Chapter 18
Sitka; the Same Day
Rosalind returned home to find a sapphire necklace waiting on her vanity. Much like her engagement ring, small diamonds formed a ring around the circular stone pendant. A note was scrawled beside it, not in her father’s handwriting, but in Leeland’s large, sloppy script.
Wear this to dinner with the dark blue satin.
She didn’t want to wear either, but what would happen if she didn’t?
Maybe Yuri was right. Maybe she should just leave without trying to find proof of her father bribing the Marshal.
She absently brushed her bruised wrist. It wasn’t healing as it should. She probably needed to go back to using the sling, but not when her father might see her, or he’d pull her off the library committee and refuse to let her friends visit again tomorrow.
She rang for her maid and walked into her dressing room, filled with gowns of all colors and fabrics.
She preferred light colors and material.
Lavander chiffon or pale blue silk, but Leeland always seemed to want her in heavy fabrics and dark tones, like royal blue velvet or jade green satin.
The requests became more frequent with each day he stayed in Sitka.
Her maid appeared in the doorway, and she tried to say that she wanted to wear the dark blue satin, but her mouth didn’t want to work, and her tongue felt as though it had been wrapped in cotton.
She didn’t want to change, not really. She’d much rather wear the dress she’d been wearing all day. It was light and comfortable, with soft yellow tones that matched her hair and reminded her of spring.
But her maid was already moving toward the dark blue dress.
She pulled it from the hanger, then turned and smiled.
“Mr. Vandermeer requested that we recurl your hair for dinner tonight. And did you see the necklace he left on your vanity? It’s lovely.
You’re blessed to have such a thoughtful fiancé. ”
Was she blessed, though? Truly?
Her mother would tell her to rejoice in the Lord despite her circumstances, but surely this wasn’t what God wanted for her life. Surely she was missing something. Should she really be thanking God because her father hadn’t hit her since the night he sprained her wrist?
She sat silently as the maid went through the motions of removing her walking dress and putting on the dinner gown, then curling her hair for the second time that day and piling it atop her head.
Finally, the maid added the sapphire pendant around her neck, then stood back so Rosalind could stare at her reflection.
A poised, elegant woman looked back at her.
Was this what Yuri had seen when he’d looked at her so intently that afternoon?
When he’d begged her to find a way to leave Sitka?
A mannerly woman who was a perfect example of femininity?
Or had he seen beneath the shell to a woman who liked to read books and visit with friends?
Who would gladly volunteer time to help any of the charities she supported, if only she lived nearby.
Who was quite good at managing Finnances and investments and even enjoyed reading the business section of the newspaper.
She’d bet Yuri Amos had never in his life told a woman what clothes to wear—and that he never would, not even after he married.
She suddenly wanted to be having dinner at his house, not her father’s. And she suddenly didn’t want to marry a tyrant or someone her father picked for her. She wanted to marry someone kind. Someone who smiled. Someone who asked her what she would like and listened when she answered.
Someone like Yuri Amos.
It was a ridiculous notion. She could never actually marry Yuri himself, and not just because their families were enemies but because every girl in Sitka wanted to marry him.
He was the most eligible bachelor in town, and half a dozen women, if not more, were already in love with him, Freya, Jane, and Millicent included.
And why wouldn’t every single woman in Sitka want to marry him? He was charming and kind and helpful, never too busy to stop and lend a hand or give an encouraging word. He was probably the most wonderful man in all of Alaska, or maybe in all of America.
She hoped that one day God might bring someone similar to him into her life. Someone who would love her for who she was and not marry her because of who her father was or the business connections she would bring into a marriage.
She lifted a hand to the necklace at her throat, fingers brushing the sapphire as she stared at her reflection. She couldn’t stay in Sitka or marry Leeland.
Which was all the more reason she needed to find proof of her father’s illegal activities. She couldn’t let Leeland’s desire to be either constantly by her side or with her father deter her from the task that needed doing.
She went downstairs and forced herself to sit beside Leeland at dinner, smiling politely and listening while he and Father and Uncle Simon talked about requiring traders to become Indian agents.
After dinner, she slipped into the kitchen and asked the chef to send a maid to wake her first thing in the morning, then retired to her room for the evening.
Part of her hated herself for creeping down to her father’s study after the maid woke her in the morning. It felt sneaky and dishonest, but not more sneaky than bribing Alaska’s most powerful lawman and trying to swindle the Amos family out of sixty thousand dollars.
Her heart pounded the entire time she was in the study, each creak of the house and gust of the wind somehow making her believe her father was in the hallway headed to his study hours earlier than usual.
It was all a bit ridiculous. She knew he’d stayed up late with Leeland. She didn’t have the faintest idea what the two of them had been discussing, but they would both sleep until nine or later.
But after spending three hours searching his study, she came away empty-handed.