“What are you doing?” Her father’s sleep-roughened voice whispered from beside her.
She stilled for a moment, peering over her shoulder at her father, who was frowning. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just want to check on Mikhail.”
Her father glanced in Mikhail’s direction. “Why on earth would you check on him? He’s sleeping.”
“Because he didn’t have anyone else’s body heat to help him get warm. What if he’s too cold? What if hypothermia?—”
“The man practically lives in the wilderness,” Heath said from where he was climbing out of his own bedroll. “If anyone can survive a plunge in an icy river, it’s him.”
Bryony wriggled the rest of the way out of the bedroll and stood. “But hypothermia can still?—”
“Good heavens, daughter!” Her father slammed his eyes shut. “Have some decency.”
She felt her cheeks grow warm as she reached for the dry parka Mikhail had draped over her bedroll and wrapped it around herself. Then she headed the few feet to where her pack sat at the edge of camp. It had remained mostly dry, with only a few splashes of water hitting it while the canoe was being spun around.
She dug out her extra clothes but didn’t bother to put on a skirt, just the trousers she typically wore under her skirt. She was tired of fighting the thick fabric of her skirt each time she moved, and if she hadn’t worn a skirt earlier, it might have been easier for her to swim.
Once clothed, she headed straight for Mikhail’s bedroll and knelt beside him. “Mikhail?” She reached out and shook his shoulder. “Are you warm enough?”
Mikhail shifted beneath her touch, then muttered something unintelligible, his eyes staying closed.
She reached out and rested a hand against his cheek. It was freezing, the same temperature as the air. She felt his neck next, then slid her hand beneath the woolen blankets of his bedroll and felt his collarbone. That was cold too, even though he was smothered in blankets.
“What are you doing?” Heath asked from behind her. “The last thing we need is for you to go getting feelings for Amos.”
Bryony yanked her hand out of Mikhail’s bedroll and twisted around to find Heath staring straight at her. He’d pulled on a dry shirt and trousers and was crouched beside the fire making coffee, but his attention was on her, not the kettle he’d just set in the flames.
“I’m not?—”
“Heath is right. You might need a husband, but Mikhail Amos isn’t the man for you.” Her father came around the fire toward her. Even though the skin beneath his eyes was dark and shadowed with fatigue, his eyes were as sharp as ever.
She wanted to ask why her father would say such a thing, but she already knew. Mikhail was gone every summer, leading expeditions into the deepest, most dangerous, most unexplored parts of Alaska. Of course he wasn’t in the market for a wife.
But if he ever wanted to settle down, to stay in one place, would he consider marrying someone like her?
The thought caused her cheeks to feel warm all over again.
Mikhail wasn’t ever going to settle down like that. He had too important of a purpose for his expeditions. He went on each and every one so he could do the very thing he’d done that day for her—save a life.
And sometimes not just one life but two or three, or maybe even half a dozen.
Who was she to get in the way of that?
She licked her lips, then moved her gaze from her father to Heath and back again. “I just want to make sure Mikhail doesn’t get hypothermia. He seems too cold, especially considering how close he is to the fire. And he’s sleeping really deeply, but he’s usually the first one awake. Will one of you crawl into the bedroll and lie with him for a bit, just to make sure his body warms up?”
Heath stood from the fire, every muscle of his body stiff. “Richard’s death is going to cause all kinds of problems for us, so excuse me if I’m not too keen on helping him.”
She shot to her feet. “He saved your life. Or have you forgotten how you almost slid off the side of a mountain?”
“Stop it, both of you.” Her father waved his hand in the air. “Richard’s gone, and while I don’t particularly blame Amos for it, your brother’s right, and that means we need to be practical about our situation. The president will appoint someone else when Secretary Gray retires. We need to do our best to stay on the new secretary’s good side so we can continue to get funding for our research. That’s all either of you should be thinking about.”
Funding. She clenched her jaw. Of course that’s all her father cared about.
“Isn’t that what I just said? Maybe the new secretary will be a widower, and you can marry Bryony off to him instead of Richard.” Heath shoved a hand her direction. “She’s in the market for a new husband now, and we need to do something to make up for the fact that the man she was supposed to marry just died.”
She glared straight at her brother. “How dare you.”
“What? You know that’s the game Father was playing with Richard. He wanted you married to the next secretary of the interior so the man felt like there was no way he could say no to any of his future funding. And I can’t say it’s a bad plan. It would certainly help me if you married the next secretary of the interior too. I see no reason for the plan to change unless the new secretary already has a wife.”
