Forget-Me-Not Bride (30 page)

‘I don't mind comin'to terms with a grievous disapointment,' his companion said magnaminously, clearing his throat and spitting.

Miss Nettlesham swayed slightly and Lilli tightened hold of her arm. ‘I think your sister needs time to adjust to the shock she's received,' she said to the swell, intent only on preventing Miss Nettlesham from being swept off and married instantly against her will. ‘I think she should remain with the other Peabody brides for a little while. This way, Miss Nettlesham. Mr Nelson is waiting for us to introduce ourselves to him.'

Still crying, Miss Nettlesham gratefully allowed Lilli to lead her away. ‘I can't believe it!' she gasped between sobs. ‘That ghastly man! All hairy and sweaty! I thought he was a
gentleman
. My brother had assured me he was a gentleman! He wasn't even wearing a bow-tie or a cravat, Miss Stullen! He looked like a … he looked like a
labourer
!'

As they neared Josh Nelson, Marietta turned around and saw them. ‘Oh Lord,' she said as Miss Nettlesham hiccuped and sobbed and continued to protest that she had been infamously, criminally duped, ‘Not another broken heart.'

‘I don't know about broken but it's certainly cruelly diappointed,' Lilli said, relieved to see that Lucky Jack was still in animated conversation with Josh Nelson. ‘What's happening here? Has Mr Nelson agreed to a pay-off?'

‘Don't cry,' Edie was saying to Miss Nettlesham. ‘It don't do no good to cry. It only makes you feel ever so ill. Have you a handkerchief? Would you like to borrow mine?'

‘Nelson has agreed to one pay-off but not to two,' Marietta said as Edie pulled a mean-looking handkerchief from her dress pocket and thrust it into Miss Nettlesham's kid-gloved hand.

‘But that's no good at all! He has to agree to a pay-off for both of us! And for Edie as well!'

Miss Nettlesham was blotting her eyes with Edie's handkerchief. Kate was standing a little apart from everyone else, her eyes dazed and unfocussed. Susan and Lettie were standing to the rear of Josh Nelson, waiting for his conversation with Lucky Jack to come to an end. All around them men were noisily milling about.

Lilli moved forward a step or two so that she could hear what Lucky Jack and Josh Nelson were saying.

‘One, yes. Two, no. Lord almighty, Jack! What do you take me for? If you want girls for the
Gold Nugget
and the
Mother Lode
, you find them for yourself! You've just come back from the Outside. You should have been able to find yourself plenty!'

‘I'm not arguing this toss out on the dock-side,' Lucky Jack said, aware of the many men around them listening with avid interest. ‘We'll discuss it over a bottle of bourbon at the
Gold Nugget
.'

‘If it's bourbon you've brought in from Outside I'll be right with you. First, though, I have to get these women over to the
Phoenix
.'

Lucky Jack nodded and then turned towards Lilli. ‘Don't worry about anything,' he said reassuringly. ‘I'll have it all sorted out by tonight.'

‘But Lucky Jack, what if …'

‘This way, ladies,' Josh Nelson boomed. ‘You ain't got much time for primping. Your would be husbands are already in town and by tomorrow you'll all be married ladies! Now this way, follow me.'

‘Don't worry,' Lucky Jack said again, his hand cupping her elbow. ‘I'll see to it you don't provide the town with free entertainment this evening. The sooner everyone gets to the
Phoenix
and gets settled in, the sooner I can come to an agreement with Josh.'

Leo tugged hard on Lilli's hand. ‘What's happening?' he asked, disturbed. ‘What did that man mean when he said you would be married by tomorrow? Why was Miss Bumby crying this morning and why is Miss Nettlesham crying now?'

‘Will you take Leo with you?' Lilli asked Lucky Jack urgently. ‘I don't want him seeing or hearing too much. He's very fond of Susan and Kate and …'

There was instant understanding in Lucky Jack's eyes. ‘Come with me, young Leo,' he said, unable to keep amusement from his voice. ‘Your sister is
asking
that you see the inside of the
Gold Nugget
! Such an occasion is never likely to happen again so we'd best take advantage of it!'

‘I didn't know the auction was going to be
tonight
,' Lettie said to Lilli as they began to walk in Josh Nelson's wake. ‘I thought we'd be here for a few days first. Neither Susan or Kate are in any fit condition for such an ordeal.'

