Guidelines for the Perfect Goodbye - Chapter 105
Logan appeared sluggishly at dusk, just as before. He had been late to dinner then as well.
“I was delayed due to a carriage accident.”
‘A lie.’
He probably just let the coachman drive around aimlessly because he didn’t want to come in. After marriage, he often circled the vicinity before coming home.
Back then, she secretly peered out the window curtain, wondering when he would enter, when he would return this way.
One round…
Two rounds…
Three rounds…
She watched him pathetically as he aimlessly circled. Longer if it was cold. Endlessly on rainy days.
When she finally heard the door open, she’d jump into bed, startled, and pretend to be sound asleep, holding her breath.
From the room next door, separated by just a door, she could hear him undressing with thuds, his movements rustling, her ears perking up to every sound.
He never came.
He didn’t come all night.
Just one door away. Just one wall away.
‘It’s natural that he wouldn’t come.’
She had tried to convince herself. She desperately tried to understand his pain and resentment, clinging to whatever tiny bit of conscience she had, enduring like she was praying.
But she was human, too.
Just like you resented me knowing that I wasn’t aware of your lover’s death, I resented you while understanding your resentment.
Only then did she realize that patience could wear out just as conscience did. Wasn’t that also a matter of the heart? When its time would come, it would deplete and would be replaced by something else.
Hatred.
“Aren’t you coming down, Miss?”
“In a little while.”
Cecilia saw him from the top of the staircase. She watched him greet her father and survey the members of the household.
Don’t get confused now.
Who is my fiancée?
Who is the intruder in my life?
Which woman dared to throw ash into the life that should have been tranquil?
This woman? Or that one?
‘Wrong. All of it.’
Cecilia scoffed. She wanted to mock him openly for once, to throw away the thought of ‘how dare you’ and point a finger at him.
You were too harsh to me.
But I respect your life.
So, let us.
‘Let’s break off the engagement.’
* * *
Logan greeted each member of the Lasphilla family with polite formality. How much of a gentleman could a man who had rolled around with soldiers be, but at least he put on manners on the surface.
He preferred the raucousness of an inn where coarse curses flew and beer mugs clinked, but tonight, he sipped wine while listening to a gentle piano performance.
The red wine rippled, wetting his taste buds. It was tasteless.
However, the woman across from him. The woman who was explicitly placed in front of him as his fiancée.
She stood out amid the muddy and sooty heads.
Cecilia Lasphilla.
Each time the rounded wine glass touched his lips, the tips of her hair seemed to stretch long. The glass tilted, and it was full of purple hues.
It felt like he was holding a wine glass that never emptied.
‘She doesn’t look much like her family.’
From what he saw, her mother had brown hair and green eyes. Her father had black hair.
Yet she alone was purple.
A color that couldn’t possibly result from any mix of the two.
At first, he thought his fiancée would be her sister because she resembled their mother.
It was a ridiculous mistake.
She came down even later than he did, dressed in a gown that seemed like a drop of pink paint had fallen on white, her hair styled like an iris.
With every step, the wide hem of her dress fluttered.
Logan lifted the corners of his mouth as he saw her. He greeted her with a deep smile, thinking,
‘Who’s the fool now.’
His appearance hinted at a complicated birth. Beautiful, yet if it was a lie, it would be worthless.
He continued to wear his mask.
Adequate politeness and appropriate responses.
Lukewarm reactions, neither too cold nor too hot.
Anxious faces watched him, but only that woman’s gaze diverged.
Her head deeply bowed, the woman didn’t lift her head throughout the meal.
Not even the pretense of feigned kindness that he himself had practiced.
Her family said she was just very shy. Was that really the case?
Time would tell.
Like it or not, he had to stay here for a week.
It was the old man’s last wish; could he really refuse it?
Engagement? Fine, he’d play along.
But marriage was another matter.
