Forget-Me-Not Bride (31 page)

‘Then you're going to have to think up another fairy-story to tell them,' Marietta said unsympathetically, ‘and while you're doing it, just be grateful that in another few minutes' time you're not going to have to go down to the dance-hall and be sold to the highest bidder like Susan and Kate and Lettie and Lilli.'

Lilli's pupils dilated so wide her blue eyes seemed black. ‘Me?' she queried in a voice that seemed to come from a very great distance. ‘Don't you mean yourself, Marietta? You said Lucky Jack had made arrangements for my pay off with Josh Nelson and that Josh Nelson wouldn't accept a second pay-off from him. A pay-off for yourself. That's why Lucky Jack asked Josh Nelson to join him for a drink at the
Gold Nugget
, so that he could persuade Josh Nelson to accept a pay off for you as well.'

Marietta shook her head, her pekinese eyes full of pain. ‘No,' she said bleakly. ‘I said that Nelson would only accept one pay off. I never said who it was for.'

‘And it was for you?' Lilli's voice was a croak. Why hadn't she asked? Why hadn't she realised?'

‘But Lucky Jack won't let you down,' Edie said comfortingly, not really understanding all the anxious talk about pay-offs, understanding only that her friends were happy no longer and that
their
unhappiness was making
her
feel unhappy.

Lilli thought of Lucky Jack neglecting to keep an eye on Leo on the
Senator
, of his not thinking to help them when they disembarked at Skagway, at his forgetting his promise to take them to the rapids. Her clasped hands tightened together until her knuckles were white. ‘Oh sweet heaven!' she prayed inwardly, ‘don't let me down this time, Lucky Jack! Please, please,
please
, don't be playing cards now, not when I really need you!'

Lottie, who had been sitting next to Kate giving her what silent comfort she could, was equally appalled. Lucky Jack's intentions were always well-meant, but experience had taught there was often a disastrous gap between his intentions and their fulfilment.

‘Something is beginning to happen,' Lettie said suddenly from her viewpoint at the window. ‘A crowd's beginning to gather.'

The music from downstairs had also changed in tone. Now there was the sound of a tinkling piano, scraping fiddles and blaring horns.

‘Oh, it's all so vulgar!' Rosalind Nettlesham moaned, rocking herself backwards and forwards slightly, her brown tailored jacket still crisply buttoned, her hands still immaculately gloved.

‘Open the window, Lettie,' Marietta said, ‘Let's hear what's going on.'

Lettie pushed the window open and they were instantly inundated with a cacophony of noise. Dogs were barking, huskies howling, a newsboy was selling papers, crying over and over again ‘The
Nugget
! The
Nugget
! The dear little
Nugget
!' A dance hall caller was shouting through a megaphone, ‘Come to the
Phoenix
, boys! Come to the
Phoenix
! The brides are here and if it's a wife you're wanting, all you have to do is shout your bid!'

‘I cannot believe Harriet Dutton endured such a hell,' Susan said, beads of perspiration gleaming on her incipient moustache. ‘I must have been mad to have walked across Mrs Peabody's threshold. Insane.'

‘Susan, I …' Lettie began and then the door was flung open.

‘Well, ladies, have your prettified yourselves?' Josh Nelson demanded, looking round at them and seeing quite clearly that they hadn't. A couple of 'em, of course, didn't need to. The dark-haired girl in the white lace shirtwaist, for instance, and the pale-looking girl in the midnight-blue dress and the saucy ginger-haired piece. He reminded himself that the saucy ginger-haired piece wasn't for auction, having already been expensively purchased by Lucky Jack.

He hooked his thumbs in his vest, surveying his goods, relieved that Lucky Jack had been too busy with his own affairs to carry out his promise to share a bottle of bourbon with him. If Lucky Jack had done, as sure as eggs were eggs, he'd have thought of some way of persuading him to accept a pay off for the other looker and then where would he have been? Looking at Susan he groaned. How the hell was he going to slide any money into his palm where she was concerned? He'd be lucky if he even recouped her fare for Mrs Peabody.

‘Come on then, this is the moment you've been waiting for,' he exhorted, beckoning them towards the open doorway, ‘But not you,' he nodded his head in the direction of Marietta. ‘You can stay here and look after the kiddie. And not you,' his eyes had flicked towards Rosalind Nettlesham. ‘You shouldn't be here at all. Your husband-to-be was supposed to meet you off the boat.'