They had stepped onto a shaded boardwalk and their heels were playing a tom-tom on the hollow floor. Every other falsefronted building seemed to be a saloon. Doors opened and closed constantly, releasing peals of tinny piano music and laughter. Many men they passed doffed their hats as if they knew them. Others leered. All of them obviously knew exactly why they were in Dawson.

‘Perhaps if we tell Mr Nelson that Kate is ill he'll abandon whatever plans he's made,' Lilli said, wondering how on earth they had all been so foolish or desperate to get into such a situation.

In front of them, Edie's hand was securely in Marietta's. Miss Nettlesham was walking hard behind them, still clutching tight hold of Edie's by-now sodden handkerchief. Susan was walking straight and tall and heavy-footedly. Kate still seemed to be in a trance, so totally withdrawn from what was going on around her that Lilli was beginning to seriously fear for her sanity.

Apart from saloons they passed tin shops, hardware shops, grocers'shops, barbers'shops and tobacconists. At last Josh Nelson announced with a flourish, ‘Here we are, ladies! The heart of Dawson! The
Phoenix
! Here you can prettify yourselves up ready to meet all the hopeful husbands at seven sharp.'

Even Lettie blanched. ‘Lord in heaven,' she said as she stepped into the
Phoenix's
gaudy interior, ‘What have we gotten into?'

She wasn't the only one wondering what they had all gotten into. With his kit-bag resting easily on his shoulder Ringan had watched the scene at the dock-side between Josh Nelson and Lilli and her friends with increasing perturbation. His disquiet wasn't on Lilli's account. Lilli, he knew, was not going to have to suffer the indignity of being auctioned off in marriage to the highest bidder. His disquiet was for three of the other girls. The heavy-featured, dark-haired girl who, when they had been aboard the
Senator
, had seemed to be on such agreeable terms with the clergyman; the dignified, pretty girl he had seen in the company of Peregrine Lister; and Edie. The heavy-featured girl was obviously in a state of deep distress. Peregrine Lister's former companion looked physically ill. And Edie looked pathetically bewildered.

When yet another distressed young woman had joined their ranks, shepherded by Lilli, his disquiet had deepened into anxious concern. None of the lassies looked as though they were going willingly with the marriage bureau's representative, and he didn't blame them. With his bulldog expression, carefully oiled and parted hair and dark, curled moustache, the gent in question looked more like a pimp than a respectable employee of a respectable establishment.

Lilli had assured him that Edie wasn't going to be put at the mercy of the brute who had tried to take advantage of her aboard the
Senator
, or of any other oaf; that Lucky Jack's business partner, the lustrous looking Kitty Dufresne, was going to pay off the marriage bureau representative and engage Edie as a maid.

Watching Edie as she trooped trustingly off in the representative's wake, her hand in Marietta's, Ringan hoped to God Kitty Dufresne didn't let Edie down. And if she did? The blunt angle of his jaw tightened. If she did then other arrangements would have to be made. And he would have to make them.

Lucky Jack's jaw was almost as tense as Ringan's. The instant he had begun his walk up Front Street, towards the
Gold Nugget
, he had been aware of the vast change that had taken place in Dawson. The same hodge-podge of banners, pennants, signs and placards, suspended from doors and windows and slung on poles across the street, advertised mining exchanges and gold-dust buyers, but the sense of fevered excitement had gone. Dawson was no longer the centre of the Gold Rush world. That honour was now, quite obviously, Nome's.

By the time he reached the
Gold Nugget's
swing saloon doors, he had determined to head off to Nome at the earliest opportunity. Kitty would either have to see sense and accompany him or she would have to remain in Dawson without him. He thought of the eight hundred mile or so voyage down the Yukon to its mouth. If he were to make the journey in time to be able to cross the Norton Sound to Nome before autumn ice made the Sound unnavigable, then he was going to have to leave immediately. And he was going to have to leave well-supplied.

‘I've got a lot of business to attend to, young Leo,' he said apologetically as they stepped into what had been the city's most popular and prosperous saloon. ‘I'm going to have to leave you to your own devices for a little while.'

