Forget-Me-Not Bride (6 page)

‘Well, I don't think much of Lettice,' the girl said flatly. ‘Letitia's nice though. It sounds like an actress's name.'

‘It's Latin,' Lilli said, turning away from the porthole as the
Senator
began to ease out into the Bay. ‘And it means gladness.' It was singularly inapt and a smile quirked the corners of her mouth.

Lettie's sulky face registered astonishment. ‘Do you two read books for breakfast?' she asked, her voice no longer unpleasant but genuinely curious.

‘Sometimes.' Lilli was rarely put out of good temper for long and she said now, her amusement deepening, ‘And you do realize, don't you, that your name begins with an L, just like ours?'

Something fought on Lettie's face. It was as if she were frightened of abandoning unpleasantness. As if she were unfamiliar with any emotion that might replace it.

‘It's rather nice, isn't it?' Lottie said ingenuously, still sitting companionably next to her. ‘It's as if we were all meant to share a cabin and be friends.'

‘If we're all friends,' Leo said, speaking up for the first time, ‘Can we all go on deck together and watch San Francisco disappear?' He turned his attention towards Lettie. ‘And as Lilli can't tell me what a floosie is, can you?'

‘You're crazy! The whole lot of you are crazy?' Lettie rose to her feet, staring round at them as if they were escaped lunatics.

Lilli grinned. ‘You could just be right,' she said, thinking of the confession she still had to make to Leo and Lottie, ‘but we'd hardly be going to Alaska if we weren't, would we? And I don't suppose you would, either.'

Lettie blinked, clearly disconcerted by such blatant friendliness in the face of her own hostility. Then, slowly, a hint of a smile touched the corners of her mouth. ‘No,' she said wryly. ‘No, I don't suppose I would.'

Lilli had at first judged their cabin companion to be in her early twenties. Now she revised her estimate. Without a sulky mouth and a heavy scowl Lettie looked to be no older than she was herself and was possibly even a little younger.

‘Come on then,' she said to her, more than happy to see an end to all hostilities. ‘Let's do as Leo suggests and go up on deck.'

It was just as thronged as it had been earlier. Men of every age, size and shape massed the rails, leaning over them to watch as, against the dark hills, San Francisco's myriad gaslights flickered and shimmered and grew ever smaller.

‘You didn't say, but I presume you're a Peabody girl as well,' Lilli said to Lettie as, with Leo and Lottie in front of them they tried to squeeze a way through to the rails.

‘For my sins,' Lettie said with unexpected humour. ‘There's another five somewhere. Miss Salway, Miss Bumby, Miss Hobson, Miss Rivere and Miss Nettlesham. The first four are sharing the cabin next to ours. Miss
Nettlesham
,' she added, placing heavy sarcastic emphasis on the name, ‘should have been sharing with us but she said she would
die
if she had to share a cabin, and she must have come to a private financial agreement with the captain because she now has a cabin to herself. She's already had a postal introduction to the fella she's to marry and thinks she's a cut above the rest of us.'

‘What are Peabody girls?' Lottie asked Lettie curiously as two bear-like figures at the rails obligingly shifted apart a little in order to let Leo squeeze in front of them. ‘And what do you mean by saying one of them has already had a postal introduction to the man she's going to marry?'

The gap at the rails widened and Lettie pushed Lottie forward. ‘Peabody girls are gold-rush brides,' she said as she squeezed into the gap after her. ‘But when we get to Dawson, Miss Nettlesham isn't going to have to marry whatever fella picks her out, like me and your sister will have to do. She already knows who she's going to marry and what he looks like.'

Lottie stared up at her, goggle-eyed. ‘You mean Lilli's going to Alaska to
marry
?' she asked in stupefied disbelief.

‘'Course she is.' Lettie shivered as the night sea breeze seared through her threadbare coat. ‘Why else would she be going there?'

Lottie didn't know. She'd thought it had been because Lilli was trying to vicariously fulfil one of their father's many day-dreams. Now she realised that, even for Lilli, such a romantic notion would not be reason enough.

As the
Senator
began to roll in the Pacific swell and as the lights on shore became ever more indistinct, many of the men at the rails turned away from them, heading below deck.

