She is the Daughter of the Villainess in a Ridiculous Novel - Chapter 12

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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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I Am the Villainess’s Daughter in a Melodramatic Novel
Chapter 12
“Papa!”
“Vincent, they’ve found Idel!”
They must have rushed over the moment they heard, because beads of sweat dotted both their foreheads.
Lowena came up breathlessly, and at the sight of Idel she widened her eyes.
“Idel! Surely she isn’t seriously hurt?”
“No. I’ve already checked. She’s just asleep.”
“But she’s covered in dirt, and her forehead is swollen… We should call a doctor just in case. What if she really was lost on the mountain path, like Jeiana said, and something chased her, or she fell and rolled down a slope? Or maybe she ran from some intruder.”
“Lowena, calm down.”
Vincent caught his wife as she turned, her face pale, and quietly shook his head.
Then, analyzing the situation, he laid out the conclusion he had reached.
“It’s most likely a staged act, done on purpose. Seeing Jeiana’s note, she probably thought she’d found an opening.”
A staged act?
At the Duke’s reasoning, which was even more extreme than the plan she had laid out herself, Idel nearly opened her eyes without meaning to.
She managed to compose her expression again and pricked up her ears.
“If she had really gotten lost on the secret path, she would have wandered around nearby or grown exhausted and returned to her room. Not hidden herself in the bushes like this.”
It was just that I was late.
“And her state isn’t just the grime of wandering the mountain path. It’s too disheveled for that. She did this deliberately.”
That’s because I got into a fistfight with the future villainess in a back alley.
“Vincent!”
“She takes after me.”
Clenching his teeth for a moment, Duke Clementine forced himself to dredge up his own past.
“I, too, once defied my father just like this when I was young. I know it well.”
As Duke Clementine’s words, laced with a sense of bitterness, reached her, Idel silently murmured to herself.
‘…Takes after him? She isn’t even his biological child.’
Still, it isn’t bad.
If they reach this conclusion, it will be harder to watch for a chance to slip out, but the fact that I went out could be hidden perfectly.
The idea was bitter, yet quite appealing, and Idel swallowed hard and cracked her eyes open just a little.
I had planned to quietly watch the situation and step in at the right moment…
“…!”
Of all the moments, her eyes met Jeiana’s just as she opened them.
Startled by the sudden eye contact, Jeiana nearly made a sound out of reflex and hastily clapped a hand over her own mouth.
It hadn’t been long since she had gone through a situation similar to this one, so Idel’s appearance looked somehow familiar to her. Especially her expression.
‘It’s just like that time! That’s definitely an expression of injustice.’
Jeiana glanced between her parents and Idel, then nodded resolutely, as if she had made up her mind, and moved her lips.
‘What’s she saying? I’ll… help you?’
Help me?
…With what?
Idel’s heart, which had settled somewhat, began to beat uneasily once more.
Vincent Clementine had been focused on soothing his wife, but he was not the sort of man who would miss the restless movements of Idel.
He quickly sensed the faint stirring behind him and shifted his gaze toward the space behind Lowena.
Lowena, sensing that her husband’s attention had left her, also turned with a brief gasp.
“Oh, Idel!”
“….”
“You’re awake. How do you feel? Vincent said you didn’t seem badly hurt. Are you all right?”
Still looking as though she hadn’t fully woken, Idel pressed her lips together and rolled her eyes about.
As if the people surrounding her were strangers.
Lowena paid no mind to the sharp look in Idel’s eyes and leaned down.
She only wanted to check whether the child had any further wounds on her body.
Smack!
Though, the moment her hand reached for her, Idel pushed it away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Oh…”
Lowena, as if she hadn’t expected this at all, let out a small sound and stared at Idel, forgetting even to rub the stinging back of her hand.
The child had curled herself up, widening the distance between them, and she looked just like a chestnut burr bristling with spines.
Just as Lowena was about to apologize in case she had made the child uncomfortable, the voice of her beloved cut through the air before hers could.
“Idel Clementine.”
Duke Clementine, calling the child’s name in a cold voice that Lowena herself had rarely heard, set his face into a stern, rigid expression.
The child, who only moments before had been treating Lowena with prickly hostility, shut her mouth tight and looked up at him.
‘Just from the look in your eyes, I can tell.’
Idel’s blue eyes held a peculiar stubbornness.
Reading the wariness in her, the kind that would lunge the moment he showed a gap, he raked a hand back through his hair.
