Forget-Me-Not Bride (25 page)

With a groan she turned over, pummelling her pillow. She would
not
start comparing Lucky Jack with Ringan Cameron. Ringan Cameron was a
murderer
! All Lucky Jack had done was to get drunk in understandable circumstances and neglect to take a small boy to see the rapids. And herself. He had, after all, promised her he would take her to see the rapids as well.

There was an ache somewhere in the region of her heart. For a second she nearly capitulated to it and then commonsense came to her aid. She was being utterly ridiculous and seeing everything totally out of perspective. Kitty Dufresne was Lucky Jack's business partner and if Kitty was adamant that she didn't want to join with him in extending their business operations, then Lucky Jack had a serious problem on his hands. No wonder he had had a few drinks too many! And what were one lot of rapids when they had all the magnificent scenery of the Yukon to look forward to?

And Kitty Dufresne's accusation that Lucky Jack was neither trustworthy or honourable? a small inner voice persisted.

Her eyes flew wide. Kitty Dufresne was
jealous
, for goodness sake! She was in love with Jack herself and so of course she had tried to paint him in a bad light!

Swamped with relief she sprang from the bed and crossed to the wash-stand. She had been making a mountain out of a mole-hill. After all, Lucky Jack wasn't the only person with a hang-over this morning. She had one as well. Another wash in cold water was what she needed. And perhaps a cup of hot, strong, black coffee.

‘This is a prettier boat than the
Senator
, isn't it?' Leo said as they

boarded the steamer
Casca
, a white, three-storeyed river boat with gingerbread fretwork around the cabins, a yellow smokestack and a bright red paddle-wheel at the stern.

‘The
Senator
was a ship,' Lilli corrected mildly, ‘Boats are smaller than ships.'

‘We're going a long way, aren't we?' Edie said naively. ‘I never thought we'd be going such a long way.'

‘For some of us, it can't be far enough.'

The speaker was Lettie. Edie disregarded the remark, not appreciating the undertone that lay behind it.

‘What do you mean?' Lilli asked curiously. None of them had troubled to explain to each other just
why
they had become Peabody brides. Kate had said she would do so and never followed through with her promise. Lettie had never even come close to doing so.

She said now, as Leo skipped on ahead of them and Edie paused to stand on the gangplank, gazing in child-like wonder at the glittering red paddle-wheel, ‘I had Pa trouble. My Ma died when I was eight and ever since then Pa treated me as a substitute wife.'

‘There's always a lot of housework for a daughter to do when her mother dies,' Lilli said, knowing the fact from her own experience and rather surprised that Lettie should have objected to such a burden. Where Lettie was concerned, she would have vowed she was a hard worker.

‘I wasn't talking housework,' Lettie said bleakly, ‘I was talking bed.'

Lilli missed her footing as she stepped off the gangplank onto the
Casca's
deck. ‘
Bed
?' she asked incredulously.

Lettie merely nodded and Lilli didn't ask for any further clarification. One look at the expression on Lettie's face was enough to tell her all she needed to know. She felt sick. No wonder Lettie had been so sullen and reserved and bruised-looking when they had first met her.

‘I figured nothing that could happen to me as a Peabody bride could be any worse than what I had already experienced and that as a wife I would at least have some rights.'

Edie was still hugging the gangplank's rail. Leo was no longer anywhere to be seen.

‘Kate's here for the same reason. Though it wasn't her pa who made her life hell. It was her brother.'

Lilli was beyond speech. Lettie and Kate's reasons for fleeing north made her own seem very trivial. It also made Kate's burgeoning romance with Lord Lister seem even more fairytale.

‘All I want is to be able to feel clean again,' Lettie said simply. ‘And it's easy to feel clean in this country, isn't it? It's so wide-open and pure and fresh.'

Lilli nodded, knowing exactly what Lettie meant. She, too, had fallen in love with the magnificent scenery, scenery she was sure was unlike anything else anywhere in the world. All afternoon she sat in a cane chair on deck, watching it roll by. In the far distance were mountains, their peaks lost amidst plumes of cloud. Nearer were rolling blue hills their colour intensified by drift after drift of forget-me-nots and the deep, drowned-purple of lupins. Occasionally, as the hills melted into valleys, the blue would be pierced by the sharp yellow of arnicas and the piercing white of daisies and anemones. It wasn't only the vegetation that was lush. Birds, too, were in thick profusion.

