Chapter 31
“Ros? Are you awake?”
Rosalind blinked at the crack in the door, then raised herself up higher onto the bed.
Yuri stepped inside, closing the door behind him with a quiet click. “I was hoping we could talk, but I can wait if you’re tired.”
She yawned into her hand. “It’s all right. I can talk.”
“Did I wake you?” His brows pinched together with that familiar look of concern she was becoming accustomed to seeing.
“No. My mind was too busy to sleep.”
She wasn’t sure how long ago Kate and her husband had left the room so she could sleep. All she knew was that sleep wouldn’t come. Alexei’s suggestion that she and Yuri marry—followed by Yuri’s swift refusal—had been the only thing she could think about.
Yuri pulled the chair that was sitting against the wall over to the bed and sat down. “Alexei and I talked about his idea, and we came up with a plan that we think might suit the two of us a little better than rushing into a marriage.”
She swallowed. Did he realize they were discussing marriage as though it were some sort of business contract? It almost seemed like something her father might do. “What’s your plan?”
“After we go to Washington, DC, and straighten out your money, I was planning to take you to the Woman’s Commonwealth down in Texas. The one you support that Mrs. McWhirter runs?”
Her mouth opened, but it took a few seconds before any words would come out. “You are?”
His shoulders rose and fell on a loose shrug.
“It seems like a good place for you to go and recover, not just from your father’s most recent beating, but from spending so many years of your life with a man who thought so little of hurting you.
I doubt your father would think to look for you there either, and we can’t have him finding out where you are until after he’s put in prison for his seal-harvesting crimes. ”
“All right. Yes, that makes sense. I’d like to go to the Commonwealth, actually.” She’d never once seen any of the charities she supported. To spend time at any of them seemed wonderful, but to specifically see one that helped battered women? That was better than anything she could have hoped for.
Yuri sent her a tender smile. “That’s what I thought. But in the meantime, we still need a way to protect you from your father and Leeland, to legally make it so they can’t do anything to harm you or find a way to take your money. And the best way for us to do that is to temporarily marry.”
She searched his face. What was he saying? “So you want to marry me now? I thought you said you didn’t want to marry me? And what do you mean by ‘temporarily marrying’ me?”
He reached out and wrapped her hand in his, his palm large and warm. “We’ll marry in a private ceremony before we leave Sitka but have everything set up so we can file for an annulment as soon as you’re in Texas.”
“Oh.” She carefully eased her body back against the pillows, once again not certain what to think. “That’s . . . That’s awfully . . .” She wasn’t sure what word to use. Severe, maybe. Calculated? Well planned? “What if—”
She clamped her mouth shut before her next thought spilled from her mouth.
“What if what?” he prodded.
She licked her lips. What if there were feelings between them after spending so much time together traveling to Washington, DC? What if she wanted to stay married to him?
But she couldn’t ask him that. And honestly, what was she doing letting her mind wander to such a place? Yuri didn’t want to stay married to her. He’d said as much when he refused to marry her after Alexei first suggested it.
And she couldn’t blame him. Her family had done nothing but harm his since they’d moved to Sitka. The thought of him permanently binding himself to a Caldwell probably made him sick.
“Do you have a question, Ros?” he asked, his voice gentle in the dim room. “Does something about the plan not work? We don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. The last thing I’d ever do is force you into a marriage that you don’t want.”
All she could do was shake her head, then squeeze her eyes shut against the tears suddenly threatening to spill onto her cheeks. “No. This is a good plan, the best plan, really. I can’t think of a better one.”
“So you’ll do it?” He stroked a thumb over her knuckles. “You’re all right with temporarily marrying me with the understanding that the marriage won’t last more than a few weeks.”
“Yes,” she spoke past the lump in her throat. Because as far as she was concerned, the problem wasn’t the marriage; it was all the things her father had done to his family, and how quickly Yuri wanted their marriage to end because of it.
Alexei dipped his pen into the small bottle of ink, then stared at the paper in front of him, still not able to come up with a single word.
He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there staring at what should have been his letter to Laurel, but so far he’d only managed to write two words. Dear Laurel . . .
Nothing else would come. He set his pen down and stared out the window, where darkness blanketed the world. He didn’t know how late it was, only that it was past midnight, and trying to sleep would be useless, just like trying to write Laurel.
He hadn’t been able to get anything at all done since his conversation with Yuri.
Everything I’m doing for Rosalind, I’m doing because I learned it from you.
Had he really made that big of an impact on his siblings? That hadn’t been his goal. After their father and stepmother had died at sea, he’d just done what he considered to be his duty.
He could still remember the day twelve years ago when he left San Francisco for Sitka.
He’d been at naval architecture school, bent over a drafting table with two other friends, working on a sail plan for a three-hundred-and-fifty-foot, five-masted barque.
The vessel had over an acre of sails that needed to be positioned.
His friend Howard had burst into the room.
One look at Howard’s face, and he’d known something was wrong.
He could still recall the sound of Howard’s voice and see the large whites of his eyes as he had come toward them, saying that a telegram had arrived from Alaska.
Just like he could still recall the six words that had changed his life.
Come home. Father, Amika, Ivan dead. –S.
Alexei had left San Francisco on the first ship north, hoping and praying that Sacha was wrong, that somehow there’d been a mistake, that maybe one of their ships had been delayed, and everyone was presumed lost at sea only to arrive safely home by the time he reached Sitka.