‘That's all right.' Leo was gazing around at his surroundings in rapture. A real saloon! There was a long, curving, mahogany bar, a host of green-baized tables, great big posters showing Gentleman Jim Corbett trying to regain his heavy-weight title and Frank Slavin, ‘The Sydney Cornstalk', winning the Empire's heavyweight championship. There was also a host of men at the tables and, even though it was only the middle of the afternoon, a piano was being played and lots of pretty ladies in silk and satin were circulating between the tables.

Lucky Jack lifted Leo onto the bar. ‘You'll be able to see everything that's going on from here, young Leo. Gerry will see you're alright for lemonade.'

The bar-man gave Leo a wink and then said, ‘Takings are down, Mr Coolidge, but then I reckon you've guessed that already.'

‘It's nothing to fret about, Gerry,' Lucky Jack said easily, ‘We'll do what we always do. Pack up and move on.'

‘And Miss Kitty?' Gerry queried, continuing to clean glasses.

‘And Kitty too,' Lucky Jack responded, not having time to express his doubts on such a ticklish subject.

Gerry raised an eyebrow slightly but said nothing. Lucky Jack, having ascertained Leo was in safe hands, headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time and acknowledging noisy greetings every step of the way.

‘So it's a lemonade, is it?' Gerry said to Leo, wondering what in tarnation Lucky Jack was doing with a youngster in tow. ‘You a relative of Lucky Jack's, son?'

Leo shook his head, ‘No. But I might be when Lucky Jack marries Lilli.'

A glass dropped from Gerry's hand and shattered on the floor. ‘
Marries
? Lucky Jack? Now who in tarnation's been feeding you that garbage? And who's Lilli? A new dance-hall girl?'

Leo shook his head. ‘No,' he said, watching in fascination as, on a nearby table, chips clicked on green baize. ‘She's my sister and she's a Peabody bride. Or she was,' he added, wishing he understood things a little better. ‘Because if she's going to marry Lucky Jack, I don't suppose she's a Peabody bride any longer.'

‘I wish I'd never heard the word Peabody bride,' Susan was saying bitterly. ‘I only thought of becoming one because a friend of mine, Harriet Berton, was a Peabody bride. Like me, she was a kindergarten teacher, and like me she was nearly thirty and had given up all hope of marriage. Then she went to the marriage bureau and married Daniel.'

‘And were she and her husband happy?' Lettie asked, sitting close to a window so that she could see the activity in the street below.

‘Yes.' The speaker was Lilli and everyone looked at her in astonishment. ‘I read about Harriet's marriage in the San Francisco
Examiner
. There was a wedding photograph of them and they were obviously very happy.'

‘But why was their photograph in
The Examiner
?' Marietta asked, puzzled.

‘Because Daniel Berton went to Nome, struck it rich and had just returned to San Francisco with his bride to invest his new-found wealth in real estate,' Lilli said, remembering the moment in the cable-car when she had read the Bertons'story; remembering how, so soon afterwards, she had met Lucky Jack for the first time.

From the barn of a room beneath them came the sound of loud hurdy-gurdy music and male laughter.

‘I don't think I like it here,' Edie said tremulously, looking round the shabbily ornate room they had been cooped up in ever since Josh Nelson had left them to share a bottle of bourbon with Lucky Jack. ‘I liked it better on the boat. I liked it better when Mr Saskatchewan Stan told his funny stories and made me laugh.'

There was a heavy silence. All of them had liked it better on the boat. On the boat, for a little while at least, it had seemed as if nearly all their stories were going to have happy endings. Lucky Jack was going to pay off Josh Nelson for Lilli and Marietta and marry Lilli. Kitty Dufresne was going to pay off Josh Nelson for Edie and employ her as a maid. Susan had been hopeful of becoming the Reverend Mrs Jenkinson. Kate had been hopeful of becoming Lady Lister. Rosalind Nettlesham had had dreams of marrying a gentleman. Now, with only an hour to go before the process of marrying them off began, half those hopes lay in ashes and only one pay-off had been achieved.

‘It will be all right,' Lilli said, knowing that Edie's problem was in the forefront of all their minds. ‘Kitty won't forget her promise. I know she won't.'

‘And Rosalind is all right,' Lettie said practically. ‘She signed a completely different contract to ours and she has enough money to pay for an immediate passage back to San Francisco.'

‘But I don't
want
to go back to San Francisco!' Rosalind Nettlesham wailed. ‘I told everyone I was getting married. I told everyone my husband-to-be was practically the
mayor
of Dawson!'