The Baby Sprout Who Bloomed in the Villain Duke’s Family
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Lucky, Clover’s talking four-leaf clover, had told her.
He told her that Daddy hadn’t abandoned her, but had left her here because something came up.
That after many, many nights passed and the sun rose over and over again, Daddy would definitely come looking for her.
[So don’t worry, kiddo.]
Clover believed those words.
Yet,
Just how many more nights had to pass?
How many more times did the sun have to rise?
Now, Clover was truly beginning to miss her daddy.
The father she had never once seen since the day she was born.
Reality, however…
Dangle, dangle.
She was currently being hauled along like a plucked goose, clutched in Count Demper’s grip.
Count Demper hoisted Clover up and strode briskly toward the child’s room.
Then, plopping Clover down onto the sunken bed, she barked,
“Stop acting as you please!”
Huffing with irritation, she continued,
“Don’t you dare run out on your own again, understood?”
“…….”
“Answer me! Do you understand?!”
“Yeees…….”
Clover nodded, clutching the armful of parchment tightly to her chest.
“Tsk.”
Only then did Count Demper retract her sharp glare.
She pressed a hand to her forehead, thinking,
What an utterly disobedient brat…….
Clover was never supposed to wander outside carelessly.
At least not in this state.
Count Demper, like Duke Claudian, was also an ‘Authority user.’
The Authority of the Demper family was water.
She was an Authority user who wielded the Authority of Water.
That was why conduits carrying large currents of water ran throughout the Demper estate.
The manor was constructed that way because within any place where water flowed, no one could encroach upon Count Demper’s ‘Authority.’
In other words, as long as one was inside the water-lined estate…
No matter how formidable an Authority a Claudian possesses, they cannot peer inside.
Clover was practically a stain upon the Claudian name.
So even if she were treated poorly, no one would ever care.
After all, they had all but dumped her here.
She believed the child support they sent was done purely out of minimal propriety.
Still, even if Clover was a defect, she was nevertheless a ‘Claudian,’ so there was no harm in being careful.
If she slipped up and gave them something to hold against her, she would be the one facing trouble.
That was why she forbade the scruffy-looking Clover from ever stepping foot in the garden.
Yet Clover constantly slipped past her watch and crept out into the garden.
All to practice that petty, worthless Authority of hers!
Her thoughts reaching that point, Count Demper glared down at Clover.
Eep.
Startled, Clover fumbled and averted her eyes.
Count Demper looked displeased at the thick bundle of parchment Clover was clutching, then snapped,
“What is this?”
She reached out and snatched Clover’s parchment away.
“Eek!”
Again.
It was taken again.
She took it again!
Having the parchment swiped in the blink of an eye, Clover’s mouth fell open in a small gasp.
This mother and son were truly two of a kind!
Having her ‘diary’ snatched first by Louis and now by the Count, Clover looked up at her with a flustered expression.
“It’s… n-nothin’?”
“If it’s nothing, why are you clutching it so dearly?”
She narrowed her eyes, scanning the parchment.
Densely scrawled across the sheets was something written in a child’s clumsy hand.
Count Demper stared at Clover.
“Did you write this?”
“N-no……?”
Clover subtly shifted her gaze away.
A brief silence fell.
“I suppose not.”
Losing interest at Clover’s denial, Count Demper handed the parchment back to her.
“…….”
“There’s no way you can write already.”
Clover was barely four years old.
She was at an age where she might know how to read, but certainly could not write properly.
So Count Demper took Clover’s words at face value without a second thought,
And handed the parchment back to Clover.
However…
Super bad demon auntie! Auntie is stealing the money Daddy sent for me.
“……Wait.”
In that fleeting fraction of a second, having caught sight of what was written on the parchment, the Count whipped it back into her grasp.
“Ah!”
“……?”
She held the parchment right before her nose and read down the crooked scribbles.
There, laid out in vivid detail, was ‘how’ Clover had discovered that her aunt was not spending any of the money on her.
“!”
Utterly shocked, the Count continued reading through the rest of Clover’s diary.
What was written below was even more appalling.
It was packed with venomous remarks cursing her, Count Demper.
