Instead, she asked, “Why didn’t you let me stay at the chalet to visit with my mother? You don’t need me to deal with the aftereffects of that attack.”
“I won’t—can’t leave you alone when your life is still at risk. But you didn’t really want to stay there.”
She blushed, grateful that he probably wouldn’t see it with the blanket half-covering her face. If he was looking. She didn’t peek up at him to see.
How had he guessed? She hadn’t even fully realized how uncomfortable she’d felt at that meeting with her mother until now. However, she did know that she would have wanted to visit longer if she’d felt better about it. Now she felt totally confused.
Not once had the relaxed, happy woman who had laughed over being given gifts by the king reappeared after Christoph had informed her that her daughter was alive. Helga had been fearful the entire time. Because she thought she might lose her place at the chalet now? Alana couldn’t reassure her that wouldn’t happen, but why would Helga even worry about it? She’d still saved a princess and lost her own daughter for eighteen years because of it.
Alana tried to explain to Christoph what she was feeling. “It’s not that I didn’t want to stay, it was—I thought some natural feelings would well up in me when I saw her, like love. And when I first saw her, I actually felt some kind of bond for a few moments. But her reactions . . . I don’t know, I just don’t feel any closeness to her at all. We are strangers. I should have realized it could be like that. I suppose it’s even normal after so many years. She might have given birth to me and has mourned my loss all these years, but she is just a stranger, after all. That is normal, isn’t it?”
“My answer would be an opinion, which is irrelevant. I’ve never seen or heard of a situation such as yours to know how your experience compares. But perhaps the feelings you wanted to have are still missing simply because you always thought your mother was dead. From everything you said, it didn’t sound as if you would have had those feelings for Frederick either, though you thought he was your father for a longer time.”
“That was different. That was mixed feelings. I wanted to like him, but disparagement kept getting in the way. I think I even told you why, didn’t I? It was because Poppie, even loving him and swearing he was a good king, was contemptuous of him for not resolving the matter of who wanted me assassinated years ago. But that doesn’t matter anymore. I’m never going to meet him, so I don’t need to worry that I might insult him with my disdain. Most of my nervousness had stemmed from that, that I wouldn’t be able to conceal those feelings from him.”
“You understand now why there was no resolution?” Christoph said. “It was a branch of his own family that was suspected, and it’s a large family.”
She snorted. “Niceties don’t apply when lives are at stake, especially when the two branches of that family have been feuding for generations.”
“When we could never say who was pulling the strings? When without proof, banishing that whole family at that time could have brought the country to arms again? The Bruslans were long in power. They have many people still loyal to them, many that would have objected if an entire family was punished for the wrongs of just one of them. Do you really think we are that barbaric?” He added, “Don’t answer that.”
She sighed. He was correct in the point he was making. She knew he was. But he wasn’t the one they’d tried to kill. . . . She blinked. Neither was she. She’d just been an innocent bystander, as it were.
“That’s neither here nor there and none of my concern anymore, thankfully.”
“It’s still your concern as long as the king’s enemies mistake who you are and try to kill you.”
She frowned. “Which is why I’m leaving Lubinia as soon as possible. As for my mother, good Lord, I actually felt more comfortable with your mother than with mine. But she is my mother. I do want to see her once more before I return to England, and without you standing there making her so nervous. I want to try to talk her into living with me, too, though you seemed to think she won’t want to. If she doesn’t, I can at least write to her after I’m gone. I’ll even come back and visit her next year—if you’ve arrested the perpetrators of this nasty plot, and I expect you to do exactly that now that you have a good reason to point fingers at the Bruslans after that attack this morning.”
“Do you?”
She heard the humor in his tone. She’d just complimented him, in a roundabout way. Not deliberately!
“Well, you do have culprits now, the older generations of the Bruslan family. Start your interrogations with them. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how to do your job. You have to anticipate that everything else might well unravel from what happened today, and I might add, you’ll have Poppie to thank for it if it does.”
She glanced over to see how he took that remark, only to find his head shaking in disagreement. “His actions provoked an attack on the palace, which is treasonous.”
She groaned. “Have it your way. But he is a wild card. The Bruslans are going to realize that Frederick had nothing to do with the attack on Karsten, that they actually have someone else to fear now. They might even figure out that it’s the very assassin they hired. He’s on your side, you know, not theirs, and he’ll use any means to get at the truth. Your hands were tied because the Bruslans have managed to keep secret all these years which of them were responsible for the assassination attempt on the princess. Poppie’s hands aren’t tied.”
“If you’re done singing your guardian’s praises, let’s get back to Helga.”
“I’d rather not. I’m very disappointed with how that meeting went. I’m going to need a little time to get over it.”
“Because you don’t think she’s your mother.”
She gasped. “Of course I do. That’s why it—” She didn’t want to finish.
“What?”
She clamped her mouth shut. But she knew he was waiting, albeit patiently. She finally spat out, “It hurt. It actually felt like she rejected me.”
He drew her closer to him. To comfort her? She did suddenly feel like crying, but that was unacceptable.
So it was more to reassure herself that she said, “It will be better next time.”
“If I allow another visit.”
“Allow!? Do I need to remind you that I stopped being your prisoner when you told me who I really am?”
