I do, I do, I do (31 page)

In the second hour, she watched sleds with blankets rigged as sails zip past her, and envied the sailors because they could stand on the back runners and let the wind carry them.

When they stopped at noon for hot coffee, she asked Tom why they couldn't have sails, too.

"When the wind dies you'll see why the dogs are a better choice for the long run." Extending a paddle over the flames of a small hot fire, he toasted a slice of bread and cheese. "Without wind, the men will have to pull the sleds themselves."

"How are you little ladies doing?" Bear Barrett asked. His voice boomed across the lake, and a few people looked their way. "Are your legs holding up?"

Gentlemen didn't mention legs in the presence of ladies, but Juliette liked Bear just the same. Initially, his size and scarred face had frightened her, but now she thought of him as a cheerful and kind man. He made her think of a shaggy-haired Viking, golden and warlike in his zest for life, intensely loyal to those of his own tribe.

When Tom shouted and halloed to another party, waving them toward the fire, Juliette's heart squeezed in her chest. The party was made up of men. They would have seen her naked on the shore or would certainly have heard about it.

Bear studied her expression before he dropped a huge hand on her shoulder. "No one is going to say one damned word about you falling through the ice," he said gently, with surprising tact.

Her lip trembled, and she spoke in a whisper. She would die of humiliation if anyone referred to her nakedness. "But what if they do make a comment?"

"Then Ben Dare is going to whup the innards out of them. Ben put out the word. If anyone upsets you, they'll answer with blood and bruises, by God. And me and Tom will be standing right behind Ben, ready to step in if he wants a little assistance."

"Ben did that?" Turning toward the sleds, she watched him tying a new set of burlap bags over the dog's feet to protect their paws from patches of jagged ice.

The party of men drawing up to the fire were additional clients of Tom's. Juliette caught them sliding glances in her direction, but as Bear had promised, none of them uttered an impolite word.

Learning that Ben was willing to fight any man who offended her cast him as more of a hero than she already believed he was. This turn of mind surprised her. Until this journey Juliette hadn't known the sort of men who engaged in violence and hadn't wanted to. She felt certain that Jean Jacques would never have joined the brawl on the shore.

But the men around her didn't shy from physical confrontation or disdain it. They were quick to punish insult or offense—and to protect their women. Juliette liked the way their hardness made her feel safe and cherished and respected in a way that good manners alone could not accomplish.

"I should be ashamed of myself," she muttered. Some of her new attitudes were not for the better.

"For what?" Zoe asked, looking unhappily down at her boots. "I think I'm getting a blister."

"For condoning violence."

Zoe waved a tin of coffee in one hand and a slice of toast and cheese in the other. "You? Condone violence? As I live and breathe. Is violence covered in the etiquette books?"

"Never mind. Where did you get the toasted cheese?"

"I fixed it for her," Tom called from the campfire.

"I didn't ask you to," Zoe snapped.

Tom smiled at Juliette. "Miss Wilder and I are courting. I'm showing her how thoughtful I am and how helpful I'd be around a house."

Juliette and Clara stepped backward and stared at Zoe.

Even the ash and grease could not hide Zoe's bright red flush of anger. "We are
not
courting! Do you hear me, Tom Price? We are
not
, as in never ever not possibly, courting!"

Juliette glanced toward Ben over by the dogs, and Clara shot a look at Bear, who was talking and laughing with the men in the second party. Both men had positioned themselves facing the women. As they always did, Juliette abruptly realized.

Tom smiled. "Would you like more toast and cheese, darlin'?"

Zoe sputtered, then shook her head fiercely and stomped away, heading toward Ben and the dogs.

"Fortunately I admire obstinate women, and God knows that woman is obstinate. But if she were easy to woo, she wouldn't be worth having." He winked at Juliette, then placed another slice of bread and cheese on his paddle and held it over the flames.

Clara blinked. "They're courting. When did this happen? Did Zoe suddenly get unmarried? I'd like to know how she did that."

Throughout the afternoon, Juliette thought about Zoe and Tom courting and, despite Zoe's protests, the long smoky glances between them. And clearly Clara and Bear were circling each other. The air fairly sizzled between those two. And then she thought about Ben Dare.

"I am
not
courting," Zoe continued to insist after they had eaten supper and retired to their tent to fall into their cots.

"I don't care what you do as long as you don't forget why we're here," Clara said, covering a yawn. Her long red woolen underwear clashed with her carroty hair, which had frizzed around her head like a halo. "As long as you remember to shoot our no-good weasel of a husband, you can court all you want to. Makes no never mind to me."