The child’s handwriting that Louis had failed to decipher—
Count Demper, having skillfully read through it all, slowly raised her head.
Then, she glared at Clover.
“You…….”
This was unmistakably an indictment.
And one penned by a four-year-old child, no less.
“……Hiccup!”
Terrified by the Count’s overwhelming fury, Clover began to hiccup.
The frightened child clamped both hands over her mouth, but…
“Hiccup!”
Once started, the hiccups showed no sign of stopping.
Count Demper glared at the hiccuping Clover, then snatched every last scrap of the ‘diary’ from the child’s grasp.
“Give me that!”
And with savage eyes, she began reading through them one by one.
Watching her with both hands over her mouth, Clover muttered,
“Clover’s in big twouble…….”
[Oh dear, we’re in big trouble…….]
Fortunately, that whisper did not reach the Count’s ears.
“You ungrateful little brat!”
Even so, it did nothing to quell her mounting rage.
Count Demper roared.
Clover gasped, trembling in terror as she shrank backward.
“A-Auntieee…….”
First, she ‘confiscated’ every sheet of Clover’s diary in her hands.
She had no choice but to confiscate them.
Because all the misdeeds she had committed until now were laid out in plain writing!
This crazy little—!
Crumpling one of the pages in her fist, she barked,
“Where on earth did you get this parchment and pen?!”
Clover was not even old enough to take lessons, so there was no way the servants would have brought them to her.
Backing away as if trying to flee, Clover answered,
“Auntie did…….”
“Me?”
“……Auntie gave dem to me to dwaw pictures and play at home.”
[Right, exactly! You gave them to her yourself!]
Lucky chimed in.
At Clover’s words, the Count’s face contorted violently.
Come to think of it, that did sound familiar.
Yet that hardly mattered right now.
“It doesn’t matter. You are never to write again.”
She growled,
“The moment you write anything that even resembles a letter, consider yourself thrown out of this estate! Understand?”
[You wicked thing! You petty scoundrel! Screaming at such a tiny child just because she wrote a few bad words about you!]
Lucky threw a fit as well.
Yet right now, Clover could not afford to agree with Lucky.
Clover meekly nodded her head.
“Yeees…….”
“Is someone out there?!”
When the Count hollered at the top of her lungs, two maids came scrambling inside.
Without even sparing the maids a glance, the Count commanded,
“Tear this room apart right now and find every single pen and sheet of parchment! Find them and throw them all away!”
“Y-yes, my lady!”
The maids answered hurriedly.
“And Clover, starting today, you are not to take a single step outside this room.”
The Count declared in a voice dripping with fury.
A tiny gasp escaped Clover’s lips.
“I will lock the door, so you won’t even be able to sneak out.”
“……!”
“Do nothing and stay quietly locked inside this room!”
Tossing the parchment down in front of Clover, she strode briskly out of the room.
Just then—
“Countess!”
Her aide came rushing up to the fuming woman.
“Countess, a guest has arrived.”
A guest?
Thoroughly enraged, the Count snapped,
“What guest?”
“U-um, Duke Claudian has……”
At those words, the Count froze mid-stride.
Turning back to the aide, she demanded,
“Who is here……?”
“T-the Duke is here right now! We have shown him to the drawing room for the time being.”
Count Demper turned to stone.
Duke Claudian?
Why him, when he hadn’t shown so much as a shadow for the past four years?
Why of all times did it have to be right now?
He was Clover’s father.
The man who had sent immense fortunes over the past four years to have Clover raised.
Yet his daughter, Clover, was at this very moment…
Right now…….
She was locked in the second worst room in the entire estate, sniffling her eyes out.
Not right now!
Right now, even those damn ‘indictments’ in Clover’s room had not yet been disposed of.
Leaving the sniffling brat aside, she had to destroy all of those first.
Unable to hide her rising panic, Count Demper spoke swiftly,
“I will go to the drawing room. You, summon two maids and two footmen right now and……”
Go to Clover’s room.
And swiftly find that diary or whatever it was and destroy every last trace of it.
Just as Count Demper was about to issue that command—
“There is no need to go to the drawing room.”
A voice rang out, as cold as a cutting blade and as fierce as the northern wind.
