I do, I do, I do (29 page)

"In my heart, I know it's proper to thank him in person," Juliette said unhappily. "But he saw me
naked
." She clapped a hand over her eyes. "How could you and Clara let that happen?"

"Oh, maybe because we were trying to save your life. Or maybe we took a walk, discussed it, and tried to decide what we could do to cause you the worst embarrassment of your life. And we concluded that we wouldn't let you freeze to death on the shore, but instead we'd tear off your icy clothing and let Ben Dare see you naked while he was trying to warm you and save you. If it's any comfort, I voted to let you freeze on the shore rather than cause you the tiniest bit of embarrassment." She made a face and sighed.

When she'd believed Juliette was dying, Zoe had vowed never again to treat her with impatience or bad temper. She'd already broken that vow a dozen times. To be fair, Clara irritated her, too, and there were signs that she annoyed both of them. Being cooped in the tent for almost a week might have something to do with everyone's short fuse. That's what her pa and brothers had called a quick temper—having a short fuse.

Sighing again and feeling a long way from home, she stirred the kettle of laundry on top of the camp stove, which they had moved inside the tent. Outside, a storm had pounded the Crater Lake area for almost a week, and the temperature had plummeted to a point well below zero—and that's where the thermometer stayed. Inside the tent, the camp stove radiated intense heat, forcing them to strip to their shimmies and knickers. Even then, they perspired. And suffered the boredom of confinement with nothing to do.

"I think the storm has ended." Juliette didn't sound as if she cared one way or the other. She'd been listless since nearly dying under the ice.

"The snow and wind ended sometime last night," Zoe agreed, stirring the kettle of laundry. Boiling laundry wasn't a problem. Drying laundry was the problem, so they didn't attempt to wash anything larger than hankies, stockings, and undies. They could hang these items on the cot frames to dry, but anything larger would have dragged on the ground and made it too humid and too crowded within the small tent.

"Zoe?" Clara shouted from outside, since they didn't open the flap unless they had to. "Tom's here. He wants you to go to the lake with him so he can show you how to drive a sled."

She stopped stirring and considered the effort involved in getting dressed in cramped quarters. With the stove inside, there was space for only one person to dress at a time, and you had to keep a sharp eye on hems so they didn't fall against the stove and catch fire. Four tents had burned in as many days.

"Go ahead and go," Juliette said, flinging an arm over her face. "I don't need tending anymore."

Zoe wasn't thinking about Juliette. She was thinking about Tom. They hadn't seen much of each other since the day they'd picnicked beside the glacier. In some ways, the day they kissed seemed a hundred years ago. In other ways, it was as immediate as last night's dream.

Feeling the back of her neck grow hot, Zoe frowned at the suds frothing on top of the laundry water. Tom was dangerous. He made her question long-held beliefs. He confused her. She couldn't sort out her feelings toward him. One minute he attracted her, the next he repelled her. And as hard as she tried, she couldn't forget the electric thrill of his lips or the hard length of his body pressed to hers.

"Tell him I'll be out as soon as I get dressed." Which wasn't at all what she wanted to say. Now she had to stand behind her words.

When she finally stepped outside, bundled up to the eyes, she noticed that Clara had swept loose snow away from the tent and she'd chipped the ice off one of the piles of goods so they could get to the foodstuffs. Today, Clara's energy and relentless good cheer annoyed Zoe half to death. And she didn't like the way Tom's eyes twinkled when he scanned the layers of clothing she wore. A heavy corduroy skirt over wool petticoats topped by a winter-weight shirtwaist and a thick sweater. A coat, a muffler, a pair of gloves beneath a pair of mittens, and a wool scarf that went over her hat and tied beneath her chin. She wore so much bulk that she couldn't see her boots.

"Are you laughing at me?" she said through her muffler.

"I'm not laughing." But she could see his lips twitching. He appealed to Clara. "Am I laughing?"

"No. I'm the one who's laughing." Her eyes crinkled above the scarf wrapping her throat and mouth. "We look like fat penguins, waddling along with our arms stuck out at the sides."

