Forget-Me-Not Bride (36 page)

Ringan looked at Lilli's pale, strained face. ‘A bite to eat would be verra welcome,' he said tentatively, ‘A sandwich, perhaps?'

‘A sandwich is the most uncomplicated request I've ever received. If you're so easily pleased Mr Cameron, Mrs Cameron is one hell of a lucky lady!'

Mrs Cameron had already stepped inside the bridal suite and was looking around it in horror. The fittings were sumptuous. How they had all been manhandled over the Chilkoot she couldn't even begin to imagine. The brass-headed bed was vast, its pillows in their lace-trimmed pillow-cases, plump. The bedspread was virginally white, the sheets satin-edged. On a mahogany chest was an ice-bucket containing a bottle of champagne. On a marble-top wash-stand was a rose-painted jug and washing-bowl. There was a mahogany inlaid wardrobe on bracket feet, a matching tallboy, a dark green velvet upholstered chair with a buttoned tub back and through an open door leading off from the bedroom, a claw-footed bath, steam rising from its contents. What there was not, was a couch.

The door closed as Ringan entered the room and Belinda Mulroney departed. He stood, feet set wide apart, his kilt still swinging slightly, his hands on his hipbones as he looked around the room Belinda had well-intentionally moved him into.

He registered the absence of a couch and the smallness of the chair with a sinking heart. He could hardly demand they be moved back into his previous room with its single bed and couch. If he did, the news would be all over Dawson by the morning and Josh Nelson might well take the line that Lilli's marriage was null and void.

‘Dinna fret, I'll sleep in the chair,' he said easily, not wanting to cause her more distress than she was already suffering on account of Lucky Jack.

‘I wasn't fretting.' It was true. Her initial horror had been on his behalf. She hadn't wanted him to be embarrassed. She hadn't wanted their few hours together to be marred by even more awkwardness.

Carefully she set her wedding bouquet down on the bed. Wearily she sat down beside it. There was so much she wanted to ask him, so much she wanted to find out about him before she left on the steamer in the morning. And she had no alternative but to leave. They were man and wife. She couldn't build a life for herself in Dawson separate from him. The consequent talk and speculation, added to speculation about his jail-bird past, would damn him utterly amongst his new neighbours.

‘As we've been given champagne, it would be a shame to waste it,' Ringan said practically, walking across to the chest, his swinging kilt magnificently accentuating his strong, well-shaped calves.

It was a typically Scottish, typically thrifty remark and she wondered again about the ease with which he had paid Josh Nelson twentyfive thousand dollars.

‘The money,' she said hesitantly as he eased the champagne cork from the bottle, ‘at the
Phoenix
. How did you …? I'll never be able to repay …'

He poured champagne into a fluted glass and handed it to her. ‘My grandfather was one of Britain's railway kings. My father invested the wealth he inherited wisely.' The tone of his voice altered as he added dryly, ‘And for the last ten years I've had no opportunity at all of spending the even greater wealth he left to me.'

She was so startled she spilt some of her champagne on her skirt. ‘You mean you're
rich
?' she said incredulously. ‘You haven't come to the Klondike seeking a fortune? You already have one?'

He grinned, relieved that he had at least caught her attention and taken her thoughts away from Lucky Jack. ‘Aye,' he said, filling his own glass to the brim, ‘so no more mention of the money I bid. It isna necessary.'

There was a knock at the door and as he crossed the room to answer it she wondered what other surprises were in store for her. She still knew nothing about the supposed crime he had been convicted of. And she didn't know how he was going to occupy himself in Dawson. Everyone else was either a prospector or living off the backs of prospectors. By his own admission Ringan didn't fall into the first category and it was beyond imagination he would ever fall into the second.

An immaculately dressed member of one of Belinda Mulroney's bar staff entered the room bearing a mammoth silver tray of sandwiches.

The anguish she had been feeling ever since the realisation that, unlike the other Peabody marriages, their marriage was not to be a proper marriage, surged through her with fresh vengeance. If only he felt for her a smidgeon of what she now felt for him, everything would have been so perfect.

