“Your family still has both?” She raised her head to fully meet his gaze, the movement causing her hair to spill against his shoulder. “After all these years?”
“Yes.”
“But somehow you’re an explorer.”
He pulled her closer, until her head rested against his shoulder once more. And no, he wasn’t going to think about why it felt so right to hold her against his chest. All he knew was that it did. “I learned to be an explorer by growing up on my father’s ship. My favorite route was the one he took up the Yukon River to trade with the Athabaskans. I learned the language at a young age, along with Yupik and Aleut and Tlingit, but the Athabaskans were my favorite. My father was trying to open up more trade routes with the interior when he and my stepmother died, and I resumed where he left off. Or at least, I resumed as much as I could at sixteen years of age.”
“Your father and stepmother died?” Her hand rose slowly, then rested against his chest, right over his heart. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.” He swallowed away the tightness in his throat. “Richard was living with the Athabaskans before my father died. That’s how I knew him. He’s a few years older than me, and he was young when he came to Alaska.”
“Even then, he was angling to become secretary of the interior. I think his family decided he should fill the role when he was about twelve, and they’ve been grooming him to do so ever since.” Bryony toyed absently with the fur edge of his parka. “The first thing his parents did was send him to Alaska so he could learn about the giant icebox everyone in America thinks we wasted our money on.”
“Well, he left quite an impact on the Athabaskans, and not in a good way.”
“And then he came home and wrote a book to make himself famous.” She drew back to look at him, the warmth of her body leaving his side. “Like I said, it was all planned.”
“Except he didn’t write that book. He stole most of it from Sadzi’s grandfather.” He could still recall the devastation on the older man’s face as he recounted how Richard had stolen years’ worth of his records. “He was a tribal elder. The Athabaskans don’t have a written language, just a spoken one, but Sadzi’s grandfather recognized the importance of learning Russian when the first traders came, and he also recognized the importance of the written word. So he learned to read and write Russian, and my father was teaching him to read and write English. He was working on a field guide of plants and animals. It had maps and drawings and was quite comprehensive. I always asked to see it whenever we visited.”
“And Richard stole it.” Bryony’s jaw tightened.
“He left in a canoe with some traders, saying he was going farther up the river do a bit more exploring, but he never returned.”
Bryony leaned her head back against his shoulder, her pretty little lips turned down. “And here I was hoping you’d distract me when I asked about your family.”
He winced. “I guess that wasn’t much of a distraction, was it?”
“No, but you could always tell me more about your sisters.”
“My sisters?”
“Yes.” There was something sincere about how she said the word, something about the way her eyes dipped away from him and darted back to the creek that made his chest tighten.
“You said that one of your sisters is a doctor and one’s a lawyer. Who...” She swallowed. “Who paid for their schooling?”
The tightness in his chest turned into a lead weight. “My oldest brother.”
“Why him?” Her voice was soft now, almost so quiet that he couldn’t hear it over the trickle of the creek.
“When my parents died, that left Alexei, my oldest brother, in charge of both the family and the companies my family owns. The girls—they’re twins—were fifteen at the time, but Kate had dreamed of being a doctor since childhood, and when it came time for her to go to Boston for medical school, Evelina wanted to go with her. We all thought Evelina would become a teacher. That’s what she went there to study, but she didn’t like it and ended up going to law school instead.”
“She didn’t like being a teacher?” Bryony’s brows drew together. “Whyever not? Teaching doesn’t seem so bad.”
He cleared his throat. “Maybe not to most people, but Evelina thought some of the tactics used to control and instruct the children were a bit, er, extreme. She’s all kindness and gentleness. The notion of rapping a child on the knuckles for not sitting still... well, it’s just not something she could ever bring herself to do.”
“So she became a lawyer instead.”
“She did, and I’m really hoping you can meet her once we return to Sitka.”
“I hope so too,” she whispered, her gaze still latched on the creek.
But meeting his sisters wouldn’t change the fact they had a family who supported their dreams and made a way for them to do what they truly wanted, no matter what society said. The people who surrounded Bryony not only refused to acknowledge her dreams; they wanted to use her talents and gifts for their own advantage.
And while he knew how to guide her safely through the wilderness, he felt rather helpless when it came to helping her navigate the other challenges in her life.
18
Snow came to the valley the next morning. It wasn’t a blizzard like they would have faced at the top of the mountain, but it still slowed down their progress. Mikhail built a fire at lunchtime that day and the next, giving the team a chance to warm their fingers and toes so they didn’t develop frostbite.
