Forget-Me-Not Bride (8 page)

Susan nodded. ‘I guess so. The dance-hall girls rarely marry. They're too busy having a good time, pocketing gold nuggets from men who've struck it rich.'

‘There's a dance-hall girl aboard the boat,' Edie said in awestruck tones. ‘Miss Nettlesham told me. And she's with a man born to be hanged. Miss Nettlesham says he's a professional gambler and as handsome as the devil.'

‘Then I'll look out for him,' Marietta said with great feeling. She grinned suddenly, ‘I wonder how it is Miss High and Mighty Nettlesham knows so much about him? Do you think she's a dance-hall girl herself?'

The rather sombre mood Susan had occasioned was immediately dispelled. Amid gales of laughter they put forward ridiculous theories as to why Miss Nettlesham should be so well informed about a dance-hall girl and a gambler and by the time they all filed from the dining-saloon it was as if they had known each other for months, not hours.

‘I'm actually a sourdough,' Susan said proudly as they surged from the top of the companionway and set about finding somewhere comfortable to sit in the breezy sunshine.

There were more helpless giggles and even Lettie's sulky mouth twitched into a grin of amusement.

‘A sourdough?' Kate's grey-green eyes danced with laughter. ‘What on earth is a sourdough?'

Scores of male eyes swivelled in their direction as they appropriated seats on the starboard side of the boat. Marietta's upswept and tightly curled fox-red hair would have drawn attention anywhere and Lilli's height and slenderness and natural grace was an automatic head-turner. By contrast, Susan's heavy features and clumsy gait were even more noticeable and there were many cruel male remarks; remarks Susan fortunately did not hear.

‘You'll hear the term ‘a sourdough'a lot in the Klondike,' she said in her school-marmish manner, hardly able to believe her good fortune in making so many new friends so quickly. ‘It's a term used to describe someone who has sat out a Klondike winter. If you've watched the Yukon freeze up in the fall and then break to pieces with a roar in the spring, you're a sourdough.'

‘I've heard another definition,' Marietta said, a chuckle in her husky voice, ‘It's that no man can be a sourdough until he's shot a bear and slept with a squaw …'

‘And that after he's achieved that, he'd wish he'd shot the squaw and slept with the bear!' Susan finished for her daringly, the spots of colour in her cheeks deepening to crimson.

Helpless laughter convulsed them all. Edie, who hadn't understood the joke but who had laughed all the same said, when their laughter had subsided to giggles, ‘This is the nicest morning I can ever remember. It's so nice, I don't ever want it to end.'

‘All things come to an end, Edie,' Kate said gently, concern in her eyes.

Lilli was well aware of its cause. Edie's mental age was that of a nine or a ten-year-old and it was possible she would be taken terrible advantage of when they reached Dawson City. Lilli tried to remember exactly what Mrs Peabody had told her about the arrangements they would meet with there. Hadn't it been that introductions between Peabody brides-to-be and men looking for brides would be made by Mr Josh Nelson, a Peabody Marriage Bureau representative? She knew that at the time it had all seemed quite civilised.

At the thought of the faceless, nameless men awaiting them in Dawson City, it suddenly seemed civilised no longer. Her anxiety began to deepen. What was it Susan Bumby had said to her when she, Lilli, had airily announced that when it came to fulfilling her contract and marrying,
she
would do the choosing? Hadn't it been something about that not being the way of it? With mounting anxiety she wondered exactly what Susan had meant. ‘Susan …' she began urgently, but she was seconds too late.

‘Miss Bumby's going to show me round the boat,' Leo said, his face alight with anticipation. ‘She's travelled on the
Senator
before and she's going to introduce me to the captain and show me the wheelhouse!'

‘And I'm going to lay down,' Kate said, beginning to look queasy even though the Senator's pitch and roll was much less pronounced than it had been the previous evening.

‘Me too.' Though the sulky expression had long since disappeared from Lettie's mouth it was obvious to Lilli that Lettie was unused to such long stretches of sociability and needed to be on her own for a little while.

‘And Edie and I are going in search of dance-hall girls,' Marietta announced gaily. ‘Do you want to join us?'

‘No, I don't think …'

‘Can
I
go, Lilli?' Lottie interrupted. ‘Please!'