The bar-man made a discreet, speedy exit. Ringan recrossed the room towards her, setting the silver salver down beside the ice-bucket. Not for the first time she noticed that all his movements betrayed athletic muscular co-ordination and grace.

‘Tell me about your prison sentence,' she said quietly. ‘Tell me how you came to be wrongfully convicted.'

His eyes darkened, something very like pain flaring through them. After a long moment he said tautly, ‘I wasna totally wrongfully convicted.' Several beats of silence filled the room and then he said, ‘I killed a man and, though I didna intend to kill him, when I had done so I felt no remorse.' His eyes held hers. ‘And I still feel no remorse,' he said, a pulse throbbing at his jaw-line.

Her mouth was dry. The fizzing champagne in her glass suddenly seemed obscenely inappropriate. ‘Why?' she asked, still absolutely certain he was morally innocent. ‘Tell me.'

The pulse continued to beat. He had never spoken of Patti's death with anyone. He took off his jacket and his jabot and then, unbuttoning his shirt at the throat, he said, ‘My mother died when I was a wee boy and my sister, Patti, was only a bairn. My father was a businessman and always busy with his own affairs. Patti and I were left in the care of nannies and governesses and a strong bond was forged between us.'

Her eyes held his in total empathy. When her own mother had died the bonds tying her to Leo and Lottie had been cast in hoops of steel.

‘Eleven years ago, when she was seventeen and I was a newly qualified doctor in Edinburgh and far from home, she fell in love with a man named Tad Rowntree, a man my father immediately discerned to be a blatant fortune-hunter.

He paused again, his pain agonisingly obvious.

‘They ran away together and my father called Rowntree's bluff by refusing to give permission for their marriage and striking Patti out of his will.'

There was another long pause and then he said, ‘Patty became pregnant and Rowntree took her to an abortionist. Afterwards, when she lay bleeding to death, he didna even call a doctor.'

He ran his hand through his gleamingly brushed helmet of hair making it thick and tumbled again. ‘When I was told, I did what any man would have done. I sought Rowntree out to give him a beating.'

‘And he died from it?'

Ringan gave a small, bitter laugh. ‘I only hit him the once and that was on his jaw and yes, he died. And though I've tried and I've tried, I canna be sorry for it.'

The urge to cross the room to him and offer him physical comfort was so strong she had to hug her arms to prevent herself from doing so.

‘She was a verra bonny lassie,' he said thickly, ‘Like you, she had true Celtic skin, so white it was almost translucent, but her hair was red, not dark. So deep and rich a red ye felt your hand would burn if it touched it.'

This time the silence was deeper and longer than ever before. She wondered if he realised the compliment he had paid her. She wondered what on earth she could say that wouldn't sound hopelessly inadequate. He had served ten years for inadvertently killing the man who had destroyed his sister. Ten years locked in a prison cell. She thought of his passionate love of nature and the way he had tried to communicate that love to Leo and Lottie and shuddered. For a man who loved wild-life and the open air as much as Ringan did, it had been a savagely hard sentence. No wonder that after such an experience he hadn't mixed easily with the prospectors aboard the
Senator
but had stood alone, gazing out to sea for hour after hour.

‘So perhaps, now ye know the truth of it, ye'll not want to be spending the night alone with me,' he said, his voice raw.

She shook her head, lights dancing in the soft upsweep of her hair. ‘No. You're wrong. What you've just told me doesn't change anything about the way I feel about our … our friendship. I always knew you could never have killed anyone intentionally and I'm not shocked at your inability to feel remorse. I just think you're being very truthful. Far more truthful than most people would be.'

He made his Scottish noise again in his throat, so vastly relieved by her reaction he couldn't speak.

Neither could she. The room was thick again with their silence.

‘About tomorrow …' he began awkwardly, wanting with every fibre of his being to somehow delay her departure, to perhaps deter her from leaving Dawson at all.

‘I'll leave on the morning steamer,' she said swiftly, not wanting to cause him the embarrassment of being encumbered with a wife he had no desire to set up home with. She squeezed her hand into fists, her nails digging deep into her palms, not wanting to think of Leo and Lottie's reactions when she told them they were returning immediately to Whitehorse.

