"He..." Karl's voice sounded in the darkness, dry and abrupt, breaking the long silence and startling even himself.
But he asked anyway. Perhaps it was to dispel the awkwardness, perhaps... some deeper unease was driving him. "Your Henry... what's his full name? I mean, that scholar."
The question came somewhat suddenly, yet in the circumstances, it also seemed only natural.
Sharing information about each other's "secret lovers" was like a strange, tacit trust built upon a shared "sense of guilt."
Princess Louise shifted slightly, as if she had not expected him to ask that.
With her back to him, Louise's body stiffened for an almost imperceptible instant. It seemed she had not fallen asleep either. She was silent for a long time, so long that Karl thought she would not answer, or had already fallen asleep, before he finally heard her voice, gentle with reminiscence and tinged with a trace of bitterness too faint to catch.
"His name is Henry... Henry Rochefort. He is... the eldest son of Count Rochefort. He was sent to the Royal Capital a few years ago to further his studies, studying history and philosophy at the Royal Academy."
"Rochefort?" Karl had originally only asked casually, wanting to distract himself, or deepen this sense of kinship as "fellow sufferers at the ends of the earth."
But when the surname "Rochefort" entered his ears, clear and unmistakable, his entire body seemed to be struck by a faint yet powerful current. He tensed almost imperceptibly.
It was not surprise that the other party was a noble scion. The people a princess knew naturally would not be ordinary. It was the surname itself that brought with it some latent, disquieting association.
Count Rochefort's eldest son? Charlotte's father? Wait... eldest son? Henry?
He abruptly turned over, the movement so large