Place du Tertre, the artists' square in the Montmartre district of Paris, enters the story as the stage for a quiet but decisive transformation. It is here, in early March 2020, that the long-simmering private correspondence between Alex Claremont-Diaz and Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor finally becomes something physical. The square itself is almost incidental to the encounter — a meeting point near a herd of crêpe-eating tourists — yet it functions as the threshold across which the two young men step from flirtatious emails into an intimacy that will redefine their entire relationship. The location's bohemian character, its reputation as a gathering place for artists and lovers, lends an almost painterly quality to the scene, as if the square itself sanctions the romance that begins there.

The Meeting at the Square

The encounter at Place du Tertre is the culmination of a week of increasingly bold electronic flirtation. In the days before, Alex had written to Henry with characteristic audacity, addressing him as "His Royal Horniness" and confessing that he had been thinking about Henry's mouth on him all week, hoping to see him in Paris so he could "put it to use." He had also, with characteristic wit, claimed ignorance of French cheeses, framing the trip as both a romantic and a culinary expedition. Henry, for his part, had replied with mock exasperation — "Hate you. Will try to get out of Germany." — signaling both his willingness and the logistical obstacle of his official duties. When Henry does manage to escape his commitments in Germany, he arrives at Place du Tertre wearing a sharp blue blazer and a wicked smile, a visual contrast to the square's casual, tourist-filled atmosphere. The two meet near the crowd of crêpe-eating visitors, and the very ordinariness of the setting — the bustle, the food, the public space — stands in sharp opposition to the extraordinary privacy of what is about to happen between them.

The First Night Together

From the square, the two stumble back to Henry's hotel after consuming two bottles of wine, the alcohol loosening whatever remaining inhibitions either of them might have held. Inside the hotel room, the scene shifts from the public square to the white marble of the interior, where Henry sinks to his knees and looks up at Alex with big, blue, bottomless eyes. The moment is so overwhelming that Alex finds he does not know a word in any language to describe it — a striking admission from a character who is otherwise defined by his verbal fluency and quick wit. The encounter breaks the unspoken rules that had governed their relationship until then. Alex, drunk and overwhelmed by the softness of Henry's mouth and the sheer Frenchness of the entire situation, forgets to send Henry back to his own hotel. He forgets that they do not spend the night together. And so, for the first time, they do.

The Morning After

The morning after reveals a new dimension of their connection, one that exists entirely outside the charged atmosphere of their flirtation. Alex discovers that Henry sleeps curled up on his side, his spine poking out in little sharp points which are actually soft to the touch. The detail is intimate in a way that the previous night's passion was not — it speaks to a vulnerability and a domesticity that neither of them had shown the other before. Alex reaches out to touch those points very carefully, so as not to wake Henry, who is actually sleeping for once. The phrase "for once" carries its own weight, suggesting that Henry's rest is usually troubled, that the prince does not often sleep peacefully. In the morning, room service brings up crusty baguettes and sticky tarts filled with fat apricots, along with a copy of Le Monde that Alex makes Henry translate out loud. The scene is almost absurdly idyllic — the French breakfast, the newspaper, the shared domestic ritual — and it stands in stark contrast to the secrecy and urgency that have defined their relationship up to this point.

Significance and Aftermath

The night at Place du Tertre and the hotel room beyond it marks a fundamental shift in the Alex-Henry dynamic. Before Paris, their relationship existed primarily in the realm of emails and stolen moments, a game of flirtation conducted at a safe distance. The Paris encounter makes their connection undeniably physical and emotional, crossing a line that cannot be uncrossed. The setting itself — the artists' square, the wine, the French hotel — becomes part of the mythology of their relationship, a touchstone of the early, heady days of their romance. The fact that Alex forgets the rules, forgets that they do not spend the night, is itself significant: it signals that this relationship is no longer something that can be contained within the careful boundaries they had both maintained. The morning scene, with its baguettes and apricot tarts and translated newspaper, hints at a future they have not yet dared to imagine — a life of ordinary domesticity shared between a prince and a first son, a life that the rest of the novel will show them fighting to achieve.