Lettie rose from her seat near the window and crossed the room. Watching her, Lilli realised that out of all of them, she was the only one who had appreciated right from the outset what the realities of being a Peabody bride would be. And she was the only one of them still quite willing to fulfil her contract to the marriage bureau.

Susan rose clumsily to her feet and, taking Kate gently by the arm, began to walk with her towards the door.

Lilli stood up slowly. ‘I think you've made a mistake, Mr Nelson,' she said through parched lips. ‘You only told Miss Rivere and Miss Nettlesham they were to remain behind. You should have also stipulated Miss Hobson and myself.'

Josh Nelson's eyebrows rose towards his slickly oiled hairline. He knew darn well that one of the remaining girls was under the impression Coolidge was going to pay him off for her, because he'd attempted to do so at the dock and, having failed, had announced his intention of doing so over a bottle of bourbon at the
Gold Nugget
. He hadn't, however, realised that Coolidge intended trying to pay him off for
two
more girls. And looking at the dumpy, blank-faced Miss Hobson he couldn't even begin to believe it.

He opened his mouth to tell the young woman facing him so, and then checked himself. Her eyes had a captivating slant, as did the soft tilt of her brows, but there was nothing soft in her expression. Rather, there was a fierce intelligence that threatened trouble.

‘No doubt Lucky Jack is downstairs by now, ma'am. When we get downstairs and see him we can solve all your little problems.'

It was a blatant lie but he told it with practised ease.

‘And Edie?' The words were like a whip-lash and they came from the saucy ginger-haired piece.

Presuming correctly that Edie was the dumpy, simple-looking girl he said smoothly, ‘If Mr Coolidge was going to come to some arrangement with me about Miss Hobson then no doubt he'll do so at the same time he clarifies Miss Stullen's situation.'

‘It isn't Mr Coolidge who wishes to pay you off for Miss Hobson. It's Miss Dufresne.'

Josh Nelson felt a shaft of relief. At least now he didn't have to worry about Lucky Jack's sanity.

‘The same thing applies ma'am,' he said soothingly, knowing the sooner he separated the girl he was speaking to from the simple-looking girl, the better. ‘Now, ladies. If you'd just come with me …'

‘I don't believe him,' Marietta said tautly to Lilli. ‘I don't believe either Lucky Jack or Kitty are in the building.'

Neither did Lilli. ‘Find them,' she said, trying to keep the panic she was feeling out of her voice. ‘Find them and bring them here, Marietta. Quickly!'

Marietta turned to Edie, ‘Do you remember when I said there might come a time when I wouldn't be able to be with you, Edie? Well, this is it. I want you to go with Susan and Lilli and Lettie and Kate. And there's no need to get frightened. I'm going to come back for you and I'm not going to let anything horrid happen to you. I promise.'

With her little monkey face a mask of determination she pushed her way past Josh Nelson and ignoring his cries of protest, ran fleet-footedly down the stairs.

‘Stay with Miss Nettlesham,' Lilli said to Lottie.

Lottie nodded, careful not to verbally make a promise she knew she was going to break.

Susan and Kate were already at the door. Feeling as if she were about to walk into the jaws of hell, Lilli took hold of Edie's hand and crossed the room to join them.

Leo was having the time of his life. Gerry, in starched shirt and apron, a white waistcoat drawing attention to his flamboyant diamond stickpin, kept him regularly supplied with lemonade, introducing him to all and sundry as ‘Lucky Jack's new sidekick'.

Gamblers and miners obligingly took him round the tables, educating him in the niceties of faro, poker, dice and roulette.

When his magic lady entered the saloon, escorted by a veritable platoon of men carrying her steamer trunks, a roar of welcome went up so deafening Leo thought it must have been heard in Skagway.

Kitty had dressed up for her return in a glorious hat fairly dripping willow plumes. The plumes tickled Leo's nose as she chucked him under the chin and kissed his cheek.

‘It hasn't taken long for you to find where all the action in Dawson takes place,' she said, amusement thick in her voice. ‘Is there any champagne in that lemonade and if not, why not? Gerry! A little champagne for my friend here. Not too much but enough to make him feel a part of things.'

