I do, I do, I do (18 page)

"Since every minute of delay brings you closer to bad weather, I'd suggest you and your party leave tomorrow morning. Figure you'll carry on your backs whatever you might need immediately. My men will transport the rest. But they don't pack and unpack. So be sure your goods are organized in a way that you can easily get to your tent, stove, foodstuffs."

She turned to leave, carrying the Winchester comfortably in a manner that confirmed she knew how to use it. Tom doubted anyone would get in her way.

"Zoe?"

She glared back at him over her shoulder.

"You used to smile a lot. What happened in your life that you don't smile much anymore?"

The chip flew off her shoulder, and her chin quivered. "Oh, Tom," she said softly. Then she rushed away from him, almost running toward the tent city.

Puzzled, he watched her go. He was wrong to think she was the same girl he'd known when they were younger. She was a woman now, and she'd changed. Secrets and pain lay at the back of her gaze. He wished he knew why she was going to Dawson City.

"Why are you staring at me? What have I done now?" Both Zoe and Clara had returned to the tent in bad moods. Well, Juliette wasn't in a good mood either.

The
Annasett
had sailed this morning without her, and no one knew when another steamship might arrive. But she couldn't wait for another ship in any case, since she and Clara and Zoe owned the tent jointly. Clara and Zoe would take the tent on the trek to Dawson City, and then Juliette would have no place to live and sleep if she remained behind in Dyea. Fate was pushing her toward Dawson City, which was acceptable, she supposed, but getting there scared her to death.

Low temperatures had intrigued her at first. She'd told herself the chill on her cheeks was invigorating. But she'd had enough of the cold now. It was no longer interesting to lie shivering in her camp cot. Even without the cold, it was hard to sleep on the narrow cot. But the worst was living in a tent. Two days of coping with the inconveniences of camping out had obliterated any allure roughing it might have originally held. If it ever
had
held any allure.

These discomforts would only worsen as the journey progressed. It seemed that everyone in Dyea had told her a half dozen horror stories about incidents along the trail. It was enough to make a grown woman whimper.

Clara ladled out three bowls of the thin soup Juliette had prepared, and she stared hard at the burned crust on Juliette's bread before she tore it into chunks.

"I told you I don't know how to cook!" Tears of frustration floated near the surface. She hated the stove. First she had to build a fire on the ground, then place the camp oven over the fire, then fit the cooktop over the oven. But of course it wasn't that simple. The fire kept going out. Neither the oven nor the cooktop heated evenly. Consequently, the bread got scorched but the vegetables in the soup were crunchy and half-cooked and the soup hadn't thickened.

"Tomorrow I'll cook," Clara announced.

"I have some news to share." Zoe sat on one of the folding camp stools, balancing the soup bowl on her knees. "I spoke to Tom Price today. And you'll never guess.
Someone
is paying almost half of our packing fees. Tom's company will pack our goods over Chilkoot Pass for thirty cents a pound. And that includes packing us all the way to Dawson." She stared at Juliette while she spoke.

"Glory be!" Clara blinked hard. "I was getting a bit depressed thinking about how many times we were going to have to climb the pass to get our goods to the top. But I can afford thirty cents. And all the way to Dawson!"

Zoe glared. "It's charity, Clara.
Someone
pities us.
Someone
who feels superior has condescended to make our journey easier."

"I'd already decided to hire a packer," Juliette said. After the experience with the wheelbarrow on the beach, she'd decided it was simply impossible for her to transport her goods herself. "I think it's very nice that someone already made the arrangements and saved us a lot of money."

"Really. And who do you suppose that nice someone might be?" Zoe asked in a furious tone.

"I have no idea." Juliette didn't understand Zoe's tight expression and snippy attitude.

"I think you do have an idea."

Clara frowned. "Wait a minute. It almost sounds like you think Juliette is paying the extra."

"Oh, my. Now why would you imagine that?" Zoe asked, arching an eyebrow. "Could it be because Juliette has more money than anyone we know and can afford to give the little people a handout? Or is it because we don't really know anyone in Alaska except each other, so it must be one of us?"

"Well?" Clara asked. "Are you paying Tom Price to pack us in for a ridiculously low price?"

Dumbfounded, Juliette looked from one face to the other. "It isn't me. Admitting this makes me sound selfish and thoughtless, but it never entered my mind to pay a packing company to pack you two all the way to Dawson."

They were traveling to the same destination at the same time, but they weren't companions and they weren't friends. The best that could be said was that they were related by marriage. And they loathed each other for that relationship.

"If you didn't make the arrangements, then who did?" Zoe demanded.

"Your friend, Mr. Price?" Juliette had no idea who would do such a generous thing.

"I haven't seen Tom in years. And he wasn't my friend, he was my brother's friend. Tom's doing well up here, but I don't think he's rich enough or foolish enough to squander his money helping three greenhorn women."

"The only other people we know are Bear Barrett and Ben Dare," Clara pointed out. "Is Mr. Dare rich?"

