I do, I do, I do (10 page)

Pained by the injustice, she shifted a frown to Juliette's and Zoe's reflections. They stood behind her in the street inspecting mounds of goods, discussing methods of packing and arranging. At least that's what Zoe appeared to be doing. Juliette wrung her hands and gazed at the packs with a dazed look of confusion and disbelief.

Clara sighed. Next to the other two Mmes Villette, she felt like a Saint Bernard plodding along beside two sleek greyhounds. In the last week she had stopped thinking of herself as merely substantial and had started thinking of herself as unbecomingly big and clunky. Secretly she wondered what her Jean Jacques had seen in her since two out of three of his wives were petite. She was the unfortunate anomaly.

She wasn't skinny like the other two. Her hair wouldn't stay put. She preferred comfort to fashion. She'd rather scrub a staircase than pick up an embroidery hoop. She liked to grow vegetables and she liked to polish silver.

Mostly she liked to eat a perfectly prepared and abundant meal. She was a peasant.

Sighing again, she gazed into the reflection and watched Juliette and Zoe bend their heads over Zoe's list. After a minute she noticed a man leaning against a mound of goods and smoking a cigar on the far side of the street. He observed Juliette with narrow intent eyes, his gaze following as she paced beside Zoe.

Clara's attention sharpened and she turned from the reflection to study him directly. Like most of the stampeders buying outfits at Wilder's, this man wore a beard, but his was new, just beginning to fill in. He wore denims with plain suspenders running over the shoulders of an open-collared shirt, had tilted his hat to shade the late August sun. He was tall and good-looking, but it was his attitude that set him apart from the other men in the street.

Whereas the others had an air of frenzy and perhaps desperation about them, this man did not. He wasn't focused on his outfit to the exclusion of all else. And he was more aware of his surroundings than the others seemed to be. Certainly he was aware of Juliette. He hadn't looked away from her in several minutes.

When Clara was certain she wasn't imagining his interest, she moved between the piles of foodstuffs and camping equipment.

"Juliette," she said in a low voice. "There's a man across the street who's watching you like you're a dumpling and he's starving."

Juliette did not glance up from Zoe's list. "Is he broad-shouldered and handsome? Smoking a cigar and wearing a green scarf twisted around his hatband?"

Clara hadn't noticed the scarf until she turned sideways and shot him a suspicious look. The man smiled slightly and tipped his hat to her, then returned his attention to Juliette.

"Do you know him?"

"Certainly not." Juliette glared from under her hat brim. "But we keep running into him. He was in the park last week when we talked to Zoe, and I think he's staying at our hotel."

Clara could swear she had never seen the man before, but apparently she had. "Well, he sure seems interested in you."

"If you're implying that I've encouraged him, I assure you I have not. I am a married woman!" Juliette straightened and sniffed, her shoulders stiff with insult.

"Oh, for heaven's sake. I didn't imply anything, I only… Just forget it!"

Throwing up her hands in annoyance, Clara turned in a huff to walk away and crashed into the biggest man she'd ever seen.

Huge hands steadied her. "I beg your pardon."

"No, no. It was my fault."

As he was easily six feet six inches tall, she had to tilt her head back to see his face. Shaggy masses of golden hair tumbled around his jawline since he carried his hat instead of wearing it. No one would have described him as handsome. His face was too lived in, and there were reminders of too many brawls in the once-broken nose and a scar that cut through one eyebrow. It was a craggy, intimidating face until he smiled, then Clara saw that some might consider him handsome after all.

"Did I stomp your toes?"

Like an idiot she peered down at her sturdy shoes. "I don't believe so."

"Excellent." Bowing slightly, he made a flourish with his hat. "Bernard T. Barrett at your service." A grin revealed teeth as white as baking soda. "Everyone calls me Bear."

Clara could see why. His voice seemed to growl out of a barrel chest and he had twinkly brown-bear eyes.

She would have told him her name, too, but she suddenly heard the silence behind her and realized Juliette and Zoe were watching and listening. Juliette at least would be shocked to her toes if Clara, a married woman, offered her name to a stranger.

Smiling down at her, he made another flourish, then tapped his hat onto the back of his head. "Well, then. If you're sure I didn't injure you."

"It was nothing. Really. I turned too fast and wasn't looking where I was going." Clara dipped her head. Mr. Barrett kept gazing at her. Staring, actually.

"You sure are a pretty little thing," he remarked in a booming voice, causing several men to look up and give her the once-over. Before she could take offense, Bernard T. Barrett grinned, bowed slightly, then moved away from her through the piles of boxes and sacks, his strides as big as the rest of him.

