Harper's Bride (6 page)

He gave a hard push to a mule that came too
close. "No, most of them made the same trip you did, to search for
gold. They dragged tons of this stuff over the mountains and down
rivers. And most of them found out there are no claims left to
stake." He scanned the vast emporium. "But I get the feeling that
for a lot of these people, the main goal was just to get here. Now
that they've done that, they don't know what else to do. They're
sort of lost." He lifted a hand and made a sweeping gesture at the
crowd. "They're selling everything they can to raise enough money
to go home. Rafe is right—this is folly."

Aside from the brooms and newspaper, most of
the things here were inexpensive. Melissa chose two serviceable
dresses, two nightgowns, and a pair of shoes for herself. They were
the first clothes she'd ever owned that weren't hand-me-downs. She
bought some white muslin to make dresses for Jenny, and a ten-yard
length of real diaper fabric folded in a paper wrapper that read
Sears, Roebuck. She also bought two sets of ready-made sheets for
the bed. Dylan paid for the purchases as they went.

"Thank you," she said. "I don't want to keep
you from your store, and I-I'm going to need to feed the baby
pretty soon."

Dylan stared at her, and she worried that she
had spent too much or said the wrong thing. "Is that all you're
going to get?" Dylan asked. "Don't you want some other things, you
know, female doodads?"

"Like what?" she asked, surprised.

"Well, like—" He strode ahead of her and
stopped at a booth that had women's silver-backed mirrors, combs,
and brushes displayed on a plaid wool blanket. A few cut-crystal
perfume atomizers dotted the presentation. He gestured at the
assortment. "Like this."

The man selling the vanity sets brightened.
"Step right over here, ma'am, and see. These fine brushes and
mirrors were made for Queen Victoria herself— " Dylan gave him a
skeptical look. "Well, they come a far piece to get here."

Melissa shifted Jenny in her arms and
approached the booth. She did not want to be any more indentured to
Dylan Harper than she already was. How on earth would she ever pay
him back if she kept digging a deeper hole of debt? Reaching out
her free hand, she let her fingertips trace over the intricate
designs on the silver handles that gleamed with the blue sky
overhead. Still, she supposed a body had to have a hairbrush and
comb. They were such basic possessions.

"Yes, they're very nice," she agreed with the
merchant. Glancing up, she noticed the man studying the bruise on
her cheek. Then he looked Dylan up and down with obvious
censure.

Dylan saw it too, and he felt his own face
flush. Clearly, the peddler held the same low opinion as did Dylan
about a man who would raise a hand to a woman.

Damn it, he hadn't wanted to get involved
with this washed-out female to begin with. But his sense of
honor—and Rafe's noble prodding—had put him in the role of her
protector. He wasn't the one who had hit her, and it irked him that
anyone would think he had. But what could he say about it? Nothing.
He picked up the most expensive vanity set and an atomizer, and
paid the man quickly to escape his silent criticism. Dylan wasn't
in the mood for it. Taking Melissa's elbow, he steered her onward
to a rack of dresses.

Last night had been long and mostly
sleepless, although he thought he'd dozed for a while. Feeling like
the second biggest heel in Dawson—after all, he wasn't worse than
Coy Logan—Dylan had had trouble keeping his mind from straying to
the other side of his bed where Melissa lay. It was hard not to;
aside from a saloon girl or two, he hadn't slept with a woman since
Eliz— Here it was, two years later, and he couldn't say her name
aloud, or even think it without feeling a twisting viper of
betrayal gnaw at his gut. Even now, after everything that had
happened, in those twilight moments between wakefulness and sleep,
he still saw her face play across his eyelids, the sweet lushness
of her body, her ink-black hair. She had tried to change him, bend
him to her way of doing things. And when he would not yield—

"Go ahead and find a couple more frocks," he
told Melissa gruffly. Whether he liked it or not, he felt
responsible for her, and he couldn't very well let her and the baby
go around in rags and flour sacking.

