Forget-Me-Not Bride (38 page)

‘Are we sailing on the
Casca
?' Lottie asked, as pale-faced and as hunched as if she were a beaten child. ‘What is Captain Stoddart going to say when he sees us again?'

Lilli didn't know and she didn't care. She only knew her heart was breaking and that if she didn't board the
Casca
immediately, the entire world would know it was doing so.

‘Goodbye,' she said, the tears burning the backs of her eyes. ‘Give my love to Edie. Tell her I'll write. I'll write to all of you.'

The
Casca's
whistle shrilled again. Leo began to cry. Harsh, tearing sobs that shuddered his entire body. No-one made a move to comfort him, knowing that all comfort would be vain.

In a sea of pain Lilli stretched out her hand and took her carpet-bag from Ringan's grasp. ‘Goodbye,' she said, not able to look him in the eyes. Knowing that if she did so she would be totally lost. ‘Thank you for … for everything,' and then, before he could even say goodbye in response, before the sound of his voice should unhinge her completely, she turned on her heel, walking quickly up the the steep incline of the
Casca's
gangplank.

‘Lord in heaven,' Marietta said as Lottie, her little face bruised with grief, took hold of Leo's hand and began walking after Lilli with such unsteady steps she might have been blind.

Numbly they watched the children join Lilli at the deckrail; in stricken disbelief their eyes remained on them as the
Casca
began to pull away, heading out into the centre of the river.

‘Lord in heaven,' Marietta said again, tears streaming down her face, ‘How could you ask her to leave, Ringan? How could you send the three of them away?'

‘She couldn't have stayed.' His voice was harsh, his eyes still fixed on the dark-haired figure in the caramel coloured shirtwaist and toffee coloured skirt as the
Casca
approached the first of the hundreds of bends that lay between Dawson and Whitehorse. ‘It would have pained her too much.'

‘Pained her?' The speaker wasn't Marietta, but Mr Jenkinson. ‘But how? She wanted so much to make her life here. She asked me, if I were to open a school for Indian children, if she could work with me, teaching them. I feel badly that I told her there would be no such school, that I wouldn't be staying in Dawson, but that was, of course, when I thought Miss Bumby … when I thought Mrs Jenkinson … lost to me.'

The
Casca
steamed around the bend; was gone. All that remained was the white spume of her wake as it rippled the river's steel-grey surface.

‘The Indians?' Ringan dragged his eyes away from the empty river, facing Mr Jenkinson. ‘The Indians?' he said again dazedly, ‘Lilli wanted to work with the Indians?'

‘She most certainly did,' Mr Jenkinson said vehemently, wondering if his own statement, that there would be no school for Indian children at which she could teach, had been a contributing factor in Lilli's decision to leave and hoping very much that it hadn't.

Ringan felt as if the ground were shelving away at his feet. Dear God in heaven! Why hadn't she told him of her desire to work with Indian children when he had told her his own plans? Their mutual ambitions were, after all, wonderfully compatible. Or they would have been if only she could have remained in the Yukon Valley without being tormented by the thought of Lucky Jack's proximity.

‘Are you really sailing with us this afternoon?' Lettie was asking Marietta.

With difficulty Marietta dragged her attention from Ringan's tortured face. What on earth had taken place between him and Lilli? Why were two people, so clearly destined for each other, making each other so very, very unhappy?

‘Yes. Lucky Jack is supervising the loading of his supplies right now. He might have initially arrived in Dawson with only the goods he could carry on his back, but he certainly isn't leaving that way!'

Ringan stared at her in stupified disbelief. ‘Leaving? Coolidge is leaving for Nome? And taking you with him?'

Marietta nodded, returning her attention to him, wondering why on earth he found the news so staggering.

‘For Christ's sake, woman! Why didna ye tell me sooner?' His face was sheet-white, every muscle he possessed clenched as tightly as a coiled spring.

Marietta's pekinese eyes widened. ‘But why should I have? Why does it matter?'

‘
Because if she'd known Coolidge was leaving Dawson, Lilli might have stayed
!'

Now not only Marietta was staring at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. So was everyone else.