"What's the matter with you?" Zoe looked up from stabbing a needle at the blisters on her heel. "Juliette, give Clara the lecture about how we're married, about propriety, about not being free to get on with our lives. I'm too exhausted to do it."

Juliette turned her washrag between her fingers, frowning at the smears of ash and grease. The gunk had helped protect against the raw wind and cold, but her face still felt chapped and burned.

"Before I fell in the lake, I would have given the 'lecture' as you refer to it, but I'm not sure I believe it anymore."

Zoe and Clara stopped what they were doing and stared. Both looked faintly ridiculous in their shapeless long Johns with hair streaming down their backs and the light of the lantern turning their faces as red and painful-looking as Juliette's.

"Now I'm thinking that people should grab hold of whatever happiness comes their way and do it while they can." She tossed the washrag toward their laundry bucket. "Tom's a good, decent man. He's honest, respected, a hard worker, and he's successful. The two of you have the same background, the same values, and the same way of looking at things. Now think about our husband. Not only has he vanished, he's a liar, a seducer, and a thief. But he wasn't from Newcastle," she added, looking hard at Zoe. "That's his only virtue."

"Juliette March! I don't believe you're saying these things!"

Clara sprinkled talc on her head and pulled a brush through her hair. The talc freshened her scalp and pulled oil from the tresses, but it also dried out her hair. Crackling noises sounded under the brush, and tendrils floated upward, snapping with static. "Any fool with eyes in her head can see that Tom loves you. He probably always has. If you weren't so stubborn, if you'd let it happen, you'd love him back."

Zoe jabbed the needle into her sewing kit. "You two have gone snow-mad. Have you forgotten that I intend to shoot Jean Jacques?" She patted the long lump of the rifle beneath her sleeping bag. "Then the Canadian Mounties will hang me or stand me up in front of a firing squad or whatever they do to execute murderers. I don't have a future."

"All the more reason to take whatever happiness you can while you still have time. I agree with Juliette."

"I couldn't possibly. Tom is from
Newcastle
."

Juliette folded her hands across her red woolen lap. "Remember the story you told us about the Owner's Day Parade?" she asked softly. "And the people in the carriages who looked down their noses at you and your family?"

"I'm not likely to forget, am I?"

"Tell me, Zoe. How are you different from the people in the carriages?" Juliette watched Zoe's mouth drop and her eyes flare. "It sounds as if you, too, think the people in Newcastle are no better than dirt. It sounds like you also see your friends and neighbors as objects of scorn and denigration."

"My God!" Zoe stared and swallowed hard.

"If you and Tom are representative of the people in Newcastle, it seems to me that you'd be proud. Maybe the residents are poor, but they sound like good-hearted, hardworking people. Why are you ashamed of that? Why do you believe the carriage people's opinion instead of listening to your own heart?" She reached to Zoe's cot and pressed her shaking hand. "You don't have to ride in a carriage to be a snob," she said gently. "Please. Think about that when you see Tom tomorrow."

"I… I just… My God," Zoe whispered.

"Me, I am going to sleep," Clara said, yawning widely.

After Clara blew out the lantern, Juliette lay in the darkness, watching Zoe, who sat with her knees pulled up under her chin staring at the dying glow of the stove.

Had she been wrong to push Zoe toward Tom? She couldn't think so.

Her last thought before she'd lost consciousness under the ice had been: I'll never be with Ben. She had thought hard about that and had concluded that propriety killed spontaneity and robbed a person of joy and opportunity. Propriety was for the old, those who had lived their lives. Not for wronged wives.

"Listen to Juliette," Clara whispered from her cot.

Good heavens. Juliette almost sat up to stare at them.

They listened to her advice. Would wonders never cease?

Chapter 15

To cross the overland stretch between Crater Lake and Long Lake, Tom's Chilkat Indians removed the blanket sails and pulled their sleds by looping a rope over their chests or rigging a harness that fit across their foreheads. On a dare, Zoe tried to pull the load and was surprised to discover that the iced sled runners made it possible for her to move the sled forward.

"I can pull it," Zoe said, handing the ropes back to Tom, "but only for a few feet, and I'm glad I don't have to." The farther they traveled the less she resented Juliette's charity and the more grateful she felt, although she couldn't bring herself to say so out loud.

The snow was deep on the steep slopes enclosing Long Lake, covering rugged terrain. Yesterday Clara had walked into the woods to gather firewood, and she had dropped into the snow up to her shoulders. Bear pulled her out, but the incident had caused a commotion, and reminded everyone not to wander off the trail. Which Zoe and Tom had done without really being aware of how far from camp they'd meandered.