“A hundred dollars a year? I thought you said Richard published five of your journals.” His voice emerged tight, the edges of his words sharper than he intended.
“He did.” She patted the journal through the top of her parka. “He wants this one to be my sixth.”
“A hundred dollars a year for five books?” Mikhail surged to his feet. The series of newspaper articles he’d published had paid him three times that.
He began pacing, his mukluks squelching against the wet ground. A hundred dollars a year wasn’t nearly enough money, not considering how popular Richard’s field guides were. If he had to guess, Richard was keeping eighty to ninety percent of the royalties for himself.
“I mean, for a while I thought the book royalties might be enough to live on.” Bryony shifted, angling her body so she could look up at him. “That I could write a field guide each summer and have it published under Richard’s name, and I wouldn’t need to worry about finding a husband. But that was before it was apparent that the secretary of the interior suffered an apoplectic fit, and Richard decided that marrying me would make him look like an attractive choice to the president. Then he decided that since he was going to marry me, I should let him take all the money from the books.”
Mikhail stopped pacing and turned to look at her. “He’s taking all your money? You’re not even engaged.”
“No. But he hasn’t given me a dime for my books since last fall.”
Mikhail took a step closer, then extended a hand to help her to her feet. How could she sit while they discussed Richard Caldwell stealing her money? How could she be so calm? “Do you have copies of the publishing contracts?”
Bryony nodded, then placed her hand in his. “I think so, somewhere back home. Why?”
“Because after you return, I want you to send copies of the contracts to me. I’ll pass them on to my sister, since she’s a lawyer.” He pulled her to her feet, working to keep his grip light and his actions calm, even though he could feel his pulse beating in his ears. “If the contracts are set up as they should be, not only is it illegal for Richard to suddenly decide to withhold royalties from you, but I suspect you’ll be able to have the past royalty payouts analyzed to make sure he’s actually been paying you what he should.”
“You think Richard has been underpaying me all along?” Confusion filled her eyes as she looked at him, as though searching for some explanation that wouldn’t make her feel so foolish. “I assumed I was just missing money from last winter.”
He wanted to howl, or maybe to scream. To clench his hands into fists and shake them at the sky. To do something that could somehow right the injustice that Richard Caldwell had put the intelligent woman in front of him through.
But he was helpless to do much of anything at the moment. And if there was one thing he hated more than anything else, it was being helpless.
“If lawyers get involved, won’t everything become public?” Bryony sank her teeth into her bottom lip. “Then the world would know he’s not the one writing the guides.”
He could hear the worry creep into her voice, and he turned away, staring at the mountains, at the sky, at the cool stream of water trickling through the moss and rocks and brush of the forest. Anything to help him retain a semblance of calm. “The world should already know that.”
He turned around to find that Bryony’s face had turned white and she’d curled her shoulders inward. “Richard would hate me, and so would my father and Heath.” Her hand crept up to press against her chest. “And the rest of Richard’s family.”
He shoved a hand through his hair. Had his oldest brother, Alexei, ever had these kinds of conversations with Evelina and Kate? When Alexei had said he was sending the twins to Boston so Kate could go to medical school, Mikhail couldn’t recall Alexei so much as blinking. It had seemed like such a natural fit for his sisters to pursue the things they loved.
He couldn’t imagine a world where Alexei forced Evelina and Kate to work for the family shipping company. Or worse yet, a world where they were so good at their jobs that working for the shipping company made the company extra money every year, but Alexei refused to pay them and then said they had to marry deplorable, dishonest men.
It made him want to wrap Bryony in a giant quilt, carry her back to Sitka, and promise that he’d find a way for her to earn a living in the field she loved, no matter what it cost or what he had to sacrifice.
But she wasn’t his to protect, at least not like that. The two of them were nothing more than strangers thrust together by unusual circumstances and destined to part, returning to two different lives the moment they reached Sitka.
So he drew in a breath, still fighting to find a bit of inner calm. “Have you ever read the parable of the master and his servants?”
“You mean from the Bible?” Bryony tilted her head. “Is that the one where the master goes into another country and leaves his three servants with different talents?”
“Yes. It’s in Matthew chapter twenty-five. The master gives his first servant five talents, his second servant two talents, and his third servant one talent.”
“Two of the servants go to work and double their talents. But the last one hides his talent, right?”
“He buries it in the ground.” His breath puffed white against the cold. “Time passes. Maybe one year, maybe ten—the Bible doesn’t say. But eventually the master returns, and he calls for his servants. The first servant shows the master his ten talents, and the master tells him, ‘Well done.’ And because the servant was faithful with the few talents given to him, the master said he would make him a ‘ruler over many things.’ Then the same happened with the second servant, who—even though he was given fewer talents than the first servant—still doubled his two talents and turned them into four.”
“And you think this somehow applies to me? To my writing?” Bryony reached up to where her journal was tucked away in her parka.
Couldn’t she see it? “Well, what happens when the last servant stands before the master?”
“He only has the one talent that he buried to show his master,” she answered quickly, almost as though the question was too simple to bother asking in the first place.
“Yes, and the master takes the talent from him, gives it to the servant who has ten talents, and sends the third servant away in judgment.”
“I don’t understand.” She shook her head. “Do you think God is going to judge me for not giving my journal to Richard to publish?”
