Chapter 12
Sitka; the Same Day
Yuri tugged at his collar and leaned forward, squinting at numbers on the ledger.
A bead of sweat itched at his temple. He ignored it and focused on the ledger, tapping his pencil as he scanned the list of shipping weights, dock fees, and something that looked suspiciously like a misfiled invoice for six crates of salted cod.
“How does Alexei do this day after day without clawing his eyes out?”
Mikhail smirked from where he stood in the open space in front of the windows, swinging his Indian clubs in controlled, rhythmic arcs. Being an explorer in Alaska meant Mikhail didn’t have work during the winter, and this was one of the many ways he stayed fit. “Tired of doing Alexei’s paperwork?”
He’d grown tired of it after about twenty minutes. On the first day Alexei had left. And that had been six days ago. “No wonder he never smiles. I wouldn’t smile either if I had to calculate ledgers and match shipping manifests with warehouse records.”
“Don’t tell anyone, but I think Alexei likes the paperwork.” Mikhail drew one of the clubs forward in a loop across his chest, then guided it up over his shoulder and back down again, not breaking his concentration.
Yuri slid a random envelope into the ledger to mark his place, then snapped it shut.
Alexei could sort through most of this after he returned.
His older brother might have said he wanted the audit done by the time he returned, but he didn’t actually expect Yuri to follow through and have it completed, did he?
Alexei had been gone before, sometimes for as long as three months.
But they typically had time to prepare for his absence, to decide which paperwork was essential and which could wait.
And Alexei always let the businesses he was working with know when he would be gone for an extended period of time, which cut down on correspondence.
This was the first time Alexei had actually given him a specific task to complete.
He could still recall the way Alexei had narrowed his eyes at him, still hear the sound of his voice when he’d said, I’m in the middle of doing our semiannual audit.
. . . You should be able to finish it by the time I return.
It was an impossible task. Why did the audit need to be done at all? He’d found only a few discrepancies so far, and none of them were significant enough to impact the functioning of the business.
“I need a bit of air.” Yuri shoved away from Alexei’s desk, the polished surface not even visible beneath the mess of letters and shipping manifests and ledgers. “I’ll be back.”
Mikhail’s muscles flexed as he transitioned into yet another series of movements. This one involved swinging both sets of clubs high above his head before bringing them out in a series of wide circles. “Where are you going?”
“To the post office. I interviewed three men for mining-foreman positions while I was in San Francisco, and I want to see if any of their letters of recommendation have arrived.”
“You interviewed mining foremen?” Mikhail stopped, dropping his clubs to his side. “Why?”
“You know why.”
“We haven’t even filed a claim.” Mikhail set the clubs down and grabbed a towel, which he used to wipe the back of his neck and his forehead.
“Correction, you haven’t filed a claim here. In Sitka.”
“Don’t tell me you filed a claim in San Francisco for that gold vein I found in November.”
“Of course I filed a claim.”
Mikhail had found the vein purely by accident.
He’d been sent on a late-season rescue mission to find a team of missing botanists who had gotten lost after their guide had died in a bear attack.
He’d returned from the expedition with two things he hadn’t expected.
A future wife, and the location of a gold vein hidden deep in the mountains of the Stikine wilderness.
After he’d gotten home, the family had talked about filing a claim in Seattle so that no one in Alaska would know about the discovery, but Alexei sent Yuri to San Francisco before anyone had reason to travel to Seattle.
Yuri had just assumed he should file a claim there, but Mikhail clearly hadn’t been expecting him to do so.
“We’re about to buy a shipyard, and after that, Alexei will still want to buy a barge—either that or build one in our new shipyard.
” Yuri crossed his arms over his chest. “Both of those things will cost money. How better to get it than by mining the vein you found? That will involve hiring a foreman and likely setting up a small stamp mill. I don’t know if we’ll need an entire refinery on-site or if we can pay another company to process the gold, but I figured the right foreman could tell us that. ”
Mikhail’s face darkened into a scowl. “This is going to get out, you know. Everyone will discover that we own a claim.”
