Forget-Me-Not Bride (15 page)

‘I don't give a hang for your reason for being aboard the
Senator
,' his companion was saying to him. ‘I seen what I seen and I know I ain't ridin'the wrong trail. You'll make a good partner …'

Lilli didn't hear any more. With her cheeks burning she allowed Jack to walk her down the deck.

When they had gone so far that Mr Cameron and his companion were swallowed up in the blue-spangled dusk Jack came to a halt, hoping to recommence from the point where they had been so annoyingly interrupted.

As his arms slid once more around her waist Lilli said, her voice sounding oddly strangled in her throat, ‘No. I must get back to Leo and Lottie. They'll be worrying about me.'

Jack curbed a surge of exasperation. The trouble with respectable women was that when they made such remarks there was every chance they meant them. ‘Tomorrow then,' he said obligingly, reflecting that he could now enjoy a few hands of stud poker. ‘And when we get to Whitehorse, I'd like to show you the rapids.'

‘I'd like that.' Her voice was thick with love. They would take Leo and Lottie and it would be almost as though they were a family.

For a moment she regretted her decision to leave him when he so obviously wanted her to stay, but she had been speaking the truth when she had said Leo and Lottie would be wondering where she was and even if she hadn't been, the deck was getting quite crowded with strolling groups of men. Too crowded for them to be able to continue kissing and caressing.

He raised her hand to his mouth, kissing the tips of her fingers. She forgot all about the mortification she had felt when Ringan Cameron's shocked eyes had met hers. She was in love. Truly in love. Just as her parents had been. Just as she had always dreamed of being.

Later that night, as she lay in her uncomfortably narrow bunk, she tried to his image against her closed eyelids. Frustratingly though it was Ringan Cameron who loomed large in her mind's eye and as she recalled the disbelief that had flared through his eyes, followed so swiftly by shock, the emotion that accompanied her into sleep wasn't joy, but deep, deep discomfort. A discomfort so deep it was almost regret.

‘So I'm going to be paying Nelson off for
two
Peabody brides, not just one,' Jack said wryly as he partially unbuttoned his shirt and dragged it over his head.

It was the early hours of the morning and he had just returned to the state-room after a highly successful game of poker.

‘Why the sudden altruistic concern?' Kitty asked, bemused. ‘You're not about to suddenly start saving girls from ruin instead of leading them to it, are you? Because if you are, you're going to have one mighty big job on your hands!'

He chuckled, easing off his boots. ‘Nope. I reckon I prefer my women to be happily on the road to ruin rather than respectability, but Lilli Stullen would never be happy ruined, it shows in her eyes.'

And Lilli Stullen's happiness matters?' Kitty asked queryingly, wondering if, just for once, she should start to worry a little.

Jack unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants. ‘I owe her,' he said simply, no longer grinning. ‘If her kid brother had drowned this afternoon it would have been my fault. Hell,
I
was the one supposed to be looking after him.'

His hair was ruffled where he had dragged his shirt over his head and he looked far younger than his twenty-eight years.

‘She should have known better,' Kitty said dryly, wondering how old she would have to be before the seven years difference in their ages began to be chronically noticeable. ‘I wouldn't give you a dog to look after. Not if I valued it.'

He hooted with laughter, striding towards the bed magnificently naked. ‘Is that so?' he asked, smacking her on her negligéed rump.

‘Then maybe I should teach you to think differently and have a little more respect.'

Kitty slithered voluptuously down against her pillows, chuckling throatily. ‘I don't think there's much you or anyone else can teach me, but you're sure welcome to try. Especially if all the trying is going to take place between the sheets!'

‘You're a wicked woman, Kitty Dufresne,' he said, rolling his hard muscled weight on top of her. ‘And what the hell I'd do without you I can't begin to imagine.'

‘I'm not being patronising!' Kate protested next morning to Lettie. ‘This dress really is too small for me and it really would fit you perfectly!'

‘I don't like charity,' Lettie persisted mulishly, making no move to take the dress from her.

Lilli swung her legs over the edge of her top bunk. ‘If Lettie's going to be idiotic about it, I'll have it. I've never owned a raspberry-pink day-dress. It looks heaven.'

‘You're the same curvy shape as Kate so it would be too small for you,' Lottie said, knowing that Lilli hadn't meant her statement seriously but was simply trying to provoke Lettie into being sensible.

She turned her attention towards their sulky cabin-mate. ‘Come on, Lettie. At least try it on. If you don't, Kate will cut it up into dish-rags.'

Lettie looked at the dress, longing in her eyes. It wasn't in the least worn out and even if it had been, it's cut and colour were far superior to the drab dress she was wearing or any dress she had ever worn.

‘Come on,' Lottie said again persuasively, ‘You can wear it when we reach Whitehorse and visit the rapids.'

The temptation and combined coercion were too much for Lettie. ