Riley’s thoughts veered off in a strange direction.

‘Good heavens…… if something like that were to go inside someone……’

She shuddered and swallowed hard, and a flick landed on her head.

“What are you doing. I’m busy.”

Snapping back to her senses, Riley hurried to help him into his undergarments.

She made sure not to forget to brush the back of her hand lightly against Lord Andy in the process. Lord Andy responded with an appreciative nod in her direction.

Avoiding Andrea’s faintly irritated gaze, Riley proceeded to dress him for the day with complete composure.

A milky white shirt with a faint pearlescent sheen, a deep navy blazer, trousers pressed to a sharp crease, buffalo leather shoes with a polished toe cap only.

She added a velvet tie with a diagonal pattern, fastened a few cufflinks, and stepped back with a quiet sigh of admiration.

Without meaning to, Riley clasped both hands together and gazed up at Andrea, who was wearing a slightly sullen expression.

‘Our Highness, my Highness that I dressed. He really is so handsome.’

For someone who loved putting things together as much as Riley did, the role of wardrobe attendant gave her life genuine meaning.

The finest materials and accessories, combined with the kingdom’s finest bone structure, all within her hands. How could she not be thrilled?

“One moment, Your Highness.”

Rising onto her toes, Riley reached up for a final touch and arranged a few strands of hair at Andrea’s forehead to fall just so.

Andrea tilted his head slightly forward out of habit, and she chattered away with quiet satisfaction.

“It has to be arranged precisely, looking styled but not styled, to get that ‘effortlessly refined’ quality. The ladies all notice these things, even when they’re pretending not to.”

Riley was happily applying pomade to the fine hairs at his temples when she felt a gaze pressing down on her.

The crown prince looked down at her with lazy amusement in those grey eyes.

She found herself staring back, caught off guard by those irises with their glints of ice, and he raised one eyebrow.

‘What are you looking at.’

Riley realized then how close she was standing and stepped back.

Two or three paces away, she began studying the finished result the way an artist surveys a completed work.

But Andrea gave a short smile, took a long stride forward, and thoroughly ruffled her hair as he passed.

He was out the door before she could even offer a proper farewell, and she stood there blankly for a few seconds.

Then she smoothed her hair down with her hand and grumbled.

“He goes out looking immaculate and ruins my hair every single day.”

Sulking, Riley went straight to the full-length mirror and tidied herself up.

No matter how she looked at it, she looked like a bright-eyed young boy.

‘Hah…… I’m twenty now……’

A sudden heaviness settled over her at the feeling of being stuck in some in-between state, neither man nor woman.

But she had a reason to shake it off quickly.

“Oh…… the deadline……”

She needed to get through the cleaning and finish the long-awaited intimate scene.

Andrea was not the type to run a finger along the windowsill checking for dust, so Riley cleaned in broad strokes. Then she hurried back to her room, pulled out the manuscript she had shoved away that morning, and spread it on the desk.

Filled with the conviction that today was the day she would produce her masterpiece, Riley set her pencil to work with great enthusiasm.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Two days later, Riley received a message to come down to the drawing room immediately.

“Me?”

“Yes, you, Raul. He said right away.”

At the chief chamberlain Jayden’s word, Riley scratched her head.

She had noticed a guest arriving at Eli Palace a short while ago, but she was not the one assigned to receiving visitors, so it had nothing to do with her.

She only helped with that when a large banquet was being held and extra hands were needed.

‘Still, if I’m being called down, I suppose I should go.’

Riley set down what she was doing and headed to the second floor.

She knocked at the drawing room door and heard Andrea’s voice tell her to come in at once, so she opened the door and stepped inside.

He was seated on the sofa and beckoned her over with a flick of his hand, a small smile on his face.

Something about his pleased expression made Riley smile back without thinking, and she approached at a measured, unhurried pace.

His platinum hair caught the light from the window and seemed to shimmer.

The guest seated across from Andrea, on the other hand, was backlit and difficult to make out.

‘I’m not very good at receiving distinguished guests.’

Riley walked over with no idea what this was about, and was preparing to offer a polite bow at a proper distance from the guest when she froze.

The guest froze too.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Several hours later.

Riley was back in her room.

Something had clearly shaken her. Her eyes were a little dazed and her heart was still pounding.

She had tried to go on with her work cleaning Andrea’s bedchamber, but had ended up breaking a vase, and so she had given up and come back to her room.

‘I always knew I’d see him again someday. But why here……?’

Riley thought of Parnelli, whose gaze had not left her the entire time.

He had clearly been startled to recognize her too.

He was her biological father.

She had learned of his existence around the age of ten, when she had stumbled across a photograph inside a locket among her mother’s belongings.

Her mother had been the only daughter of the Viscount Spencer family, but she had been cast out of the family after giving birth to Riley, an illegitimate child.

When Riley was around six, the late Queen Dowager, herself deposed and living in hardship, had heard of her mother’s desperate circumstances and taken the two of them in.

Riley’s mother, Mina Spencer, had served at the Queen Dowager’s estate as a lady’s maid, and Riley had lived as a boy from some point onward.

Her mother, always frail, had sensed her life would not be long and had Riley learn the work of an attendant. But the kind-hearted queen, who had genuinely been a girlhood friend of her mother’s, arranged for a tutor to teach Riley.

It was the education a child of noble birth ought to have received by right, had she not been born out of wedlock.

The queen felt a kinship with her friend, cast out as an unwed mother, and with her own situation, divorced by the king over his affair. She had taken pity on the two of them.

Queen Marietta, beautiful even to young Riley’s eyes, had been truly generous and warm.

When Riley was ten, her mother Mina passed away from tuberculosis, but she had gone on living under the Queen Dowager’s protection without want.

Still, a curiosity about her biological father had always lived somewhere inside her.

She knew who he was. She had pestered her mother until she gave her his name.

A promising painter of common birth who had made a name for himself through talent alone.

He had fallen in love with Viscount Spencer’s daughter while painting her portrait, and Riley had been born of that love.

But even though the Spencer family had reluctantly consented to the marriage, he had sensed the family was on the verge of ruin and left.

He had trusted in his own artistry and charm, certain he could change his circumstances through the patronage of noble ladies.

And he had been right. He entered the central art world, began making a name for himself, and before long had successfully become the husband of a widowed countess.

From there, his rise had been swift and unimpeded, and he had climbed all the way to director of the Royal Arts Institute.

But Riley could not forget the day she had gathered all her courage and gone to find Parnelli for the first time.

Misfortune had struck when she was sixteen. Queen Marietta passed away.

For the first time, Riley had no idea where to go, how to live, or what to do.

The Spencer viscountcy had gone bankrupt and the title had passed to a distant relative.

Those people would not even know she existed.

The only person she could think of was the handsome father preserved in her mother’s locket.

Her father had become a moderately well-known figure in Tennetcy, so reaching him had not been difficult.

The Parnelli she met for the first time looked exactly like the portrait in the locket, just as captivating.