Lilli nodded. Like Lettie, she, too, needed to be on her own for a little while. It would give her time to think and put her chaotic thoughts in order. And, if she were on her own she would be much more likely to be seen and recognised by the Greek god …

The mid-morning sun was so warm she had no need of her box-coat and was able to sit in just her shirtwaist and skirt. In front of her and on either side of her the deck was scattered with groups of men, some in cane chairs, others either squatting or sitting with their arms loosely circling their knees, all deep in conversation.

‘The place to be is the Third Beach Line,' she heard a grizzled-haired man to her left saying to his companions. ‘They figure it's the biggest dam'strike ever hit in Alaska! Why, there's nuggets the size of boulders …'

On her right, a young man in a cloth cap, fisherman's jersey and baggy corduroy trousers was saying, ‘I hear they've just hit gold near the head of Anvil Creek …'

Gold. It seemed to be the only thing her fellow passengers were interested in. When she had asked Lettie why she was travelling to Dawson as a gold-rush bride Lettie had said quite flatly, ‘To marry a man who's struck it rich and have him set me up for life.'

A red-haired man, as tall and broad-shouldered as a prize-fighter, walked past her strolling across to the deck-rail. As he leaned against it, looking out towards the coastline, the young man in the fisherman's jersey said in a low voice, but not too low that Lilli couldn't hear him, ‘Isn't that one of the paroled convicts?'

‘So they say,' one of his companions said. ‘There's another two on board somewhere. Been let off the rest of their sentences so long as they go as far north as possible and behave themselves while they're about it.'

Lilli looked across at the ex-convict with interest. With his shock of red hair he was vividly noticeable and she knew she would have no difficulty in recognising him again, resolving to give him a wide berth.

On her left, the conversation was still about gold. ‘The damn' stuff's right there under the grass-roots,' an Englishman with a deer-stalker hat on his head was saying, ‘All we've got to do is get a grubstake together and stake a claim …'

Lilli tapped a neatly booted foot impatiently. She wasn't interested in grubstakes, whatever grubstakes were, or claims, and she certainly wasn't interested in grizzled-haired men or men in baggy trousers or ridiculous English deer-stalkers. She was interested in a slick, suave, grey-suited man with a touch of the gypsy about him, for surely only a man with a touch of the gypsy about him would wear a gold earring?

‘What the devil,' his brandy-dark voice said from behind her, disbelief in its tones, ‘… are you doing aboard the
Senator
?'

Her head whirled round. He was standing looking down at her, not with amusement and admiration, but with a frown. A frown very similar to that with which he had first greeted her.

‘I …' She could hardly tell him she was travelling as a Peabody bride. He would assume she was spoken for; that she had a fiancé waiting for her in Dawson. ‘I'm going to the Klondike,' she finished lamely, her heart racing.

He was still wearing dove-grey, but somehow she thought it wasn't the same suit as the one he had been wearing yesterday. And this time there was a watch-chain across his chamois vest; a watch-chain made of very small gold nuggets. ‘I hardly thought you were
en route
for Florida.' His sarcasm pierced her dizzy pleasure at his having recognised her and spoken to her.

‘I don't like heat,' she snapped, stung into a ridiculous reply: ‘And I don't like oranges.'

He walked around to the front of her seat and stared down at her, too perturbed to be amused. ‘Do you have family in the Klondike, Miss …?'

‘Stullen.'

‘A father perhaps? A brother?'

Despite the devastating effect his physical presence had on her, Lilli was beginning to feel more than a little annoyed. Her reasons for travelling to the Klondike were really none of his business. And his so bluntly asking if she had family there was impertinent. ‘I have friends there,' she said, not feeling it was truly a lie because when she arrived she
would
have friends there. She would have Lettie and Edie and Marietta and Kate and Susan.

He had removed his Homburg and his hair glinted wheatgold in the strong sunshine. ‘I hope they're the right kind of friends, Miss Stullen.' He was still frowning, hoping to God she wasn't referring to girls who were his employees, wondering even as he did so why it should matter. ‘The Klondike is no place for a respectable young woman …'

‘Really?' Lilli wasn't accustomed to being patronised. Not even by a Greek god. She said spiritedly, ‘It may interest you to learn that one of the very respectable female friends I am travelling with is both a kindergarten teacher and a sourdough, Mr … Mr …?'

