I do, I do, I do (26 page)

Juliette, he thought, frowning, forming her name in his mind as he searched for his cache of goods, brought to the camp by the Indian packers. Once he'd found it, he began to set up his small tent. Miss Juliette March was an intriguing, maddening enigma.

Since the day they'd climbed Chilkoot, Juliette had kept her distance, and when he did maneuver a moment alone, she behaved cordially, but erected a barrier of politeness between them. It was as if the startling incidents of closeness had never occurred. As if she had never wept in his arms. As if they had never sat on the side of a snowy mountain and stared at each other with growing desire. He felt certain he had not mistaken the signals sent by her parted lips and quickened breathing. And he well remembered his own rush of desire. It was the first time he had experienced a stirring since Helen was diagnosed.

Juliette's withdrawal baffled him. During the days of descending into a treeless valley he'd searched his memory for any offense he might have given. The only incident that came to mind was talking about Helen the day they climbed Chilkoot.

Listening to him speak about Helen hadn't seemed to upset Miss March at the time, but perhaps she had thought about it later and had taken offense. There were women who considered it insulting for a man to speak glowingly of another woman in their presence. If Miss March was such a woman, and this was the only reason he could think of to explain her behavior, he was glad he had discovered it now, because Helen would always be part of his life and memories.

If a few words about someone he had cared for was enough to drive Juliette away, then so be it. But it was disappointing.

The trail descended on a sharp incline past frozen waterfalls to the shore of Crater Lake. Within a month deep snow would conceal the huge stones and jagged rocks that were still visible and still difficult to climb over or around. Even Clara found the going hard.

"Did you hear about Mr. Coleman?" she inquired over a cold supper. The steep mountainsides no longer grew so much as a stick, and shrewd vendors charged a fortune for firewood. At her suggestion, they had decided to buy firewood only every other night. This was a no-fire night.

"Is it true he was killed?" Juliette asked, directing a tired frown down at her plate. Tonight's fare was canned corned beef, reconstituted dried cabbage, and cold dough cakes.

Clara had made the dough cakes yesterday when they had a fire. Mrs. Eddington, whom they'd met back at Sheep Camp, had told her how. You opened a sack of flour, tossed in some snow, salt, and baking powder, stirred it all together, then pulled off globs and fried the globs in bacon fat. Clara thought the result tasted like paste, but she had to admit the dough cakes were filling.

"Mr. Coleman is dead?" Zoe asked in surprise. "Isn't he the fellow who gave us each a piece of licorice a couple of days ago? He was a nice man."

Tilting her dough cake to the light of the lantern, Clara spread a teaspoon of berry jam over the top. The jam improved the taste a little. "He was about fifty yards below one of those idiots who are packing hundreds of pounds on a sled, even though there really isn't enough snow depth yet. The weight drives the runners through the snow and into the ground below."

"Tom told me about that," Zoe said. "The runners can hit rough ground, which often causes the sled to flip end over end and send it hurtling down the slope."

Juliette nodded. "Mrs. Eddington's husband insists there should be a rule allowing only the smooth-bottomed sleds instead of those with runners."

"But the flat-bottomed sleds are responsible for pressing down the snow and creating long dangerous stretches of glassy ice." Zoe shook her head. "Several people have fallen and broken bones in those sections. It almost happened to me."

"Do you want to hear about Mr. Coleman or not?" Clara asked irritably.

Zoe spread her hands. "He got hit by a fully packed runaway sled. What else could it be? I'm sorry to hear it."

They were beginning to recognize many of the other cheechakos and identify names with faces. What was making Clara irritable, however, was not meeting new people—that was interesting. Her irritation stemmed from not seeing much of the people she already knew. Namely Bernard T. Barrett.

"Does it seem to you that we haven't seen much of Mr. Barrett, Mr. Price, or Mr. Dare? It appears they've abandoned us," she added lightly, trying to make it sound like she'd only just noticed and didn't really care.

"I, for one, think it's good that we're not seeing as much of those gentlemen," Juliette said in the prissy voice that made Clara crazy. "When you implied that it was natural for Mr. Dare and me to be together, I realized I was spending entirely too much time with him. I am, after all, a married woman. And so are you."

