I Became the Daughter of a Disgraced Duke - Chapter 29

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 28
“This kid keeps getting worse day by day…… Jeez, are you some kind of street urchin? The first thing out of your mouth when you see my face is ‘beggar’? Unbelievable.”
“I just said what I saw.”
I stared, mesmerized, at Adrian’s father with his lustrous golden hair catching the light.
Wasn’t the word “handsome” invented for someone like him?
When our eyes met, I realized I’d forgotten to greet him and quickly performed a bow from the waist.
“Hello there. I’m Iris.”
“Dad, she’s my sister—Iris.”
“I’m Zenobion. Are you still insisting she’s not your daughter?”
“Insisting? Look at her—she’s obviously my child. Are your eyes completely useless?”
“Says the man who couldn’t recognize his own son at a glance. I’d say you’ve lost your eyes somewhere.”
……
Cassian lost the argument badly, and Adrian was dragged off to the Mansion by his father.
“I don’t wanna go home!”
I shouted after the departing carriage.
“Safe travels, brother!”
* * *
The blond man’s face kept coming back to me.
‘Adrian’s so lucky.’
To have someone with flowing golden hair and skin as white as Snow White for a father.
Meanwhile, Cassian had swarthy skin, a sharp gaze, and solid muscle.
“Uncle.”
“Hmm?”
“Are you and my older uncle really brothers?”
“Not uncle—big father. He’s my elder. We’re twins, actually.”
A fool who couldn’t recognize his own daughter, lost an argument, and now was apparently less fortunate in appearance?
I gasped in shock and covered my mouth.
“Hang in there.”
I genuinely felt sorry for Cassian and reached out to pat his arm gently.
“Your big father’s temperament really was terrible, wasn’t it?”
“No, that’s not it. You’re twins, but you’re… well, less fortunate-looking than him. And he’s prettier, and…”
A fool and pitiful too. He was my father, but I felt a little sorry for him.
The father I’d wanted was handsome, cool, and fun—but seeing how pathetic Cassian was, I decided to give him a chance.
“What, what did you say?”
Cassian stammered, speaking as if he’d been wronged.
“Clearly, I’m better-looking, aren’t I?”
……
“Look carefully. He’s a bit sickly-looking.”
Hearing such a strange delusion, I realized he was an even bigger fool than I’d thought.
“Uncle, I have eyes too, you know.”
Before I knew the truth, I’d thought Cassian was handsome, but now that I’d met Zenobion, Cassian didn’t look handsome at all.
Cassian squeezed his eyes shut, pulled the blanket up to his neck, and spoke.
“Fine, that’s enough. What does a child know? Go to sleep.”
“I need you to pat my back too. I can’t sleep alone.”
“So that’s why you were always there when I woke up?”
Cassian seemed to have been planning to abandon me and sleep on the sofa.
He lay down beside me and began patting my back.
This was my first time being patted to sleep by my father.
Cassian had stroked my back before, but I didn’t know he was my father then, so none of it counted.
Hehe.
I felt happy and let out a laugh.
“Go to sleep now.”
“Will you sing me the Lullaby?”
“Only if you call me Dad.”
He’d told me not to call him Dad before, and now he wanted me to call him that?
He really was a strange man.
……
“You don’t want me to be your father?”
“No, it’s not that.”
I’d never called him Dad before, so it felt awkward.
So I fidgeted with my fingers, and Cassian spoke.
“Then call me whenever you feel like it.”
“(Oh, no, no!)”
I wanted to fall asleep listening to Dad sing me a lullaby.
Enrique had both a mother and father, so he’d tried everything, but I only had a mother, so there was so much I’d never experienced.
I decided to just push through the awkwardness.
“Ah, ah…… Aah! Dad!”
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
My chest tightened, and my whole body trembled.
He wasn’t perfect, but I had a dad now.
A real dad, at that……!
The hand patting my back stopped for a moment.
I shook my shoulder blades to urge him to keep going, and Dad’s hand moved again.
“Heh. What’s with the “Aah-Dad”? Our girl’s a bit…… cute. Very cute, actually.”
His soft chuckle eased my heart.
Having called him Dad once, Cassian somehow felt closer to me than before.
“Aaah-daaad.”
As I playfully drawled out the syllables, Dad laughed quietly in the darkness.
I waved my arms impatiently, urging him on.
“(Hurry up. Sing the lullaby!)”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”
A soft hum. A throat clearing.
Dad was warming up his voice. The moment he was about to sing, he began to hesitate, his mouth opening and closing uncertainly.
“Uh, um. Ah…… well, um. A lullaby is…….”
“Hmm?”
“Ah, no. It’s just…….”
So he wasn’t just a little foolish — he was very foolish.
A sigh escaped me.
I could feel Dad flinch beside me.
After a brief hesitation, Dad began to sing softly.
