"It helps," Solae reassured him firmly. "When we get to Panopontus I can look up your father and see if he's remarried in the last five years or had any children," she said more quietly out of respect for the conflicting emotions this information might evoke. Though he might have put distance between himself and the du Quentain patriarch, she knew he must have mixed feelings about the possibility of a half-sibling. It was likely the senior aristocrat had purposefully produced a replacement heir to secure the future of his bloodline. The marquise was not certain how she would feel if she were in Rene's situation, knowing that she had been written out of familial history, that there was a chance of an innocent child being conceived and borne only to usurp her former position, and that she had been utterly abandoned by the people who ought to have believed in her the most.

For the murder of a normal peasant there might have been a few limited motives to consider. On occasion she had heard a case stalled because they could find no motivation for the crime committed. Solae's head was spinning as she realized that the possible motives for  Amellia's death, and the subsequent framing of Rene, were so numerous she could spend the rest of her life eliminating them one by one and still not have her answer. The killer could be a jilted suitor of Amellia's, a jilted suitor of Rene's, someone who simply who was full of fury towards one or both of their families (for either a real or perceived slight), a member of a noble line that benefited from Amellia's death, someone who benefited from the du Quentain lineage being tarnished, someone who sought to humiliate the empress through piercing her security, or even someone who might gain from one or both heirs being removed from the equation. It was unlikely that a junior family would be able to get into the quarters of a handmaiden undetected; however, that [i]anyone[/i] eluded detection ought to have been impossible. If Rene's father had taken a new wife and that selection was predictable, Solae could not write off the minuscule probability that the slaying was calculated for an alliance to be formed that have not otherwise occurred.

"My mother would have probably liked you," she sighed as she trailed a finger over his collarbone thoughtfully. "Before me she had two miscarriages. It's not something she talked about but I found out when I was a teenager- fifteen maybe? They both put off having children for years because they just assumed that, with as wealthy as they were, that there was no real risk in waiting. They arrogantly thought that they and their plans were invincible." Solae shook her head. Many of the details had been kept from her purposefully and she had been too afraid to look deeply into their past. What she did know was that they had made assumptions about the quality of the late marquise's eggs, either because she had been genetically manipulated to look younger, or because they thought bad things simply did not happen to a Falia, and this had been a crushing blow. Originally there was to be an heir and a 'spare' or two, but there had been sufficient complications in having Solae that neither had been willing to endure more failures for a second success.

"At first she only wanted me to marry above my station- she'd accept nothing less than a duke. Since I assume [i]you[/i] were never in the market for a male duke, I'll let you in on a secret: most of the bachelors are insufferable. I threatened her with running away with the janitorial staff at the embassy a few times. After I kept rejecting her choices she finally relented and begrudgingly allowed me to have a wider selection," she chuckled at the memory. Solae had been a largely obedient child because, for the most part, she was given very reasonable rules and expectations. There had been little reason to rebel until the subject of a husband had been broached four days after her eighteenth birthday. Marquis Falia had not intervened in the dispute between his wife and daughter. She had never been certain it was because he was unwilling to offend either party, because he was apathetic, or because he understood there was little he could say or do to meaningfully impact the outcome.

"She had started to get paranoid that my threat was going to be a reality," she mused with a smirk, "that she would have to explain how a man who emptied wastebaskets and scrubbed the bathrooms clean was suddenly a Falia. Or that I would just never pick anyone and everything would go to my cousins. In her mind she had to protect me from her mistakes, including waiting too long, and that meant I was on clock ticking down incessantly. I can't lie and tell you that you'd be her first choice, but murder allegations or not, she would have been ecstatic." From where she had nestled in his arms she led out a deep breath of contentment as she felt the siren song of slumber impressing itself upon her mind. Tempting as it was she did not want to succumb just yet. She had learned more about Rene in the past half hour than she had in the entire week prior cumulatively.

"I like hearing about your family, your past, all of it," the linguist confided. "Even if it doesn't help me solve the mystery of what happened to Amellia, or why, I want to know all about [i]you[/i]. Except perhaps any women you dated besides Amellia," she added quickly. "I'm not above petty jealousy, so those are a secret you can keep for yourself."