They had always been comfortable around each other, but lately Andrea’s behavior had grown noticeably freer.

Ruffling her hair as he passed, draping an arm over her shoulder, flicking her cheek with a finger for no reason.

Pestering her, in a word.

There was supposed to be a proper distance between master and servant.

And even more so when one of them was hiding a secret as staggering as hers.

Riley nodded to herself with a firm expression and made her decision.

From now on, she would keep things cool and distant.

“Right. Better get to my deadline.”

She let out a sigh and settled into her chair at the desk.

She had originally been submitting work once every two weeks, but after receiving a request to deliver manuscripts weekly, she had been going out every weekend to post them.

The publication seemed equally eager to keep its whereabouts unknown, routing everything through multiple layers of intermediaries, which made the whole process feel closer to a covert operation than a creative one.

The magazine would send the next installment’s synopsis and her fee via postal coach, and the postman would leave it with an antique shop at the Mayfitt Street intersection.

Riley would collect her payment there and leave the next installment’s manuscript with the shop owner in return.

Sharpening her drawing pencil, Riley muttered to herself.

“But where did that come from. A lover, of all things.”

Andrea’s interrogation had come back to her.

She blew a small, incredulous breath through her lips and grumbled.

“A lover. Honestly. He’s been so nosy lately.”

It was a word that suited him less than almost anyone, and yet lately, with her, that was exactly how he had been.

Picking at her clothes, picking at her haircut, picking at how dressed up she looked.

“And meanwhile His Highness is the one with multiple lovers, apparently.”

Every weekend at the main intersection, the newsstands were stacked with tabloids and gossip rags.

Every single cover featured the crown prince, and the headlines were always some variation of a secret tryst with a certain lady, a certain actress, a certain noblewoman, some banquet or another.

Riley snickered, then started sketching a figure composition on the paper and promptly ran into a problem.

Today was the first time she had to draw Captain Alain in an intimate scene.

Hmm.

“So the trousers finally come off, Captain Alain. I’ll draw you the finest backside you’ve ever seen.”

She had hesitated at first, feeling like drawing an intimate scene meant crossing a point of no return.

But that lasted only a moment. A swell of bold ambition rose in her chest.

‘Because I have the kingdom’s finest model at my disposal.’

Whether his backside was truly the finest in the kingdom she couldn’t say, having no other specimens for comparison, but he was undeniably the kingdom’s most popular man.

The magazine had sent word that the serial had exploded in popularity and they were accelerating the release schedule.

Along with that came a request for an expl*cit intimate scene between Captain Alain and the lady he was currently scandalizing.

She had agreed without hesitation, naturally, since the fee had been climbing at an extraordinary rate.

She had roughly expected things to go in this direction, but looking at the pace of recent developments, wasn’t this a bit much?

A tryst in the garden three hours after meeting at a ball? With a lady on the eve of her engagement, no less?

But if it was going to earn her gold coins, the rushed pacing was none of her concern.

Hmm……

Riley twisted a strand of her hair around her finger and chewed lightly on the end of her pencil, working through the composition in her head.

Then at last she began sketching the image that had taken shape in her mind.

First, Captain Alain’s rippling back muscles and the clean line of his spine had to be rendered well. The firm backside and thighs were equally important. Apparently those were the parts noble ladies looked at most.

And if the lady’s full chest and slender legs were just barely visible, that would draw in male readers too, wouldn’t it?

“Heheh.”

Riley poured herself into the drawing, too absorbed to notice her own face going red.

She was seized by an ambition to steal the hearts of every lady in the capital, Tennetcy, and threw herself into it with everything she had. Bringing them joy felt, in that moment, like her singular and sacred calling.

But somewhere in the drawing, Riley’s own mood began to shift into something…… strange.

‘What would it actually feel like, doing something like this with a man?’

She had drawn it herself, but looking at the lady’s expression pinned beneath Captain Alain, she found herself genuinely curious.

Cheeks flushed, head tipped back, a look that hovered on the edge of a sob.

The lips parted just slightly. Even to a woman’s eye, it was undeniably sensual.

‘Does it feel that good? Enough to make that face?’

In truth, Riley had been working partly from an illustrated collection she had found at the antique shop, layering her own imagination on top of it.

And having spent all this time living as a man, she had picked up a thing or two from the conversations around her.

‘Melting to the bone, making you shiver all over.’ That good, and you can’t stop thinking about it?

‘Is that why His Highness is addicted to it too?’

He never missed a late-night social gathering and always came home reeking of strong drink…… and sometimes carrying the scent of a woman’s perfume that Riley certainly had not applied that morning……

He might well be spending every night the way Captain Alain did, indulging freely with noble ladies.

Riley clicked her tongue to herself, finished the drawing, held the paper at arm’s length, and looked it over.

‘Hmm…… that’s actually good.’

She stroked her chin and grinned.

Even by her own assessment, it was sensually well done. How could she draw something this convincingly without having experienced it herself?

Nobody would know that Captain Alain’s real model was the crown prince, but the ladies who had spent nights with His Highness might just figure it out.

She had drawn those beautifully defined muscles and that lovely backside exactly as they were, after all. Hehe.

Riley had lived with her mother at the deposed Queen Dowager’s estate from around the age of eight, and after the Queen Dowager passed away, she had come to live here at Eli Palace. The outside world had always been something of a mystery to her.

She had only recently started going out on weekends, and even then she went straight to her errand and came back, so she had no real sense of how the world turned or what the public thought of the royal family.

Anyway, Riley was grinning at her own work when a pang of guilt crept in.

‘Is it really all right to earn gold coins by selling His Highness’s n*ked body like this?’

But a rationalizing thought followed almost immediately.

‘Why not. Nobody knows.’

She did have one goal, in truth.

If she saved enough money, she wanted to leave her position as an attendant and enroll in a higher arts institute, to study painting properly, even if it was late.

She seemed to have been born with talent, but without formal training, that talent had never been properly cultivated.

It was not that working as an illustrator for a popular fiction magazine was shameful, but she could not do only this forever, could she?

Just as she could not go on living as a male attendant in the royal palace forever.

In any case, the effusive praise the magazine had been passing along lately had swept away whatever guilt Riley still had.

「Sales tripled the moment Captain Alain appeared undressed, and word of mouth is spreading rapidly throughout Tennetcy! We believe your contribution has been immense, and our editorial team is accordingly raising your rate. We sincerely hope you will continue to captivate our female readership with your extraordinary natural talent.」

That note had come tucked inside an envelope containing a considerable number of gold coins.

“Hehe.”

The bright, clear clinking of the coins against each other on the way to the bank had been so deeply satisfying.

Still grinning, Riley picked up her pencil and began a new drawing.

She had received a request to increase the illustrations to two per installment starting from this one.

Flipping through the illustrated collection, she selected one of several positions and began working out the composition.

This time, the count’s daughter was astride Captain Alain’s waist.

‘Hmm…… quite bold of the count’s daughter. And with her engagement just around the corner.’

Riley’s face went red even as she emphasized the lady’s supple waist and full backside.

Captain Alain’s expression beneath her, meanwhile, she began refining into something lost in ecstasy.

The bone structure of his face she could take from Andrea asleep and drunk, and for the expression itself she could reference the illustrated collection.