He didn’t understand why Richard thought her maps were inaccurate, but little about what that man did made sense.
“Can I show you my other sketch now?” She started flipping pages again, and he scanned the pages closely, noting she passed over several more maps before stopping at a page with another sketch. The drawing revealed a beach that held several broken strands of grass along with straight ones that stretched toward the sky.
He ran his eyes over the drawing. “I agree with you. I like the more realistic drawings. And words can often be tricky to get right, so I like that you illustrate them too. That way, people who can’t read still understand your meaning.”
Her brow furrowed, and she tilted her head to the side. “People who can’t read? I never thought of that. I can’t imagine people buying field guides just for the illustrations, but maybe they do.”
Somehow they’d moved from discussing her words to discussing her maps and sketches without her learning that he couldn’t read, and he hadn’t even realized it. But he didn’t exactly feel like revisiting the topic either, so he stood, probably a bit more abruptly than the situation called for. “I’ve got to get the deer back to camp.”
“Oh, I best come too.” She closed the journal. “I said I’d make biscuits.”
Part of him wanted to tell her not to bother, wanted to say that she should stay exactly where she was, sketching and writing and staying far away from Richard Caldwell.
But he couldn’t tell her to do that without explaining why she shouldn’t marry him.
So he waited for her to gather her things, then followed her across the shallow creek and back to camp, thinking all the while that she was probably safer at the creek by herself than anywhere near Richard.
10
Bryony woke to an icy cold. It numbed her nose and cut through her bedroll and gnawed at her fingers before the day even started. The cloudless sky from the day before was gone, replaced with a slate gray that touched the tops of the mountains. Frost glittered on the underbrush, painting the world in shades of silver and white. In another time and place, the frost would have seemed beautiful, but all it did that morning was remind her of how cold the air had turned overnight.
Rustling sounded from the other side of the camp, and she looked over to see Richard stirring. That only made her want to stay inside her bedroll longer, never mind how cold she felt. She’d been genuinely worried about both Richard and Heath when they’d left her and Father and Dr. Ottingford in the valley for so long, and she thought they had perished in the wilderness.
But the camp had been rather peaceful without Richard there. Or at least it had been more peaceful for her. Father and Heath probably didn’t get a heavy sensation in their chests each time they looked at him.
Sighing, she shimmied out of her bedroll. The cold wind cut through her skirt and trousers before she could get her coat on, and by the time she finally had her arms through the sleeves, her teeth had started chattering.
She made short work of rolling up her bedroll, then moved toward the fire pit, her half-numb fingers fumbling with the flint until smoke finally rose and a few of the twigs lit.
“Good morning, my little artist.”
She turned to find Richard had come up behind her. “I’m not your artist.”
He gave her a smile she recognized all too well, tight, annoyed, and patronizing all at once. She’d lost track of the number of times he’d given her that smile over the years, yet he wanted to marry her. “But you are, and you did good work while I was gone. I especially liked your sketch of the valley with the glacial lake.”
“How did you...”
He held out his hand, and only then did she realize he was holding her journal. He must have taken it last night while she’d been helping with supper.
She yanked it away from him. “I didn’t give you permission to look in it.”
He laughed, but it wasn’t a kind sound. “You’re not going to be able to keep it from me.”
“I can keep it from you if I want to.” She tucked the book close to her chest.
Richard’s gaze moved to something on the opposite side of the fire, and she followed it to find him looking at Mikhail, who was awake and climbing out of his bedroll. “Do you really want to have this conversation right now?”
She didn’t, but something told her that if she ended up having it in front of Mikhail, he’d take her side.
He’d been genuinely interested in her well-being yesterday, stopping to ask several times throughout the day if she’d been eating enough. He’d seemed pleasantly surprised when he looked at her maps and sketches and writings before dinner too. And he’d listened to everything she’d said, treating her as though she had something of value to contribute, not like an annoyance.
“Bryony, stop lollygagging and get the coffee started,” her father called from where he was extricating himself from his bedroll. “It’s cold out here.”
“Just a minute.” She turned her back on Richard and stalked over to her pack, where she buried her journal clear down at the bottom of it.
Not that it would stop Richard from going through her things again, but she didn’t know what else to do with it. Perhaps she could ask Mikhail to put it in his pack, but then he’d want to know why she couldn’t carry it in hers, and that would just lead to problems.
She returned to the fire, which was starting to burn in earnest, grabbed the percolator, and headed to the stream for water. When she returned, she put the grounds in the top and set it in the coals, then grabbed a biscuit from last night and some leftover venison. She would have sat on a nearby rock to eat it, but movement from the other side of the camp caught her eye.