"I doubt it." Juliette seriously considered the question. "Mr. Dare is going to the Yukon to prospect for gold. I don't think a rich man would do that."

"And I don't think Bear Barrett would subsidize two women he doesn't know and one who humiliated him in public," Clara added. A frown pulled at her brows. "He's angry that I bested him in the arm-wrestling tournament. I ran into him today, and he didn't even say hello. He just leaned down and growled at me. He said, 'There will be a rematch. And the next time you aren't going to win.' "

"So who does that leave us with?" Zoe asked in a hard voice, scowling at Juliette.

She couldn't believe this. "I promise you, I'm not the mysterious benefactor. But if I were, why would that make you so angry?"

"Because I know what you're doing! You want to tell Jean Jacques if it wasn't for you, we would have worn ourselves to a nub carrying goods back and forth. You want him to think it was your idea to find him and you made it possible. And, you want to feel superior to us! Like you're better than us!"

Juliette gasped. "That isn't true! Until the
Annasett
sailed without me, I was planning to return to Seattle!"

Zoe rolled her eyes. "You don't plan anything, Juliette. You just let yourself get carried along. I suspect you've known all along that you wouldn't be on the
Annasett
when it returned to Seattle. You want to find Jean Jacques as much as we do."

To her dismay, most of what Zoe said was true. She did allow herself to be swept along by events and people. Moreover, she couldn't argue that she didn't feel superior to Zoe and Clara, because sometimes she did. Sometimes she thought that Jean Jacques had married beneath himself when he wed those two.

"I'll accept your charity," Zoe continued, her eyes as glittery and hard as blue ice. "I'll accept because I'm worried about how long my money will last and because using a packer will make the journey a hundred times easier. But I'll never thank you for this handout. And I detest you for hiding behind anonymity and for putting me in a position where I have to accept your charity or feel stupid and suffer great hardship."

After setting her soup bowl on the ground, Zoe strode into the tent and threw down the flap behind her.

Juliette blinked at Clara. "Truly, I didn't pay Tom Price any part of our packing fees. It's someone else."

Juliette couldn't eat either, she was too upset. Life with Aunt Kibble had not been a fraction as turbulent and draining as life with her husband's other wives. And no one had ever spoken to her as directly or as insultingly as Zoe and Clara did. Nor had she ever addressed anyone as directly and, yes, occasionally insultingly as she sometimes addressed Zoe and Clara. It was a terrible thing to be forced to endure the company of people one loathed. The circumstance brought out the very worst in her.

"I don't know why Bear's so angry," Clara said, studying the chunk of black crust that she turned between her fingers. "Before the match, he said he could accept defeat gracefully." She frowned at Juliette. "Surely he knew it was possible that I'd beat him. Even if he believed it would take a miracle, he must have known it could happen."

"So who could it be?" She scanned the closed flap of the tent, upset that Zoe was so angry at her, "Ben, that is Mr. Dare, speaks well and he has nice manners. But I just don't think a rich man would travel all this distance to dig around in frozen sand. He doesn't even believe he'll find gold."

Now that she thought about it, Ben's trip to the Yukon didn't make much sense. Unless he didn't want her to know that he was as desperate as the other stampeders.

Clara dropped the bread crust into her bowl. "I never meant to humiliate or embarrass him. I didn't think about that. I just wanted to win the prize."

Last night Juliette had dreamed about Benjamin Dare. They had been walking along the shore, except in her dream, the shore had been white sand instead of pebbles.

Overhead was the twilight sky of an Alaskan spring, but she could see stars anyway. There was no tent city in her dream, no town, no mountains. Just the shore and the sky and Benjamin. He had turned her in his arms, kissed her, then they had sunk to their knees on the sand, and she had swooned as he began to open her shirtwaist.

Lowering her head, she swallowed and blinked at the cooling surface of her soup. For months she had wanted to dream about Jean Jacques, but she never had. She didn't want to dream about Ben Dare, but this was the second time he had made love to her in her dreams. It didn't feel decent or right.

After a while, she looked at the closed tent flap and wondered what Zoe was doing inside. "Do you think Zoe will really kill Jean Jacques?" she asked Clara.

"What? Oh,
ja
. I think she will."

For a moment Juliette felt disoriented. Surely she was not in Alaska, for heaven's sake, dreaming about a handsome man she had not known five weeks ago and sharing a tent with a would-be murderess and an arm wrestler. How on earth had such an improbable thing happened?

Tilting her head back, she stared up at the pale night sky and wished she could go home to California, where the nights were warm, the days boringly tranquil, and where she had never heard of a disturbing man named Ben Dare.

In her dreams there was no Jean Jacques, there was only Ben, his intent blue eyes filling her vision before he crushed her in his arms.

Guilt made her touch her wedding ring. How could her dreams be filled with such longing for one man when she was married to another? What kind of person was she?

Chapter 9