Page 17 of Echoes of Twilight (Dawn of Alaska #4)

17

T he trip the next day was miserable. Bryony didn’t know whether to blame it on the rain or the fact that her father and Heath spent a good part of the morning at the back of the group arguing about how Heath had secretly agreed to prospect for gold while pretending to help with the research.

Or maybe it was the fact that no one wanted to talk to Richard, not even Heath.

It certainly didn’t help that the sky had decided to open up, pelting them with a constant deluge of rain that made her wonder if she’d ever feel dry again, even wearing the parka Mikhail had given her. She couldn’t imagine how much more miserable she’d be if she was stuck wearing her wool coat.

Mikhail had explained to everyone that at lower altitudes, they were more likely to get rain at this time of year. Apparently the valley where they’d been studying the lichens had been high enough in altitude that clouds from the ocean didn’t have a chance of getting trapped between the mountain peaks and dump moisture. But now that they were coming closer to sea level, and since they were traveling through the valleys rather than climbing partway up the mountains to save time, they would likely have rain for the rest of the trip, including once they reached the Iskut River.

That alone was enough to put everyone in a foul mood, even without them learning Richard and Heath had been lying to them for the entire summer—or that Richard had been lying to everyone he knew for the past decade.

Then there was the fact that they didn’t find a place to cross the unnamed river they’d reached until nearly lunchtime. Richard and Heath had been wrong about finding a safe place to ford. The spot where they’d panned for gold yesterday afternoon turned out to be too deep in the center for them to cross. So they’d followed the river for what seemed like miles, down off the mountain completely and into a valley where the river finally widened and became more shallow.

The silence that had stretched between much of the group all morning continued as they ate lunch on the opposite side of the river. No one seemed to have anything to say, and Mikhail was anxious to get moving after going so far out of their way.

They’d been walking for another hour or so, mud sucking at their boots, when her father came up beside her. “Bryony, dear, walk with me for a bit.”

She moved her gaze to a mossy tree on their left rather than looking at her father. “I have nothing more to say about Richard. I would never marry a man like that, especially not after learning about the wife and child he abandoned. And nothing you say will change my mind.”

“I’m not going to try changing your mind.” Her father readjusted the hood on his head. “If anything, I want to apologize for not listening when you tried telling me how you felt about marrying him.”

She nearly tripped. “Do you mean that?”

“Yes.”

She eyed her father. He walked with his shoulders hunched forward against the rain, wearing Mikhail’s extra parka. His face didn’t give away what he was thinking, but as a renowned scientist, he prided himself on being right, not wrong, and admitting he’d been wrong about Richard would cost him dearly.

“I hope you understand that I just want the best for you.” His breath puffed plumes of white into the rain-drenched air. “I always have. I know you have a love for science, even though you’re a woman. And Richard looked like a good match. You could have continued to accompany us on expeditions and helped catalog the research, and if you marry someone else, I can’t say the same.”

There was a time when staying that involved in her father’s science would have excited her. But now?

Perhaps she’d spent too much time talking to Mikhail, because her father’s words felt hollow, an empty shell of a promise she didn’t even want anymore. “I want to go to college when I get home, and I want to study... Well, I’m not sure what I want to study. Perhaps botany or cartography or art. Something to do with my journals, and then?—”

“Science, Bryony? At a college?” He shook his head. “I know you like the subject, but there’s no place for women in the world of science. Nothing either of us do will change that.”

Her cheeks turned hot despite the cold air. “There’s a place for me here, isn’t there? Just like there was a place for me on the expedition last summer, and the summer before that. There’s so much of a place for me that Richard is publishing my work.”

“Having you accompany us on an expedition to sketch and take notes is a far cry from employing you in a lab. We’ve had this conversation before. While I’m happy to have your help from time to time, I simply can’t find a place for you at the Smithsonian Institution.”

“What about if I go to Boston and work for?—”

“Are you trying to humiliate me?” Red splotches appeared on her father’s cheeks. “Trying to make me a laughingstock among my peers?”

She pressed her eyes shut, willing herself to stay calm. Why did her father assume she was trying to humiliate him whenever she brought up science? “No. I was just?—”

“Good. Then this is the last I want to hear of it.”

Her shoulders sagged.

She had questions about what would come next, about what her father would expect of her after they returned to Washington, DC. They might agree that she wasn’t going to marry Richard, but did that mean Father would start searching for another husband? Perhaps someone he knew in the field of science so she’d have at least a bit of access to the world she loved?

He clearly didn’t want her going to college to study science, but would he support her if she once again asked to attend Wellesley and study education? Would he accept her becoming a spinster so long as she had a means of supporting herself that he didn’t find embarrassing?

She didn’t know, but at the moment, she didn’t have the heart to ask.

* * *

Bryony had disappeared. Mikhail looked around the campground, trying to figure out where she might have gone. The grouse they’d kicked up a couple of hours earlier was cooking over the fire, and everyone had set up their tents for the night.

