I do, I do, I do (7 page)

Since Zoe didn't doubt her husband for an instant, she could only conclude that she had explained things poorly. Still, she hoped Jean Jacques would write soon. A letter would go a long way toward putting to rest a strange niggling restlessness that she couldn't define.

The stage driver informed them that forty thousand people resided in the Seattle area. If anything, Juliette believed the driver might have underestimated the number. Every shop, every restaurant, every street, every place she went to or saw teemed with people. She'd never seen so many folks in one place, and it awed and frightened her.

Fortunately, she and Clara had found rooms at the Diller Hotel, which was jam-packed to the rafters. Actually, the registration clerk had informed Juliette there were no rooms, but Clara spoke to the same man, and in five minutes she had rooms for them both. It annoyed her to the bones that Clara could obtain rooms and she could not.

The hotel was situated too near the railroad depot and the docks, but they were lucky to have found a room at all. One of the positives was discovering the business district lay within walking distance. That's where she began her search for Jean Jacques's import-export shop.

Within a day she recognized the futility of the task. The city was too large, too far-flung. She would never find his company. After forty-eight hours of searching followed by agitated pacing and wringing her hands, she came up with the idea of checking city and county records. A visit to city hall and then to the King County
Courthouse verified what she desperately did not want to admit.

"The city didn't issue a business license for a Villette Import and Export Company. And no Jean Jacques Villette owns property anywhere in King County."

Clara lowered a fork full of lemon pie. "You actually wasted time checking?"

There was virtually nothing about Clara Klaus that Juliette admired or liked or enjoyed. And Clara exhibited innumerable traits and habits that Juliette deplored. At the moment, she would have liked to scream across the dining-room table that she was sick and tired of Clara's implied criticism. Naturally she did no such thing. The more life crumbled around her, the more she retreated within, relying on the manners and standards that made civilized life possible.

"It would have been unjust to assume that my husband lied about everything," she said coolly. "I prefer to keep an open mind." It irked her to realize that she had hoped for a little praise for going to city hall and then to the courthouse all by herself.

"So now you know that he did indeed lie about everything." Clara finished her pie.

Here was another thing that Juliette despised. Clara brought no grace or delicate niceties to the table. She appeared to know which fork and spoon to use, but chose to employ them correctly only about half the time. She ate with unbecoming gusto and cleaned her plate, which no true lady would think of doing.

"I refuse to believe that Jean Jacques lied about everything," she insisted. She couldn't let herself believe that.

"He didn't lie about going to Seattle," Clara said, leaning back in her seat so the waiter could whisk away her pie plate while another waiter poured coffee for them both.

The waiters scrupulously treated Clara the same as they treated Juliette, even though Clara lacked even a semblance of style. Clara wore a straw boater squarely on top of her flyaway red hair, and she squinted when she was outside because the hat brim didn't shade her eyes and she never remembered to carry a parasol. She insisted her plain, ugly boots were sensible for walking, but Juliette thought they looked like men's boots. In between the poorly trimmed hat and chunky boots, Clara wore a dark skirt, a white shirtwaist, and a cape that might have been modish during a distant ancestor's lifetime.

For the life of her, Juliette could not fathom why a discriminating man like Jean Jacques Villette would have taken up with a common creature like Clara Klaus.

After a deep sigh, she broke the silence. "All right. How do you know that Jean Jacques came to Seattle? You couldn't possibly have called at all the hotels and boardinghouses."

"There are six banks in the area. I started with the one nearest the hotel and told the manager that Mr. Villette wished to rent commercial space from me and had named the bank as a reference. I wished to verify that he had an account and inquire if he was known to the bank personnel."

"You misrepresented yourself!" Juliette could never have done such a thing. But she grudgingly conceded the scheme was clever.

Clara rolled her eyes, then continued the story of her triumph. "I found him at the fourth bank."

Juliette clapped a hand over the sudden racing of her heart. "He's here?" she whispered.

