

‘Huu.’

Grace exhaled heavily, then she tried to calm down her wildly beating heart.

She looked up at him with her quivering eyes, but she couldn’t read his expression.

If she were to say that his expressionless face wasn’t scary, then she’d be lying.

Nevertheless, Grace could not back down here.

‘I have to fix this somehow before sending him away. I can’t let this man leave this place while he’s still angry.’

So with a rather tense face, Grace looked up at Lucas and said,

“Please let me apologize first, Your Excellency.”

While she started to apologize, Lucas tilted his head to the side, perplexed.

Then with one brow raised, he responded.

“I don’t believe there’s anything you have to apologize for though?”

“But all of this happened because of my misconduct, so I know that it’s my fault.”

Listening to her polite voice, Lucas stared back at Grace, neither smiling nor unsmiling.

As if he wanted to say something back.

 

 

¹ Grace’s eyes are purple, so I’m not sure why they were compared to topazes (from the raws: 토파즈). Maybe the author meant amethysts instead? 

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