“You’re right.” He gave a firm nod. “Writing a letter to the publisher is more important. Want to pay a call to the Caldwells with me?”
Alexei arched an eyebrow. “You think they’ll let you in the door?”
“I think Bryony will want to talk to me.”
Alexei just shook his head. “If you want to take someone with you, grab Yuri. He’s the least likely to get kicked out.” Then he turned and left the office.
30
“Tell me how this sounds,” Kate said. “If you would like a sample of Miss Wetherby’s journal, please send a return letter to my address in Sitka. Does that... Wait.”
Mikhail watched confusion creep over Kate’s face as she stared down at the letter she was transcribing for him, and he waited for the question he knew was coming.
“Why are you having the publisher send a letter to you all the way to Sitka when Miss Wetherby will be in Washington, DC?” Muted sunlight filled the window behind Kate, casting a pale glow over Alexei’s study where they’d gone to work after breakfast. “It will take at least two weeks to get here, then another two weeks for your letter to reach Miss Wetherby.”
He leaned his hip against the side of Alexei’s desk. “Because I don’t have Miss Wetherby’s address.”
He blamed that solely on the fact that Preston Caldwell’s butler hadn’t let him in the house last night when he and Yuri had called on Bryony. The straight-laced man hadn’t asked Bryony if she was willing to come to the door and speak with him on the porch either. The man had flat-out refused to notify her that he’d needed to speak with her, then threatened to send for the Marshal if he and Yuri didn’t stop trespassing on Caldwell property.
“Surely the Department of the Interior can give you Miss Wetherby’s address,” Kate continued. “Don’t you get contact information for everyone on your expeditions?”
Mikhail raked a hand through his hair. He didn’t need his sister’s meddling right now. Why couldn’t she just write the letter he was dictating?
Almost as though she could sense what he was going to say, she set the pen down and folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not writing another word until you tell me what’s going on—all of it.”
He blew out a breath. How come his most stubborn sibling was the only one who knew about his word blindness? Did she think he hadn’t already gone over every possible way to handle this? “Fine. I have Bryony’s address, since she’s been living with her father and brother. But I expect that to change after she returns to Washington.”
“See? That wasn’t so hard.” Kate picked up her pen again and held it to the paper, but she didn’t start writing. She only turned to him with another frown on her face. “I still don’t understand. Won’t her father pass along the letter?”
He shoved a hand through his hair again, exhaling hard through his nose. If she would just stop interrogating him and finish the blasted letter, they might actually get somewhere. But no, she had to question every detail. As if she were the one who had spent weeks in the wilderness with Bryony. “Not every woman has family as accepting of women in the field of science as ours. Remember?”
Kate stood. “Are you telling me that her father doesn’t want her book to be published? What kind of man would withhold such an opportunity from his daughter? Besides, writing is a perfectly acceptable occupation for a woman. Just look at Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher?—”
“If Bryony were to procure a reliable income stream on her own, her father wouldn’t be able to marry her off to the next secretary of the interior.”
“Are you telling me her father is trying to force her into a marriage she doesn’t want?” Kate started pacing from one side of the room to the other. “Let me guess, this marriage will benefit him in some way.”
“That’s one part of it. The other part is what I told you last night. Bryony is quite talented when it comes to science, but no male scientist wants to see a woman’s name on anything, from a journal article to a field guide.”
“Which is why you’re writing this letter to the publisher on Miss Wetherby’s behalf.”
That and because he was tired of watching her fight to hold on to something that should never have been stolen from her in the first place. “If I thought she could submit her work on her own and have it published, I would simply give her the address, but no publisher is going to take a female field-guide writer seriously.” He headed to the window and stared out at the mountains lining the calm waters of the sound.
Kate came to stand beside him. “Perhaps both your names could go on the book.”
“I suppose that would be an improvement over having only a man’s name on her work, like what happened with her first five field guides.”
“What?” Kate jerked her gaze to his. “She didn’t get to put her own name on five of her books? And she was the one who wrote them?”
“Whose books are we talking about?” Yuri bounded into the room, a cup of coffee in hand. “Does this have something to do with Miss Wetherby? I’m still devastated I didn’t get to meet her last night. All we asked for was a simple meeting. The butler had no reason to send us away.”
Mikhail sent Yuri a dry look. “You can leave now.”
Yuri smirked, then settled into an open chair with his cup of coffee. “Leave when Kate’s getting worked up? Now where’s the fun in that?”
“Who’s this man that’s been falsely publishing Miss Wetherby’s work as his own?” Kate jabbed a finger into his chest. “I want a name, Mikhail. I mean it.”
“Wait. Someone’s been stealing Miss Wetherby’s work?” Yuri took an obnoxiously loud sip of his coffee. “This is more interesting than I thought. Is that what you wanted to talk to her about? And here I thought you were just heartsick.”