"He was. The manager said Jean Jacques closed his account two weeks ago." She ground her teeth together. "We missed him by two weeks."

"Oh, no." Juliette stared across the table. "And we have no idea where he might have gone from here!" Tears burned her eyes, and she blinked them back rather than cry in a public place or in front of Clara.

Clara stirred cream into her coffee. "Ask yourself this question. Why would a man come to Seattle? What's happening here as opposed to—" She shrugged. "Chicago, for instance?"

Juliette had seen enough of Seattle to notice the lines of grimly determined men crowding the outfitters' stores. Since the hotel was near the wharf area, she'd even strolled to the piers to watch the crowded Alaskan steamers sail off for the Klondike.

"Are you suggesting that Jean Jacques went to the Yukon to search for gold?" she inquired, forming the words slowly.

"I'm starting to think it's certainly possible. What I don't understand is why he didn't sail immediately. Why would he wait until late July ?"

"Men are still sailing to the Yukon. Steamers leave for Alaska every day."

"True. But the stampeders are taking a risk by leaving this late. Winter comes early up there. So why didn't Jean Jacques sail in April or May?"

"Maybe he didn't have enough money to pay for his passage and his outfit? Someone told me the Canadian customs won't allow anyone into the Klondike unless they have a year's worth of supplies."

Clara's lips thinned into a bitter twist. "He had plenty of money, believe me."

It was small comfort to realize that Clara also felt foolish. Juliette wished that she had never met Clara Klaus. Clara was living, breathing proof that Jean Jacques was not the man she had so totally believed him to be. Lowering her head, she gazed into her lap at her wedding ring, hating that Clara's ring was identical to hers.

In fact, Clara Klaus brought out the worst in her. Her mother and aunt would have been appalled by the unladylike thoughts tumbling through her head and the sharp words that occasionally shot from her lips like barbs aimed at Clara.

"So what do you suggest we do now?" she said, looking away from the curly red strands falling out of Clara's hat.

"I don't know what you're going to do, but I'm going to visit every outfitting store until I confirm that Jean Jacques bought supplies for the Yukon."

"Couldn't we just ask down at the piers? The ship companies must have passenger manifests." But they didn't know the date he had sailed or even if he had sailed. Didn't know which ship company he might have chosen or if he had used his correct name.

Juliette nodded to the maître d', and he hurried to hold their chairs so they could rise and leave the dining room. As they did every night, she and Clara stepped outside and took a turn around the terrace. A damp fish scent reminded Juliette of the nearby Sound. And they could hear street noises, the rush and rattle of harness-drawn vehicles, the cough and bang of an occasional horseless carriage. The wonders of electricity were evident as here and there bright lights flickered on across the city. Power poles and telephone wires were strung along every street like giant clotheslines.

A hollow space opened inside her. Never had Juliette felt so out of place and so completely alone as she did this minute with Clara by her side and dozens of people within sight.

Not a single person, certainly not Clara, cared about Juliette March. No one gave a fig that the noise and bustle of this enormous city unnerved her or that she grieved for the man who had left her behind.

Homesickness swamped her like a wave rearing out of the gathering darkness. She yearned to run home and hide herself away in Aunt Kibble's house. She belonged in small sleepy Linda Vista, where crossing a street didn't terrify her, where strange men didn't tip their hats and pretend a small courtesy gave them the right to run their eyes over her figure. She didn't have the temperament for travel and new places. She wasn't that brave. It did, in fact, astonish her that she had come as far as Seattle.

But going home would be a mistake. Sooner or later, everyone in Linda Vista would hear their suspicions confirmed: that she had been victimized by a confidence man. Such stories had a way of surfacing; they didn't remain secret.

And she couldn't face the scandal and gossip, not after she had once been a role model of decorum. So she wouldn't go home.

But she had no idea what to do next.

Sighing again, she slid a sideways glance at Clara. Only a lifetime of rigid adherence to good manners made it possible for her to endure the intolerable necessity of traveling with a woman her husband had dallied with. She detested Clara Klaus because Clara had known Jean Jacques's touch, and imagining them together made Juliette's bones ache.

