“Hey, don’t cry.” He crossed the distance between them in two large steps.
“I’m not.”
“There’s a tear streaking down your cheek, Ros.”
Confound it! She pressed her eyes shut, but that only caused another tear to slip from her eye.
He lifted a hand to her cheek and swiped at her tear with his thumb. “Will you let me take you away from here yet?” he whispered.
She shook her head. “No, but I’m working on it. I promise.”
“That’s what you said yesterday. How are you working on it? Did you write your charities and tell them they wouldn’t be receiving money from you for six months? Do you at least have letters for me to mail?”
“No.”
He dropped his hand. “I’m going to get you away from here, Rosalind. I don’t care how many times I have to ask or how much nagging I have to do. I don’t care if I have to storm into every library committee meeting for the next four months and do something outlandish and embarrassing. You need to escape your father, and marrying the fiancé he picked for you isn’t a good way out.”
She licked her lips. “I know. I just... There’s something I have to do first.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I absolutely do.”
She looked away, her gaze fixed on the ornate molding of the fireplace. “I overheard my uncle and father talking about increasing the amount of bribe money they give to Marshal Hibbs every month. I know there’s proof of it somewhere inside my father’s study. I want to find it and turn it over to your brother-in-law, the Deputy Marshal.”
“What?” Yuri nearly shrieked the word, but when she turned back to face him, she found him stock-still.
“You might be confident that I can escape my father simply by leaving, but I’m not so sure. The fact that he’s bribing Alaska’s most prominent lawman feels like something I should prove before leaving. If my father’s in prison, he can’t steal my money or force me to marry Leeland.”
He shoved a hand into his hair. “You can’t tell me there’s a safe way to get that kind of information from your father. Whatif he finds you searching his study? What if he hurts more than just your wrist?”
“You’re the one who told me to ask God for strength and not to let my fear control me. What do you think I’m trying to do? Don’t attempt to scare me out of what I need to do. My father bribing the Marshal needs to be brought to light.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. That’s what she’d taken the verse from Isaiah 41 to mean? That God would protect her from her father while she tried to prove his involvement in a criminal activity?
He’d told her that verse to encourage her to leave Sitka, not to give her a reason to stay longer. But should he really try to stop her from proving the bribery? The entirety of Alaska suffered whenever Marshal Hibbs looked the other way for influential people committing a crime, and he’d done so more than once.
“Is there something specific you’re looking for?” he finally asked. “Or are you searching for a random slip of paper he accidentally left lying around?”
“My father records everything in ledgers. I’m sure there’s one that contains not just a record of the Marshal’s bribe money but a list of other people who have been bribed too. All I can tell you at the moment is that it’s not in his desk.”
She’s already searched her father’s desk?He fisted his hands at his side. “Rosalind...”
“You won’t get me to change my mind.” She lifted her chin.
He swallowed, every muscle of his body still tense. “No. I don’t suppose I will.” He ran his eyes down her before bringing his gaze back up to meet hers again. “At least promise me you’ll be careful. And if you ever feel like you’re in danger, or if your father catches you and figures out what you’re doing, I can have you away from Sitka within an hour. We’ll leave on our skiff and go to Wrangell or Petersburg or Ketchikan, some small villagewhere we can hide for a few weeks before taking you to a larger port.”
“All right,” she whispered in return. “If I need to leave on short notice, I’ll send word through Millicent.”
“You promise?” he asked.
She pressed her lips together and sucked in a long breath before finally forming a reply. “Yes. I promise.”
His shoulders lost a bit of their tension, and the lines around his mouth softened. “Just don’t make me come for you too late.”
She nodded, then fled before she found herself accidently stepping into his arms and begging him to take her away from Sitka that very moment.