That had been Alexei’s prayer the entire way north, but the moment he stepped foot in Sitka, he’d known there’d been no misunderstanding. The somber faces of his siblings had told him everything before he debarked the ship.
They’d all sat around the familiar, old table in the kitchen as Sacha and Mikhail explained that their father and stepmother had been lost at sea, caught in a wild storm that had dashed their small boat against the rugged coastline about a mile north of Sitka Sound.
It was tragic, but it was fairly common, especially for traders. People died at sea every year.
But the circumstances of Ivan’s death had ripped a hole in his heart.
Twenty-year-olds weren’t supposed to die, and they especially weren’t supposed to be killed by the brother of a man’s fiancée.
But that’s exactly what happened. Ivan had been mistaken for a robber during the same brutal storm when their parents’ boat had gone down.
When he’d opened the back door to Clarise’s house with news that her parents’ ship had returned safely to the harbor, he’d been greeted by a blow to the back of his head.
That had caused him to fall forward and hit the front of his head on the corner of the hutch near the door.
He’d lost consciousness as a result of both head injuries and never regained it.
Dr. Hollis had been called, and Ivan had been moved to a bedroom in Clarise’s house, but his breaths had grown weaker and weaker throughout the night and ceased before lunch the following day.
Nathan and Kate had since explained to Alexei that a blow to the head can cause a person’s brain to swell, and surgery could be performed to relieve the pressure by drilling a hole into the skull.
Sometimes it worked and saved a person’s life.
Sometimes it didn’t. And sometimes the person lived but was never the same.
In severe cases, the person might not be able to walk or talk after the surgery, in spite of not dying.
But Dr. Hollis was an older doctor who hadn’t bothered to keep abreast of the newest advances in medicine. Either he hadn’t known about the surgery or didn’t feel comfortable doing it.
Ivan had died, and so had Alexei’s plans for the future.
The first thing he did was move home. He had seven siblings to care for.
An eighteen-year-old, a sixteen-year-old, and two fifteen-year-old twin sisters, followed by Yuri, who’d been ten, and Inessa and Ilya, who’d been four and one.
All of them had needed a parent. He’d made an extremely poor replacement for their father, but somehow they’d all survived.
The businesses had survived too, slowly and surely, never mind that Ivan had always been the one with the head for business.
Alexei had been the dreamer who’d wanted to open a second shipyard down in Seattle and design and build steel-hulled ships.
Ivan had been the planner who was going to make it all happen.
Alexei stared down at the blank paper in front of him and rubbed a hand over his breastbone. It seemed ridiculous, but he still missed his brother, even after all this time.
Just like he still missed Clarise.
Or rather, he missed the life he was supposed to have with Clarise.
Her brother, William, had stood trial for involuntary manslaughter.
In those days Alaska was run by a navy general who acted as governor, and that governor just so happened to be Clarise and William’s father.
And governors’ children were rarely convicted of intentional crimes, and they certainly didn’t get convicted of crimes they accidentally committed.
It was true there’d been a rash of robberies in Sitka for about two months leading up to Ivan’s death.
The thief had been caught the very next week, and the jury had ruled that William Rothley had been defending himself, his sister, and their property when he struck Ivan. They declared him innocent.
William’s trial and acquittal had felt like reliving Ivan’s death all over again. Alexei hadn’t been able to truly grieve Ivan’s death until it was done.
After the trial was finally over, what should have been a time of clinging to Clarise and making plans for their life together had instead been marked by her slowly withdrawing from him.
At first she’d been insistent that he could never forgive her, but he’d been just as insistent that there was nothing to forgive.
William, not she, had killed Ivan, and it truly had been an accident.
And even though he still felt frustration and anger and sorrow when he thought of Ivan’s death, he’d still fallen in love with a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed woman who had a smile for anyone and everyone.
He’d taught her to sail a boat and tie a sailor’s knot.
And she would tease him into smiling when he was too serious or beg him to take breaks from the office and go for a walk around the harbor.
She could see the light from the office above the warehouse from her own house, and when he worked late, sometimes she would come over with a batch of cookies—ones she’d baked herself, not asked their cook to bake.
They would stay up until the wee hours of the morning, talking and dreaming and planning and kissing.
After the trial, they moved up the wedding, since Alexei wouldn’t be returning to San Francisco for his last year of school and set a date for October.
But one day Clarise didn’t come to meet him for their walk by the harbor.
He’d thought it odd but decided to wait, certain something had come up and that she would stop by the house as soon as she was able.
But one hour turned into two, and two turned into three, and three turned into four.
He’d finally headed over to the Rothleys’ after dinner.
He could still recall the paleness that had crept over the butler’s face when he asked after Clarise.
Still see it slowly dawning on the servant that Clarise had left without saying a word.
She’d left a letter for the housekeeper to give him that the butler hadn’t known about.
The letter explained that she’d gone to Washington, DC, with her brother and mother to stay with her mother’s sister, and that her father, General Rothley, would be joining them in the spring when he finished his service to the navy.
And that had been the end of it. He’d spent four years of his life falling in love with a sweet girl-turned-woman, only to have her jilt him.
Earlier that afternoon, Yuri had spoken of all the ways he’d helped him and Kate and Evelina, the native tribes, and anyone else who had a need.
But none of that made his heart hurt any less when he thought of how he’d lost the woman he’d once loved so dearly.