Page 39 of Echoes of Twilight (Dawn of Alaska #4)

Sitka; Five Weeks Later; December 27

Yuri stood against the wall, watching as couples twirled around the dance floor. There were more men than women—of course there were. It was Alaska. And that meant men had paired up with men, dancing to their hearts’ content, not caring which one of them played the woman as they waltzed around the warehouse.

Mikhail and Bryony were in the middle of it all, with Bryony dressed in her wedding finery. Mikhail was looking down at his new bride with so much love that Yuri could swear his own heart felt ten degrees warmer.

And here he’d expected Mikhail would be the last of his full-blooded siblings to up and marry. Evidently all it took was the right woman tagging along on one of his expeditions to convince him that he was better off with a wife than without one.

Mikhail spun Bryony beneath his arm, then dipped her back and planted a brief kiss on her lips before hauling her upright. His lithe body made the most complicated of moves look simple, and Bryony had no trouble staying loose in his arms, letting him guide her wherever he wished, as quickly or slowly as he wanted.

“And here I thought I’d find you surrounded by a gaggle of women. Either that or dancing with one of them.”

Yuri looked over to find that Kate had come up beside him, her hands clamped over her stomach and her face a bit pale.

“I danced with Millicent, Jane, and Freya earlier. Two times each, to be exact. Then I told them they needed to dance with some of the other men. You should have seen the glares others were sending my way.” He gave a mock shudder.

Kate chuckled. “That’s only fair. There are ten men for every woman in Alaska, maybe more, and here you are with a constant swarm of three or four single women on your arms every time I look.”

He shrugged. “What can I say? Some women just find my charm irresistible.”

Kate rolled her eyes.

“What about you? Why aren’t you dancing with Nathan?”

Kate’s hand crept back over her stomach. “I’m afraid all the twirling and spinning doesn’t agree with me these days.”

“I see. Well, the condition doesn’t seem to be affecting Evelina or Maggie.” He nodded to where both of them were wedged onto the crowded floor, each dancing with their husbands. Nathan, on the other hand, was twirling Inessa around the room.

“I’m glad. I don’t wish this nauseous feeling on any other person ever, least of all Evelina or Maggie.”

“Do you need to lie down?” Yuri extended his arm in her direction. “I can escort you home.”

She sucked in a breath, slouching against the wall until it took nearly all of her weight. “No. I’ll be fine in a minute or two. I’m just through with dancing for the night.”

A pair of dancers spun by, waltzing slowly enough for the woman in the man’s arms to catch his eye, then wink. He sent a wink right back.

Kate snorted. “You need to up and marry that poor girl, or she’s going to get tired of waiting for you.”

“Marry Millie?” He frowned. “Why would I do something like that? We’re just friends.”

“And here I recall you telling Sacha that you were just friends with Freya.”

“And?” He scratched the side of his head. “I’m friends with her too. I fail to see the problem.”

Kate shook her head, then winced and clutched her stomach again. “Just how many women in Sitka are you friends with?”

“Mainly just Millicent, Jane, and Freya. Which works out well, since they’re all friends with each other.” Well, there was Rosalind Caldwell, but he wasn’t sure she should be included in the group.

“You’re sure that you’re only friends? With all of them?”

He shrugged. What could he say? Women made for excellent friends. They were fun. They got excited easily. They remembered to say things like please and thank you. They always smelled nice and tried to look their best—which was certainly more than he could say for most men in Alaska.

Besides, he’d been born into a large family with female siblings on both sides. Evelina and Kate were five years older than Yuri, but he’d been only ten when their parents died, and his twin sisters had been fifteen. Alexei had returned home, but that was to run the family business, not to dote on a ten-year-old boy who had twice as much energy as he did sense. Ivan had just died, Sacha had needed to fill their father’s role as captain on one of their family’s ships and had left almost immediately, and Mikhail, at the age of sixteen, had stepped in to help Alexei with running the shipyard and trading company.

That had left the twins to watch him and care for his most basic needs, and six years after him had been yet another girl, Inessa. He’d been charged with playing with her more times than he could count while one of his older sisters cooked or cleaned and the other looked after the baby of the family, Ilya, who’d only been a year old.