Looking at her now, Idel was not so different from what Silvia had reported. Lowena and Jeiana had their reasons for shielding the child, though he could not fathom what they were.
Self-centered, indulging every twisted whim, lounging about with no regard for anyone.
‘If she’s really like that, I can’t leave it like this.’
Spoiling and sulking both have their limits.
A child who runs wild with no sense of rank or order needed to learn what happens when she crosses a line she must never cross.
Vincent, having already settled his suspicions into certainty in his mind, flicked his fingers stiffly.
“Idel, stop sulking and stand up properly. Do you even understand what you’ve done?”
“….”
“Because of your childish behavior, every servant had to search the entire Ducal Household and the back mountain, the one with the Secret Path. Lowena and Jeiana haven’t eaten a proper meal all day, worried that something might have happened to you.”
“….”
“And yet, what are you doing right now, in front of those people? I don’t see a trace of remorse in your eyes.”
“Vincent.”
Lowena quietly called his name, but Vincent shook his head firmly.
She had stood up as he told her to, but there was still no trace of guilt on Idel’s face.
That wasn’t all. Idel kept stealing glances at Jeiana, the one person least involved in this affair, as if she meant to make Jeiana her target.
Above Idel’s stubbornly pressed lips and twitching brows, Melissa Lopez’s face seemed to overlap once more.
Vincent shook off the image and clenched his jaw.
“Idel, apologize to Jeiana and Lowena. And to everyone else who wasted their time, falling for your cheap little act and failing to do what they were supposed to do. Then I’ll let this slide.”
“….”
“Idel. Answer me.”
The moment he called her name with a note of pressure, an unexpected voice suddenly cut through the conversation.
“Don’t scold Idel! It’s Daddy who’s wrong!”
“What?”
“Idel didn’t do anything wrong! Because it was me, me, who dragged Idel into the Secret Path!”
Everyone was startled by the sudden intrusion, but it lasted only a moment. Jeiana’s proudly blurted lie left everyone in the room wearing expressions of confusion.
Of them all, the one most bewildered was Idel, who had received a dependable smile from Jeiana, as if to say, leave it to me.
She had been keeping quiet, unsure how Jeiana would play this, and yet here Jeiana had gone and lit the fuse.
Idel barely held herself together and, half a beat late, denied Jeiana’s words.
“No, you don’t… that’s not…”
“Idel, I understand how you feel, but we can’t do this! Lying is bad!”
Ah, right. Who exactly was lying right now?
Just as Idel, momentarily tongue-tied, let out an inward sigh, her savior, the Duke of Clementine, leveled a sharp question at Jeiana.
“That’s right, Jeiana. Lying is wrong. So don’t try to shield her like you did last time. Tell me the truth. How on earth did you manage to reach where Idel was?”
“…In the early morning, when Silvia and everyone else was asleep, I slipped out through the secret passage. Daddy, you told me about it, remember?”
“The secret passage, is it? Yes, I did tell you about that. Then why didn’t you say from the start that you took Idel down the Secret Path? You clearly told your mother and me that Idel had gotten lost. And you were crying when you said it.”
“That’s, that’s…”
Watching Jeiana hesitate, Idel unconsciously clenched her fist tight.
Jeiana glanced at Idel’s face for a moment, then drew a deep breath and cried out.
With an expression even more resolute than before.
“I, I hid it because I was afraid of getting scolded! I was dragging Idel along the Secret Path and let go of her hand, and Idel got hurt! I was afraid Mommy and Daddy would… be, be disappointed…”
Jeiana, unaccustomed to lying, moved her lips with her cheeks flushed deep red.
She had thrown it out with conviction, but her words kept tangling, and she looked utterly unsure of herself.
Idel, who since recalling her previous life had been lying as easily as breathing, could see right through everything.
Watching Jeiana fidget, Idel quietly breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Thank goodness the kid can’t lie. This much should be enough for both of them to catch on. That Jeiana is doing this to cover for me.’
Yet what she had overlooked was the truth that a person can only see as far as they know, and the fact that one’s everyday conduct decides everything.
Just as the servants would not believe in Idel’s innocence after she had diligently piled up her wrongdoings, people never even considered that Jeiana might be lying.
In other words…
“So… Idel was upset about fighting with Jeiana in the Secret Path, and that’s why she’s been sitting here like this? And she didn’t answer when Vincent pressed her sternly because she was afraid Jeiana would get scolded?”
The result was that someone came to believe that clumsy lie.

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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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