Chapter 93
"No."
"Then? Then why did you suddenly collapse?"
At that question, Laura recalled the astonishing truth she had realized just before collapsing. She paused for a moment, then turned her gaze to Mrs. Star standing behind him.
"Mrs. Star, would you allow me a moment to speak with Mr. Dalton?"
Understanding her meaning, Mrs. Star left the room, glancing back at them with a curious expression.
Only the two of them remained in the room.
"Mr. Dalton's childhood art teacher, was he Mr. Louis Sheldon?"
"Yes."
"From America? Blond hair and gray eyes?"
"That's right. How did Miss Pendleton know that? Ah, now that I think about it, you collapsed in front of his tombstone. Did you ever meet him in person?"
Laura remained silent. His answer provided solid evidence for the newly discovered truth.
Mr. Dalton, who had been looking puzzled, soon realized something. He looked at Laura with a look of disbelief.
"He's my father."
"......"
"My real name is Laura Sheldon. I've been living under my mother Dolores Pendleton's name, but that's what I was originally called."
His face froze in shock. Perhaps his tongue was as well.
Laura pondered the truth she had just learned in silence.
She recalled the year of death written on the tombstone. It was two years after she had been left at the Pendleton Estate. It seemed he had come here as an art teacher while looking for work.
Laura felt extreme confusion at that fact. She had thought her father would have returned to America as soon as he left her. There hadn't been a single letter or telegram since they parted, so it was only natural to assume so.
She had been abandoned by her father, but it had been a long time since she had felt bitter about it. It was difficult for a poor, unknown painter to raise a child alone.
Besides, her father was still young. Remembering his dazzlingly handsome face, she guessed that he had probably returned to his home country and started a new family with a new woman. If he hadn't succeeded as a painter in England and couldn't afford to bring his child to raise, that was the most sensible choice.
And she respected her father's choice.
Laura had learned the importance of reason from her parents' failures and had trained herself to restrain her emotions for a long time. Thanks to that, she became an independent person far removed from childish and self-centered emotions. She looked at her parents through the eyes of a third party and understood that it couldn't have been any other way.
But suddenly, in an unexpected place, she had discovered her father's tombstone. She had learned of circumstances that suggested her father might not have abandoned her.
It felt as if heaven and earth had turned upside down. The realization didn't sink from her head to her heart. Laura couldn't feel anything.
"This can't be."
Mr. Dalton's cracked voice echoed in the quiet room.
"Mr. Sheldon's daughter is you......"
He looked confused. Although the context was different from Laura's, he was sharing the same emotion.
"How did you only find out now that Mr. Sheldon is buried here? Ah, of course, you were young then, and I know you might have been at boarding school. But he always wrote letters to his daughter. The place of origin was always Whitefield."
"My father wrote letters?"
"Yes. He made bookmarks to send to you in between teaching me and working on his own art, and he would copy poems onto the letter paper. He always sealed those letters with a kiss. A very long kiss, a kiss filled with longing and sadness."
Laura was speechless. Still, Laura only accepted the fact in her head. She murmured in a voice devoid of emotion.
"I never received a single one. I didn't even know he had passed away in the first place."
"Someone as intelligent as he was wouldn't have written the address wrong, so it seems there was a circumstance in which the letters were lost in the middle."
Laura had a hunch. Her uncle, Count Gerald Pendleton. He was a Justice of the Peace (an honorary position held by the head of a prestigious family in the region) in the Cornwall area. Stealing a few letters from the post office would be nothing for him.
Mr. Dalton also thought that Count Pendleton might have been involved in the circumstances in which the letters were lost. As a result, the animosity he already felt towards the Count burned even more fiercely.
But he didn't show it.
"If Mr. Sheldon had known that his daughter had been left to the Pendleton family, this wouldn't have happened. But he strictly kept silent about which family his daughter was growing up in. Even my father didn't know. Thinking about it now, I think he kept silent to avoid creating any more rumors, since the Pendleton family is a prestigious one."
"I think so too."
Laura nodded.
Even though a fact that would have warranted shedding tears like rain had been revealed, her face remained calm. Mr. Dalton found that quite unsettling.
"This must be a great shock."
"A little."
"It must also be sad. To find out that the father you thought was alive somewhere had passed away without you knowing."
Laura shook her head.
"If I had found out in my teens, I would have been shocked. I might have cried for days. But I forgot about my father a long time ago. I loved him very much when I was a child, but it's been quite a while since I let him go from my heart."
"How is that possible? Is it really possible to let go of someone you love from your heart?"
There was no reproach in his voice. It was a question asked out of pure curiosity.
He was a man who placed hand-picked flowers on the grave of an art teacher who had died twenty years ago. Laura thought it was only natural that he couldn't understand her.
"My father left me promising to see me again, but he didn't send a single letter. He wrote them, but I didn't receive them. I spent a long time longing for and resenting my father. But as I grew up, I learned to understand the positions of others, and I came to think that it was a wise choice for my father to abandon me and return to his home country to start a new family."
"Your father wasn't that kind of person."
"Even if he was, it wouldn't have mattered much. That would have been the most rational decision he could have made. It's also a much more realistic choice than running away with a noblewoman's daughter. I thought my father had learned a lesson through failure."
His puzzled expression gradually darkened. He even seemed a little angry.
"If you knew how much he loved you, you would never say such a thing. He didn't say your name, but he always talked about his daughter. He painted day and night, saying he had to bring you here soon. The reason he passed away so early was because he spent too much time outside trying to paint landscapes in the middle of winter and contracted tuberculosis. If he sold his paintings and made money, he could bring you here."
Laura was so surprised that she lost her words.
"To think that such a precious daughter is living her life regarding herself as a byproduct of a failed marriage...... Every time you think like that, Mr. Sheldon in heaven must be shedding tears of blood!"
Mr. Dalton shouted in an agitated voice. He seemed to be a spokesperson for the deceased Louis Sheldon.
"Mr. Dalton, calm down."
"Calm down...... I can't. The person who must be the most confused is Miss Pendleton, yet I'm getting overly excited in front of such a person."
She shook her head.
"There are Mr. Sheldon's belongings at Whitefield Hall. Things that my father had personally prepared to give to his family when they came to find them. They will finally be returned to their owner."
He looked at Laura with eyes that revealed complex emotions.
"After Mr. Sheldon passed away, I prayed every night by my bedside. That news would be delivered to his family. But that the family is Miss Pendleton. Is it a trick of God, or...... is it our predetermined fate?"
