Chapter 5
Edward Quan ·
“What do you mean, he never had a daughter? You’re only saying that because you’re afraid our young lady will come home and ruin your marquis’s household’s little scheme!”
“To keep the false heiress, your household is even dragging your late heir’s wife into this. How utterly heartless!”
Auntie Du angrily rushed forward.
I raised a hand to stop her.
At that moment, hurried footsteps suddenly came from outside.
A young servant called in from the doorway.
“Miss, the heir has returned to the residence.”
My fingers paused.
My eldest brother, Ji Huaiyue, was back.
He had been stationed outside the capital these past few days and wasn’t expected home until tomorrow.
Now he had hurried back ahead of schedule. He must have heard the rumors spreading outside.
Su Wanning reacted faster than anyone.
She suddenly turned, lifted her skirt, and ran toward the door.
As soon as the hall doors opened, she rushed out beneath the covered walkway.
I followed behind her.
A man in black official robes strode through the moon gate.
His eyes were cold, his shoulders straight.
It was my eldest brother, Ji Huaiyue, heir to the Marquis of Yongning.
Su Wanning took one look at him and burst into tears.
She dropped to her knees before him with a thud.
“Father!”
The cry was utterly mournful.
The servants in the courtyard lowered their heads as one. Even their breathing grew quieter.
Ji Huaiyue stopped.
He looked down at Su Wanning for a long moment. His face showed not the slightest warmth at this supposed reunion between father and daughter.
Wet Nurse Qian crawled over on her knees.
“Please see the truth, Heir!”
“Our young lady is your own flesh and blood! She’s wandered outside all these years, suffered so much, and only wanted to come home.”
Ji Huaiyue didn’t even look at Wet Nurse Qian.
His gaze remained on Su Wanning.
“If you had only come here to seek your family, I would have found you a place to stay, even if the evidence wasn’t conclusive.”
But his voice was ice-cold.
“Instead, the moment you entered, you searched through Peiyao’s marriage contract, stopped the Duke of Jingguo’s betrothal gifts, and pressured her to yield her marriage.”
“Su Wanning.”
“Who told you to say these things?”
Tears dripped from Su Wanning’s cheeks onto the green bricks.
“No one.”
She sobbed and lifted her head.
“I only heard that the Marquis’s daughter was about to marry into the Duke of Jingguo’s household. I thought… I thought that marriage was meant for me.”
Ji Huaiyue furrowed his brow slightly.
“You thought?”
“You didn’t even know which daughter of the marquis was getting married today, and you dared to storm in and take her marriage?”
Su Wanning’s lips turned white.
At last, she seemed frightened. Or perhaps she was reaching for the last straw she could grasp. She pulled her collar down sharply, revealing a dark red cinnabar birthmark behind her shoulder.
“Father, I really am your daughter.”
“They told me the girl the heir’s wife gave birth to had a cinnabar birthmark behind her shoulder.”
She wept so hard she trembled.
“Look at me. Just look.”
Ji Huaiyue’s gaze fell on the red mark.
The courtyard fell into an eerie silence.
After a moment, he suddenly laughed.
There was not a trace of warmth in his smile.
“Who told you a birthmark alone could make you my daughter?”
Su Wanning froze.
Ji Huaiyue turned toward Ji Mingyi.
She stood beneath the covered walkway, her eyes already red.
His voice softened, at last.
“Mingyi, come here.”
Ji Mingyi slowly stepped up beside him.
“Father.”
Ji Huaiyue raised a hand and gently patted her shoulder.
“There are things I was afraid to say plainly in front of everyone before, because I didn’t want you to be hurt.”
“This has turned into such a mess today because of me.”
Tears streamed down Ji Mingyi’s cheeks.
Ji Huaiyue looked at all the servants in the courtyard, then turned to Su Wanning.
“Back when Shen gave birth, she had a boy.”
“To protect a child, I told everyone that the heir’s household had been blessed with boy-girl twins.”
Su Wanning’s head shot up.
Wet Nurse Qian stared, dumbfounded.
Ji Huaiyue enunciated each word.
“Mingyi is the orphaned daughter of an old friend.”
“Her parents died at the border while saving my life. I brought her back to the marquis’s residence, entered her into the family genealogy, and raised her as my adopted daughter.”
He looked down at Su Wanning, his eyes cold to the extreme.
“So that birthmark proves nothing.”
“Because from the very beginning, I never had a biological daughter lost outside the household.”
8
Su Wanning knelt on the green bricks, the red cinnabar mark still exposed on her shoulder.
Wet Nurse Qian was the first to recover. She shrieked,
“Your Lordship, you can’t say that!”
“In those chaotic years of war, it was possible for infants to be switched.”
“You say the child born was a boy, but who knows whether that boy was really yours?”
As soon as she said it, the whole courtyard fell into dead silence.
I watched my brother’s face grow colder by the second.
He had served in battle for many years and was usually quite restrained.
But Wet Nurse Qian’s words were clearly meant to plunge a knife into the hearts of my brother and his late wife.
“Seize her.”
Ji Huaiyue said only those two words.