"You're quiet tonight," Clara commented, pausing to examine a riot of blossoms stuffed into a stone urn. "Not that I care, you understand, but what are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking about what you said at the table." Juliette touched the back of her glove to her forehead. She absolutely did not want to dwell on Clara lying naked in Jean Jacques's arms. It was better to suppose such an outrage had never happened. "If we find the outfitting store where my husband purchased his supplies, what do we do then?"

Clara halted at the corner of the terrace and faced her with narrowed eyes. "Every time you say 'my husband' I want to slap you silly."

Such statements no longer shocked her. Which was shocking in itself. "How utterly vulgar to threaten a person!" Truly Clara was common and base.

"Jean Jacques is
my
husband, too. He is not exclusively
your
husband."

Juliette's lips went as stiff as her spine. "He was
my
husband first!" That was important. Hers was the legal marriage. At least that was her assumption, and she believed she was correct.

Clara puffed up, and her face pulsed red. "You know what I think? I think
my
husband got tired of your prissy superior attitude and left you to find a real woman he could laugh with and be himself with! That's what I think!"

"I'll have you know that Jean Jacques and I laughed all the time!" Juliette refused to be intimidated by a person who slurped her coffee. Pulling to her full five feet two inches, she glared up at Clara. "If I weren't a lady, I would point out that my husband left
you
quicker than he left me! Apparently sinking to a common level wasn't as fulfilling for him as you'd like to believe!"

"If being common means not putting on silly airs or extending my pinkie when I sip from a cup, then I'm common and proud of it!"

Furious, both Clara and Juliette turned in a spin of summer skirts and strode toward the lobby door. At the foot of the grand staircase, they faced each other again.

"Breakfast at seven," Clara snapped.

"You never said what we'll do if we find where he bought his supplies."

"I don't know, all right? You can go home to California. I wish you would. Maybe I'll buy a boardinghouse with the money I got from selling the inn." Lifting her plain dark skirt, Clara started up the staircase. "I can't wait to see the back of you and your stiff-necked ways!"

"And I you," Juliette said, raising her chin. Even to her own ears she sounded prissy. And she was so weary of this conversation. Every night they exchanged a variation of the same words and sentiments. My husband; your husband. No,
my
husband.

Juliette didn't tell Clara what was constantly on her mind. She didn't say,
I hate you because he touched you and lay with you and held you in his arms. I hate you because you laughed with him and because he said beautiful things to you. I hate you because jealousy is tearing me apart and because I need to know that he loved me better and more than he loved you.

Frowning and blinking hard, she lowered her head and stared at the brooch pinned to her lapel. If she wore this brooch and her blue garter every day, Jean Jacques would come back to her.

Waiting, she gave Clara time to reach her room and go inside so they wouldn't have to encounter each other in the corridor.

Had he ever loved her? Even a little bit?

Blinking rapidly at the liquid burn in her eyes, she lifted her skirts with shaking hands and ascended the staircase. She had never dreamed that a person could hurt so much.

Most of the outfitting stores were strung along First Avenue South, not far from the piers. Mountains of goods spilled onto the sidewalk and into the street, presided over by eager-eyed men checking lists against receipts.

Clara didn't spot any women near the corner of First and Yesler except herself and Juliette. Even so, they didn't attract much attention. Dreams of riches stuffed the heads of the men crowding the walkways and stores, not thoughts of women. Many seemed unaware of the noisy chaos around them; they concentrated solely on packing a year's supply of food into as small a space as possible.

Clara and Juliette began at the top of the street and moved slowly toward the Northern Pacific ticket office, stopping at each of the outfitting stores to interrupt feverishly busy salesmen with questions about a handsome Frenchman. No one recalled the name Jean Jacques Villette.

Discouraged, they silently entered the next store and then stopped abruptly. Juliette gripped her arm. "Good heavens! There's a woman working in this store."