Heath pressed a hand to his head and sucked in a breath, as though trying to stave off a headache. “You can’t. I just told you as much. Now go back to Rosalind’s room and visit with her for a bit while Father and I handle things.”
“Go back to Rosalind’s room?” She couldn’t help the high pitch to her voice. “Do you truly expect me to ignore what you’re doing? To do nothing to help Mikhail?”
“And just how do you plan to help him without ruining Father’s ability to procure funding for next year?” Heath cracked an eye open and looked at her from beneath his hand. “Why would you even consider such a thing? You’ve never gotten upset about his methods before. In fact, as I recall, you were willing to marry Richard to help us.”
“I wasn’t willing to marry Richard. I just hadn’t found the courage to tell anyone no.”
“Well, I suggest you forget you found any courage.” Heath dropped the hand from his head and sucked in another breath. “Amos’s wily sister is a lawyer, and even though she’s a woman, people around town say she’s quite good. She’ll get her brother acquitted, and life will go back to normal.
“We’ll stay in Sitka as long as the Caldwells need us for this case against Amos,” he continued, his tone almost bored. “And then we’ll return home and hopefully not come back—at least not until you’re married to someone influential. I don’t like being thrust into the middle of this war between the Caldwells and the Amoses, and neither does Father.”
Heath heaved out a sigh, then stepped around her and opened the door to her room. “I know you developed feelings for Amos while we were in the wilderness, but you have to understand that nothing can ever come of them—for the good of the family. Now maybe instead of visiting with Rosalind, you should spend the evening resting.”
Rest? She rooted her feet to the floor, not taking a step toward the room. What, exactly, did her brother think a little rest was going to help with?
Heath just shook his head. “I mean it, Bryony. Get some rest. Things will look better in the morning.”
Then he turned and headed for the stairs, leaving her standing alone in the center of the hallway.
33
He was an idiot. An utter and complete idiot. Sitting on the thin mattress, Mikhail hung his head over his knees, his back against the rock wall of the jail cell.
He’d known there would be some questions about Richard Caldwell’s death, but he’d assumed it would be treated like the death of any other man who ventured into the wilderness.
A few questions might be asked, but Alaska was harsh and brutal, capable of killing a man within hours—sometimes even within minutes. No one asked very many questions when someone died, and people asked even fewer questions when a man ventured into the mountains and simply disappeared, never to be heard from again.
Other than that long-ago expedition with Livy that he’d ended up in charge of, he’d lost only one man. One man in a decade of guiding expeditions, and he’d had a weak heart. He’d died one night in his sleep, camped high in the mountains, where the air was thin.
Marshal Hibbs had asked him and the others in the group a handful of questions when they returned, and that had been the end of any investigation.
He should have known it would be different with the Caldwells. Should have realized they were looking for any opportunity they could to attack his family.
And really, he couldn’t blame them. Richard might have been a snake, but he still could have done something more to prevent his death. That was his job, after all. To keep people alive in the most dangerous place in the world. And had he been standing closer to Richard, had he been faster walking out on the log rather than creeping along slowly, he might have been able to stop him from falling.
Or maybe he should have sent Heath across the gorge first and then had Richard help him carry the trunk. Or...
The door separating the jail from the administrative offices on Castle Hill squealed open, and the sound of boots on the dirt floor thudded closer. Alexei. He could recognize the clipped sound of his brother’s gait anywhere.
He pushed himself off the mattress and approached the bars.
“I’m sorry.” The words were out of his mouth before Alexei even fully stopped in front of him.
Evelina had come with him, a satchel hung over her shoulder.
Deep grooves appeared in Alexei’s forehead. “Sorry about what?”
“That I didn’t do more to prevent Richard’s death.”
“Were you negligent?” Evelina stepped closer to the bars and slid a thick stack of papers from the satchel. “Is there anything to this claim?”
He glanced at the legal papers, likely typed up in haste that afternoon so he could be arrested before Thanksgiving. “Of course there is. I should have stopped Richard from falling, just like I should have stopped the others from dying too.”
“What others?” The grooves in Alexei’s forehead deepened. “I thought Richard was the only man who died on the expedition.”
“I wasn’t talking about this expedition. I was talking about before, about all the other times.”
Silence filled the space between them as Evelina and Alexei looked at him in the lamplight flickering from the sconce on the wall.
