Forget-Me-Not Bride (10 page)

‘The likes of Miss Nettlesham will never speak to me,' Marietta agreed, not remotely disconcerted, ‘but that won't cause me any grief. And I doubt if, when it comes to it, you will stop speaking to me. Edie certainly won't stop speaking to me and though Susan Bumby might, I'd be surprised if Kate Salway cut me. Or Lettie.'

In one of the
Senator's
most luxurious cabins a handsomely mature woman with hair far redder than Marietta's, and naturally so, was saying to Lucky Jack Coolidge, ‘I'd like to befriend Miss Stullen and give her some tips on how to handle life in Dawson but if I did, everyone would assume she was going to be working at the
Gold Nugget
or the
Mother Lode
and by the time we hit town her reputation would be in shreds.'

Jack exhaled a ring of fragrant blue cigar smoke. He was lolling in a comfortably padded cane chair, his legs crossed at the ankle, his booted feet resting on a pink, satin-topped dressing-table stool.

‘I suppose you're right, Kitty, but it's a damned shame. I've a feeling Miss Lilli Stullen could do with a bit of straight feminine advice. She's obviously never been in a pioneer town before, much less a mining camp.'

‘She'll get used to it,' Kitty said dryly. ‘She might even have a protector waiting for her. Captain Stoddart says there are half a dozen Peabody brides aboard.'

Jack shook his head. ‘She ain't one of'em. She has a younger brother in tow. And the girl-friend she's travelling with is a kindergarten-teacher at Dawson public school.'

‘Then maybe Miss Stullen's a teacher, too,' Kitty said, shuddering at the thought of such boring respectability. ‘Do you think you could exert yourself, dear heart, and unhook me out of this corset? I don't see why I should be pinched damned near in half when I'm not on public view.'

‘So what do you think of'em?' Lettie asked morosely as Lilli sat down thankfully on one of the bottom bunks.

‘Who?' Lilli began to unlace her boots. The nervous strain of the previous day was at last catching up with her and she knew she would only have to lie down to be asleep within seconds.

‘The others. Miss High and Mighty Nettlesham and that masculine-looking Bumby girl and the racy Miss Rivere.'

Lilli eased her feet out of her boots. ‘I liked them,' she said, swinging her legs up onto the bunk. ‘Though perhaps not Miss Nettlesham,' she added quickly as Lettie's sullen features transformed themselves into an expression of stunned incredulity.

Lettie pushed a tangle of hair away from her eyes. ‘They've all got high opinions of themselves, haven't they?' she said sourly, plucking at the cheap material of her dress.

There was a world of misery in her voice and Lilli abandoned the prospect of a nap. Different though Kate Salway and Susan Bumby and Marietta and Edie were from each other, friendly relations had been established between them all, almost immediately. Only Lettie had remained stubbornly unfriendly, taking no part in the morning's conversation apart from her one comforting remark to Edie.

She looked searchingly across at Lettie, noticing for the first time the bruised look about her eyes and her pathetic thinness. Beneath her well-worn, bilberry-coloured dress her collar-bones were bonily prominent, her wrists and ankles almost stick-like. Her life before she had boarded the
Senator
had obviously been one of deprivation and, with sudden understanding, Lilli realised that Lettie was sullen because she had never had much love in her life and felt the world was against her.

‘No,' she said gently, taking care to keep all censure from her voice. ‘You haven't read them right, Lettie. None of them have high opinions of themselves. Kate Salway is more nervous than she's showing. Susan Bumby is painfully conscious that she isn't as pretty as you or Kate or Marietta. And Marietta has no false illusions about herself at all. She's simply herself.'

Lettie stopped plucking at her dress. ‘They make me feel uncomfortable,' she said with stark frankness. ‘Kate Salway talks like a Sunday School teacher and Susan Bumby thinks she knows everything there is to know.'

‘Kate Salway probably
is
a Sunday School teacher, but that doesn't mean she has a high opinion of herself. And as Susan is a teacher, it's only to be expected she has a school-marmish manner.'

‘I suppose so.' Lettie's voice was grudging. ‘But they're both so prissy I can't see either of them standing up to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, can you?'