‘But Lilli did know,' Marietta said, a terrible suspicion forming in her mind. ‘I told her here, on the wharf. She was pleased for me. She said Lucky Jack and I were so obviously suited and …'

Now it was Ringan's turn to stare in dumbfounded incomprehension. ‘How could she have?' he protested, his grey eyes incredulous. ‘She's in love with the man! It nearly killed her when he didna keep his promise to marry her! Did ye not see how distressed she was this morning? Her heart's been broken and it's Coolidge who's broken it!'

A ring of faces stared at him, Will Bennett's and Mr Jenkinson's bewildered. Marietta's face, and Kate's and Lettie's and Susan's and even Perry's, far from bewildered. There was a terrible look of stricken understanding in their eyes.

‘No,' Marietta said to him slowly, ‘It isn't Lucky Jack who has broken Lilli's heart. Lilli was never truly in love with Lucky Jack. She was girlishly infatuated with him for a time, but she had realised just how immature her infatuation was long before she stepped inside the
Phoenix
. The man who bid for her was the man she had come to truly love. And her hopes that he had bid for her because he was as much in love with her as she was with him, were crushed utterly when he suggested she leave on this morning's steamer. The only reason Lilli has left Dawson is that she believes you wanted her to leave, Ringan. She believes that, if she had stayed, she would have been an embarrassment to you.'

‘Dear Jesus Christ!' the words were a whisper. He was white to the lips. ‘Are ye absolutely sure?'

She didn't even have to answer him. He could see the truth in her face. He could see it in Susan's face, and Kate's, and Lettie's.

‘I need to hire a steamboat,' he said hoarsely, ‘The
Casca
will be stopping at the Indian camp to take on cord wood. I can catch up with her there! For the Lord's sake, Perry!
Help me get my hands on a boat
!'

Lilli stood on deck, gripping hold of the deck rail so tightly her knuckles were white. There was no longer any sign of Dawson. A huge rocky bluff hid the town from sight. All the valiant optimism she had clung to earlier in the morning, her certainty that somehow she would make Ringan learn to love her, had vanished. How could she make him learn to love her when, no matter where she settled outside Alaska, thousands of miles would divide them?

The scenery that had filled her with such deep pleasure on her voyage down-river, now made no impact on her at all. Sightlessly she stared out across the swirling grey water at steep ravines and broad valleys and wooded creeks.

When she had settled somewhere and he had arranged for money to be paid into a bank account for her he would, no doubt, divorce her. He could, after all, do so with ease. Their marriage was unconsummated. She thought of the heat that had suffused her when she he had walked from the bathroom into the bedroom with only a bath-towel around his hips for covering. She hadn't wanted their marriage to remain unconsummated. She had wanted him with fierce hunger and, God help her, she still did so.

The
Casca
steamed around yet another bend. Soon they would be at the Indian encampment where they had stopped on their journey down-river for cord wood. She wondered if Lottie would want to visit it again; if she would want to see how Nana's baby brother was progressing.

Tears glittered on her eyelashes. Whether Lottie wanted to or not,
she
would visit it again. It was there where she had first realised just how special a person Ringan was. It was there, though she hadn't realised it at the time, that she had fallen in love with him.

‘No, I don't want to go.' Lottie's eyes were red-rimmed from weeping. In the bunk above her Leo was exhaustedly asleep after crying until he could cry no more.

‘Then I'll go by myself,' Lilli said, hoping that her relief at being able to do so didn't show. She wanted to be able to think about Ringan in privacy. She wanted to be able to remember so vividly, it would be like re-living those few precious hours all over again.

Very few people were travelling up-river to Whitehorse. The traffic was all the other way, to Dawson and then to the Yukon's mouth, and Nome. The only person in the boat leaving for the shore, apart from the member of the
Casca's
crew at the oars, was herself.

She stepped ashore to a tumult of barking and howling. ‘Don't try and frighten me,' she said to the dogs, ‘because you'll be wasting your time. I've been here before, remember?'

The dogs, it appeared, remembered. They swarmed around her but didn't snap at her.

‘Missy! Missy!' a familiar voice cried joyously.

