She had not deliberately deceived anyone about her s*x. Growing up like a boy from childhood, it had simply become fixed, and once she was on her own, she found that living that way helped her look after herself.

‘Please forgive me, Your Highness…… I wasn’t trying to take advantage of anything.’

On the day her secret came out, Riley had knelt on the floor and pleaded again, her large eyes brimming with tears.

With the n*de portrait incident, he had made a loud fuss and frightened her, but this time Andrea was the one who was shaken.

He had been too flustered and unsettled to say anything. And watching her tremble and cower at his silence, he had felt a sudden pity.

Unable to bear watching Riley cry any longer, Andrea had pulled her to her feet and told her simply not to cry.

Now that he knew she was a woman, even scolding her felt too tender.

After that, Riley had gone around with her shoulders drooping for a while, then submitted her resignation and finally ended four years of employment and left the palace.

Her absence was filled, but no one could be quite the same as her.

When Riley was there, no matter what mood he came back in, a few rounds of bickering with her would lift it almost immediately.

But now Eli Palace was so quiet you could hear a needle drop on the carpet, and even with someone far more skilled attending to him, Andrea felt vaguely uncomfortable.

His subtle discomfort made the other attendants feel Riley’s absence all the more keenly.

Today too, Andrea was lying stretched out on the long sofa, lost in thought.

Every so often he would let out a hollow, helpless laugh, press a knuckle to his brow, and then exhale a long sigh, over and over.

The more I think about it, the more absurd it is.

He had agonized so deeply over the belief that he was attracted to men.

By the end he had reached a point of resignation and accepted his own inclinations as they were, and then suddenly she turned out to be a woman.

It was deeply disorienting, but as his reason gradually returned, he confirmed once again the perfectly natural truth that the person he was drawn to was not a man but a woman.

The feeling of confirming it was like encountering a miracle. Pure joy rose slowly in his chest, welling up like spring water.

So Andrea had taken to asking Alfonso.

More accurately, he asked constantly.

“What is Riley doing these days?”

Alfonso was tired of being asked every three hours, but reported dutifully, suppressing his exasperation.

“She seems to be absorbed in decorating her home lately. She occasionally goes out to the main street or Rue Saint-Honoré to buy things.”

“Hmm……”

Andrea said nothing more, but his face immediately showed curiosity.

Sure enough, he sprang to his feet and began pacing around the office.

He’s itching to go see her right now, Alfonso thought.

The truth was that Andrea had impulsively ordered Riley to leave the palace without any plan in place. Then, learning she was looking for a cheap boarding house in the city with her savings, he had come to his senses belatedly and involved himself deeply in the process of her finding a home.

When she tried to sign a lease on a single shabby room, he appeared out of nowhere and torpedoed it, then bought her a small house in a quiet residential neighborhood.

He was the very person who had told her to get out immediately, and yet he followed her everywhere, and Riley grumbled about it.

‘Good grief, where would I get that kind of money?’

‘The money…… don’t worry about it. What about this one?’

‘There’s no reason for me to live alone in a house this big……’

‘Here, what about this one.’

‘……Please, Your Highness. I’ll handle my own housing.’

Riley had shaken her head firmly at first.

But Andrea was just as immovable.

‘No, absolutely not here. Every house you pick is in a neighborhood with poor safety.’

‘……’

Riley had been exasperated too.

‘What can I do when I have no money? I’m perfectly satisfied with this. I’ll work hard and save up.’

‘Work? That I can allow even less.’

Riley’s mouth fell open at Andrea’s flat refusal.

She looked as though she had not expected their connection to continue this stubbornly.

Andrea had gone on trying to exercise some kind of authority over Riley, and in the end she could not resist his unyielding interference.

There was good reason for that. She had not left on honorable terms. She had been dismissed for deceiving the royal family and the palace.

The fact that she had not been punished at all was already a great mercy.

In the end, Riley settled for a modest two-story brick house in a quiet residential area.

The problem was……

“What are you still doing up?”

“……”

Andrea showed up like this, at all hours.

Day or night, coming and going as though it were his own home.

Riley had been sewing lace onto curtains she had bought herself at the fabric market that day, and she suppressed her bewilderment and acknowledged him.

“……You’re here.”

Ignoring her less-than-welcoming tone, Andrea slowly pulled off his gloves and looked around the room.

Riley’s second-floor room was decorated all over in her own charming, whimsical style.

He found it funny, thinking about how she had restrained herself all this time and lived simply and plainly, pretending to be an ordinary young man.

He laughed quietly, then looked back at Riley and stopped.

Sitting on the wooden floor sewing something, she looked like a decorative doll.

Riley noticed Andrea staring at her and paused, hands stilling.

More precisely, he was looking her over slowly from head to toe.

She realized she was not in her uniform but in a lady’s dress, and felt a flicker of self-consciousness.

She tried to carry on as though nothing was happening, but heat crept up to her earlobes.

She had changed her clothing the moment she left the palace.

With her identity already discovered, she had decided she could not go on living the same way forever.

And yet every time he saw her, he still did that.

……Shouldn’t he be used to it by now?

He had known her as a young man for years, and now she was suddenly wandering around in front of him like this. It was understandable that it might unsettle him.

But he’s the one who keeps coming here.

Riley was grumbling to herself and did not notice.

That Andrea was rubbing his mouth for no particular reason and looking away, and that his earlobes had gone slightly red.

But the awkward tension had been making her miserable, and she snapped first.

“I find it awkward and uncomfortable too, so please stop staring. I know you’re thinking I look ridiculous.”

The language of the kingdom used different intonation and speech endings for men and women, so Riley had changed her manner of speaking entirely. To anyone’s eyes, she was now simply an ordinary young woman. But Andrea kept looking at her with that baffled expression, and Riley’s mood soured quickly.

Apparently feeling no particular need to respond to her complaint, Andrea set his gloves on the table and settled into the sofa with easy composure.

Riley glanced back at him over her shoulder and pushed her lips out.

He just keeps rubbing his chin without saying anything. No idea what he’s thinking.

She would almost prefer it if he scolded her or snapped at her the way he used to, but he said nothing at all.

The maid Nancy came up from downstairs just then, set down the tea and cups with trembling hands, and left. Nancy was another person Andrea had insisted on hiring when he bought the house, over Riley’s objections.

She could not understand why she was being treated this way when she was no noble lady, but living alone for the first time after suddenly leaving the palace seemed harder than having company, so she had accepted it without too much resistance.

She intended to pay it all back once she found work and saved more money.

After the maid left, Riley stood and began pouring the tea with an instinctively deferential posture, then flinched.

By her own standards, something about Andrea’s outfit was not sitting right.

He usually came back at the end of the day looking loosened and casual, but today there was a peculiar dissonance about his whole appearance.

The fabric of the shirt and tie did not complement each other, the blazer and pocket square clashed in color, and the cufflinks were so ornate they belonged at a ceremonial banquet.

The careful balance she had maintained, walking the line between elegance and refinement, had been subtly broken.

Mildly irritated, Riley reached out without thinking and began straightening Andrea’s appearance.

“Goodness, it’s not as though no one’s been attending to you since I left, and yet you’ve somehow gotten strangely unfashionable.”

Andrea flinched for a moment but soon let her hands work in silence.

A short while later he laughed quietly and looked up at her.

“Right. I don’t let them.”

Jayden had taken over Riley’s duties and was serving as his personal attendant, but he simply did not have her eye for it.