Lilli's eyes nearly popped out of her head. ‘
Auctioned
?' she said, leaning her weight on her elbow as she stared across at Lettie. ‘
Auctioned
? What in the world do you mean, Lettie? No-one's going to be auctioned! They will be introduced by a representative of the marriage bureau, a Mr Nelson, to the gentlemen who have applied to the bureau for wives.'

Lettie regarded her pityingly. ‘You don't really think that's going to be the way of it, do you? Didn't you listen to what Susan Bumby said to you at breakfast? She said she didn't think anyone would
choose
you as a bride, not as you had two children in tow.'

‘Being chosen is a lot different to being auctioned! And Susan Bumby certainly wouldn't allow herself to be auctioned. It would be far too dangerous for her. What if no-one made a bid?' She shuddered at the very thought. ‘Susan certainly wouldn't expose herself to that kind of humiliation. She's far too intelligent.'

‘Oh, yeah?' Lettie swung her legs off her bunk and sat on the edge of it, her hands clasped between her knees. ‘There are thousands of men roaming the Klondike hoping to strike it rich. Like men everywhere a lot of them would like the home comforts a wife provides, but north of British Columbia respectable woman are as rare as penguins in the Sahara. Which is why the Peabody Marriage Bureau is doing such a roaring trade supplying them with respectable women who can't afford to be choosy. And when we arrive in Dawson it's going to be the
men
who take their pick. Not us.'

Lilli pushed herself up into a sitting position. ‘What do you mean by “women who can't afford to be choosy”?' she demanded indignantly. ‘
I
don't fall in that category! Marietta couldn't possibly fall into that category and neither could Kate …'

‘Oh yeah?' Lettie said again. ‘You don't have to look like the back of a tram to be so desperate you become a Peabody bride. I bet
you
didn't have much choice, did you? Little Edie certainly didn't. I doubt if racy Miss Rivere even
intends
marrying anyone. Kate Salway never did tell us why she was going to Dawson to marry but you can bet your sweet life the alternatives must have been pretty horrendous. I know mine were.'

There was thick bitterness in her voice and Lilli wanted to ask her just what those alternatives had been. Lettie gave her no opportunity.

‘And so when we get to Dawson Mr Nelson is going to be able to dispose of us as he thinks fit,' she said savagely, ‘and that's going to be in a way which is to his employer's best financial advantage.'

‘It isn't going to be with an auction.' Lilli's voice was firm. Even though she had already made up her mind that, like Marietta, she would not be marrying any of Mrs Peabody's clients, it was horrific beyond belief to think that her new-found friends might be treated in such an undignified, abominable manner. And she didn't believe it. Not for a minute.

‘Wait and see,' Lilli said darkly. ‘We're just cattle to market. Mrs Peabody is nothing but a white slave trader under a different guise.'

Lilli abandoned trying to argue with her. Lettie would find out differently when they arrived. She closed her eyes. She had been up since the crack of dawn and she needed to sleep, if only for thirty minutes.

Jack Coolidge's image fizzed against the backs of her eyelids. He had been wonderfully kind to Leo. Not many men would have taken the time to talk to a six year old boy the way he had done. She was glad he wasn't a gold-prospector, especially if they were all as unshaven and grizzle-haired as Marietta said they were. Initially she had been rather shocked to discover he was a professional gambler but remembering her father's love of gambling had helped her to quickly come to terms with the discovery, especially as her father had never allowed his gambling to harm his family in any way.

She smiled happily and then, just as sleep was about to claim her, another thought tugged at her muzzy brain. Hadn't Marietta, or perhaps it had been Edie or Kate, mentioned a dance-hall girl in the same breath they had spoken of Jack? What was it they had said exactly? She couldn't remember.

‘I don't know how you endure it,' Miss Nettlesham said to her that evening as she waylaid her near the stairs on the hurricane-deck. ‘Sharing a cabin with that Rivere creature or the retarded overgrown child she seems to have taken under her wing would be bad enough, but sharing it with a low-class, unclean …'

Assuming rightly that Miss Nettlesham was referring to Lettie, Lilli said sharply, ‘Lettie is shabby, not unclean.'

Miss Nettlesham adjusted the chiffon scarf securing her hat with a kid-gloved hand. ‘You must have very bad eye-sight, Miss Stullen, if you believe unwashed hair can be described as
shabby
.'

