Lydia untucked the bandage and started unraveling it. The movements were similar to what Yuri had done countless timessince their wedding, but with Yuri, the action had always felt tender and gentle. There was nothing gentle in Lydia’s practical, no-nonsense touch.
“Not the boys,” Margaret added. “Boys are allowed to stay here with their mothers until they turn twelve. After that, they need to go live with their fathers or find a job.”
“Twelve?” Rosalind turned her head slightly. “That seems awfully young.”
“Not when you consider every woman here has been hurt by a man.” Lydia tugged off the last of the bandage, then set it on the bed. “That’s why Martha doesn’t teach the boys to shoot.”
“Just the women and girls learn?”
“Exactly. Can’t have any of them boys gettin’ their hands on a gun. There’s no saying what they might do. I mean, look at what your husband did to you.” Lydia nodded toward her ribs.
Rosalind slid a hand over the bottom of her ribs. “I already told you it wasn’t my husband. He’s the kindest man I’ve ever met.”
The frowns on both women’s faces deepened.
“It was my father,” she whispered, ducking her head. Hopefully they’d believe her now. “And it wasn’t his hand. It was his foot. He broke five of my ribs, and one of them punctured my lung. I almost died, but my husband’s sister and brother-in-law saved me. They’re both doctors. And then Yuri married me to protect me from him.”
Silence settled in the room, long and heavy. Rosalind kept her head down, staring at a rather large crack between two of the floorboards. The sound of crickets chirping filtered through the window. Rosalind couldn’t say how long the room was quiet for, only that Lydia was the first to speak, and her voice emerged a bit lower and rougher than before.
“Well, you’re safe here, no matter what man hurt you. That’s what matters.”
Rosalind managed a small smile. She was safe.
She knew that. But the safety here didn’t come with Yuri’s arms wrapped around her, or his words of encouragement whispered in her ear, or his quiet way of making the air around her easier to breathe.
It came with dour looks and distrustful glares whenever she spoke of the man she loved.
41
Belton, Texas; Two Days Later
Yuri tilted his head toward the ceiling of the boardinghouse room and drew in a breath. The telegram sat unfolded and open on the desk beneath the window. But he didn’t need to look at it again to remember what it said. He’d memorized it when he’d stopped partway into town to read it after leaving Rosalind at the Woman’s Commonwealth yesterday.
P. Caldwell arrested and in jail. Awaiting trial without bail. Warrant issued for S. Caldwell’s arrest. I’m new governor. –A.
Yuri still didn’t know what to think of the last sentence, only that he was sorry he’d missed whatever had transpired to cause the secretary of the interior to offer Alexei the governorship.
As for the rest of the telegram, he needed to tell Rosalind. The stage would be here just after two that afternoon, which gave him about six hours to ride out to the Commonwealth and give Rosalind the news. She’d said she wanted to know the instant her father was in jail, and she’d said she wanted to stay married to him too.
But did she really? She might have changed her mind over the past two days. That’s why he hadn’t turned around and ridden back to the Commonwealth after opening the telegram. If she was going to choose him and living in San Francisco over spending her days on a peaceful farm surrounded by kind women who’d understood what she’d gone through, then he wanted to make sure she fully understood the choice she was making. He refused to pressure her into any kind of choice she might regret later, and that included staying married to him.
He’d watched the way her eyes had lit up when they’d turned into the drive at the Commonwealth and noticed the way she’d looked around, as though wanting to explore every inch of the property. He’d seen the eagerness on her face when Mrs. McWhirter had offered to introduce her to the other women too.
There was no question the Commonwealth was the right place for her, but he still needed to tell her what the telegram said. And she’d wanted him to come say good-bye anyway.
Dear Father, give me strength. This is going to hurt.It wasn’t the type of situation he could smile or joke his way out of. It was the type that called for Alexei’s version of seriousness.
Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.
When he’d first befriended Rosalind and God had given him that verse, he’d had no idea how far God would ask him to go to deliver her from her father, or how deeply he would fall in love with her along the way.
But the verse was still true. He wasn’t sorry that he’d helped her. He was only sorry that he now needed to say good-bye.
But Rosalind was safe and making her own choices and no longer living in fear. She’d stood up to the solicitor in Washington, DC, and found her father’s seal-harvesting ledgers,then turned them over to Yuri to give to Jonas. She’d made so much progress.
That was what he needed to think about as he said good-bye. The good things God had in store for her future, not the things he would lose by not having her in his life.
He grabbed his hat from the hook on the wall and settled it on his head, then latched his suitcase. He could leave it at the livery for a few hours while he rented the horse and pick it back up before the stage came.