‘Aye …' His despair was so deep he wondered if he was ever going to surface from it. It was understandable, of course, that she wanted to shake the dust of Dawson off her heels at the earliest opportunity. Hadn't he, knowing how she would feel, suggested she do so? And he had done so in order that she wouldn't have to suffer remaining in close proximity to the man who had so sorely let her down; the man she had believed was going to pay off Josh Nelson and marry her; the man who, by his own admision, had only wanted her as an employee.

His jaw tightened. How must she have felt when he, and not Lucky Jack, had made the bid that had saved her from marriage with a total stranger? How must she feel now, closeted in the intimacy of a bedroom with him? ‘If ye dinna mind I'll think take advantage of the bath that's waiting,' he said, unable to bear the fierce frustration of being so near to her and not being able to reach out and touch her; to take her in his arms; to make love to her with all his heart and all his soul.

She was relieved. He could tell. Savagely wishing the bath waiting for him was an ice-cold one he turned mutely on his heel and entered the bathroom, pushing the door closed behind him.

Lilli shut her eyes, squeezing them tight against the tears that threatened to fall. Dear Lord in heaven, how had she come to be in such an agonizing situation? An image of spilt milk flashed into her brain and she made a small sound, half hysterical laughter, half sob. It had been Lottie's spilt glass of milk that had triggered off the row with her uncle which had culminated in him demanding she leave his house for good. And then she had seen the newspaper article about Harriet Berton and her husband. And she had emulated Harriet Berton and stepped over the threshold of the Peabody Marriage Bureau.

She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. In many ways she didn't regret that step at all. It had led to her meeting Susan and Kate and Edie and Marietta and making friends she knew would be her friends for life. It had also led her to Alaska and the Yukon Valley and the scenery she had seen from the
Casca's
decks, blue hills rolling on towards the rim of the world and small creeks gurgling and bubbling down into the mighty river, were images that would stay with her forever.

If only she hadn't become so air-headedly besotted with Lucky Jack! If only Ringan had never seen her in such an intimate embrace with Lucky Jack! Then, perhaps, she would have realised the enormity of her feelings for Ringan much, much earlier. She would have sought out his company, as Lottie had done. And if she had done so perhaps he would have come to love her, instead of merely feeling compassion for her.

With heavy limbs she swung her legs from the bed. If she was to wash and clamber into her nightdress, then now was the time for her to do so.

The bathroom door hadn't quite shut and there were sounds of vigorous splashing. Presumably he was rinsing soap from his back. Trying hard not to think of how magnificent a sight his naked back would be she poured water from the washing jug into the bowl. Then, certain that he wouldn't re-enter the bedroom without first verifying she was decently clothed, she removed the cameo from the neck of her blouse and undid the tiny mother-of-pearl buttons at her wrists.

Once in her shift and bloomers she washed as adequately as she was able. The cold water revived her and her despair began to lift as her innate optimism re-asserted itself. She was
married
to Ringan. He had generously promised to open a bank account for her wherever she chose to settle. That meant that he would be remaining in touch with her. And that meant that there was at least hope that their relationship would change in character. They were, after all, already friends. That had been determined during the hours they had spent together at the Indian camp. And, given time and proper encouragement, friendship could lead to love.

As the sounds of splashing and wallowing continued she drew her nightdress from her travelling-bag and slid it over her head, then she removed her shift and bloomers. High-necked and long-sleeved and made of serviceable cambric, it wasn't the garment she would have chosen to wear on her wedding night. But then, she reminded herself, this wasn't her wedding night in the true sense of the word.

Bare-footed, she padded across to the bed and picked up her posy of forget-me-nots. He had picked them himself and he had chosen them because they matched the colour of her eyes. With hope coursing strongly though her veins she detached a tiny spray from the posy. She would press it in her New Testament. She would keep it for ever and ever.

The splashing abruptly ceased. There was a long moment's silence. His travel-bag was still near the door where the bell-boy had presumably deposited it. She wondered what he would be wearing when he emerged. Had he taken his night-shirt into the bathroom with him? And if not, would he dress again in full Highland regalia, even though it would mean his having to sleep in it?