‘Lucky Jack's upstairs,' Gerry said, topping up Leo's glass with the
Gold Nugget's
sixty dollars a quart best. ‘Seems like he's all set to ship out for Nome.'

The radiance drained from Kitty's peaches and cream complexion. ‘Is he?' she said, such a queer note in her voice Leo wondered if she was perhaps not feeling very well. ‘Well I'm not, Gerry. My days of chasing rainbows are over.'

Abruptly she turned away from the mirror-backed bar and mounted the stairs, the heavy emerald silk of her travelling dress swirling around her ankles.

Leo was plunged into disappointment, but not for long. A man dressed in fringed buckskin, with black locks hanging to his shoulders, began telling him how, every evening at eight o'clock, he gave a shooting display, his
pièce de résistance
being to shoot glass balls from between the thumb and forefinger of his pretty blonde wife.

Leo was just about to ask him for a demonstration when Lord Lister entered the bar, his handsome face taut and strained. ‘A double shot of whiskey,' he said peremptorily to Gerry and then, to Leo, ‘You shouldn't be in here, y'know. You should be with your sister.'

Assuming, quite rightly, that Lord Lister was referring to Lilli and not Lottie, Leo said, ‘I can't be with her. She's with all the other Peabody brides and Mr Nelson has taken them to the
Phoenix
.'

Lord Lister knocked his whiskey back in two swift gulps. He had entered the
Gold Nugget
intent on becoming drunk in the shortest time possible and he wasn't going to let even Leo stand in his way. Affianced! The words rang in his memory like thunderclaps. The quality that had first attracted him to Kate had been her shining, moral integrity. It had made a welcome change from the worldly sophistication he was accustomed to. And she hadn't been shiningly moral after all. All the time she had been accepting his advances she had been affianced. Somewhere, here in Dawson, was the man she had been faithless to; the man she was still intent on marrying.

‘Peabody brides? What the devil are they?' he asked, dragging his attention back to Leo.

Leo hesitated, not quite sure. Seeing his difficulty Gerry said, ‘Mail-order brides. Respectable women are in short supply in Dawson and women keen on getting hitched are shipped up here by the Peabody Marriage Bureau. There's usually a fair old scramble when Nelson auctions'em off.'

Lord Lister set his empty glass down on the bar, too incredulous to ask for it to be refilled. Lilli Stullen a mail order bride! Lilli Stullen, a girl who could have her pick of men, being auctioned off as if she were a slave in a Turkish market-place! ‘I don't believe it,' he said flatly. ‘Why the devil would a girl like your sister become a mail-order bride?

Leo had listened in to enough conversations to have a very good idea. ‘My uncle didn't like her and wouldn't let her live with us anymore and so we ran away,' he said succinctly, ‘Kate and Lettie ran away too.'

‘
Kate
?' In a swift, disbelieving movement, Lord Lister sent his empty glass skidding across the polished surface of the bar.

Leo nodded. ‘Kate didn't run away because of her uncle,' he said, trying to remember all he had overheard and not understood, ‘she ran away because of her brother. And it wasn't because he didn't like her. It was because he liked her too much and …'

‘
Jesus God
!'

Too late Leo remembered that Kate had told Lord Lister she was affianced, though just why she had told him such an untruth he wasn't quite sure. One thing he was sure of, though, was that she hadn't wanted to tell him such a lie. Telling it had made her ill.

‘And I suppose she thought you wouldn't like her anymore if you knew and so she fibbed about having a fiancé and …'

Lord Lister was no longer listening to him. He was striding out of the saloon with the speed and urgency of a man bent on a life and death mission.

Seconds later, over and above the noisy shouting and laughter at the bar and the tables, voices could be heard in furious argument, one of them a woman's.

‘There's trouble afoot,' Gerry said to Leo, his eyes flicking towards the top of the broad, central staircase. ‘Kitty's reached the end of the line where moving on is concerned. And Lucky Jack's going to be moving on until the Second Trump.'

At a nearby table a faro player was saying loudly in disgust, ‘Well, that's the way I made it, and that's the way it's gone, so what the hell!'

And then, simultaneously, Marietta hurtled through the
Gold Nugget's
swing doors and Kitty began to storm down the stairs.