“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.