Lottie turned away also, stumbling towards Lilli, her face ashen. ‘Is it true?' she demanded hoarsely, grabbing hold of her hand. ‘Are we really going to Alaska so that you can marry a man you've never met?'

Lilli didn't answer her. Incredibly, she didn't even seem to hear her. She was staring across the deck to where, several yards away, a gentleman was standing looking shorewards, an astrakhan-collared greatcoat around his shoulders, a Homburg pulled low over his brow.

‘It was the only solution,' Lilli said half an hour later. Lettie had taken Leo into the next cabin to meet their travelling companions and she had no excuse not to answer Lottie's urgent questions.

Lottie stared at her aghast. ‘
Marriage
?' she said, wondering why Lilli so fondly thought she took after their mother when, in reality, she so spectacularly took after their father, acting first and thinking later. ‘But you can't marry someone you don't know, Lilli!'

‘Why not?' Lilli said with a lightness she was far from feeling. ‘Lettie is. And so are Miss Bumby and Miss Nettlesham and Miss Rivere and Miss Hobson and Miss Salway.'

‘I've seen Miss Bumby and she doesn't look as if she'd ever get a husband any other way,' Lottie said starkly, ‘And Lettie says Miss Hobson isn't quite right in the head and that Miss Rivere is fast and would marry anyone.'

Lilli's sleek eyebrows rose nearly into her hair. ‘You're only ten years old, Lottie,' she chided, genuinely shocked. ‘You shouldn't be using words like fast – and you certainly shouldn't be using them in the right context!'

Lottie hadn't known that she had done so. She did know, however, that nothing could be done to alter the situation until they reached their destination and that it was pointless discussing it further, especially when it was obvious Lilli was far more alarmed by it than she was allowing to show.

She leaned her head against Lilli's shoulder, knowing full well why she had taken the crazy step of becoming a Peabody bride. It was because she had been desperate to remove Leo from their Uncle Herbert's care; because she loved her and Leo so much she would do anything, anything at all, if she thought it was in their best interests.

‘I love you, Lilli,' she said huskily, forgiving her elder sister her rashness, knowing it had been prompted by the very best of intentions. ‘You're the best big sister anyone could ever have.'

‘And I love you, pet-lamb,' Lilli said, her arm tightening around Lottie's slender shoulders, her eyes overly bright, her voice unnaturally thick. ‘And loving each other, and Leo, is all that truly matters.'

‘A nice lady gave me a stick of liquorice'Leo said minutes later as he and Lettie squeezed back into the cabin. He clutched his bounty with glee. ‘And another lady says there are gamblers and guns-slingers aboard!'

‘I don't care if Billy the Kid is aboard.' Wearily Lettie sat down on the edge of her bunk. ‘I'm ready for a little bit of shut-eye.'

So was Lilli. It had been a long, long day. The longest she could ever remember. ‘Bed-time,' she said to Leo, beginning to ease his arms out of his jacket sleeves.

‘Is Leo going to have the bottom bunk?' Lottie asked, taking off her sailor-hat and standing on tip-toe to lay it carefully at the foot of the top bunk she had already decided was hers.

‘Yes.' Lilli ignored Leo's tired yowl of protest. ‘That way if it gets rough he'll have less distance to fall.'

‘What do you mean “
if
it gets rough”?' Lettie asked darkly, already ensconced, fully dressed, beneath an inadequate-looking blanket. ‘It's rough already, or hadn't you noticed?'

Lilli had had too much on her mind to pay attention to the
Senator's
increasing pitch and roll. Now that her attention had been drawn to it, however, she began to feel just the slightest bit queasy. ‘The sooner we're all asleep, the better,' she said, tucking Leo into his bunk as securely as possible and laying her box-coat on top of his blanket for extra warmth.

‘It's going to feel funny saying my prayers when we're moving,' Leo observed sleepily. ‘Do you think God will mind? Do you think He'll think it disres … disres … not good manners?'

‘Not at all, my love,' Lilli said tenderly, brushing a lock of hair from his eyes. ‘We decided long ago that He doesn't think it's disrespectful for you to say your prayers in bed when its freezing cold, didn't we? And there isn't room to kneel in this cabin. There's scarcely room to stand.'