She lifted her face to his, and he got
another dose of her eyes, gray and clear. What was it he saw in
them? He sensed that there was another woman behind them, a
completely different one from the skittish, colorless female the
world saw.

"Oh, but you've already spent too much," she
said, pushing at the strands of hair that had again come loose from
the knot at the back of her head. "As it is, I owe you money for
today, and for Coy. I don't want anything I can't pay for."

"Never mind about that for now," he said,
annoyed at her mention of Logan. Even though he'd dumped her on
Dylan's front step, she still wanted to shoulder his obligation. He
had to admire her pride, but if he ever saw that money again, and
he certainly didn't expect to, it would not come from her. "You'll
work for me, just like I told you yesterday. But you can't wear the
same thing day after day. You should probably have a shawl, too. It
gets cold here at night sometimes, even in summer."

"Of course, whatever you think best—" She
looked as though she would have said more, but apparently changed
her mind and dropped her gaze again.

Dylan sighed. She had probably learned her
meekness just to get by in life. He supposed that a lot of men
would be more than pleased with her cowed, docile obedience.

But Dylan Harper was not most men.

*~*~*

Dylan carried Melissa's purchases for her as
they made their way back through town to the store. Walking next to
him, she could not help but notice the wickedly long knife sheathed
in leather and resting against his thigh. That he might actually
use it was a frightening prospect, and but she thought it suited
him. She knew nothing about him, but he seemed as though he might
have lived much closer to nature than she had. His long,
sun-streaked hair and easy, graceful gait did not suggest a man who
had spent his days behind a desk or even a counter. Yet his
wildness was tempered, and he possessed better manners than the few
men of her acquaintance. With his long legs, he'd be able to walk
much faster than she, but she thought that he made an effort to
keep from getting too far ahead of her.

When he did gain the lead, she found herself
studying his wide shoulders and straight back. Then her gaze
drifted down to his lean hips and backside, which were highlighted
by the snug black pants he wore today. Melissa didn't really know
much about men; her marriage to Coy had not been very enlightening,
and what little she had learned at Coy's hands wasn't good. But
Dylan bore a magnetic sensuality that she detected, even in her
ignorance. He was powerfully and cleanly built, and she supposed
that some women might find him appealing.

As for herself, Melissa felt certain that she
would never want a husband again. But what people wanted and what
they got did not always agree.

Returning to Front Street, she found it quiet
for now. The carnival atmosphere that poured out of every saloon
and dance hall along the wide, muddy thoroughfare each night
wouldn't get started again until mid-afternoon.

"God, just look at what they've done to this
place," Dylan said, more to himself than to her. He pointed at the
surrounding hills, logged nearly bare. What didn't go for firewood,
and to build sluice boxes and pilings for mining operations, was
used in the explosion of new construction aided by the twenty hours
of daylight. Skeletons of half-raised buildings added to the wildly
contrasted landscape, and sawmills were kept running around the
clock. In place of the trees were white orchards of ragged tents
that housed ragged men, crowding the hilltops and spilling down
their sides. "When I came up here two years ago, it was nothing
more than some tents and a moose pasture. A few hundred people
lived here. It was hardly a paradise to begin with—it's pretty
swampy and the mosquitoes are so thick they'll eat a man alive. But
at least at night you could hear the wolves howling in the hills,
or maybe a moose calling for his mate. Now a man can barely hear
himself think."

"You don't believe the gold rush is a good
thing?" she asked, stepping around a deep puddle.

He shrugged. "I'm not saying it is or isn't—I
didn't come to Dawson for that. I just drifted up here with no
particular plan. It was a good place for a man who had nowhere to—"
He broke off for a moment. "But then Carmack found that gold on
Rabbit Creek, and the rush was on. Now this town only has a little
peace and quiet on Sundays." By order of the North West Mounted
Police, all business and work in Dawson ceased every Saturday night
from midnight till two A.M. on Monday morning. So unforgiving was
the blue law that anyone caught working, even fishing for his
dinner or chopping wood for his own fire, was sentenced to the
woodpile, where he could chop all he liked.

