Roscoe bowed his head as he had often before, but having done it, he did not then move to the door. He said instead, “Not quite, if you please.” He turned to look directly at Sarah. “Perhaps Mrs. Kendrick has other matters to claim her? These I now must mention, if not trivial, are only tangential to the more important ones that have been settled.”

“Say what you have to say,” she declared, and was not sorry that her voice sounded rude, except in that it might gratify the man to know he had upset her.

Roscoe shrugged lightly; his voice was brisk as he turned to Leon. “Over the years a number of your slaves have run up debts to me. I have made them loans of money when there was something they had set their hearts upon and could not afford—a wedding dress, a burying suit, that kind of thing. All small, inconsequential. But the inconsequentialities have accumulated over the long years, and the sum owed me is—not an amount that would seem substantial to you perhaps, but to me, yes. I had not foreseen that accounts would have to be so suddenly closed. But so it is.”

“How much are you owed?” Leon said. “I will pay you.”

“That is gratifying to be told,” Roscoe said.

“Even though,” Sarah said, her voice trembling, “it was improper of you to lend money to them. You were not ever authorized to lend them money or demand interest.”

“Ah!” Roscoe said, as if taken by surprise at such an attitude. “I did not know. The system began many years before the young Mrs. Kendrick’s arrival at Beulah Land. It was known by the old mistress before you. No one said then or has said since that it was wrong—until now.” He looked at Leon as if genuinely puzzled.

“How much is it?” Leon said.

“I have no figures with me,” Roscoe said, “but I believe it is something over a thousand dollars. Of course, if it is for whatever reason or circumstance inconvenient to pay me in gold, I shall be agreeable to accepting slaves in exchange.”

“I shall—try to arrange direct payment to you,” Leon said.

“You will want to check my accounting. May I suggest that we set a day that is convenient for both of us and have the debtor slaves brought to our mutual presence and confirm—or deny, if they can—the sum charged against their names?”

“Yes. I agree.”

Roscoe bowed and turned as if to go, then turned back. “There is one other thing,” he said. “My family is complete with the exception of one—the boy Roman. I want to buy him, as I bought my wife.”

“He is not for sale,” Sarah said.