Reassured Leo closed his eyes. ‘Now I lay me down to sleep,' he began, the familiar words muffled with tiredness. ‘I pray the Lord my soul to keep …'

‘If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take,' Lilli finished for him softly as his breathing changed and he fell into almost instant sleep.

Seconds later, as Lilli climbed into her own bunk, there came the sound of Lottie quietly saying her prayers, her feet curled up to her chest so that she wouldn't crush her precious sailor-hat. ‘And God Bless Leo and Lilli and Aunt Gussie and Lettie,' she finished, ‘And may we all reach Alaska safely.'

In the now thick darkness there came a suspicious sound from Lettie's bunk. It was almost like a stifled sob. Lilli leaned over the edge of her bunk and looked down but Lettie was laying on her side, facing the cabin wall, and all she could see was the shadowy outline of her back. She lay down again, succumbing to exhaustion. It probably hadn't been a sob. It had probably only been a stifled sneeze. She closed her eyes, trying to acclimatise herself to the movement of the boat, every muscle in her body aching. How many miles had she walked since getting out of bed that morning? It must have been well over twelve for she had visited every single employment agency listed in the
Examiner
and more houses with rooms to rent than she cared to remember.

Image after image burned the backs of her eyelids. The spilt milk running in rivulets onto the Turkish carpet; her uncle demanding that she be out of the house, for good, before he returned to it; the abortive hunt for a suitable job and a room; her aunt's anguished face when she had told her she was leaving and taking Leo and Lottie with her; the frantic dash for the cable car and the even more fraught hackney carriage ride. There hadn't been time to think. From the moment she had entered the Peabody Marriage Bureau she had acted on instinct and instinct alone.

There was a gentle snore from the direction of Lettie's bunk. Leo murmured in his sleep. Lottie's rhythmic breathing indicated that she, too, was deep in dreamland. With her every nerve and muscle longing for sleep Lilli remained awake. Had she behaved with crass rashness? And if she had, was the situation she had plunged herself into one from she would be able to extricate herself?

Of all the images that burned against her eyelids, one, grey-suited and Homburg-hatted, predominated. Was he a gold-rich miner returning to his strike? Was he, perhaps, one of the men who had approached the Peabody Marriage Bureau in the hope that the bureau could find him a wife willing to endure the rigours of the pioneer north? Lilli's tummy muscles tightened with fierce, desperate hope.

She remembered the way he had looked at her when he had cautioned her to take more care crossing city streets. There had been amusement in his amber-brown eyes and there had been something more; an expression of open admiration. Merely remembering it sent the blood racing heatedly along her veins. No-one had ever looked at her in such a way before and even if they had, she was certain they wouldn't have aroused such an extraordinary response in her.

When she had seen him on deck she had felt as if Fate had directly intervened in her life. What other explanation could there be for the bizarre events of the last fifteen hours? Destiny had ensured she walked into the Peabody Marriage Bureau and destiny was responsible for their travelling on the same ship. Tomorrow he would see her as she leaned against the deck rails, watching the coast of northern California slide by; tomorrow he would speak to her and introduce himself to her; tomorrow would be the most momentous, most memorable day of her life. Happy anticipation replaced tension and Lilli fell into a deep, but not a dreamless, sleep.

She woke to stark reality. ‘I'm going to be sick!' Leo announced as morning light streamed through the porthole into the close confines of the cabin.

Lilli swung her legs over the edge of her bunk and dropped to the floor. ‘Not yet!' she said peremptorily. ‘Wait till I've got some clothes on!'

Minutes later she was up on deck and Leo was leaning over a brass deck rail, retching up a vile black substance.

‘It serves you right,' she said crossly as he moaned piteously for comfort. ‘You shouldn't have eaten your liquorice in the middle of the night.'

Across the heaving grey-green waves, hills and mountains could be seen, misty and insubstantial in the early morning heat haze. She had no idea how fast they were travelling and no idea if the land she could see was still California or if it was the State of Oregon or even, perhaps, the State of Washington.

She leaned against the deck rail, trying to create a map of north-west America and Canada in her mind's eye. She couldn't think of any other large, coastal city between San Francisco and the Canadian border. In America there was Seattle, of course, and in Canada, Vancouver. She wondered if the
Senator
would in stop off at either city for more passengers and for the first time wondered how long the voyage to Alaska would take and where they would eventually disembark.