With that thought, a smiling Kit returned to his desk. He picked up the last quarter’s market prices, forwarded by his father, and checked the figures against his current contracts. His smile faded. Prices were dropping, which was not good news to an agent who had a leased warehouse full of whale oil and baleen, waiting for shipment to the factories back East. He had promised his friend, Captain Jan Fredriksen, that he’d get top dollar for theSea Haven’slast cargo. They had agreed to wait until Kit could sell the goods to the highest bidder.
He leaned back in his chair and chewed on his pipe. Once the ship docked and unloaded, it would reload with Jan’s goods, already consigned and waiting. It would be a huge weight off of his shoulders to have those accounts settled and get out from under the warehouse lease. His own warehouse would be built with his agent’s share of the profits, alleviating the need to pay the huge warehouse rents that now ate up his profit.
Now he had another problem. Although the ship’s arrival would eliminate his business problems, it would also bring a new one—his aunt. Kit cursed his luck, knowing with his aunt’s arrival, his heretofore peaceful existence would be no more.
Hallie’s foot sunk intothe oozing mud that masqueraded as a San Francisco street. With last night’s spring rain, the sandy dirt had turned into a reddish-brown clay that made the flat section of the road almost impassable. Hallie lifted her skirts and trudged through the boggy stuff.
In her rush to get away from that greedy rat of an undertaker, she had passed the turn for one of the rare, wood-paved streets.Now she plodded her way down the unpaved section San Francisco’s banking district, heading toward her father’s bank. The gritty mud was seeping through the eyelets on the inside of her leather boots. By the time she reached a walkway, she banged her shoes a bit harder than was necessary, imagining it was Abner Brown’s knobby throat lying on the gray, weathered boards.
Pacified somewhat, Hallie dropped her skirts and marched down to the Adams Bank and Express. The door opened suddenly, and she stopped. A petite, raven-haired woman emerged, dressed in an expensive-looking plum taffeta gown. The woman pulled the strings of her embroidered purse closed and drew a silk parasol cord off her gloved wrist. As she eyed Hallie up and down, her features filled with haughty disdain. She snapped open her parasol, and as if it would ward off some unseen plague, wielded it in Hallie’s face, forcing her back to avoid the sharp peak that bobbed so perilously close to her nose.
Hallie frowned, watching the woman scurry away, then she caught her reflection in the window. No wonder that woman warded her off like some kind of riffraff. Lord, what a mess she was! Thick strands of pale blond hair had escaped from her long braid and hung from her head like Medusa’s snakes. She glanced down at the baggy flannel work smock covering her dark woolen dress, both which were littered with petals and twigs, as if she had rolled down a hillside. She swiped off the debris, embarrassed, her cheeks hot, ashamed of how she looked.
She had taken to wearing the concealing smocks almost two years ago, when, in a matter of months, her boyish thinness had blossomed into womanly proportions. When she had dressed this morning, she hadn’t intended to go anywhere, but she couldn’t find Liv, and so she left her sixteen-year-old sister Dagny in charge of the twins and went off to track down her precocious nine-year-old sister.
Her smock made her look dowdy. Little balls of wear speckled its front, and the dour shade of gray drew the color from her face. Hallie stepped into a nearby stoop, unbuttoned the overblouse, and pulled the wretched thing over her head. She looked around and spotted an old spittoon. Wadding the garment into a tight ball, she crammed it into the brass urn, holding her breath, because spittoons stunk.
She grabbed a handful of hair, pulled the two hairpins out of her pocket, and placed them between her teeth while twisting her braid into a lopsided bun. Jabbing the pins into her knotted hair, she tucked a few scraggly wisps behind her ears and glanced down at her dark dress. The soft wool didn’t hide her deep bust; instead, the fabric clung to her torso before it flared downward in draping gores. No, plum taffeta it was not, but she’d make do. Hallie squared her shoulders and, with a determined step, entered the bank.
Miners were gathered six deep in front of a mahogany counter, and behind it stood two men, dressed in crisp white shirts and absorbed in weighing bag after bag of gold. When the din inside occasionally waned, she could hear the clink of gold nuggets as they spilled into the scale’s dish.
Another line formed at the counter to Hallie’s right. She figured that this was the express station by the way the banker bellowed names of various cities and by the men who groped their way forward so they could arrange to send funds.
Three desks were jammed into the room, their tops smothered with papers and empty chamois bags. The path to one of the desks was open, and the man behind it appeared to be immersed in a stack of papers, oblivious to his chaotic surroundings.
Hallie walked up to the desk. “Excuse me, sir?”
The sound of a distinctly female voice rendered the room suddenly quiet. The young man behind the desk looked up, and startled, he quickly rose. “Can I be of service, miss?”
“I am Miss Fredriksen. My father is Captain Jan Fredriksen of theSea Haven. He said he made arrangements for me to have access to his funds.” Her voice seemed to echo in the room’s sudden silence.
“Just a moment, Miss Fredriksen. I’ll get Mr. Adams.” He walked over to a large door at the back of the room, knocked briefly, and entered.
Hallie could sense the attention she was receiving, and she felt as conspicuous as a nun in a bawdyhouse. She could feel the heat of the miners’ eyes blatantly staring at her, and it was frightening.
She wished for her smock.
After a few long seconds she crossed her arms protectively over her chest and forced herself to stare straight ahead, wishing she still had the concealing security of her lackluster smock. She felt movement around her, but before she could panic, the door behind the desk opened and an older gentleman walked toward her.
“Miss Fredriksen, it’s a pleasure.” He stepped around the desk and grasped her still trembling hand. He must have felt her shaking, because his expression changed to one of concern. He assessed the situation, then quelled the ogling miners with a stern look. Placing her hand on his stocky arm, he led her to the safety of the room beyond.
After seating her and closing the door, he walked around the massive oak desk and sat down. “Now, what can I do for you?”
Hallie looked at his kind, round face and felt reassured. “I need five hundred dollars.”
“I see,” he said, his expression unchanging.
He opened a leather-bound ledger and began thumbing through the pages. Appearing to have found what he needed, he perused the page, and during those awkwardly silent seconds, Hallie’s curiosity got the better of her. She stretched her neck, trying to decipher, upside down, the figures on the page. She was beginning to rise from her chair in her craning effort when she caught his sigh and quickly settled back down into her seat.
He looked up. “It seems we have a problem.”
“But my father assured me he made arrangements for me to withdraw from his account. His voyages have been getting longer and longer, so he felt there might be a time when I would run short of funds. This is an emergency. I must have—”
“Excuse me, Miss Fredriksen,” he interrupted. “Captain Fredriksen did give me the authorization. That’s not the problem. There isn’t five hundred dollars in the account.”
Hallie was stunned. “I don’t understand, there should be at least fifteen thousand in that account. The cargo from my father’s last voyage was worth that much.”
He looked back at the book. “There haven’t been any deposits for eight months.”
