Page 29 of Echoes of Twilight (Dawn of Alaska #4)

29

“S o the lawsuit can’t progress until a judge arrives in Sitka?” Mikhail glanced around the table. His entire family was there—all seven of his siblings, along with the spouses of the three who were married. Maggie’s younger half brother and half sister, whom she and Sacha were raising as their own, were crowded around the table as well.

If another one of them got married, they’d have to start having meals in the dining room. But Mikhail wasn’t complaining about being stuffed in Alexi’s kitchen. This was the table he’d sat at while growing up. It was warm and cozy, with the hulking cookstove filling up one wall and the hutch his great-grandfather had built for his great-grandmother sitting against the other.

“Yes, the lawsuit is stalled until the judge arrives, hopefully in early December.” Sacha scrubbed a hand over his beard, the plate in front of him wiped nearly clean of the venison roast, beets, and potatoes that had filled it a few minutes earlier. “And even though we’ve filed a lawsuit, that snake running the RCS office still thinks nothing of searching the Aurora .” He flung a hand toward the window, not that any of them could see the ship through it.

“I’ll say one thing. They sure don’t seem afraid of a legal battle,” Alexei muttered around a mouthful of beets.

“They should be.” Evelina set her fork down with a clatter. “If we win a lawsuit like this, Secretary Gray will have to take notice, especially if the Department of the Interior needs to pay us for lost revenue like I requested.”

Mikhail tapped his fingers on the table. He didn’t like this, not one bit. If he’d been home rather than traipsing around the wilderness, maybe he could have found a way to prevent the ships from getting searched. “What else happened while I was gone? Anything more I should know about?”

“You missed our announcements.” Maggie beamed at him, her smile stretching from one side of her face to the other. “We’re pregnant!”

“You and Sacha?” Mikhail found himself smiling right back at her. “Congratulations.”

“Not Sacha.” Ainsley, Maggie’s eight-year-old sister, rolled her eyes. “He’s a man. He can’t have a baby.”

“I know, but?—”

“Evelina and Kate are pregnant too.” Ilya straightened in his chair, his eyes bright. “And I’m going to be an uncle and take my nieces and nephews prospecting for gold.”

“You’re all three pregnant together?” Mikhail sat back in his chair, sweeping his eyes around the table.

“We are.” Evelina set down her water glass, a smile filling her face. “Our babies will grow up together. And Kate is the farthest along. She’s due in May. Maggie and I aren’t due until June and July.”

Mikhail’s gaze fell to Kate. “Is that true? Are you pregnant?”

She huffed. “You don’t need to sound so surprised. I’m married, and children are a natural outcome of intercourse, so?—”

“I don’t think he needs details, love.” Nathan reached out and patted her hand.

Mikhail leaned over until his shoulder bumped Kate’s beside him. “Congratulations. I’m happy for you.”

She looked up at him. “Are you really?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

She slid a hand over her stomach. “I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to practice medicine with a little one to look after.”

He gave his head a small shake. “If anyone will find a way to do it, it’s you.”

“So you don’t think I need to stop being a doctor because I’m pregnant?”

Mikhail glared at Nathan. “Did you tell her that?”

Nathan shook his head, his hand still covering Kate’s on the table. “Never. I told her we’d work it out, but some of the women in Juneau don’t feel that Kate should continue treating them after the baby comes.”

“Then treat the men or the Tlingit. It’s none of those women’s business.” First Bryony had to deal with her father telling her she couldn’t train to be a scientist, and now Kate was dealing with yet another round of opposition to her being a woman doctor. Why couldn’t the rest of the world view women as people who were just as capable of contributing to society as men?

“There’s someone I want you to meet while you’re in town, if I can arrange it. She was on the expedition.” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, never mind that he’d already decided not to introduce Bryony to his family.

“There was a woman on the expedition?” Kate looked up at him, swiping a strand of chestnut hair away from her face.

“Yes, she’s quite talented when it comes to both botany and cartography. She sketches plants and records notes for her father, but she’s hoping to publish her journal and perhaps find a job working for a scientist when she returns to Washington, DC. She had questions about how you knew you wanted to be a doctor and how you found work after you finished your schooling. You too, Evelina. She’s curious.”

The corner of Kate’s mouth tipped up into a rare smile. “I’d love to meet her.”

After dinner, they moved to the parlor, where Evelina and Yuri decided everyone should play a game of charades. Mikhail leaned against the mantel, arms crossed, watching as Alexei—stoic, composed Alexei—flopped onto the rug and clapped his hands like a seal. The room erupted with laughter. Something told him that if Bryony were with them, she’d love this. She’d happily throw herself into the game, mimicking a whale’s breach or a navy general’s stiff salute. He could almost see her now—her eyes bright and her wavy red hair bouncing as she exaggerated some ridiculous gesture.

Was she happy at the Caldwells? They would certainly be feeding her fancy food and showing her to a finely appointed room, but did they smile around their dining room table? Did they play games afterward?

He clenched his jaw. It didn’t matter. They were already separated. He wasn’t even sure if he could arrange a meeting between her and Kate. And if he could somehow manage to get the two of them together, it would only be for an hour or so. Then he would go his way and she would go hers.

But what if they didn’t go their separate ways. What if he found a way for the two of them to...

No. He was getting ahead of himself. He was an explorer, gone for months every summer. And Bryony was... was...

Well, he wasn’t sure what she was. Part scientist, part artist, part cartographer, part writer. All he knew was that her journal was magnificent. That under normal circumstances, she’d have no trouble getting it published and making enough money to live on for several years.