"I've never seen anything like Dawson," she
said, staring in amazement as four men hoisted a crystal chandelier
from a wagon bed.

"Do you like it?" he asked, watching her with
those probing green eyes.

"No. I'll be happy to go back to Portland. It
wasn't my idea to come up here to begin with."

"I didn't suppose it was. There are women
here who wanted to dig for gold beside their husbands, or to even
work claims of their own." He studied her with a questioning
expression that was almost gentle. "But they came mostly because
they wanted to, not because someone dragged them up here."

She lowered her eyes to the top of the baby's
head, but not before she noticed how striking he looked with the
dear blue Yukon sky behind him. The sun highlighted the blond
streaks in his hair that blew back from his shoulders in the light
wind. He seemed completely unaware of his elemental handsomeness,
but Melissa was not. She didn't want to notice his looks. She had
known women on her street who waved farewell to their good judgment
and had believed some man with a pretty face or smooth words, all
to no good end. At least she could say that desperation had driven
her to marry Coy, not the loss of her sense.

They reached Harper's Trading, and she was
glad. Small though Jenny was, she was getting heavy in her already
aching arms. Added to that, Melissa's breasts were growing firm
with milk. Dylan followed her upstairs with the things she had
bought, but she was grateful when he turned to go back to work. He
treated her well enough, but she felt that odd quickening in her
chest when he looked at her.

"Come by the store later and choose whatever
provisions you need," he said, standing by the door. "I'd like to
see what you can do with more than bacon and biscuits."

When Dylan walked into the store, he saw Rafe
tipped back in the rocking chair beside the cold stove, flipping
cards into a chamber pot that he'd taken from a shelf. His feet
were propped up on a keg, and a whiskey bottle and a half-empty
glass stood on the plank flooring next to him.

"I wondered where you got off to. I've been
languishing here for the better part of an hour. Between card
games, drinking in the saloon without intelligent conversation
sometimes loses its allure." He grinned at Dylan and gestured at
the strongbox. "I did manage to sell a pair of rubber boots and
some matches to one of your adventurous customers in your absence.
I put the dust in your box."

Dylan laughed, highly amused at the idea of
Rafe Dubois, a high-born Southern gentleman with silk handkerchiefs
and French-laundered shirts, working behind his counter. "Maybe you
should think about a job in trade. I could use the help here. You
already have a key to the place."

"That is an offer that I'll believe I'll pass
on, thank you. I did you the favor since you'd wandered away from
your business."

Dylan shrugged and hung his hat on a peg near
the now cold stove. "I took Melissa down to the waterfront to, you
know, buy her a few things." He mumbled the last part of the
sentence, but Rafe heard him perfectly well.

The other man recrossed his ankles and
pitched another card at the chamber pot. So far he'd missed only
twice. "A shopping expedition? What a picture of domestic
delight."

Dylan knew Rafe was teasing him, but he felt
defensive. "Hell, Logan abandoned her here with just the clothes on
her back. The baby didn't even have a diaper."

A card pinged off the inside rim of the
enamal pot. "So I gathered," Rafe said, keeping his eyes on his
game. "And how are Melissa and her child faring?"

"All right, I guess." Dylan hoisted a crate
of beans to the counter and began putting the cans on the
shelf.

"And you? How are you doing with your new
arrangements?"

"This is a great time to ask, considering
that you got me into this."

"I'm guessing there's a fine woman hiding
beneath Melissa's timid exterior. You make a nice-looking little
family."

The word family made Dylan wince. "The hell
we do. That's not why I agreed to this. Logan would have sold her
to the highest bidder. I couldn't let that happen." He had the
feeling that Rafe was enjoying this enormously.

"You'll thank me later."

"For what?"

Rafe looked up. "For giving you something
more to care about than proving a perfidious woman wrong."

As if summoned by his comment, Elizabeth's
face rose in Dylan's memory. Raven-haired. Beautiful. Treacherous.
He swung around, frowning. "Is that what you think I—" he
began.

Just then, though, a couple of stampeders
came in for supplies, and his attention was forced away from the
subject of fickle women.