She clamped her mouth shut before her next thought spilled from her mouth.
“What if what?” he prodded.
She licked her lips. What if there were feelings between them after spending so much time together traveling to Washington, DC? What if she wanted to stay married to him?
But she couldn’t ask him that. And honestly, what was she doing letting her mind wander to such a place? Yuri didn’t want to stay married to her. He’d said as much when he refused to marry her after Alexei first suggested it.
And she couldn’t blame him. Her family had done nothing but harm his since they’d moved to Sitka. The thought of him permanently binding himself to a Caldwell probably made him sick.
“Do you have a question, Ros?” he asked, his voice gentle in the dim room. “Does something about the plan not work? We don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. The last thing I’d ever do is force you into a marriage that you don’t want.”
All she could do was shake her head, then squeeze her eyes shut against the tears suddenly threatening to spill onto her cheeks. “No. This is a good plan, the best plan, really. I can’t think of a better one.”
“So you’ll do it?” He stroked a thumb over her knuckles. “You’re all right with temporarily marrying me with the understanding that the marriage won’t last more than a few weeks.”
“Yes,” she spoke past the lump in her throat. Because as far as she was concerned, the problem wasn’t the marriage; it was all the things her father had done to his family, and how quickly Yuri wanted their marriage to end because of it.
Alexei dippedhis pen into the small bottle of ink, then stared at the paper in front of him, still not able to come up with a single word. He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there staring at what should have been his letter to Laurel, but so far he’d only managed to write two words.Dear Laurel...
Nothing else would come. He set his pen down and stared out the window, where darkness blanketed the world. He didn’t know how late it was, only that it was past midnight, and trying to sleep would be useless, just like trying to write Laurel.
He hadn’t been able to get anything at all done since his conversation with Yuri.
Everything I’m doing for Rosalind, I’m doing because I learned it from you.
Had he really made that big of an impact on his siblings? That hadn’t been his goal. After their father and stepmother had died at sea, he’d just done what he considered to be his duty.
He could still remember the day twelve years ago when he left San Francisco for Sitka. He’d been at naval architecture school, bent over a drafting table with two other friends, working on a sail plan for a three-hundred-and-fifty-foot, five-masted barque. The vessel had over an acre of sails that needed to be positioned. His friend Howard had burst into the room. One look at Howard’s face, and he’d known something was wrong. He could still recall the sound of Howard’s voice and see thelarge whites of his eyes as he had come toward them, saying that a telegram had arrived from Alaska.
Just like he could still recall the six words that had changed his life.
Come home. Father, Amika, Ivan dead. –S.
Alexei had left San Francisco on the first ship north, hoping and praying that Sacha was wrong, that somehow there’d been a mistake, that maybe one of their ships had been delayed, and everyone was presumed lost at sea only to arrive safely home by the time he reached Sitka.
That had been Alexei’s prayer the entire way north, but the moment he stepped foot in Sitka, he’d known there’d been no misunderstanding. The somber faces of his siblings had told him everything before he debarked the ship.
They’d all sat around the familiar, old table in the kitchen as Sacha and Mikhail explained that their father and stepmother had been lost at sea, caught in a wild storm that had dashed their small boat against the rugged coastline about a mile north of Sitka Sound.
It was tragic, but it was fairly common, especially for traders. People died at sea every year.
But the circumstances of Ivan’s death had ripped a hole in his heart. Twenty-year-olds weren’t supposed to die, and they especially weren’t supposed to be killed by the brother of a man’s fiancée. But that’s exactly what happened. Ivan had been mistaken for a robber during the same brutal storm when their parents’ boat had gone down. When he’d opened the back door to Clarise’s house with news that her parents’ ship had returned safely to the harbor, he’d been greeted by a blow to the back of his head. That had caused him to fall forward and hit the front of his head on the corner of the hutch near the door. He’d lost consciousness as a result of both head injuries and never regained it.
Dr. Hollis had been called, and Ivan had been moved to a bedroom in Clarise’s house, but his breaths had grown weaker and weaker throughout the night and ceased before lunch the following day.
Nathan and Kate had since explained to Alexei that a blow to the head can cause a person’s brain to swell, and surgery could be performed to relieve the pressure by drilling a hole into the skull. Sometimes it worked and saved a person’s life. Sometimes it didn’t. And sometimes the person lived but was never the same. In severe cases, the person might not be able to walk or talk after the surgery, in spite of not dying.
But Dr. Hollis was an older doctor who hadn’t bothered to keep abreast of the newest advances in medicine. Either he hadn’t known about the surgery or didn’t feel comfortable doing it.
Ivan had died, and so had Alexei’s plans for the future.
The first thing he did was move home. He had seven siblings to care for. An eighteen-year-old, a sixteen-year-old, and two fifteen-year-old twin sisters, followed by Yuri, who’d been ten, and Inessa and Ilya, who’d been four and one. All of them had needed a parent. He’d made an extremely poor replacement for their father, but somehow they’d all survived.
The businesses had survived too, slowly and surely, never mind that Ivan had always been the one with the head for business. Alexei had been the dreamer who’d wanted to open a second shipyard down in Seattle and design and build steel-hulled ships. Ivan had been the planner who was going to make it all happen.
Alexei stared down at the blank paper in front of him and rubbed a hand over his breastbone. It seemed ridiculous, but he still missed his brother, even after all this time.
Just like he still missed Clarise.
