“I opened it on accident. It was in a big stack of letters that I was going through, and I’m afraid I opened it and startedreading before I realized it was addressed to Yuri. But even though the envelope was addressed to Yuri, the letter itself was addressed to you. You can see why I had questions.”
Coldness swept through her. “Does anyone other than you and Yuri know about the letters?”
Bryony nodded. “The whole family knows.”
“The whole family?” She could hear the panic creeping into her voice, and she didn’t know how to stop it.
“Please don’t be upset.” Bryony reached out and settled a hand on her arm. “They’re just donation letters. Sending money to these charities is nothing to be ashamed of.”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she shoved the letters into her pocket and backed away. “No one except for Yuri is supposed to know.”
But if the rest of the Amoses had been told about the letters, how many people now knew? Twelve? Thirteen? Maybe even fourteen?
“Rosalind? It’s all right.” Bryony took another step forward. “None of us are going to tell your father.”
“No, it’s not all right.” Nothing about the situation was even close to right.
“Rosalind, please. Let’s sit back down on the log. We need to figure out how to get you away from your father. I know he was the one who hurt your wrist. You won’t be able to convince me otherwise.”
She just shook her head again, then took another step back. “No. No, I don’t want to sit and talk to you. I don’t want to do any of this.”
Then she turned and ran.
6
An Hour Later
Alexei shoved open the door to Governor Simon Caldwell’s office without waiting to be announced. He didn’t care that it was almost time for the governor to leave for the evening, nor did he care that one of the governor’s clerks rushed after him, telling him he couldn’t enter. He didn’t even care that his boots left muddy tracks on the rug due to the rain.
He’d arrived in Sitka less than an hour ago, and as far as he was concerned, he’d already waited too long to start demanding answers.
“You ordered the entire village of Klawock to leave Prince of Wales Island?”
“Alexei.” The governor looked up from where he sat behind his massive desk working through a stack of papers, then placed his pen carefully into its inkwell. “How nice to see you. I was just about to send a messenger to your office to arrange a meeting, and yet here you are.”
“Here I am,” he growled. “Explain yourself.”
“I’d love to.” The governor picked up a sheet of paper that had been lying on the corner of his desk and held it out for him. “You are hereby barred from visiting the villages of Klawock, Kasaan, Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, Unalaska, Barrow, or anywhere else.”
“What?” Alexei strode forward, once again not caring that his boots left scuffs of mud on the rug. A quick glance at the paper told him it said something about either halting contact with tribes or registering as an Indian agent or both. “You can’t stop me from trading with villages I’ve been working with my entire life.”
“But I can.” Simon folded his hands over the polished desk, his thin lips pressing into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “You see, the Department of the Interior is paying quite close attention to the tribes in Alaska. They’re under the rather mistaken assumption that they have some sort of claim to Alaska, and the government wants that corrected.”
Alexei tossed the paper back on the desk. “They were living and working here long before you arrived.”
“We paid Russia for every inch of this land.”
“Yes, and the Tlingit, Yupik, Inupiat, Aleut, Athabaskans, Haida, and any other tribe will tell you the land was never Russia’s to sell.”
A flicker of something he couldn’t quite read passed over the governor’s features—there and gone in less than a second. Then the man reached for the heavy brass letter opener on his desk. He turned it absently in his fingers, studying the dull gleam of metal. “Perhaps you’re right, but the Indians won’t claim the land is theirs either. They don’t view land as something that can be owned, only used. What a shame for them.”
It was a shame. Over the past century, that difference in mentality had caused far too many tribes to be taken advantage of, not just in Alaska, but everywhere.
“Since the Department of the Interior wants the Alaskan tribes to be consolidated into already-established towns, they’ve decided to limit outside contact with the tribes.” The governor set down the letter opener with a thunk. “They don’t want any negative influence on the tribes, you see. Don’t want them communicating with anyone who might try to persuade them that they have a claim to the land—or tell them not to leave a village they’re being ordered to leave.”
Alexei picked up the piece of paper again and looked at it a little closer. “It sounds like you’re saying I need to become an Indian agent in order to have contact with the tribes. What form do I need to fill out for that?”
The governor chuckled, then reached for another a short stack of papers. “You can apply, but you’ll never be accepted. Your views of the natives are too... ah, compassionate.”
