***
10 February 1831
Island of New Pixham
via Bridgetown, Barbadoes
British West Indies
Dear Willow,
I have just received your letter dated 15 January regarding the visit of my uncle. Thank you for writing to alert me. It is clear from your description that you handled the situation deftly, despite the unpleasantness, and I am mortified that Archibald has imposed himself. Please accept my most sincere apologies. As you make your new life in London, you’ve certainly no use for a verbose relation sniffing around with repeated calls and thinly veiled interrogations.
It is my great hope that by the time you receive this, his visit will be all but forgotten and that he has not been heard from again. If for some reason he does return, please reiterate to your aunt’s staff that he should be turned away without backward glance. Invoke Mr. Fisk to be ruthless, if you must.
At the risk of boring you with family politics, Archibald appears to be hounding my mother and brother in Yorkshire as well. He and one of his sons have made the journey to Caldera for an extended stay, and they seem disinclined (as of her last writing) to leave. They’ve installed themselves in the family wing of the castle and make repeated visits to tenants and the sealed mines. My mother is at a loss for how to evict him. My brother is a mild and bookish young man, far more suited to his work as a historian than family protector, and he, too, seems powerless to drive our uncle out.
I would return to England and deal with him in person (and I may do this yet), but we are making such progress. We’ve tweaked the system of scaffolding and chutes, eliminating nearly all waste. We are sealing thousands of pounds of guano in barrels. We may have double the haul we expected.
Each of us has fallen into informal roles in the operation—Stoker manages anything to do with the ship, Joseph coordinates the logistics for making port in London and distributing the guano to buyers, and I oversee the actual mining, but we all swing a jackhammer, we all shoulder barrels of cargo, we all toil daily, and no man can be spared. With every new threat from home, I curse Archibald’s name.
Then again, he did give you cause to write me, and for this I am grateful. If I’m being honest, I live day to day for any word from Belgravia. I welcome any reason you may have to write, even news of Archibald.
Although my work here is for my family and for Caldera, it would be a lie to say that I do not also believe that, somehow, if you will allow it, I work also for you and me. This is either folly or selfishness or both, because we’ve made no promises—or it should be said that I made no promises—and you are obviously making precisely the life you wanted in London, but still, it could not go unsaid.
And so now I’ve said it. And now I will cease, except to reiterate how very much I miss you, Willow.
Yours,
Cassin
***
15 February 1831
No. 43 Wilton Crescent
Belgrave Square
London, England
Dear Cassin,
Please overlook another letter so rapidly on the heels of my last and forgive my brevity and haste.
I am trying desperately to seal this and see it carried to the Barbadoes mail packet that leaves the General Post Office in St. Martins Le Grand on the first Wednesday of the month. (Yes, I have committed the schedule to memory.)
But here is my urgent news. I pray God it is inconsequential, but only you may be the judge of that.
Your uncle has returned to Belgrave Square, several times in fact, although I have refused to receive him. I keep out of sight when he calls, but the staff summons me so that I may listen to his exchange with the butler without being seen.
Yesterday he called late in the day, oddly late, a new level of rudeness, and my aunt’s butler struggled to remain cordial before I intervened. Archibald was wildly insistent, biting and impatient. He was so set on seeing me that I finally emerged and demanded to know his purpose.
He claimed that he required a signature—your signature—on “important documents” pertaining to Caldera. When I asked how I might provide such a signature, considering you were half a world away, he said that he himself intended to sign on your behalf—“by proxy,” he said—and needed only to view some other official paperwork that bore your signature.
Cassin, I believe he meant to forge your name.
When I pressed for more detail, he said that he had just recently returned from Yorkshire, and the situation at Caldera had grown very dire indeed, that the winter had been punishing on the castle and your family. He bemoaned your absence and your (alleged) “indulgent lack of interest” in your responsibilities. That said, he assured me that he had discovered a new and inspired strategy to save us all. (Clearly he includes me in Caldera’s dire state, whatever it may be.)
