The Truscott family were a strange collection of people, Lucas decided as they all mulled around waiting to be let into the dining room.

Lady Truscott had five other children besides Mirra's mother. And not one of them had paid any attention to him as he kept to the shadows by the staircase. Mirra was still nowhere to be seen, but whilst the other family members were in his sights, he felt reassured that she was likely safe from them.

'Excuse me.' A woman snapped her fingers to gain his attention. 'How long is my mother going to make us wait?' she demanded.

Lucas raised his eyebrow, taking in her sparkly dress and jewel encrusted fingers. He'd been informed that this would be a low-key dinner, but was feeling underdressed in his jeans compared to the rest of the Truscott family.

'I don't know,' he said when it became clear the woman was waiting for his response.

'Can you at least make yourself useful and find out? I'm sure my mother is paying you well to do whatever it is you do,' she snapped.

'I don't work for your mother,' Lucas said, resisting the urge to grind his teeth.

'He is my guest, Abigail.' Madge explained as she entered the hall from the dining room. 'An old family friend whom I've recently been reacquainted with thanks to Mirra.'

Abigail's sneer dissolved into a polite smile in the face of her mother.

'A family friend?' she asked in a sugary voice that set Lucas on edge.

'Mr Ashfield will be joining us for the weekend,' Madge explained without elaborating further.

'Ashfield? As in Martha Ashfield?' A man who had been attempting to wrangle two children from causing chaos said, giving Lucas his full attention.

'She was my mother.'

'Then you must be Edward Jushua Ashfield's son?' Abigail giggled at him, her previous looks of contempt apparently stricken from history, now that she knew his identity.

'He's the actor?' the man said, now leaving his two children to run up and down the stairs.

'My father mostly directs.' Lucas's smile was tight-lipped. His father was not the topic of conversation that he would have preferred to be engaged with.

Alex gave him a brief respite by appearing from the kitchen and announcing that dinner would begin shortly, before seeing them seated at an impossibly long table.

Lucas sat on Madge's right, and he was once again grateful that his host detested late dinners. If he was lucky, he could enjoy his food, fulfil his task to his host, and also query Mirra on her current projects, all without having to make an excuse as the sun set.

The only downside to his plan seemed to be Abigail's renewed interest in him as she sat beside him. In truth, he could tell she wasn't the only one who watched him with calculating eyes. There were many around the table that seemed to question his inclusion.

'So Lucas, is it? How did you and my mother reconnect?'

'Don't badger our guest, Damian, until he at least has his glass filled,' Madge admonished her son, who looked anything but contrite.

Lucas watched the servers dance around the family, bringing requested drinks, colouring books for the children, and even a battery pack for an unamused teenager glued to her screen. In some ways he wished the servers would never leave, for as soon as they did, the questions would start, and it had been too long since he'd been the centre of attention anywhere but inside his own lab.

During this performance of efficiency, Mirra entered silently and took her seat across from him.

'Late again, Mirra.' Tsked a woman in her forties with jet black hair.

'Finishing up some work calls, Portia,' Mirra replied politely.

'You're still working then? I would have thought you would have grown tired of...what is that you do?'

'I'm a marine biologist.' Mirra delicately removed her napkin from the table and placed it over her legs. An effective excuse not to look at the rest of her family.

'An exceedingly accomplished one, from what I understand,' Lucas said, giving Mirra a brief smile.

Madge hadn't been lying about her family, barely five minutes in, and he'd already felt the need to defend her. He took a fortifying sip of wine, realising what a long night it promised to be.

Abigail's girlish giggle sounded next to him. 'How can you possibly know that? It's not as though Marine whatsyoumacallit's are on the face of magazines.'

A few others murmured their agreement, and there were a few concealed smiled, whilst Mirra gulped down a portion of her wine.

'Her previous work on microplastics and their effects on turtle migration has led to much change within Indonesia, and conservation work around the world. And though I don't know much about her latest research, I have heard positive things. Not just any scientist is given a grant for research.'

'And how does a movie star know so much about it?' Damian asked politely, but there was no hiding the rebuff in his words.

'I'm the son of a movie star, but movies never held my attention,' Lucas said, this time without a smile. 'I work at the same labs as Mirra, conducting my own research.'

'Then how can you be a family friend?' Portia asked, abandoning all forms of pleasantries, and instead opting for directness so sharp it could have cut the tense atmosphere like a birthday cake.

'I knew Lucas' mother,' Madge intervened just as the first course was served. 'An exceedingly beautiful woman, with exceptional wit, and when Lucas drove Mirra to the hospital to see me, I just knew that he must be invited. Not to do so would dishonour his mother's memory and kindness towards me in the past.'

Lucas pretended that he knew all of this, though he hadn't the faintest idea of what kindness his mother had ever shown to Madge, nor whether they had been well acquainted with each other before her death.

Right now he was in the dark about whether Madge was lending him credibility, so no one would guess the task she'd given him, or whether she was telling the truth. Certainly nothing about her face proclaimed it to be a lie, but then Madge seemed an excellent liar.

'It seems a strange thing to become a marine biologist, considering how your mother died,' Damian said evenly, as he cut his fishcake up into even portions.

'My mother's death was a tragedy, as were the others who died with her, but she would never have approved of me living my life in fear.' There was a bite to Lucas' words that seemed lost on the Truscott siblings.

'Most admirable,' Damian said, his lie falling easily from his lips. 'Though if I were the only survivor of such a tragic accident that had left my mother, and everyone else on board, drowned, I fear that I would never have been able to set foot on a boat again.'

Madge cleared her throat, and declared the fishcakes exceedingly excellent, but Damian's gaze remained on Lucas, even as the plates were taken away to be replaced by the main.

It was the challenge in the other man's eyes that seemed to stab at something very dark inside Lucas.

'Then that's where we differ. The sea is dangerous, but it is also beautiful.'

'Well said,' Mirra commended him, though Damian was not yet finished.

'No one really knows what happened that night, do they? No one knows why the boat sank? Or how you were the only survivor?'

'Accidents happen. Boats sink. I can only be grateful that I survived.' The dark thing inside Lucas curled tighter at the insinuation behind Damian's remarks.

'I just find it interesting that your mother shared my sister's love of the sea, and yet they are the two not here at the table.'

The man's grin spread over his face, and Lucas gripped the knife in his hand so hard he feared he would warp the metal.

'Perhaps it is because, like the sea, they were free spirited. They could not be controlled,' Mirra said to the man who was in fact her uncle. 'It's a sad truth that such people seem to experience short lives, but we should all be so lucky to experience life as they had. To understand what that freedom is.'

'My mother would have loved your description of her. She used to tell me that to be free is to always live in the light, but also to be that light for others when they are stuck in their own eternal midnight. As a child I never understood that, as an adult who has lived in much midnight, I now understand how important those people are.'

'It's a sad truth, that we don't always appreciate those we love until they are gone,' Mirra said quietly.

'Humans are funny creatures like that. We don't often see what's right in front of us.' Madge cut into her lamb cutlet with gusto, but her eyes strayed to Lucas, a hidden smirk lurking at the corner of her mouth. 'We should all be so lucky to have that kind of sunshine in our lives.'