Zoe finished her meal and scrubbed her plate with a handful of snow. "I think we should talk about that."

"I don't want to talk about Jean Jacques," Clara snapped. Thinking about that low-down no-good had given her the fury and the energy to climb Chilkoot Pass. She planned to cheer when Zoe shot him.

"I'd like to tell Tom the truth." Zoe held up a hand. "Just hear me out. Tom's a longtime family friend, and I don't feel right about misrepresenting myself to him. He asked outright if I was married, and I lied. That doesn't feel good. And there was," her face turned redder than could be accounted for by the frigid temperature, "something else that happened that wouldn't have happened if he'd known I was married."

Now that was interesting, Clara thought. And the incident wasn't difficult to figure out. Tom and Zoe must have kissed. Instant resentment stiffened her spine. Zoe had kissed another man. But she had not. And she had certainly wanted to. Well, damn. If she'd known the others were out there kissing men they were not married to…

"Have you kissed Ben?" she demanded, glaring at Juliette.

Juliette flashed as scarlet as Zoe. "Certainly not! Is that what you did, Zoe? You kissed Mr. Price? How could you! Even though Jean Jacques is a worthless scoundrel, he's still our legal husband. You're still one of his wives."

Zoe tossed her tin plate into the crate it had come out of. "I didn't say I'd kissed Tom. If I did—and I'm saying
if
—it would have been an accident. And that's my point. If I told him the truth, no further accidents would happen!"

Clara waved a hand at a thousand tents pitched along the lakeshore. "If you tell our story to Tom, how long do you think it will take for us to be laughingstocks? The gossip and scandal will run through this camp just like that." She snapped her fingers, the effect diluted by her gloves.

"I trust Tom not to tell anyone!"

"And maybe he wouldn't, but maybe he'd let it slip. I'd like to tell Bear the truth, too. I had an opportunity to admit I was married, and I didn't. That doesn't feel good to me either. But it would feel worse to admit I'd lied to him. And I don't want to risk everyone knowing our private business!"

"I'd like to tell Mr. Dare the truth, too," Juliette said slowly. "But I think I've inadvertently and completely innocently led him to mistakenly suspect that I might be a tiny bit interested in his company."

Clara sighed and sipped from a canteen of cold coffee.

"If he now discovered that I was married, what would he think of me? He'd think I was a promiscuous wife. He'd think I have the morals of a dog."

"Which wouldn't be true," Clara said after a minute, wondering if Bear would think that, too. "Jean Jacques had the morals of a dog, but we didn't and don't. And the truth is, we don't know our legal situation. We should have consulted an attorney, but we were in too much of a hurry to get up here and find that louse. My point is, it's possible that none of us are really married."

"We're really married. We went through the ceremony. And the wedding night." Juliette's cheeks flamed again.

"But was the marriage legal and binding? For all we know we might be free to marry again if we wished. We might be free to get on with our lives whether or not we run Jean Jacques to ground. For all we know, it's perfectly legal, permissible, and moral to spend time with Mr. Barrett. And Mr. Dare and Mr. Price," she added hastily.

"But maybe it's not," Zoe said. "Maybe Juliette's right, and enjoying another man's company makes us wicked women."

"I can't stand the thought," Juliette said, raising her gloves to her temples.

They fell silent for several minutes. Then Zoe jumped to her feet, swore, and kicked her cup into the night. "All right, I won't tell him. But I enjoy Tom's—friendship—and I'm going to spend time with him. I don't care what the two of you think." She glared at Juliette. "When we find Jean Jacques, you can tell him that I have the morals of a dog if you want to. I'd say he's in no position to cast stones on that score."

Juliette squared her shoulders. "When we find him, the only thing I'm going to say is 'I hate you.' Then I'm going to step aside and let you shoot him."

"After which one of us claims to be the widow. We go through his effects, and if he has any of our money left, we hire a lawyer to defend Zoe and we split whatever the lawyer doesn't take," Clara said in a tight voice. "As for this discussion, married women can have male friends. I've always thought so." Actually she'd always thought the opposite, but recent circumstances had changed her opinion.

