“I do.” Alexei exhaled slowly, dragging a hand over his face. “I just—” He shook his head, watching as Yuri leaned in to catch every word the women said.
Alexei didn’t understand it. He never had. But somehow Yuri could navigate a room full of people with effortless charm and make himself useful in ways that had nothing to do with ciphering numbers on a ledger or drawing blueprints.
Or rather, he was useful when he wasn’t burning bridges with a shipbuilder as significant as Harold Farnsworth and getting them tangled up purchasing a shipyard that might be more trouble than it was worth.
10
Rosalind hurried down the east staircase, careful not to trip on the hem of her skirt as she rounded the landing. She was never late, but here she was, running almost five minutes behind because she’d ordered her lady’s maid to take extra care with her hair. She couldn’t arrive at the first library committee meeting looking like a girl without a single idea in her head. She needed to present herself as a polished professional woman. One who had ideas worth listening to. Otherwise she’d never get the committee to agree to set up a temporary library while they made arrangements for a more permanent one—and she’d never be able to get them to agree to name the library after her family either.
Oh, she hoped that last part wouldn’t be too hard. Her father would be furious if the library ended up named after a different patron.
She reached the lower hall, then straightened herself into a more dignified posture and slowed her steps lest she get in trouble for racing past her father’s office.
The smell of pipe smoke drifted from beneath the heavy wooden door. She was about to knock and then poke her headinside, just to let him know she was leaving, but the sound of her uncle speaking caused her to pause.
“...I told the customs office those contracts were already spoken for,” he was saying. “By the time the Amoses get wind of it, they’ll have nothing left to bid on. And that’s after I canceled three of the ship commission contracts earlier this week that the previous governor had given them.”
Rosalind’s hand dropped. The Amoses? Why were her father and uncle discussing them? Her family had already done enough to make the Amoses’ lives miserable.
Her father spoke next, and she leaned closer to the door so as not to miss anything. “Just how much money do you think the loss of those ship commissions will cost the Amoses?”
“Ten thousand a year for each of them, I’d think. So they’ve already lost three that would have been in their revenue predictions, then an additional three that I’m not even letting them know about until we have another bid accepted. That leaves us with sixty thousand total in lost revenue, maybe more.”
Her father let out a deep chuckle. “That’s a nice, large figure. It might not be enough to bankrupt them just yet. But it’s a start.”
Rosalind fisted her hands at her side. She was so tired of this. Why was her father always looking for a way to harass the Amoses? They were the kindest, most upstanding family in all of Sitka.
Or at least, that was how it seemed from her perspective. She didn’t know them very well. Being friends was impossible considering how much her father hated them. But she knew enough to tell that they were much different from her father. That was part of why she’d gone to Yuri and asked for help with her letters.
“Your favorite Marshal paid me a visit today.” Uncle Simon’s voice filtered through the door again.
A quiet clink followed, the sound of glass against glass, likely her father pouring himself brandy from the decanter. “Don’t tell me Hibbs wants more money.”
Her breath froze in her lungs. Were they talking about what she thought? Bribing the Marshal?
“You guessed that rather easily.” Dryness crept into her uncle’s tone.
“He always wants more money.” A soft thunk sounded. If she had to guess, her father had just set his snifter on the desk.
“He had a rather long list of why we should pay him more.”
“How much is he asking this time?”
“An extra hundred a month.”
Rosalind’s stomach tightened. Yes, that’s exactly what they were talking about, bribing the only lawman in Sitka and the one Marshal who was in charge of the entirety of Alaska. There was only one other lawman in Alaska, and that was Yuri’s brother-in-law Jonas Redding. But he lived in Juneau, and he worked under Marshal Hibbs as a Deputy Marshal.
She’d heard rumors that Marshal Hibbs was on her father’s payroll, but no one could ever prove anything. People just assumed the Marshal was being paid off when charges against her father got dropped after a few months of an investigation that stalled.
Two summers ago, her father had been investigated for falsifying the navigational charts that the ship captains used. The incorrect charts had led to numerous ships running aground or hitting rocks in the islands of Southeast Alaska. The Marshal had dropped all charges against her father last year and instead charged some clerk with the Revenue Cutter Service for making the mistake.
Before that, it looked as though her father might have paid men to kidnap the youngest Amos boy, Ilya, who had been around ten, but that time Marshal Hibbs hadn’t even tried tocharge her father. He’d pressed charges against the men who did the actual kidnapping and nothing more.
“That old fool just keeps getting pricier and pricier.” Her father’s voice took on a sharp edge. “Pay him for now, but maybe it’s time we start thinking about a less expensive way to protect ourselves from the law.”
“Those were my thoughts exactly,” her uncle drolled.
Rosalind swallowed. She didn’t want to think about what that meant. In fact, she didn’t want to think about what any of this meant. More suffering for the Amoses, more money to a crooked snake who had no business being a lawman, and likely more power for her father and uncle.
