Contrary to Ariadne’s contempt, Alfonso went through a lot of consideration and discussion with his secretary, Bernardino, in writing this letter.

“Can I invite Ari?”

“Absolutely not, Your Highness.”

It was Bernardino’s firm answer to whether he could send an invitation to Ariadne de Mare to go to the southern palace together under the name of the Prince’s Palace.

“What are you planning to invite the matured daughter with the Prince’s Palace’s name?”

Alfonso had no answer to that question.

“You can invite any gentleman, Your Highness. If you were a princess, you could have invited Ms. de Mare. But now, especially in this situation, you can’t have a female guest.”

Bernardino stopped Alfonso, pointing out the current situation where negotiations related to political marriages are taking place.

Alfonso briefly imagined running around the southern palace together, disguising Ariadne as a nameless gentleman dressed in men’s clothes.

Going for a walk in the morning, playing with water at the fountain at noon, taking a nap in the hammock in the afternoon, then sharing grapes… such a day that was like a dream walking in the clouds.

Alfonso was not particularly imaginative. He was a model student who learned as taught and faithfully carried out what he learned. But when it came to Ariadne, he often had absurd imaginations.

He lived a life where everything was divided and decided. He was a prince when he was born, and it was his destiny to become a successful soldier by diligently learning and mastering imperial studies.

His mother eagerly opened his way, and his father removed all obstacles in front of his son.

When the time comes, he will meet the daughter of a monarch, marry her, have children with her, maintain a respectful but bland marriage life, and wait for his father to pass away to take the throne.

All Alfonso had to win was his subjects, and there was nothing else but his subjects. He had no doubt that he would live such a life.

‘Can’t I be with Ari?’

Clever Ariadne advising, and he leading the nation—.

“Your Highness?”

Alfonso suddenly woke up from his daydream. He thought of asking Bernardino, his secretary, ‘how about my idea’, but he shook his head in just a second.

If Alfonso arbitrarily cancels the marriage arrangement, and he cannot secure other allies through his marriage, it would not be strange if the Gallic kingdom led the military to the border.

It might pass somehow even if the marriage arrangement was canceled. If the engagement has been confirmed and it has been converted into a marriage contract, and then the contract is canceled, then the Gallic’s armored knights and artillery troops will surely appear on the border.

And before the dissolution of the betrothal or the engagement gets underway, if this story comes out of Alfonso’s mouth, Luca will scream first.

“No, proceed as per the afternoon schedule.”

In the end, Alfonso sent the letter with only the sentence, “I definitely want to show you the Taranto Star Palace.” It was a promise he could keep at the time, as well as being sincere.

The mailbox of Count Cesare de Como was overflowing with letters. The letters he sent to Ariadne were repeatedly ignored, but recently he managed to receive his first response, and since then, a response has come back about one in every three.

The success rate of getting a response was not so good, at least when it came to Ariadne.

But in most cases, Cesare didn’t write letters to others, others wrote to Cesare first. For this reason, the letters were piled up in Count Cesare’s mailbox, overflowing the height of the box.

Twothirds of them were from women longing for Cesare.

“To the beloved Count Cesare,

It’s been more than a month since I last saw you, my dear. Then, your passion, standing under my window all night and taking the morning dew, disappeared without a trace, and here I am standing miserably alone……”

“Ah, it’s boring.”

Cesare crumpled up the letter from Lady Benedetto and tossed it onto the floor. Otavio de Contarini, who was next to him, picked up the letter out of curiosity and looked at it. Cesare didn’t particularly stop him.

“Isn’t she the young lady you met last month? Already bored?”

“What meet, just hung out once. Why don’t they get the hint? Isn’t it clear if there’s no letter for a month, it means we should just casually part ways?”

“You’re definitely going to be stabbed in the back by a woman when you die.”

Otavio looked at the pile of letters stacked up on Cesare’s desk. He picked up one of them and read it out loud.

“I waited for you in front of the outskirt’s mill where we promised to meet, but you never showed up. Ah, the cruel man.”

Full of emotion, Otavio exaggeratedly read the dialogue from the letter with a strong tone, then clicked his tongue.

“The mill? You seduced a woman to get her all the way to the mill and then didn’t show up at the last moment?”

“I forgot.”

“I’ve had something a bit more engaging recently,” Cesare added.

“Even so, how could you forget that? My, it will remain a scar for her whole life.”

“She’s not a virgin. She’s a married woman. She should be thankful that I forgot. Thanks to my fickleness, didn’t she preserve a peaceful household! Since I didn’t show up, she must have released her pentup passions with her husband instead. Isn’t it a good thing for everyone?”

That was the shameless Cesare. Otavio, sticking out his tongue, rummaged through Cesare’s desk and discovered a letter tucked into a corner.

Unlike the other casually torn letters, this one had red wax carefully peeled off and then carefully replaced, preserving its original form. It bore the crest of the de Mare family.

“What’s this that you’re treating like a holy relic?”

As Otavio reached out for the letter from the de Mare family, Cesare smacked Otavio’s wrist with his good right hand.

“Get your hand off.”

“Why are you hiding it from me?”

“None of your business.”

At Cesare’s resistance, Otavio laughed uproariously.

“Show me? What is it?”

Otavio wrestled with Cesare to snatch the letter. Cesare swatted Otavio away with his castbound left arm. His face turned red as he gasped for breath in his haste. It was unlike the usually elegant Count Cesare.

He finally managed to pick up Ariadne’s letter before Otavio and stashed it in the drawer, locking the top drawer with a key. He also hid his own response inside the drawer.

“None of your business!”

“Are you planning to open a gambling den? If that’s the case, why aren’t you showing me? Are you planning to gamble without me?”

“No!”

“Could it be, a woman?”

“Quiet!”

Alfonso’s letter ended at ‘I want to see the stars of Taranto with you’. There was no mention of ‘I will invite you to the star palace’. It was a letter that described only the truth, and the promise he could keep.

In the reply that Cesare was to send to Ariadne, it was written, ‘The woman I will marry with a pretty face is you, if you take responsibility for me, I will dedicate even a kingdom to you.’

As of now, they were overly sweet words, and it was difficult to even think of sincerity, let alone the ability to fulfill the promise of marriage or a kingdom.

What a woman’s heart would choose, or whether it would be frozen like ice in the end, could only be known when the situation arose. And the masquerade, where they could meet each other with hidden identities, was approaching.