‘Mr Cameron says those are martins,' Lottie said informatively as she sat by Lilli's side watching birds dart from the Yukon's high clay banks. ‘and that's a thrush and that's a yellow warbler.'

Lilli made no comment. Since boarding the
Casca
she had managed to avoid Ringan Cameron and she had no particular desire to begin talking about him.

‘Mr Cameron knows an awful lot about birds,' Lotti added, wondering what the situation now was between Lilli and Lucky Jack but not liking to ask. ‘He's a Highlander and he says parts of the Highlands are very like the Yukon, though on a lot smaller scale of course.

Lilli allowed her to chatter on. Lucky Jack still hadn't made an appearance on deck, though discreet enquiries on her part had confirmed that he and Kitty Dufresne were aboard.

‘And that's a Redpoll,' Lottie was saying, proud of her new knowledge, ‘Can you see him? He's in the willow tree. And that bird singing those three descending notes is the olivesided flycatcher.'

Despite the fact that she was only listening to Lottie with a quarter of her attention, Lilli was impressed. She didn't particularly like Leo and Lottie spending as much time as they did in Ringan Cameron's company but they didn't seem to be coming to much harm by doing so. In fact, where natural history was concerned, they seemed to be gleaning themselves quite an education.

It was late evening, the sky still as light as if it was mid-afternoon, when Lucky Jack finally sought her out. ‘Am I in disgrace?' he asked with a rueful grin as he settled himself in the cane chair next to hers, his Homburg at a rakish angle,

‘I … Yes … No …' Her confusion took her by surprise. He
wasn't
still in disgrace. If he were, she wouldn't even be speaking to him. She had, however, expected him to be a little more shamefacedly contrite. And the disarming grin indicated that his contrition was marginal and not very shame-faced at all.

He reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘Least said, soonest mended,' he said in his teasing voice, confirming her suspicions, ‘or at least that's what my old Ma always used to say.'

Despite her disappointment in him, her lips twitched in unwilling amusement, pleasure at his touch knifing through her. ‘Miss Dufresne apologised to me on your behalf,' she said, trying to keep her voice cool in order to signify how very much he had let her, and Leo and Lottie, down. ‘And she also explained why it was you weren't able to take us to the rapids.' If she had thought that this revelation would convulse him with shame she was very much disappointed.

‘Did she now?' His grin deepened. ‘And Kitty usually so loyal too.'

Aware that he was lovingly laughing at her and knowing that nothing she could say or do was going to elicit the kind of response she had been anticipating, she abandoned the subject. ‘What will happen when we reach Dawson? Will we be staying there or will we be going on to Nome?'

‘Don't worry about Nome,' he said reassuringly, imagining she was worrying that he might have decided to employ her in a new business venture rather than one of his established businesses. ‘I shan't be expecting you to trail Leo and Lottie across the Norton Sound to the Seward Peninsula. And cutting across the Sound is, unfortunately, the only sensible way to reach Nome.'

‘But if
you're
going there …'

Miss Nettlesham hoved into view.

He released hold of her hand. ‘I don't know that I am, yet. Everything depends on what I find when we reach Dawson. Whatever I find, though, isn't going to affect you. You're going to have a home on Dawson's main street, Leo and Lottie will be within a hundred yards of the school-house …'

‘Good evening, Miss Stullen. Our journey has become exceedingly tedious, hasn't it? I …' Miss Nettlesham broke off abruptly. ‘Oh! I didn't realise I was intruding on a private conversation!'

Lucky Jack cursed beneath his breath and then rose reluctantly to his feet. No wonder he'd never attempted a courtship with a respectable young woman before. Even a few minutes privacy was impossible to achieve. ‘Evening, ma'am,' he said through his teeth. ‘I was just informing Miss Stullen that we'll be in Dawson in another thirty hours or so.'

‘Only if we meet with no mishap,' Miss Nettlesham said, showing no sign of resuming her lonely evening stroll. ‘My brother is a resident of Dawson, an
esteemed
resident of Dawson, and he has informed me that delays due to groundings on sand-bars are very likely.'