He’d said he didn’t want Richard or Heath leaving camp again to look for gold, so Richard had volunteered to cook dinner. Mikhail would normally be surprised, but the quietness on the hike had made it clear that Dr. Wetherby and Dr. Ottingford were quite put out with Richard and Heath.

Perhaps Richard making them dinner and proving he knew a thing or two about surviving in the mountains would help foster a bit of goodwill, but Mikhail wasn’t holding his breath.

Nor did he care. He might be getting paid to make sure everyone on the team reached Sitka, but after last night, it seemed like they’d all be better off if Richard decided to head back to Sitka on his own.

None of that explained where Bryony had gotten off to, though. Mikhail looked around the campsite once more. There was a creek just over the hill where they could get water and wash dishes. Had she gone there? She seemed to like sitting by creeks, but she typically waited until after dinner, when the food was put away and the dishes were cleaned, before she started journaling.

Frowning, Mikhail started toward the creek. Sure enough, boot prints too small to belong to a man indented the muddy soil. He followed them over the crest of a gentle hill and toward the soft sound of water until he spotted a flash of familiar red hair.

She was sitting on a fallen log, her back to him, her head tilted slightly downward. He expected to find her writing in her journal, cataloging the trail they’d taken that day, but the thick book was shut, resting on the log beside her while she stared into the swirling water.

She looked his direction as he approached, her eyes a dull, gloomy hazel. “Were you going to tell me?”

He frowned. “Tell you what?”

“About Sadzi and Deniki.” She whirled a hand in the air. “Richard’s first marriage. All of it.”

He sat on the log beside her. Once again, he couldn’t claim to understand everything she was feeling. He only knew it must hurt. His older brother Alexei had been devastated after his fiancée left him, and there hadn’t been a prior marriage or secret child to contend with. “If I needed to. But you had already made up your mind about marrying Richard, and the rest didn’t seem like my story to tell, at least not at first.”

“Is that why you discouraged me from marrying him?”

“Yes. That’s certainly a big part of it.”

She pressed her lips together, staring back at the creek meandering its way around mossy boulders. “If I’d been set on marrying him, would you have told me then?”

He drew in a breath, but the thick, damp air did little to relieve the ache in his chest. “Yes. Marriage is forever, and everyone should enter it being fully informed—especially women. They have far fewer resources at their disposal if something goes wrong.”

“I’ve known Richard my whole life, but I never would have imagined...” Her voice choked. “That is, how could he...” She pressed her eyes shut. “He has two mistresses back in Washington, DC, and a third with a little girl that he cast off when he learned she was pregnant.”

“So I’ve heard.” But again, it hadn’t seemed like it was his place to get involved. “I’m surprised you even know about them.”

“I wouldn’t, except that Richard and Heath are the closest of friends, and I overheard them talking one day in the library. Heath has a woman he visits, but she’s not his mistress, and Richard was offering to share one of his...” She buried her head in her hands, then let out a soft groan. “Oh, what am I saying? I’m sure you don’t want to hear this, and I certainly shouldn’t be talking about it. Heath would be mortified.”

He was tempted to tell her it was all right. After all, that seemed like the polite thing to say. The problem was, nothing was right about the situation. Not the mistresses or a hidden child, and certainly not the woman Richard had married and then left without so much as a good-bye, knowing she was pregnant. So he reached out and draped an arm over her shoulder instead.

He half expected her to shift away. He had no business touching her this way. But she leaned into him, her body softening against his side, almost as though she’d been waiting for this very thing.

He tightened his arm around her, the weight of her body pressing through his fur parka and making him once again wish that it was summer and they were on the beach in Sitka. That he knew how Bryony looked in a fitted dress that showed off a bit of her womanly shape. Her red hair would hang long and free, cascading down her back in shiny, untangled waves, catching the sunlight when she laughed or looked up at him with those bright hazel eyes. She’d turn to him with a carefree smile, the kind he hadn’t yet seen on her face, but that he could picture all too easily. And then they’d...

What?

Just what was he thinking? There was no version of his life where he and Bryony shared a picnic on the beach in Sitka in July.

There wasn’t even a version of his life where he was in Sitka during the summer. The expeditions he guided left in April or May every year. Any later, and he wouldn’t be able to get the team home before winter.

And there certainly wasn’t a version of Bryony’s life where she was in Sitka for the summer. Since she wasn’t marrying Richard, maybe she’d end up accompanying her father on his trip to Yosemite next summer after all, and who knew where she’d be the summer after that, or if she’d go to college and find some type of study program to occupy her.

She shifted and looked up at him, her head still resting against his shoulder. “Tell me more about your family.”

“My family?”

“Yes, you know all about mine, but I know next to nothing about yours. And while part of me could believe that you were carved from the mountains themselves, I know you have two sisters.”

