She didn’t want to think about why any of those things mattered, so she shoved the thoughts aside and forced herself to focus on the practical aspect of his absence. “Do you have January’s installment to give me?”
“Yes.”
She nodded toward where his hands were tucked into the pockets of his suitcoat. “Did you bring everything with you now?”
“I would have, had I known you were coming.”
Right. He wouldn’t have expected to see her here. “Then we need to set up another time to meet. When do you leave?”
“Next Tuesday, unless the ship is late coming into port.”
It was Saturday night. That only left her with Sunday and Monday. “I’ll see if I can move my visit to Millicent’s up to Monday afternoon, and I’ll sneak off to meet you after I have tea with her.”
He gave a single nod of his head. “The usual time and place?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone.” Yuri’s breath cast another plume of white between them. “I’m guessing two weeks, maybe three. I’m sure Alexei will set my mail aside for me, but if something in San Francisco takes longer than I expect, do you want me to see if Bryony can meet you at the beginning of February?”
He might be gone that long? What would he be doing?
She clamped her lips shut. It wasn’t her business. Not any of it.
Just answer the question, Rosalind. It was simple and straight forward, and he deserves an honest response.
“No,” she found herself saying. “I don’t think so. The fewer people who know about this, the better.”
Yuri raised his eyebrows. “I thought Bryony was your friend.”
“She is, but she doesn’t need to know everything.”
Silence stretched between them, as thick as the snow piling at their feet. A new song from inside filtered through the cracks around the window, laughter mixing with the fiddlers’ tune.
“You should come to San Francisco.” Once again, Yuri’s words seemed to come from nowhere, bold and unexpected against the frigid night.
She found herself flinching at the offer. “You want me to run off? With you?”
How could the idea sound so very foreign when she’d been thinking the same thing only moments before he’d joined her?
But Yuri hadn’t factored into her plans earlier. “You want me to run off—with you?”
“Not with me.” He held out his hands, as though that might somehow make him look innocent. “I just want you away from here. We’ll get you a new name, a ridiculous hat, and you can claim to be an heiress from Boston. No one will suspect a thing.”
He sent her a crooked grin, and for one small moment, she let herself imagine being on the ship as it pulled away from Sitka, the icy air stinging her face as lightness filled her chest.
But the dream shattered before it could fully take form. “I can’t leave. Things aren’t ready.”
“You’ve been saying that for the past year.” Yuri shoved a hand into his hair. “Just come with me. San Francisco is a big enough city for you to disappear in for a month or two while you figure out where to go next.”
Her pulse pounded at her temples. “If you think my father won’t have men searching for me at every port city on the Pacific Ocean the day after I disappear, then you don’t know him very well. If I leave, everything needs to be perfect. If it’s not perfect and I mess up just one detail...” She broke off, her fingers curling into the thick fur of her coat.
She couldn’t afford the price her father would demand if she failed.
“Maybe you need to think more about what God can do to help you leave than about how afraid you are,” he said.
She blinked at him. “What?”
Yuri rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry. I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”