Lucky Jack didn't doubt it, he also didn't doubt Miss Nettlesham's ability to reduce him, within minutes, to a state of gibbering dementia. He
had
been about to reassure Lilli as to the comfort of the rooms set apart at
The Elaorado
for the housekeeper's own use. Without disclosing to Miss Nettlesham that he was
The Eldorado's
proprietor, a piece of information that, if it became public knowledge, would ensure that
The Eldorado's
reputation for respectability would be immediately compromised, he couldn't very well now do so. ‘It's been nice speaking with you, ladies,' he said, aware that yet again Lilli Stullen's virtue had been saved, this time by a guardian angel in a very unlikely guise, ‘and now I must wish you both goodnight.'

‘Goodnight,' Lilli said frustratedly, understanding his reason for his making a hasty departure and wishing Miss Nettlesham at the bottom of the Yukon.

‘How
very
fortunate that I was passing by,' Miss Nettlesham said, seating herself in the cane chair Lucky Jack had just vacated. ‘Gentlemen such as Mr Coolidge are
not
to be encouraged, Miss Stullen. Why, if it wasn't for my coming to your rescue as I did, I do believe you would have had to endure the embarrassment of his making a pass at you!'

‘And so before I could decently escape I had twenty minutes of hearing all about how
esteemed
her brother is in Dawson and of how equally
esteemed
her husband-to-be is!' Lilli said bitterly as she crawled into the bunk above Lottie's.

‘Does Miss Nettlesham know that Kate's beau is a member of the English aristocracy?' Lottie asked interestedly. ‘Because if she doesn't, someone should tell her. It might take her down peg or two.'

‘Better not tell her,' Leo's muffled voice said from beneath his blankets, ‘she might start having breakfast with us again and we don't want that, do we?'

‘I'm going to tell Mr Jenkinson that I'm a Peabody bride,' a pale-faced Susan said at breakfast next morning. ‘We stop off at an Indian camp in an hour or two to pick up cord-wood and I'm going to tell him then, when we go for a short walk together.'

‘If he's the man you think he is, he won't think any the less of you,' Lettie said, passing a plate of sourdough hot cakes across to Leo.

‘Perhaps not.' Susan's heavy jawline was tense. ‘But will he offer to marry me when he knows my circumstances? And even if he does, will he be able to
afford
to marry me? None of us know what sort of amount Mr Nelson will be willing to accept as compensation for our breaking our contract with the marriage bureau. And clergymen aren't overly well paid.'

No-one said anything because no-one could think of anything reassuring to say. The problem of how much compensation Mr Nelson would demand was one that was troubling all of them to a greater or lesser degree. Even more troubling was the worry as to how he might decide on the sum concerned.

‘What if he insists on seeing what each of us would fetch at auction and then demanding
that
figure as compensation?' Kate had said the last time the subject had come under discussion. ‘How could Lord Lister and the Reverend Mr Jenkinson take part in such a demeaning exercise?'

The answer was, of course, that they couldn't. And though Lucky Jack undoubtedly could, the very thought of him doing so filled Lilli with unspeakable horror. Savagely she reflected that it was no wonder Mrs Peabody had glossed over the actual arrangements for teaming a Peabody bride up with a husband. If she had been more frank, she would never have had a bride on her books.

‘We're stopping to take wood on for fuel,' Lilli said to Leo as the
Casca
dropped anchor. ‘Do you want to go ashore for a little while? Susan says we're going to be here for an hour or so.'

‘Yes,' Leo said unhesitatingly. ‘I want to see the Indians.'

So, it seemed, did nearly everyone else who was journeying up the Yukon for the first time.

‘Miss Bumby says the Indians wear rings in their noses,' Lottie said as they squeezed into the small, overcrowded boat that was to carry them over the shallows to the river bank. ‘I wouldn't want to wear a ring in my nose, would you? It must be very uncomfortable.'

‘Lucky Jack wears a ring in his ear,' Leo pointed out, leaning over the edge of the boat and trailing a hand in the swirling grey water, ‘Do you think that is uncomfortable as well?'

‘Where is Lucky Jack?' Lottie asked ingenuously. ‘Doesn't he want to see the Indians?'