“My plan is for no one to know until we start exporting gold sometime this summer. If we handle things right and hire people from California rather than Alaska, we should be able to keep the entire operation secret for a few months.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You haven’t liked it from the beginning.
But if we don’t mine the vein, someone else will.
” He understood why Mikhail wanted everything in the wilderness left pristine and untouched.
But Alaska was over half a million square miles.
He wasn’t convinced that mining ten or twenty acres of land would make that big of a difference.
“This way we can have a say about how the mining is done, how the workers are treated, and how much of the mountainside gets destroyed in the mining process.”
Mikhail didn’t answer, just wiped the sweat from his hands, his movements slow and methodical.
“You can’t be mad that I filed the claim. We talked about this before you got married.”
Mikhail still said nothing. Yuri rolled his eyes, then turned his back on his brother and stalked down the stairs and outside into a rare bit of winter sunshine.
Was everyone in his family mad at him right now?
It seemed that way. Alexei was upset because he’d saved them money and not bought a sinking pile of rusted metal.
Mikhail was mad because he’d done something about the gold vein rather than just talk about it.
And Sacha . . . well, Sacha wasn’t mad. He probably looked at all of this as some kind of merry adventure.
But still, two of his brothers were unhappy with him, and he hated that feeling.
He strode up the street toward the post office, his boots sinking in the mud from days upon days of winter rain that had preceded the afternoon’s small bit of milky sunshine.
The air carried the scent of salt and damp timber, mingling with the faint aroma of woodsmoke from the chimneys of shops and houses.
Everyone seemed to be outside enjoying the break in the rain.
Dockworkers were hauling crates from a newly arrived ship, a group of women stood beneath the porch of the mercantile chatting away, and a pair of fishermen stood near the docks mending their nets.
At least here, outside the office, no one was upset with him.
He turned, leaving the waterfront and making his way to where the post office sat a block inland. The bell above the door gave a hollow chime when he stepped inside, and Mr. Hooper looked up from where he stood behind the counter sorting a bundle of letters.
“Ah, Yuri.” He reached beneath the counter. “Got a fair bit of mail for you today.”
“Thank you.” Yuri took the stack and flipped through the letters. Most of them were for Alexei, but a couple were postmarked from San Francisco. Could they be from the mining foremen candidates?
The bell rang behind him. He tucked the envelopes into the pocket of his coat and turned toward the door, then stopped.
Rosalind Caldwell stood just inside, her hand resting lightly on the arm of a hulking dark-haired man with streaks of gray at his temples. There was something familiar about the giant, though Yuri couldn’t quite place where he’d seen him before.
“Mr. Amos.” Her voice was perfectly polite when she spoke, without any hint of the vulnerability from their conversation after the library committee meeting. “I don’t believe you’ve been introduced. This is Mr. Leeland Vandermeer, my fiancé.”
Fiancé? The breath rushed from his lungs, and for a moment, he could only stare at Rosalind and the man towering beside her.
Alexei would know how to keep his face neutral and his features schooled at a time like this. He would know how to look at the large man and not give away a single thought or emotion.
But he wasn’t Alexei, and he hated the man beside Rosalind instantly, if for no other reason than the fact that Rosalind was just as cold and proper around him as she was around her father.
And that wasn’t the true Rosalind. It wasn’t the woman who could dream up a library by the water so townsfolk could have a pleasant place to read, and a temporary library so that people could have access to books months sooner than they would otherwise.
He didn’t know what emotions flashed across his face as he looked between Rosalind and Vandermeer. All he knew was that her fiancé watched him with dark eyes that made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.
“Your name sounds familiar.” Yuri forced himself to extend his hand. “Have we met?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Mr. Vande— Leeland, this is Yuri Amos.” Rosalind nodded his direction. “His family owns both Sitka Trading Company and Amos Family Shipbuilders. Perhaps you’ve done business?”
“Sitka Trading Company?” The man gave his hand a stiff shake. “I believe we have a contract with your family’s company to handle goods delivered by ship and transport them inland on my railroad line out of Seattle.”
Something about the man’s tone set Yuri’s teeth on edge, but at least now he knew why he recognized him.
“How is it you know my fiancée?” Vandermeer looked between the two of them.