An hour later, during a demonstration emphasizing the dangers of camp stoves, Clara gave up trying not to think about him. She couldn't get over the fact that Mr. Bernard T. Barrett had complimented her as a pretty
little
thing.

In twenty-six years, no one had ever described Clara Klaus as little. The word ravished her and sent a shiver of delight coursing through her body followed by a pang of regret. Where had men like Bernard T. Barrett been when she was single? She just knew that he didn't have a string of Mmes Barrett trailing out behind him. Her heart understood with rock-solid certainty that he wasn't that kind of low-down, good-for-nothing man.

"Clara, are you paying attention?" Zoe glared at her. "We all need to know how to operate this stove, because we'll each have our turn at using it."

"Wait a minute." Juliette's gray eyes rounded in horror. "You don't expect me to cook. Oh, my heavens. You do."

Clara listened to Zoe's sharp reply with half an ear. As far as Clara could discern, Juliette had not acknowledged the man across the street. Judging by Juliette's demeanor, she was entirely indifferent to a handsome man's intent interest.

Which meant that Juliette was a far better person than she, Clara thought with a sigh of irritation. She cast another surreptitious glance in the direction Bernard T. Barrett had taken. She would never see Mr. Barrett again, and that was just as well. After all, she was sort of married.

Bracing herself, she thought of her thieving husband and waited for the anvil of pain to squash her as it usually did when she grieved over Jean Jacques.

The pain came, but it didn't quite squash her. For the first time since Juliette had appeared and ruined her life, Clara sensed that a moment might come when she could think about Jean Jacques without the anguish of wanting to hold him or kill him.

Possibly. Maybe.

Chapter 5

The piers at the foot of First Avenue were crammed with men jammed shoulder to shoulder trying to shout or push their way on board the
Annasett
. Hoping to catch the attention of an armed crew member guarding the bottom of the gangplank, Zoe waved her ticket above her hat. It was useless to shout as everyone was yelling. And, she realized, she was too short for her waving ticket to be noticed in the chaotic melee.

Peering over her shoulder, she screamed at Juliette and Clara to stay right behind her. Then she lowered her head and went to work with her elbows, opening a path. When one man stepped back in surprise or anger, she slipped in front of him and jabbed at the next one. By the time she reached the gangplank, her hat was askew, splatters of tobacco juice soiled her skirts, and her elbows were bruised from banging against ribs, but she presented her ticket with a triumphant flourish.

The crewman's eyebrows soared at the sight of three ticketed women, but he grinned and waved them on board with a look that said he thought they were crazy.

Once on deck, Juliette gripped the railing and stared down at the crush of men shouting and shoving on the pier, all hoping to be the one chosen to fill a last-minute vacancy.

"What if our outfits didn't get loaded?" she asked, speaking next to Clara's ear to be heard.

" That's why we had them sent to the dock yesterday. To make certain no mishap occurred," Clara reminded her.

"How safe is this boat?" After straightening her hat and cape, Juliette gazed up at the stack, then scanned the deck. "I was told the
Annasett
has room for sixty passengers, but there's twice that many standing at the rail."

"I'm guessing we'll share the trip with three hundred fellow travelers," Zoe said with a shrug. "Can't blame the owner for making a profit while he can."

Juliette gasped and her face turned pale. "We'll sink!"

Zoe raised her eyes to the hills of Seattle and fervently wished that Juliette were standing on one of them. All she had heard for the last week was: "I can't do this."

"What if we don't have enough food in the packs?"

"What if we freeze to death?" What if, what if, what if, until Zoe felt like screaming.

She truly did not understand why Juliette undertook a journey that so clearly terrified her. She must have loved Jean Jacques very much to do something she desperately did not want to do in the hope of finding him.

Jealousy whipsawed down Zoe's spine. For several days now, she hadn't imagined Jean Jacques kissing Juliette and Clara every time she looked at them. But at odd moments the images rose with tormenting power, blindsiding her as now.

It made her furious. She wanted to feel nothing but hatred when she thought of Jean Jacques, wanted to imagine no scenes except that of herself firing a bullet into his black heart. Unlike Juliette, Zoe had no questions she wanted to ask, and she didn't care about getting her money back as Clara did. She just wanted revenge, just wanted to kill his butt.

Glaring down at the docks, she watched Bear Barrett stride through the yelling throng, knocking aside smaller men—which included everyone on the pier. She knew him by sight because he came into Uncle Milton's store once or twice a year, ordering supplies to be sent to his place in Dawson City. Coming up the gangplank behind him was the man who had shown an interest in Juliette the day they assembled their outfits. Today, the green scarf he'd worn around his hatband was tied to a belt loop.