Read Online Rosa and the Veil of Gold by Kim Wilkins - Free Book Online

paused at the door to the room. “So we’re off to Arkhangelsk today then?”
    Em nodded. “Timing’s everything, right? We can’t have your Russian princess getting eaten by the ogre she calls Uncle Vasily.” She stopped what she was doing for a moment and fixed her gaze on him. “Daniel, one last time…are you sure you won’t fly?”
    Daniel felt like a beetle on a pin. His stomach twitched with embarrassment and self-loathing. Two days trapped in a car with Em, who was obviously annoyed with him for making her drive that far. The thought of letting Rosa down was worse. But neither of these things could persuade him to fly.
    “Don’t answer,” Em said. “Your face says it all. I’m sorry, I should leave you alone. I don’t understand, but I won’t judge.”
    “I’m really sorry, Em.”
    “It’s okay.” She returned to her packing. “If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have this fabulous lead to follow in the first place.”
    “So the others are flying up?”
    “Yes, this morning. They’ve got a suitcase for me and a suitcase for you. We’re overnighting in Vologda tonight, so borrow some more of Vasily’s clothes, and see if he has an overcoat. We might have to go out for food.”
    “Okay,” Daniel said. “You’ve thought of everything.”
    “We’ll get going around ten. I’ll take you past Rosa’s office on the way and you can drop in her keys and say goodbye.”
    “Thanks.” Goodbye. He supposed he’d see her again when they returned the bear and all the borrowed clothes, but he had to accept that Rosa would be out of his life again soon. An empty dimness crowded in on him.
    Em paused in her packing. “She’s really nice.”
    “Yes.”
    “You still love her?”
    He felt himself blush. “I don’t know.”
    “Why did you break up?”
    He had to laugh at himself. “I don’t know. She’s never told me.”
    Em returned to zipping up her suitcase. “Sometimes people change,” she said. “Sometimes they don’t feel the same things as each other.”
    Daniel had once been certain that Rosa felt the same for him as he did for her, and her tenderness and kindness towards him since he’d arrived in St Petersburg suggested she still felt the same way. So why had she left him? If she could look him in the eye and tell him she didn’t love him, then he might have a chance of moving on. But she was mysterious and refused to talk about it. That was why it was so painful. That was why it was impossible to give her up.
    Now, intimidated and bossed around by Em, about to take off on a round trip of more than a thousand miles for Rosa, Daniel grew angry. He was doing so much for her; the least she could do for him was answer him directly.
    As he packed his things and got in the car with Em, through traffic and right up to the door of Rosa’s office where he left Em waiting outside, he rehearsed the demand over and over in his head: “No excuses, no deferrals, Rosa. Tell me why you left me.” In his imagination, he sounded forthright and commanding. In reality, with her dew-drop beauty there to unnerve him, the question sounded petulant and shrill.
    “Daniel,” she said, as she pocketed the keys. “I’ve said I won’t discuss it. Now have a safe trip and—”
    “That isn’t fair!” he said. “You know it isn’t fair.”
    Rosa held a finger to her lips. “Everyone can hear you.”
    “I don’t care if they can hear me,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper because he actually cared very much. “You can’t keep fobbing me off like this. If you just said that you didn’t love me—”
    “Come on, let’s go to Vasily’s office,” she said quickly, ushering him ahead of her.
    When the door was safely shut behind them, she turned to him and said, “Daniel, why are you doing this? I thought we agreed to keep it light, not to talk about the past.”
    “No, I never agreed to it. Those were your rules not mine.”
    Her face flushed and he wondered if she was angry or