He’d spent most of his growing-up years surrounded by women, and now that he was a man, he enjoyed surrounding himself with women even more. He didn’t see anything wrong with that. He and Freya and Millicent and Jane were friends. Perhaps one or two of them wanted to be more than friends, but he wasn’t interested in any of them romantically. And he didn’t understand why everyone else found such a thing so hard to believe.

“You just need to pick which one you like the best, marry her, and then let the two you didn’t choose focus on finding a husband for themselves. I don’t think a single one of them will marry until they know you’ve been taken.”

He threw up his hands. “I already told you. I’m not going to just up and marry one of my friends. We’re friends. That’s it. I have no desire to kiss a single one of them.” Or rather, he could say that as long as he excluded Rosalind Caldwell from the list.

Kate rolled her eyes again. “I should have guessed you’d be all romantic about who you marry. Maybe you should try being more practical. Any one of your so-called lady friends would make an excellent wife.”

Leave it to Kate to be so painfully efficient regarding something as serious as finding him a wife. “Marriage is forever. It’s supposed to be more than practical, which I’d expect you to know, seeing how you’re happily married yourself and carrying your husband’s child.”

Her cheeks turned pink. “The circumstances of our marriage were far more practical than romantic, I assure you. And it turned out just fine.”

“Only because Nathan was already smitten with you when you wed.”

“Yes, and whichever one of the girls you decide to marry will be equally smitten with you.”

That still seemed like a rather flimsy way to start a marriage. “Just because practicality—or maybe we should call it disaster—worked out well for you doesn’t mean it will work out well for me. Don’t you think it’s better to?—”

Movement outside one of the windows caught his eye. At first he thought it was nothing, just the light from the lanterns playing tricks against the windows. But no, he’d definitely seen a shadow and a flash of blond hair through the window.

“Excuse me.”

Kate had started prattling about marriage again, but he didn’t give her a chance to finish. He just pushed himself off the wall and headed toward the side door that opened to the back of the warehouse. He paused about halfway there, then turned and started toward the main door everyone was using to enter and leave the wedding reception. It was decorated with holly and berries that Alexei had shipped up from California at the last minute to celebrate Mikhail and Bryony’s wedding. Alexei had tried to find white bryony vines to match Bryony’s name, but they were out of season and too difficult to procure on short notice, so he’d settled for holly, which was perfect for a wedding that took place a few days after Christmas.

Yuri tromped through the entrance and out into the cold. Snow was falling tonight rather than the usual rain that plagued Sitka for most of the winter. It drifted down in slow, lazy flakes, catching in the folds of his suitcoat and clinging to his lashes.

The world outside felt hushed beneath the snowfall, the sound of laughter and music from inside muffled by the thick, wintry air. The cold bit at his cheeks as he rounded the closest side of the warehouse, but he barely noticed that or the lack of an overcoat as he moved toward the side of the building, his eyes scanning the shadows.

Had he used the door closest to the window where he’d seen her shadow, she would have realized he was coming and ducked away. That, plus he wouldn’t be able to control who watched him leave the ballroom through the side door.

But coming through the main entrance and walking around the side of the warehouse gave him the element of surprise.

He poked his head around the far side of the building, and there she was, cloaked in her mink coat and peeking through the window closest to where he stood. Her blond hair was pulled up beneath a matching fur hat, leaving only a few silky strands of hair dangling beside her neck. Her back was to him, but he didn’t need to see her face to know that she was staring longingly at the festivities.

“You’re allowed to go inside, you know.”

She jumped at the sound of his voice, then turned to face him, a gloved hand pressed to her heart. “Yuri. What are you doing out here?”

“Making sure you don’t catch your death of cold, it seems.”

She looked down at her thick coat. “I’m perfectly warm. You, on the other hand, seem to have forgotten your coat entirely.”

He’d been in too big of a rush to bother with it, worried she’d saunter off before he could catch her if he didn’t head straight outside.

But he wasn’t going to admit it aloud. “You still don’t have to stand out here.”

“I do, and we both know why.”

That was probably true. If Bryony were marrying into any other family, Rosalind would have been allowed to go to her wedding, but she wouldn’t be allowed to attend anything attached to the Amos family name, never mind that she and Bryony had been friends back in Washington, DC.

Rosalind watched him for another moment before turning to look back through the window. “Bryony looks so very happy with Mikhail.”

“She is.”

“I’m glad. She deserves to be happy.”

“So do you.”

His words caused her head to jerk in his direction. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. He never could. She had a face like her father’s—one that gave nothing away.