Mikhail chuckled. “I wasn’t carved from the mountains. I come from Russian stock. My family’s been living in Sitka for almost a hundred years.”

“You’re Russian?” Their eyes met over the fur of his parka. “But you have an English surname.”

“My great-grandfather was accused of murder in Maine in the late 1700s and fled to Russian America. Then he met my great-grandmother and decided not to leave Sitka. He came from a family of shipbuilders, so he started a shipbuilding company in Sitka. Then his son—since he had ships at his disposal—started the Sitka Trading Company. And that brings us to where we are now, four generations later, with both a shipbuilding company and a trading company in the family.”

“Your family still has both?” She raised her head to fully meet his gaze, the movement causing her hair to spill against his shoulder. “After all these years?”

“Yes.”

“But somehow you’re an explorer.”

He pulled her closer, until her head rested against his shoulder once more. And no, he wasn’t going to think about why it felt so right to hold her against his chest. All he knew was that it did. “I learned to be an explorer by growing up on my father’s ship. My favorite route was the one he took up the Yukon River to trade with the Athabaskans. I learned the language at a young age, along with Yupik and Aleut and Tlingit, but the Athabaskans were my favorite. My father was trying to open up more trade routes with the interior when he and my stepmother died, and I resumed where he left off. Or at least, I resumed as much as I could at sixteen years of age.”

“Your father and stepmother died?” Her hand rose slowly, then rested against his chest, right over his heart. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you.” He swallowed away the tightness in his throat. “Richard was living with the Athabaskans before my father died. That’s how I knew him. He’s a few years older than me, and he was young when he came to Alaska.”

“Even then, he was angling to become secretary of the interior. I think his family decided he should fill the role when he was about twelve, and they’ve been grooming him to do so ever since.” Bryony toyed absently with the fur edge of his parka. “The first thing his parents did was send him to Alaska so he could learn about the giant icebox everyone in America thinks we wasted our money on.”

“Well, he left quite an impact on the Athabaskans, and not in a good way.”

“And then he came home and wrote a book to make himself famous.” She drew back to look at him, the warmth of her body leaving his side. “Like I said, it was all planned.”

“Except he didn’t write that book. He stole most of it from Sadzi’s grandfather.” He could still recall the devastation on the older man’s face as he recounted how Richard had stolen years’ worth of his records. “He was a tribal elder. The Athabaskans don’t have a written language, just a spoken one, but Sadzi’s grandfather recognized the importance of learning Russian when the first traders came, and he also recognized the importance of the written word. So he learned to read and write Russian, and my father was teaching him to read and write English. He was working on a field guide of plants and animals. It had maps and drawings and was quite comprehensive. I always asked to see it whenever we visited.”

“And Richard stole it.” Bryony’s jaw tightened.

“He left in a canoe with some traders, saying he was going farther up the river do a bit more exploring, but he never returned.”

Bryony leaned her head back against his shoulder, her pretty little lips turned down. “And here I was hoping you’d distract me when I asked about your family.”

He winced. “I guess that wasn’t much of a distraction, was it?”

“No, but you could always tell me more about your sisters.”

“My sisters?”

“Yes.” There was something sincere about how she said the word, something about the way her eyes dipped away from him and darted back to the creek that made his chest tighten.

“You said that one of your sisters is a doctor and one’s a lawyer. Who...” She swallowed. “Who paid for their schooling?”

The tightness in his chest turned into a lead weight. “My oldest brother.”

“Why him?” Her voice was soft now, almost so quiet that he couldn’t hear it over the trickle of the creek.

“When my parents died, that left Alexei, my oldest brother, in charge of both the family and the companies my family owns. The girls—they’re twins—were fifteen at the time, but Kate had dreamed of being a doctor since childhood, and when it came time for her to go to Boston for medical school, Evelina wanted to go with her. We all thought Evelina would become a teacher. That’s what she went there to study, but she didn’t like it and ended up going to law school instead.”

“She didn’t like being a teacher?” Bryony’s brows drew together. “Whyever not? Teaching doesn’t seem so bad.”

He cleared his throat. “Maybe not to most people, but Evelina thought some of the tactics used to control and instruct the children were a bit, er, extreme. She’s all kindness and gentleness. The notion of rapping a child on the knuckles for not sitting still... well, it’s just not something she could ever bring herself to do.”

“So she became a lawyer instead.”

“She did, and I’m really hoping you can meet her once we return to Sitka.”

“I hope so too,” she whispered, her gaze still latched on the creek.

But meeting his sisters wouldn’t change the fact they had a family who supported their dreams and made a way for them to do what they truly wanted, no matter what society said. The people who surrounded Bryony not only refused to acknowledge her dreams; they wanted to use her talents and gifts for their own advantage.

And while he knew how to guide her safely through the wilderness, he felt rather helpless when it came to helping her navigate the other challenges in her life.