"What do you know about penguins?"

"In a bad mood, are we?" Tom asked, lifting an eyebrow. He'd pulled his scarf away from his mouth and she could see his smile.

"I'm either too hot or too cold. I've been stuck in that tent for a week. Juliette is driving me crazy. We're all starting to repeat ourselves. We've had no exercise. And I'm so sick of Alaskan strawberries and dough cakes that I could scream."

Alaskan strawberries was the name given to the pink half-cooked beans that everyone in camp joked about when they weren't complaining. No one had the energy to cook much else even if they could have found more interesting fare among the tumbled boxes of iced-over goods.

"When are we going to get out of here?" At least a hundred people had turned back. They might not have given up if it hadn't been so late in the year, if they could have sailed across the lakes and down the rivers. But the frigid temperatures and the long walk over ice had discouraged them. Zoe had watched them go with envy in her heart.

"A few folks left for Dawson today." Tom fell into step beside her, making walking on snowshoes look easy and graceful. "There's no reason our party can't depart tomorrow morning."

"Good." She wanted to get to Dawson, find Jean Jacques, do what she'd come to do, then go home if they didn't hang her as they probably would. She wanted to sit in Ma's snug kitchen, pour her heart out, and let her family comfort her. She wanted her life back the way it was before she met Jean Jacques and before she ran into Tom Price.

Jean Jacques had deceived her and ruined her, but he'd made her feel like a lady. Tom confused her and reminded her of a background she wanted to rise above. Good sense advised her to forget both of them.

Head down, she listened to the cold squeak of the snow beneath her boots, heard the rhythmic
schwoosh
of Tom's snowshoes. She couldn't think of a single thing to say to him.

When they reached the shore of the lake, Tom paused and pushed back the fur-lined hood of his coat. Mist gathered in front of his lips when he spoke. "That was some kind of fight you started last week," he said, shaking his head and grinning. "I never saw anything like it."

Zoe closed her eyes and cringed inside her layers of clothing. When she felt uncertain about her behavior, she asked herself: Would Juliette do this? Never in a hundred years would Juliette have punched a man in the nose and started a brawl. Only a low-bred person would do such a thing.

"I was proud of you, Zoe." Tom pushed his hands in his coat pockets and gazed down at her with soft eyes. "If you hadn't gotten to Horvath first, I would have flattened him."

She turned away, focusing on the men loading sleds out on the lake. "I'm ashamed of myself," she said in a low voice. How was she ever going to better herself if she couldn't control the Newcastle in her?

Tom took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. "There's no reason to be ashamed of standing up for your friend."

Juliette was not her friend. They could barely tolerate each other. Although she'd thought about it at length, she didn't know why she'd flown at Jake Horvath like an avenging angel. It was nothing to her if some vulgar-mouthed man made scurrilous comments about Juliette. But at the time it happened, she had cared deeply, had cared enough to bust the man's nose. She still didn't understand what had come over her.

"Ladies don't get into fistfights."

"Is that what's bothering you?" His fingers tightened on her shoulders hard enough that she felt the pressure through all the layers. "The standards are different up here, Zoe. If you aren't a fighter, you won't succeed in the Yukon. And you might die. Qualities like toughness and loyalty are prized."

"Is that how you see me?" she asked, horrified. "As tough?"

"You bet I do. You're tough enough to go after what you want. Tough enough to fight for what you believe in. It takes strength to make your way in a big city like Seattle, and you've been doing it. It takes strength to set your sights on a place like Dawson City and endure what it takes to get there."

The praise made her feel a little better, and then a lot worse as she realized he praised her for the wrong things. There was nothing admirable about starting a brawl.

He grinned down at her. "You and Clara are becoming legends. There isn't a man on the trail who wants to get crossways with either of you. Everyone knows you can shoot that rifle you keep in the tent, and now they know you throw a mean right fist."

You could take the girl out of Newcastle, but you couldn't take Newcastle out of the girl. What a fool she had been to believe that Jean Jacques really thought she was genteel.

