Exile by Anne Osterlund

have made an effort to investigate. Unless he, like her sister, now desired her death.
    “Robert!” The female voice slammed into his thoughts so forcefully that for a moment, he thought she had risen up from his own imagination to scold him for accusing her father. But the figure speeding down the stable aisle in a green blur was no illusion. Though the fury on her face fit the image well enough.
    “Yes?” Robert glanced behind him. There was no sign of Daria’s husband.
    “You told Lord Lester about the assassination plot and the attack in the forest,” Aurelia accused.
    Robert sighed. So she had found out. Even this he was not to be spared. “He already knew there was more to the plot than what your father had claimed to the public.”
    She froze in her tracks. Gone were the rags from her journey, in their place an elegant forest green gown, the gown of a lady. Clearly, she had not planned on this trip to the stables. “Do you think Daria told him what she knew?”
    “Perhaps.” Daria or Thomas. Robert shrugged.
    Aurelia’s head was shaking, and her hands were trembling.
    It would not be fair to thrust his own guilt on Daria. “I made the choice to tell your stepfather about the attack in the forest,” he admitted.
    “Why?” Aurelia sank down onto a wooden crate, showing little regard for her gown’s trailing hem. The green fabric folded itself into the dirt.
    Robert quelled a sudden urge to draw closer. “He is your stepfather, Aurelia. He wanted to protect you, and he has taken a great risk housing both you and your mother here.”
    She let her head fall back against a stall door, her dark hair drifting past her shoulders. Soft. He longed to touch it. One last time. Her hair, the changeable contours of her face, her arms. The desire to hold her once—just once—without the aura of tragedy stalking them both, gripped his chest so fiercely he had to fight for breath.
    “But it was my story to tell,” she said. “Not yours.”
    “I think ...” Robert knew if he so much as stepped toward her, he might lose the will to let her go—that he would beg her to come with him, condemning her in the process. “I think your stepfather was trying to spare you that trauma.” It took a lot for Robert to admit, but Daria and Thomas claimed that His Lordship would do anything to spare his wife, and by extension his stepdaughter, pain.
    “He’s trying to protect you,” Robert said. “I certainly failed at that.”
    “What?” Her back suddenly arched.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “You are what?”
    “Sorry.” His control began to slip. “I am sorry for what you went through in the forest, Aurelia.” He could not help but tell her, though he knew it was his own selfish need for closure that propelled him to mention the dark memory.
    She stood up. “ You’re sorry?” Her face flared alive, that vivid shift of line and color that he knew would chase him down no matter how far he fled. “You’re sorry for being the only person on the expedition who didn’t want to murder me? For keeping me alive? For bringing a spoiled, thankless princess across the Asyan on foot?! I’m the one who’s sorry. Robert, I’ve been trying to thank you, but every time I see you, you seem so distant I—”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Ahh!” She stormed from the stables.
    He stared after her. Unable to take in what had just happened. All he knew was that she had come in, angry with him for doing something wrong, and left, furious with him for apologizing. And his pulse raced with the contradiction.
    “Yes,” Thomas Solier’s emotionless voice drifted out of the shadows. “I see how much she doesn’t need you.”

Chapter Eight
    THE PRICE OF DESTINY
    HE WAS SORRY! AURELIA RUSHED UP THE HILL toward the Fortress. It was her stepfather who should be sorry, drilling Robert about the danger to her life. She should have questioned Lord Lester further about the messenger from Transcontina. But His Lordship had been well into a bottle