Is there something wrong with her being my daughter?
The look in Cain’s eyes was so unusual that I almost asked him that out loud, but I managed to keep hold of my wits.
“…Ye-es, why do you ask?”
Now that I thought about it, I’d been in such a rush to get the contract sealed that I’d never explained to Cain how Melody and I were related.
Cain seemed to have taken it for granted that the Saintess candidate was my little sister.
Well… I’m not exactly old.
It was actually a misunderstanding I ran into now and then. Melody and I looked so much alike that everyone naturally assumed we were family, but they mistook us for sisters.
It had never been a problem, though. All I had to do was correct them right away and say she was my daughter…
But why?
The words wouldn’t come out easily.
It was the look in Cain’s eyes. His face was blank, and yet his eyes were strange. That dignified gaze of his even looked a little dazed, like a man who’d just been struck over the head.
I’m… imagining it, right?
This was the cold Dragon Duke, who supposedly had no feelings at all. Maybe in the later part of the original, once he’d become a doting fool for his daughter, but right now it had to be my imagination.
I decided to explain properly again.
“Melody is my daughter. I’m raising her on my own.”
“On your own?”
“Yes.”
“And where’s your husband?”
“Um, I’m unmarried, for now…”
“Ha. Unmarried?”
I’d meant to clear up his confusion, but it only seemed to have made it worse; the look in his eyes wavered in a way I couldn’t even put into words.
“Mommy?”
Melody must have sensed the strange mood too, because she tugged at my clothes.
“Mm-hm. It’s nothing. Grown-up talk.”
“Uu!”
Melody gave a little nod, satisfied, but my head was still in full emergency mode.
Ugh. I’m in trouble.
I knew this pattern well.
Any second now, an indignant question would come: what kind of man was the child’s father, that I was raising her by myself?
What do I say? This question always puts me on the spot.
It had already been over a year since I started pretending to be an unwed mother, and yet I never got used to this.
Uwaah. I have to answer something.
I could just say, as if it were nothing, that my husband had abandoned me or died, and that would be the end of it—but the words wouldn’t come.
Because I wasn’t a good enough liar to invent a story that didn’t exist.
And it feels like I’m turning Melody’s birth father into trash, so I feel sort of sorry…
He was never even mentioned in the original, so I had no idea what kind of person he was, but it still pricked my conscience.
Maybe I should just tell Cain the real story.
The thought crossed my mind for a moment, but I shook my head slightly.
That Melody wasn’t my own daughter but my adopted one was a secret between the two of us alone. I didn’t want to break my promise to Melody for any reason.
There was actually a long story behind how I’d come to claim to be Melody’s birth mother.
I was a commoner now, but I had originally been the adopted daughter of the Devereux marquisate.
And, as adopted daughters in novels always were, I’d been hated by my family. They locked me up, starved me, beat me.
Later on, they even shamelessly tried to sell me off as the fifth concubine of some old lord out in the countryside.
The day I met Melody was the very day I’d been informed of that marriage.
A pink-haired child, crying and shivering in the rain.
The moment I saw the signs of abuse all over her small body, it was like looking at myself as a little girl.
Why? I couldn’t explain it even to myself, but it felt like fate.
Now that I think about it, it might have been because of the original… but either way, I’m glad I met her that day.
I treated the child’s wounds at once and decided to become her family.
The problem was that imperial law was very much against adopted daughters.
If anyone ever showed up claiming to be Melody’s real parents, I would have no choice but to hand her over. To the very people who might have abused her.
Then why don’t I just become her birth mother instead?
Now I’d remembered the original and knew those signs of abuse had come from the Temple.
But at the time, I’d thought something was wrong with Melody’s real parents. So I’d been able to decide without hesitation.
As it happened, Melody and I looked uncannily alike, which made it very easy.
Sure enough, no one doubted our relationship. Not even my family.
There were questions about when I’d had a baby, but there had been plenty of stretches of a year or more when they hadn’t laid eyes on me once I’d grown up a bit, so it was easily brushed aside.