With Lottie's sailor-hat perched incongruously on her sleek-black hair, Nana ran to meet her, her eyes shining with welcome. ‘You comum see papoose?' she asked breathlessly, sliding her hand in hers. ‘You comum with more medicine? You comum to talket Nana?'

‘Yes,' she said, as Nana danced along at her side and they walked towards her family tepee, ‘I've come to see your baby brother and talk with you.'

This time when Nana's grandmother rushed out of the tepee towards her, it was to greet her with toothless enthusiasm, not panic-stricken anxiety.

Within minutes she was being treated like a royal guest. Nana darted off to gather up her friends so that they, too, could make Lilli's acquaintance. Everyone wanted to know where the ‘one with hair like the setting sun'was.

‘He's in Dawson,' she said as Nana darted back inside the tepee.

‘No,' Nana said vehemently, overhearing Lilli's last remark. ‘The one with hair like the setting sun is comum. He comum now.'

Lilli stared at her. Was it possible Nana had misunderstood her or that she had misunderstood Nana?

‘Mr Cameron is in Dawson,' she said again and then, through the open flap of the tepee, she saw down to the Yukon's banks; saw the smaller version of the
Casca
that had moored there; saw the tall, broad-shouldered, red-headed figure striding purposefully through a sea of dogs towards her.

Her heart began to slam in such heavy strokes she thought it was going to fail her. He had sailed after the
Casca
! Why? For what possible reason could he have done so?

Stumbling slightly, she walked to the open flap; stepped outside it. He was now only fifteen yards or so away from her and she could see the expression on his face clearly. It was one that left her in no doubt as to his motives for sailing after the
Casca
. He had come for her. He had come to take her with him back to Dawson.

‘Ringan …?' His name was tentative on her lips and then he began to sprint towards her and all the misunderstandings that had ever existed between them were dust in the wind.

‘Oh, God!' she sobbed, ‘Oh Ringan!
Ringan
!'

She was running. Running as she had never run before in her life. Running as if she had wings on her heels. Oblivious of children and dogs, oblivious of everything but the knowledge that he had come to take her back with him because he loved her, she raced towards him, entering his arms like an arrow entering the gold.

‘Can ye ever forgive me?' he asked, his voice cracking with joy and thankfulness as his arms at last enfolded her. ‘Can ye ever forgive me for being such a verra great fool?'

She could feel his heart hammering next to hers; feel the hard, powerful strength of his body, a body that would always love, honour and protect her.

‘Oh, yes,' she said, raising her radiant face to his, ‘as long as you promise me you'll never be so foolish ever again!'

‘I promise.' There was deep, sweet laughter in his voice and then, as the children and dogs surged around them, he said thickly, ‘I love ye, Lilli. I shall love ye for always.'

‘And I shall love you for always,' she said passionately, tears of joy shimmering on her cheeks. ‘Forever and throughout all eternity!'

His mouth came down hard and sweet on hers. Far out in the river the
Casca's
whistle began to shrill insistently. Both of them ignored it. They ignored it for for a very, very long time.

The log cabin was sturdily built, set beside a gurgling creek in a valley thick with lupins and forget-me-nots. Red gingham-check curtains fluttered at its open windows, white briar roses surged around its door. A little distance away were two larger log buildings. One had the word CLINIC carved above its doorway, the other proudly displayed the word SCHOOL.

Children were playing on the intervening grassy ground. The majority of them were Siwashes, their hair night-black, their cheekbones high. Two of them, however, a boy and a girl, were red-haired. The boy was six years old and sturdy-limbed with a scattering of freckles across his nose. The girl was three years his junior, chubby-legged and with a mop of curly hair not carrot-red, but a rich, warm Titian.

As their laughter drifted in through the cabin's open windows, Lilli continued with her task of kneading pastry for a last batch of tarts and smiled to herself. It was a glorious day. The anniversary of her, and her friends'arrival in Dawson, always was.

Eight years. She paused in her task, looking out at the school-house and the clinic. The school-house was her domain, only closed today because it was such a special day. And the clinic was closed because Ringan was down-river, dealing with a medical emergency at a Tagish Indian camp. She resumed her task, rolling the pastry out on a floured board, hoping he would be back before their guests began to arrive.