Exile by Anne Osterlund Page B

patience. I courted her for ten years under this very roof before she agreed to marry me. And believe me when I say I’ve been locked out of that room for far longer than you are ever likely to be.” The bottle thudded down.
    Aurelia blinked. This man, whom she had assessed as rude and brash, had waited ten years for her mother to marry him? And according to the locals, he had felled half an acre of forest for the gardens so that she might have fresh blossoms in her room. And he had raised an entire army to protect her. Perhaps he did not, entirely, deserve Aurelia’s disdain. “I think I upset her when I mentioned horses.”
    “Ah.” Lord Lester tilted the wine in her direction.
    The scent twisted her insides and darkened her thoughts. She tried not to inhale, pushing the bottle away.
    He corralled it in the crook of his arm, then stated, “Your mother has never recovered from your brother’s death. Horses remind her of the accident.”
    Was her entire family always to remain captive to that moment fourteen years ago, when Aurelia’s brother had been trampled by her father’s mount? Nothing could undo that slicing imprint. And she well knew, based on her experience with the king, that she could never measure up to her brother’s place in her parents’ eyes. “I see.” Aurelia rose to go.
    “She isn’t punishing you.”
    Of course she is.
    “She’s only afraid.”
    Of what? The former queen had not once tried to initiate conversation—had taken no risks at all. “She’s made no attempt to get to know me.”
    “She has let no one else into that room without my presence in fourteen years.”
    Could that be true? Had her mother taken a risk simply by allowing her daughter over the threshold? And what folly to learn that now!
    Aurelia took a half dozen steps away, then paused. It was not this man’s fault her mother was scarred. “Thank you,” she whispered.
    “You’re welcome.”
     
    The next day the door was unlocked. Aurelia hovered on the threshold.
    Her mother was sitting in her chair beside a large basket of delphiniums, gazing out the window.
    “I’m sorry I’m late,” whispered Aurelia, as if she had not been barred from this azure refuge for the past seven days. “I was assisting a family that is moving into their new home in the village.” The words tumbled over one another. “They have ten children, and I was helping the little ones find their way.”
    Her mother turned so that the midmorning sunlight shone on half of her face. “The Rienthur family.”
    Aurelia was astonished to hear the name from the former queen’s lips. She had come to think her mother’s interests were restricted to the minutiae of her surroundings: the paintings on the wall, the fabric, the flowers.
    Lady Margaret’s slender fingers reached down to the overflowing basket and removed one of the long stalks of cobalt blossoms. On a small table at her side lay a pair of shears and a ball of twine. For drying flowers.
    Again her mother spoke. “A great many families have come to the estate this year. That is why the new school is so important.”
    “You know of the school?” Aurelia edged into the room.
    “I sponsored it.” Her mother clipped the stem.
    Aurelia caught herself at the curved end of the bedpost, startled. The idea made sense. The former queen had been well known for her passion for education, but that had been ... before.
    Lady Margaret tied the twine around the severed stem and retrieved another strand of blossoms. Then the shears wavered in the air, and her voice faltered. “Did ... did you like the room?”
    “What?” asked Aurelia, unable to follow the sudden shift in the conversation.
    “The room that the Rienthurs vacated.”
    Until today, the family Aurelia had helped move had been living in a large corner room on the second floor of the Fortress. An open, airy space with buttercup walls and yellow coverlets, the aura far superior to her own dark, vine-covered quarters. “Y-yes.”