If she were a man. If she had access to a publisher.

Which he’d promised to get her.

He pushed himself away from the mantel, interrupting Kate’s attempts to be a... Well, he had no idea what she was pretending to be.

“Is something wrong?” Kate stopped acting, her hands thrust into the air at two odd angles.

“No. I... ah... just need to step outside for a minute.”

He turned and escaped the crowded room, heading to the outhouse. He stopped by it briefly, more because he didn’t want to lie to his family than because he had a need to use it.

After he emerged, he turned and headed toward the office above the warehouse. It was a short walk, but years ago their mother had planted spruce trees between the two buildings. To give the house a bit of privacy and separate work from home , she’d always said.

So he threaded his way along the path that ran through the trees, then opened the door to the office and headed up the stairs.

He wasn’t sure where his letters from that publishing house in New York City had been stashed. If anything, he vaguely remembered telling Alexei to get rid of them.

But Alexei wouldn’t have destroyed them. His oldest brother saved everything and had surely filed them somewhere. The question was, where?

He stalked to the filing cabinet against the far wall and yanked open the top drawer. The words on the papers blurred in front of him, but he forced himself to focus, forced himself to make his way through the communications in the top drawer until he was certain it didn’t hold the letters he needed.

Because this was what Bryony needed most from him.

She didn’t need another man in her life who told her what to do. She needed to make her own decisions.

But what if she’d already told him what she wanted most?

She’d said last night that she didn’t want to leave Alaska. But if he was going to ask her to stay, then he’d need to marry her. It was unfair of him to offer anything less.

And it was just as unfair to offer marriage when he intended to leave next summer on another expedition, and then again the summer after that.

Just how would a marriage proposal even go? What would he tell her? That if she stayed in Sitka and married him, he would kiss her when he was home? If he didn’t die on one of his expeditions?

No. If he married her under those circumstances, he’d be little better than her father and brother.

Two summers ago, Sacha gave up his job captaining the Aurora for Maggie and took over their family’s shipyard.

But Mikhail couldn’t do that. Alaska needed guides for all the expeditions the government wanted, and there were fewer guides than ship captains. Even fewer knew the rigors of the wilderness. If he were to take a job with the family and stay in Sitka, where would the government find another guide with his experience and skill? Would they settle for a guide like Roger Liscomb, whose poor understanding of Alaska led to all but two people on his expedition dying?

Mikhail shoved the filing cabinet drawer closed, then briefly flitted through the other drawers, but even with the way the words moved in front of him, it didn’t take long to figure out the correspondence and records in there were several years old.

He moved to the shelf on the wall directly behind Alexei’s desk, but he still came up empty.

Where could Alexei have put those letters? Could they still be in his brother’s desk?

He stalked across the room and yanked open the first drawer. It was filled with letters and papers that had yet to be sorted.

He flipped through the first few, but the words on these papers were even more determined to swim and jiggle and dance across the page, making them impossible to read.

He pressed his eyes shut, then drew in a breath. Calm. He could never read when he was worked up. He had to stay calm and logical.

And logically speaking, he needed to make sure Bryony’s journal got published.

There would be business between them and nothing else. Next summer, if Bryony went on that expedition to Yosemite Valley, she’d fill another journal with her sketches and notes, and he’d ensure that one got published too, and the next journal from wherever she went the summer after that.

It was the perfect plan, and it was what she needed from him most.

So why did his heart ache at the thought of it?

“What are you doing searching my desk?”

Mikhail jolted, then turned to find Alexei standing at the top of the stairs, his eyes narrowed and arms crossed over his chest.

“Where are those letters from that New York publisher?” Mikhail peered down at the papers in the drawer. He’d turned it into an even bigger mess while searching. “The one who wants me to write a book about Alaska?”

Alexei started forward. “They’re somewhere in that drawer, all three of them.”

Mikhail picked up several envelopes and tried to focus on the return name and address, but his brain still refused to cooperate. “Where? I don’t see them.”

Alexei rounded the side of the desk and peered into the drawer, then frowned and picked up two letters. “Well, these two are right in front of your face, and it looks like the third one is in your hand.”

Mikhail swallowed, then snatched the two letters from his brother’s hand and formed the other three he was holding into a pile.

Alexei leaned a hip against the side of the desk, studying him. “The rest of the family is still at the house, wondering where you went.”

Mikhail winced. “Sorry. I, ah... I got distracted.”

“Why are you even looking for these letters? You told me you would never write a book.”

“Things change.”

“Does that mean you decided to write a book about your rescue?”

He scowled. “Of course not. This is for Bryony.”

“Bryony.” Alexei’s mouth flashed a rare grin. “The woman you want Kate to meet? I assume she’s the redhead I saw on the Aurora . You were stranded with her?”

Mikhail crossed his arms over his chest. “We weren’t stranded. The stranding happened before I found them.”

“I see.”

He stepped away from the desk. “I need to call on Bryony and get a few pages of her journal to copy in case the publisher wants a sample.”

“Now?” The smile dropped from Alexei’s face. “When you haven’t seen your family for months?”

Mikhail froze. “I’m being an oaf, aren’t I?”

“Not to Bryony, it appears.”

“You’re right.” He gave a firm nod. “Writing a letter to the publisher is more important. Want to pay a call to the Caldwells with me?”

Alexei arched an eyebrow. “You think they’ll let you in the door?”

“I think Bryony will want to talk to me.”

Alexei just shook his head. “If you want to take someone with you, grab Yuri. He’s the least likely to get kicked out.” Then he turned and left the office.