Juliette closed her eyes and sighed. "I've lost the thread of this conversation. Have we decided anything?"

"We won't tell anyone how Jean Jacques married us all," Zoe said. "And we won't think less of each other for spending time with—our friends."

"We decided that?"

Clara nodded. "It's a sensible decision given our circumstances and our uncertain status."

Clara would have liked to jump to her feet, rush off to find Bear, and plant a kiss on that man when she found him that would sink him to his knees. Her skin felt hot just thinking about grabbing him.

But she was reacting to her resentment that Zoe had kissed Tom and she hadn't kissed Bear. It wasn't right or proper for any of them to be kissing anyone. But at least she didn't have to feel guilty or wonder what Juliette and Zoe were thinking if they came upon her enjoying Bear's platonic company.

Still, if a kiss happened… Well, it was only fair since Zoe had done it. She couldn't wait to see him again.

Now that they'd discussed it, Juliette felt less self-conscious and guilty about spending time with Ben, although she hadn't seen him yet. She still wrestled with doing the right thing. And the right thing was by no means clear-cut. But she needed to know what it was, because every time she had ignored propriety and followed an impulse, she had either ruined part of her life or immersed herself in great difficulties.

But it did seem that she should be free to enjoy Ben's company. He was merely a friend, after all. Aside from a couple of thrillingly awkward moments, there was nothing romantic between them. No words or sentiments had been exchanged that she would be ashamed to hear repeated in a churchyard. She had conducted herself as a lady. And Ben might be only a prospector, but he knew how to act like a gentleman.

Pushing her gloved hands into her coat pockets, she kicked a stone and watched it skitter across the ice covering Crater Lake. None of the men she'd met on this journey were anywhere near what Aunt Kibble would consider a gentleman. Men of breeding and background did not pin their futures on discovering gold. A true gentleman traveled with a retinue and wouldn't dream of relinquishing his comforts to sleep in a small tent on frozen ground, eat the same monotonous beans and bacon every day, and wear himself out walking hundreds of miles to reach the Yukon.

She didn't know Ben Dare's background, but she reluctantly conceded that he wouldn't be here if he were a gentleman. On the other hand, he was liberal-minded and regarded women in a way that Juliette had not encountered before. Moreover, he made her feel interesting, and he made her suspect that she had potential to be more than she was. That frightened her a little, but it flattered her more.

She missed him. And she had no one to blame but herself. She had driven him away by bludgeoning him with inane politeness. It was disappointing that he'd given up so easily, but she had been the cause of their estrangement, if she could call it that.

Ben was heavy on her mind as she wandered out on the ice capping the lake. An inch of new snow covered the surface, but she felt the hidden smoothness beneath the soles of her boots, saw the tracks of animals in the snow. The strangeness of walking on frozen water interrupted her thoughts. If someone had told her a year ago that she would be walking on ice, she would have laughed and insisted they were dreaming.

A sharp cracking sound erased the smile from her lips. She didn't know exactly what the noise meant, but it sounded ominous, almost menacing. And now she noticed that she'd wandered beyond the animal tracks.

Panic stopped her heart when the ice seemed to give way beneath her feet, seemed to sink beneath her weight.

For an instant she couldn't move, couldn't think. Then she grabbed her skirts, fixed wide eyes on the shore, and dashed forward.

It happened fast. One minute the ice felt almost solid, the next second she dropped into water so cold that for an instant her brain and heart were shocked into paralysis.

Black icy water swallowed her whole, freezing against her face, penetrating her layers of clothing.

She had never learned to swim.

Thrashing wildly, the wet weight of her coat dragging at her arms, she tried to claw upward. The top of her hat banged against an ice ceiling, then broke through, and she gulped for air. She wasn't facing the shore, couldn't see if anyone had noticed her plunge through the ice. Throwing out her arms, she tried to lean on the surface with the idea of pulling herself out of the freezing water. But the ice broke, and she sank again. This time her toes touched a sandy bottom and she pushed off, but not hard enough. Her head didn't break water this time.

As her heavy clothing pulled her down, it occurred to Juliette that she was going to drown. In water shallow enough that a tall man could get his head above water to breathe.