It was a point difficult to argue and Lilli didn't attempt to. She had left Leo and Lottie playing Halma with Susan Bumby and had been strolling the decks in the hope of accidentally-on-purpose meeting Lucky Jack Coolidge again. If she did so in Miss Nettlesham's company the encounter would be a complete waste of time and she was eager for Miss Nettlesham to take her leave of her.

‘As for that Rivere woman!' Miss Nettlesham shuddered and Lilli knew it wasn't from cold, even though the evening breeze was decidedly chilly. ‘Being seen in the company of a woman like that is enough to damn all our reputations. Do you know that she actually engaged Kitty Dufresne in conversation this morning? And in
public
!'

Lilli pulled the collar of her box-coat closer around her throat. There was no sign of a tall, broad-shouldered, Homburg-hatted figure, and good manners demanded Miss Nettlesham be endured. ‘Who is Kitty Dufresne?' she asked politely, wondering how on earth Miss Nettlesham was going to accommodate herself to the hardship of life in a mining camp.

Miss Nettlesham's camel-like nostrils quivered. ‘In her day Kitty Dufresne was the most notorious dance-hall girl in Dawson. Now, on behalf of her paramour, she employs dance-hall girls for the
Gold Nugget
and all the other disreputable dance-halls and saloons and ‘gaming hells'he owns.'

At the word ‘gaming'Lilli's attention was caught. Although she had not the slightest doubt that Jack Coolidge's gambling saloons would not be ‘hells' but would be exceedingly well run establishments, it was quite possible that the owner of the
Gold Nugget
was a business rival of his. ‘How come you know so much about the personalities of Dawson, Miss Nettlesham?' she asked, intrigued. ‘And who is this person who owns so many “gaming hells?”'

Across the silk-grey Pacific the coastline of British Columbia was violet against the twilit sky. Miss Nettlesham made an abrupt about-turn, obliging Lilli to forego the sight and face the open ocean. ‘Really, Miss Stullen! I'm surprised you need to ask when he's aboard ship! You must walk around with your eyes closed and your ears shut! He's Lucky Jack Coolidge, of course. Though what's lucky about a man no respectable person would pass the time of day with, I can't begin to imagine!'

Giddily, Lilli looked out beyond the hurricane-deck over the vast, velvet-dark expanse of the Pacific. Was Miss Nettlesham telling her the gospel truth or was she simply repeating malicious and untrue rumour and gossip? After all, Jack Coolidge had freely admitted to her that he was a professional gambler and that he owned many gambling saloons in Dawson. It was a fact she had already come to terms with and Miss Nettlesham's describing them as ‘hells'was utterly meaningless. She was the kind of stiff and starchy young woman who would describe
any
gambling saloon as being a gambling ‘hell'. It was the coupling of his name with a woman's, a woman apparently aboard the
Senator
, that made it feel as if the deck was tipping at her feet.

‘Did you say Miss Dufresne employs dance-hall girls for Mr Coolidge's establishments?,' she asked, trying to keep her voice cool and disinterested.

‘
Procuring
would be a better description,' Miss Nettlesham retorted tartly. ‘No doubt she struck gold when she engaged Miss Rivere in conversation. I knew the instant I set eyes on that young woman she was destined for Klondike City.'

‘Then Miss Dufresne is an
employee
, of Mr Coolidge's?' Lilli persisted, the deck beginning to steady. ‘And where is Klondike City? I've never heard of it. Is it near Dawson?'

The hurricane-deck was small and they had again been obliged to turn-about. In the pale Northern twilight Miss Nettlesham's albino fairness gave her a look of almost ghostly transparency. She raised a gloved hand to her mouth, coughed discreetly behind it and said, ‘You won't have heard of Klondike City, Miss Stullen, because under normal circumstances it would
never
be mentioned in polite conversation. Klondike City is the …' she lowered her voice almost to a whisper, ‘the
red-light
district of Dawson.'

Lilli's eyes widened. Miss Nettlesham's claims seemed to be growing wilder and wilder. She had obviously never set foot inside a gambling saloon and yet authoritively described Jack Coolidge's gambling saloons as ‘hells'; she had assumed, on no other evidence apart from Miss Kitty Dufresne being employed by Lucky Jack, that Miss Dufresne was Jack's ‘paramour'. And now, without ever having set foot in Dawson, she was quite categorically stating that part of it, known as Klondike City, was an area of ill repute.