But he studied it anyway, searching for a flicker of emotion, some crack in her carefully composed mask. The golden glow from the window illuminated the delicate slope of her cheekbones, and the faintest breath of color dusted her skin from the cold.

“I’m going to San Francisco,” he blurted, then cringed at how bulky and awkward the statement sounded. With any other woman, his words emerged smooth as butter, but whenever he was around Rosalind, everything about him turned clumsy.

“I won’t be able to meet you in January. That’s what I was trying to say.” He tried again.

Her delicate blond eyebrows drew down. “But you have things to give me, right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you bring them with you now?”

“I would have, had I known you were coming.”

She exhaled, glancing toward the snow-covered street. “We should set up another time then. When do you leave?”

“Next Tuesday, unless the ship is late coming into port.”

“I’ll see if I can move my visit with Freya up to Monday afternoon.”

“The usual time and place?”

“Yes.”

He hesitated for a moment, his breath forming a mist in the cold night air. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone. I’m guessing two weeks, maybe three. I’m sure Alexei will set my mail aside for me, but if something takes longer than I expect, do you want me to see if Bryony can meet you at the beginning of February?”

Her brows pinched together, creating a subtle groove just above the bridge of her nose. “No. No, I don’t think so. The fewer people who know about this, the better.”

“I thought Bryony was your friend.”

“She is, but she doesn’t need to know everything.” Her response was a bit too rushed, a bit too hurried.

He sighed, rubbing his hand over his face. Sometimes he felt like things would be easier on Rosalind Caldwell if a lot of people knew a lot more things about her life. If everything wasn’t always some big secret to her.

But he wasn’t the one with a snake for a father. He wasn’t the one living in a house where he had to constantly worry about being bitten by Preston Caldwell’s venom. So who was he to tell her she had to handle things differently?

Silence stretched between them again. Music from the trio of fiddlers drifted outside, along with muted laughter and conversations. Mikhail was probably still twirling Bryony around the dance floor, and she was probably still smiling up at him with that smitten look on her face.

He couldn’t blame Rosalind for wanting to come and watch her friend smile, especially when she had so few reasons to smile herself.

“You should come with me.” He wasn’t sure where the words came from. All he knew was that they felt right, that he suddenly wanted nothing more than to sneak her onto the Alliance next Tuesday and whisk her away to a new life somewhere other than Sitka.

“You want me to run off? With you?” She drew in a ragged breath.

“Not in a romantic sense. I just want you away from here.”

Even in the dim light from the window, he saw the way her eyes dulled and her shoulders folded inward. “I can’t leave Sitka yet. Things aren’t ready.”

He clenched his jaw. He’d lost track of how many times he’d asked her to leave. “You’ve been giving me that same answer for at least a year, if not more. Just come with me. San Francisco is a big enough city for you to disappear in for a month or two while you figure out where to go next.”

Her eyes flashed with something sharp. “If you think my father won’t have men searching every port city along the Pacific Ocean for me the day after I disappear, then you don’t know him very well. Everything needs to be perfect before I leave. And if it’s not—if I mess up just one detail...” She clamped her lips together, but he didn’t miss the way her throat moved in a tight swallow.

“I meant what I said earlier. You deserve to be happy too. It’s not just Bryony who deserves happiness.”

She squared her shoulders, her jaw turning firm. “I’ll meet you on Monday afternoon. Please bring everything you’ve received with you.”

Then she strode off into the night, head high and back straight with perfect posture.

He watched until the darkness and swirling flakes swallowed her slender form. Then he forced a smile onto his face, went back inside, and found a woman to dance with.

Because that was certainly better than standing in the cold stewing about Rosalind Caldwell.

* * *

A note from Naomi…

I’m so glad both Mikhail found a way to get the botanists out of the wilderness alive—and I’m also glad he learned a few things about humility and trusting God in the process. Just like I’m glad Bryony found a way to work in the field where she is so obviously talented and do what she loves most, all while marrying Mikhail.

I know Mikhail and Bryony already have their happy ending, but I couldn’t resist writing a bonus scene about Bryony’s return to Washington DC. It has to do with Bryony’s journals that Richard published under his name. I just couldn’t finish the story without giving Bryony a meeting with Richard’s publisher. I think you’ll love what happens. (And you’ll also love seeing how happy and content Bryony and Mikhail are a few months into their marriage).