Chapter 164

Chapter 164

Deatrice didn’t know the ‘to do’ thing Lucius was referring to. But she tried not to complicate things for nothing.

Of course, her dream of telling him everything and solving this problem was thwarted, but he would do his best to solve this problem in his own way and Deatrice had no qualms about his capabilities to achieve that.

Instead, she called in an artist to hang paintings in the mansion and made arrangements for a trip to the capital, just in time for her to reach the social season.

It was very difficult to find a painter skilled and fast enough because she wanted to see the finished product before leaving for the capital. If it hadn’t been for their name value—that they were the rumored sweethearts of the century—they would never have found a famous artist willing to take on the job.

For four days, they posed stiffly in front of the painter for a full two hours. Deatrice sat on the right side and Lucius stood on the left, a typical pose for a couple just as she had imagined it to be. She wore a dress with layers of mauve-grey silk and Lucius wore a dashing, black uniform that perfectly contrasted with his blonde hair.

Lucius could barely hide his boredom the whole time he stood there as he didn’t have any interest in the portrait, much to the embarrassment of the painter. However, later on, the painter noted a sudden change in his attitude on the matter.

It was when he decided to check on the progress after a session and abruptly saw Deatrice’s portrait drawn so exquisitely on the canvas.

All of a sudden, he asked the artist for another portrait small enough to be put inside a locket.

“A small portrait? But Lucy doesn’t own a necklace nor a pocket watch.”

“Then from now on, he does.” The painter playfully replied, “Isn’t it quite dear of him to bring it everywhere and take a look at it every once in a while when he misses you?”

Those words strangely imprinted on her heart and tickled her into a warm fuzzy feeling. She couldn’t even dare to ask Lucius in passing a simple, ‘I heard you asked the artist to draw a picture for you?’

It would’ve been a great opportunity to make fun of him by saying if he wanted her to cut a lock of hair for him too.

Alas, her imagination was larger than her guts. That little scenario forever remained in her head.

Lucius didn’t ask for anything specific for her solo painting, but when Deatrice heard that it was a portrait for Lucius, she deliberately untied her hair.

As such, she became a model. When the time came that she opened this beautiful silver pocket watch, there was her portrait on the left side.

She did it because he said he liked her sloppy side better, but when she saw the finished picture, I thought it was for no reason.

Her hair was drawn more scattered than it actually was. Gray eyes looking straight ahead and a bluish-looking white dress. The painter’s artistic spirit seemed to have captured her rebelliousness hidden within those demure eyes.

At a glance, she did not seem at all like a picture of a wife that her husband could lug around carelessly. It was so absurd that Deatrice couldn’t help but ask.

“Do I look like this in your eyes?”

Then the painter replied with a kind smile.

“I am a person who paints things as they are, but I am also a person who unveils what is inherent and makes it look more beautiful. This right here is like a sharp fragment that almost every soul has.”

Then he added more thoughtfully, “And yours is a little bluish, calm on the surface but quite the opposite underneath.”

The words were like clear water. He was not a painter whose job was to deal with capricious nobles and make them purchase paintings for the sake of making money out of it.

Deatrice took away the pocket watch on the pretext that she would pay for it quickly and give it to him instead. She didn’t want to hear any more unnecessarily obtuse words like ‘sharp fragments’ and ‘soul’.

Perhaps Lucius had already forgotten that he had asked to draw this?

Deatrice was holding onto that hope and decided not to reveal the existence of this silver pocket watch until he mentioned it first. Or… In the meantime, there might be a way to ask the painter to insert another picture.

However, Deatrice had a habit of freezing up at a decisive moment.

It happened less than four hours after she decided to hide it. She didn’t know how it happened, but she watched as the timepiece suddenly fell at Lucius’ feet.

“Lucius.”

She blankly called his name.

Lucius caught her when she nearly fell down the steps, then bent over to pick up the thing she had dropped. Seeing the object, Lucius remembered he had impulsively asked the painter to paint a separate portrait of Deatrice.

“Is this finished?”

Not realizing that she was hiding it, Lucius naturally opened the locket just as he was asking the question. On the right was a watch, and on the left was her portrait with her hair loose naturally. Exactly like the one he would often want to keep in his memory.

“This…”

He was stunned.

He looked back at her. What he expected was, at best, a copy of her portrait based on their couple painting. But the one in front of him was the perfect likeness of her beauty that it was almost as if she was frozen in time. A piece of paper managed to capture that and he was extremely astounded.

“Was this what you asked for?”

He asked. In fact, he didn’t even have to ask because she was already blushing.

“I just said that you prefer my hair untied, so I let my hair down for about an hour. But,” she paused, looking at the portrait, “I really didn’t know he could draw like this.”

“Like this?”

He asked what that meant.

She couldn’t bear to say anything about how secretive she seemed.