‘Coolidge,' he said, amusement tugging at him again just as it had when she had so disarmingly apologised for frightening the horse. ‘Jack Coolidge.'

‘And a sourdough, Mr Coolidge, is a person who has …'

‘I'm well aware of the definition of a sourdough, Miss Stullen.' Now that he was more or less convinced she wasn't travelling to Dawson to work as a dance-hall floosie he could allow the amusement she aroused in him to surface. ‘Dawson City is my home.'

Her relief was so vast she was sure that if she hadn't already been seated her knees would have given way.

‘How … nice.'

‘That's just the problem,' he said dryly. ‘Dawson isn't “nice”. It's a man's town.' He thought of the saloons and gambling places and raucous red-light district. It was no place for a young woman as beautiful and pure-looking as a Raphael Madonna. ‘I wouldn't advise staying there too long.'

‘I … er … I'd thought of making it my home,' she said, realising that she was going to have to tell him she was a Peabody bride. Unless she did so, how could he possibly realise that Fate had singled him out as her future husband-to-be? ‘I'm travelling to Dawson with six other young ladies. We're all …'

‘Lilli! Lilli! Look what I've got!' It was Leo and he was racing towards her, something gold and glittering clutched in his hand. ‘It's a nugget, Lilli! A real gold nugget!'

As he barrelled breathlessly into her Lilli slid her arm lovingly around his shoulders. ‘I'd like you to meet a gentleman who lives in Dawson City. Leo, Mr Coolidge. Mr Coolidge, my little brother, Leo.'

‘Pleased to meet you, young man,' the Greek God said, shaking Leo's free hand with solemnity.

Leo simply stared at him, his eyes like saucers. ‘Gosh!' he said, when he found his voice. ‘Gosh! Are you
really
Mr Coolidge? ‘Lucky'Jack Coolidge? The man Miss Nettlesham says was born to be hanged?'

Lilli wanted to die with mortification but the Greek god merely chuckled. ‘You obviously get around, young man, picking up that kind of information about your fellow passengers on your first day at sea. Is Miss Nettlesham the kindergarten-teacher your sister was telling me about?'

‘I don't know,' Leo said truthfully, gazing at him starry-eyed, hardly able to believe he was in conversation with a man he had heard described as being a living legend. ‘Miss Bumby is a teacher. She isn't very pretty but she's very kind.' He fumbled in his pocket and withdrew a crumpled paperbag. ‘She gave me these humbugs. Would you like one?'

‘Leo, I don't think …' Lilli began in an agony of embarrassment.

‘I'd love one,' Jack Coolidge said, easing a sticky offering free and popping it into his mouth with commendable disregard for the flecks of paper still clinging to it.

‘Miss Nettlesham says you own nearly every gambling saloon in Dawson,' Leo said with hero-worshipping wonder. ‘Is it true? And is it true there are gun-slingers in Dawson, just like in the old Wild West?'

Not for the first time it occurred to Lilli that both Leo and Lottie were fast gaining the kind of education they could well do without. It had been bad enough Lottie saying that Marietta was fast, without Leo chatting familiarly about gambling saloons and gun-slingers.

‘There is an occasional fracas,' Jack said, taking care not to disillusion Leo totally, ‘but in the main, Dawson is remarkably law-abiding.'

Lilli was pleased to hear it. How she felt about the discovery that Jack Coolidge was
Lucky
Jack Coolidge, a professional gambler, she didn't yet know. There simply hadn't been time to assimilate the information and besides, even though Miss Nettlesham had described him as a professional gambler, she could easily have been misinformed. Just because Jack Coolidge had admitted to owning gambling saloons didn't necessarily mean that he …

‘Would you like me to teach you a couple of card tricks?' He was speaking to Leo and Lilli snapped out of her reverie instantly.

‘No!' she said with a vehemence that sent Jack Coolidge's eyebrows towards his wheat-gold hair and plunged Leo into bitter disappointment.

‘My apologies if I've offended.' Jack Coolidge didn't look remotely apologetic. ‘But if you've a taking against gambling, Miss Stullen, you're going to find life in Dawson pretty hard.'