He couldn’t claim to understand it. All he knew was that it was some kind of reaction she couldn’t fully control, and it made her suddenly experience random, intense bouts of fear.
Hopefully the women at the charity in Texas would know how to help her through it.
“Do you want to go to Texas and see the Woman’s Commonwealth? Do you want to try staying there for a few days?” he asked.
She pressed her lips together, her eyes still riveted on the ground. “Yes, I want to go see it at least. I don’t know if I’ll want to stay, though.”
“Then let me take you. You can see how you like it, and that will allow more time for things to get settled in Sitka.”
“And if they’re not settled by the time you need to leave for San Francisco?” she whispered. “Does that mean I have to stay behind in Texas?”
“I swore a vow to love and protect you, and those are the first things I’m going to do as your husband. Once your father is locked up, things might change, but we need to start by going to Texas. Because the truth is, even though you’re standing here asking if we could not file for an annulment, once you’re at the Commonwealth, you might want to stay forever and wantnothing to do with me, and there won’t be anything wrong with that decision. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
He turned back to the half-packed room. “Now let’s get back to packing so we can leave in the morning.”
He turned and took one of the shirtwaists she’d left lying on the bed, then folded it for her. If only her father had already faced trial and was sitting in prison. Then maybe the two of them could...
No. He couldn’t let his mind wander that direction. Because as far as he knew, her father wasn’t sitting in prison, and he might not ever be. He might find yet another way to weasel out of what seemed like a sure criminal conviction.
Besides, Rosalind had just told him that she wanted to go to Texas and see the Commonwealth for herself. How could she really know whether she wanted to stay married to him when she hadn’t yet seen the other option she had?
Telling her that they could stay married without letting her see the Commonwealth first felt like it would be taking yet another choice away from her, and he loved her too much to put her in that position.
37
Sitka; the Same Day
“Two hundred and twenty thousand dollars?” Secretary Gray blinked through his monocle, then leaned closer to the ledger splayed open on Alexei’s desk.
The secretary, Mikhail, and Jonas were all in his office above the warehouse, their bellies full from the meal Bryony had cooked earlier. Alexei had invited Secretary Gray over for dinner before he’d left Castle Hill that afternoon. He’d made the invitation look casual, like little more than a friendly offer, but had fully intended to spend most of their time together showing the other man the seal ledgers.
“They hid two hundred and twenty thousand dollars’ worth of seals from the Department of the Interior last year?” Secretary Gray dropped his monocle, letting it dangle on its chain as he looked at Alexei.
“Technically it was from the Bureau of Fisheries.” Alexei nodded toward the ledger. “But yes. At least, that’s how it appears.”
“There are four years’ worth of records.” Jonas rapped his knuckles atop the stack of ledgers they’d piled onto his desk.
Gray’s frown deepened. He picked up the nearest ledger and flipped a page with more force than necessary. “Are they all as bad as this one?”
“No. The earliest one starts off with only a few hundred extra seals harvested.” Jonas slid the ledger from 1884 out from the bottom of the stack and opened it. “It appears that once the ACC—or Caldwells, whoever you want to say is responsible—figured out how easy it was to take the extra seals and pay a few bribes, they scaled up their operation rather quickly.”
“Scaled it up?” Gray slammed the ledger shut, the crack echoing off the walls. “Do you have an estimate of how much money they cheated us out of in total?”
“They illegally harvested about three hundred and fifty thousand seals,” Jonas answered. “And with the US government’s bounty being two dollars per seal pelt, that means they kept about seven hundred thousand dollars by evading the bounties.”
“I have the exact tallies here.” Alexei slid the secretary one of the papers that he’d run a series of calculations on.
Gray snatched the paper, scanned it, then flung it back down on the desk. “Three-quarters of a million dollars. Do you understand what this means? They didn’t just cheat the Bureau of Fisheries. They cheated Washington. They cheated the whole of the American people.” He turned to Jonas, his voice trembling with rage. “Arrest Preston Caldwell. Immediately.”
Jonas held up his hands. “I’d love to arrest Caldwell, but I don’t have the authority to make any arrests. Marshal Hibbs stripped me of my position and badge.”
“He what?” Gray’s face reddened beneath his snowy hair. “I thought you were the Deputy Marshal?”
“I was.” A muscle pulsed on the side of Jonas’s jaw. “Until Hibbs returned to Sitka and realized I’d arrested Caldwell for attempted murder and arson, and that I was planning to arrest the governor for arson as soon as he returned to the island.”
“Hibbs is one of the people listed in the payout ledger.” Mikhail flipped through a couple pages of the ledger still splayed on the desk, then pointed to one of the lines. “He’s right here.”