“Evil foes are gathering near. Death draws close. Charge forth. Annihilate them…….”
His voice sounded solemn, nothing like a proper lullaby at all.
Rather than listen to this strange song I’d never heard before, I figured it was better to pretend to sleep, so I quickly closed my eyes and made a loud yawning sound, then a snoring noise.
Somehow, I really did fall asleep before long.
* * *
Cassian had never been around children except for energetic types like Adrian or precocious boys like Barelmore, so he didn’t know what a daughter was like.
A daughter was…… different. Very different indeed.
When you held her, she didn’t flail about like a freshly caught fish; instead, she melted into your arms like a pillow. She preferred cute, delicate play like dressing dolls to rough physical roughhousing.
Of course, he never wanted to learn this fact the way he just had.
“Heh, heh, Brother. Ugh. Phew!”
Cassian, who’d woken early for construction, realized something was wrong when he saw Baron’s reaction — his nostrils flaring as he looked at him.
With an uneasy heart, he went to the bathroom and checked the mirror.
“What is this…….”
In the mirror, Cassian’s front hair was tangled up in a Ribbon.
The sight of his bangs standing up adorably made his jaw drop.
Wondering where the Ribbon came from when he’d never bought one, he realized it was something the women who’d slept at his house had left behind.
After removing the Ribbon, Cassian strode over to the dining table and looked down at Iris, who was eating.
Iris, her mouth smeared with Meat sauce, grinned widely when she saw him.
“(Dad. Is it pretty? I wanted to wear the pink one, so I let you have it.)”
To Baron’s eyes, who didn’t care what people paid him to do, it looked pathetic and embarrassing — but seeing her smiling face, his anger just evaporated.
Instead, without thinking, he rolled up his sleeves and wiped the sauce from her mouth.
‘She called me Dad. Dad! My girl called me Dad!’
He didn’t show it on his face, but inside, he was cheering wildly.
Though his hand trembled slightly as he wiped her mouth, he teased Iris with an air of indifference, as if he’d never felt such emotion.
“You’re still a baby. Look at all that mess on your face.”
“I’m not a baby.”
“Oh? Really? So you’re not a baby anymore — is that why you needed a lullaby?”
“(You…… stop calling yourself Dad!)”
“Say it after me. Ah! Dad! You can’t do it, can you? Can’t manage it, so you’re still a baby.”
“(I can do that much!) Ah! Dad!”
“Oh, my! Brilliant! Such a brilliant one! Already learning to say ‘daddy!'”
Cassian clapped his hands and began cutting the meat his daughter had been eating with his knife.
Iris, who had moments before declared loudly that she could do it too and cried out “Daddy!” with such confidence, now realized too late that she’d fallen for his trick.
Though Iris clamped her mouth shut and glared at him with fearsome intensity, it was no use—the child who resembled a chick could only pout so much.
‘Humanity prevails,’ she thought bitterly.
That such an expression could come from her own face—there truly was a miracle worker among men.
Cassian brought the cut meat to the child’s lips.
“If you don’t eat it, Daddy will.”
The moment he actually placed the meat in his own mouth, Iris snatched it away, terrified that her food would be stolen from her.
It felt exactly like being a baby bird.
Like a mother bird dropping food into her chick’s gaping beak as it chirps for more rice.
Or rather, a father bird.
“My lord. Are you certain you haven’t injured yourself? Our lord wouldn’t normally smile so hard that his mouth splits open like that.”
Cassian narrowed his eyes at Baron, who was rubbing his eyes and spouting such nonsense.
The man had come here to work, yet here he was, talking complete rubbish.
“Listen. After I finish feeding our daughter, I’m leaving her with you, so by then I want the door replaced and the flooring laid down completely.”
“Y-yes? My lord, surely you’re joking?”
“And you—aren’t you a loan shark yourself? Where do you get off looking for gangsters?”
As Cassian’s eyes flashed dangerously, Baron’s face crumpled and he shuffled off into the small room.
Soon the sound of him working began to echo from inside.
Iris, who had just finished eating, looked up at him.
When sunlight caught her golden eyes, the same color as his, they gleamed with such brilliance it was almost blinding.
Cassian felt something swell quietly within his chest.
That such a being could exist—so adorable, so lovely, so precious that you wouldn’t mind having her in your very eyes.
It was truly impossible, yet it had happened.
‘So God does exist after all.’
If God didn’t exist, then this creature, so enchanting you’d want to bite her, would be nothing but a cosmic accident—a probability so infinitesimally small that it was less likely than the universe being born again from scratch.
Cassian carried the child to the Mansion and transferred her into Zenobion’s arms, speaking as he did.
“You have only sons, poor thing. So I’ve decided to live here until the construction is finished, just to help you out. Isn’t that generous? Thank me profusely.”
Predictably, a vein bulged on Zenobion’s forehead.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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