After that, everything fell into place with astonishing ease.
Once word got out that I was an unwed mother, the marriage that had been arranged for me fell through in one stroke.
I’d actually been planning to run away. Yay!
And the people of the marquis’s house, whom I was so sick of, even threw me out for me. No need for a complicated legal battle—I was simply struck from the family register.
It’s all thanks to this little cutie.
I looked down at Melody. I’d only wanted to be her family, and it had solved the problems of my whole life in one go.
Ever since then, I’d been living as if I were Melody’s birth mother.
So, in conclusion.
I was pretending to be an unwed mother, and in truth, legally, I really was one, but…
The trashy man who’d supposedly abandoned me had never existed in the first place.
When I finished looking back on it all, a sigh escaped me on its own.
Haa.
So what am I supposed to say…
No matter how I thought about it, I was at a loss, so in the end, as always, I pressed my lips together. Then I made the most sorrowful eyes I could manage.
It wasn’t an act. Because…
Sob. It really is sad.
Just thinking about how often I’d end up in situations like this in this residence from now on brought tears to my eyes.
It was at that moment, just as I’d finished thinking it through.
Sure enough, Cain opened his mouth as if to ask the question I’d been expecting.
“Then where on earth is the child’s father—”
I covered Melody’s ears, just in case she heard. Then I looked up at Cain’s face, my eyes still damp.
“That…”
“Yes?”
“No. It’s nothing.”
What’s gotten into him?
This was a first. Someone who didn’t ask about the child’s father!
I didn’t know why, but I was grateful. My tears dried right up.
“It’s late. I’ll have the servants see to things, so go in and rest.”
“Thank you for your consideration!”
Cain gave a slight nod and left the room just like that.
Was he always such a fast walker?
The way he strode out in such a hurry made him seem, somehow, like a man struggling to hold back his anger.
That night, in the Duke of Asheln’s study.
“I’ve finished the investigation into Miss Viola, as you ordered.”
At Conrad’s report—stop. The pen that had been moving without pause finally halted.
Cain gave the order in a cold voice.
“Let’s hear it.”
“According to the investigation, she doesn’t appear to be a spy. However… what concerns me is that she seems to have led quite a hard life.”
“Meaning?”
“She is indeed a commoner now, but it seems she was originally the adopted daughter of a noble house. The late Marquis Devereux reportedly took in an orphan off the streets.”
Cain knew very well who the late Marquis Devereux was. The man who had long served as guard to Her Highness the Princess, now deceased. He’d given up his post as her guard and returned to his territory when he became marquis, but he had been famous for his goodness and high repute.
“The problem is that after the late marquis died, the rest of the family showed their true colors. Since then, she apparently suffered quite severe abuse, continuously.”
Cain’s fist tightened before he knew it. Unaware, Conrad went on with his report.
“That also seems to be why she taught herself pharmacy. The torment was so severe that the maids couldn’t bear to watch, and they smuggled herbs to her…”
Conrad’s explanation went like this.
The people of the marquis’s house had not allowed young Viola, battered by abuse, even to see the family physician. The maids who pitied her could bring her herbs, but they knew nothing of pharmacy.
In the end, Viola had had to study herbs alone, in secret, from a young age. What had been clumsy at first eventually became skilled enough that she was looking after the maids, too.
“And how did she come to be struck from the family?”
“It seems the marquis’s house had originally meant to sell her off as a concubine. Perhaps that was more than she could bear, because she revealed that she had secretly given birth to a child. That was what got her struck from the register.”
Ha. The sheer absurdity drew a hollow laugh from him before any words.
“And the bastard who’s supposedly the father? What was he doing at such a crucial moment?”
As if it were hard even to say aloud, Conrad answered carefully in a shaking voice.
“Well, he vanished without a trace, apparently. Never showed his face anywhere…”
Crack. The fountain pen in Cain’s hand snapped cleanly in two.