"I don't want to talk about this," she said, walking out onto the ice. Clara had reported that it was a foot thick now. Clara seemed to know everything, which was one of her annoying traits. "Tell me what we're supposed to do."

Tom followed, and she sensed that he watched her with a puzzled frown.

For the next hour, he worked with her on the sleds. Four of his clients had turned back midway to Crater Lake, therefore he had extra sleds and dogs.

"With fewer clients and goods to transport, we'll be able to move faster."

The plan was for the Chilkats to attach canvas sails to the extra sleds and let the wind blow the piles of goods across the lake. With any luck, the Indians would make such good time that camp would be set up by the time Zoe and her companions arrived. They would drive dog-powered sleds.

"So why do I need to know how to rig a sail?"

"Every survival skill you learn is like money in the bank."

That sounded reasonable. "Why do our sleds have wooden runners instead of metal like so many of the others," she asked, looking around.

"Metal runners stick to the ice in extreme cold."

He showed her how to water the wooden runners and coat them with a sheath of ice. Then demonstrated how to hitch the dogs. Showed her where to stand, how to guide the animals. At the end of an hour, the information had begun to blur. The one thing that stuck in Zoe's memory was the warning that the sled driver did not add her weight to the load. The driver ran along behind, guiding the sled.

"There's not much to worry about. The dogs will follow the sled ahead of them. I'll drive the lead sled, and Bear Barrett has agreed to bring up the rear. Ben Dare will drive a sled behind Juliette to keep an eye on her. You and the ladies shouldn't run into any trouble."

She stared at him. "Let me make sure I understand. I'm going to
run
behind a sled all the way to Long Lake. Then
run
across Long Lake to Deep Lake. Then
run
across Deep Lake to Linderman Lake. Then
run
over Linderman Lake to Lake Bennett."

Laughing at her expression, he nodded. "The alternative is to camp here until the spring melt, then take a boat or a raft downriver."

"Neither possibility sounds appealing." But remembering her experience aboard the
Annasett
made running a hundred miles sound almost desirable. "You know, this really makes me mad." Her cheeks were fiery with cold, yet she was sweating inside her coat. The dogs frightened her a little. She didn't know if a foot of ice was thick enough. And she simply couldn't imagine running behind a sled for a hundred miles, except she expected it would be a grueling experience. "No one tells you about all this before you leave the States." She waved an arm at the lake. "I'll bet half of these people wouldn't be here if they'd known the truth about what to expect."

Tom tugged her muffler away from her mouth, bent, and kissed her quickly. "You're tough, remember?"

"You kissed me!" Startled and angry, she shoved him away and then glared. "In public!" After scrubbing her mitten across the tingle throbbing in her lips, she made a hissing sound. "How dare you compromise me like that!"

"I've thought about what you said up at the glaciers. And I've thought about fate bringing us together again. I want to be more than just a friend, Zoe. So I've decided to commence a courtship." His green eyes were clear and serious. "As for kissing you in public, that was deliberate. I'm staking my territory. I doubt I'm the only one who thinks you're a fine-looking woman with spunk and spirit. So I'm sending any rivals a signal that I won't tolerate anyone else courting you."

He had lost his senses. "I don't want to be courted!" she insisted, when she stopped sputtering. "I thought I made that clear."

"You did." He unhitched the dogs from the sled he'd used for demonstration and handed the trace lines to one of the Chilkats. "Changing your mind is one of my courtship objectives."

"
One
of your objectives?" She was still indignant and sputtering. Furious that he had compromised her in front of all the men on the ice. He'd treated her as if she were common and vulgar. "If I wasn't wearing gloves and mittens, I'd slap your face!"

He laughed. "Piss and vinegar. I like that in a woman."

Angry and exasperated, she started toward the shore, praying she wouldn't slip and ruin what she hoped was a dramatic exit by sprawling on the ice.

"Teach the others what I showed you today," he called after her. "And Zoe?" She refused to look back. "I've made up my mind. It's going to be you and me. You might as well accept it."

"Never!" she shouted over her shoulder.

She had made one disastrous mistake; she wasn't going to make another.

Chapter 14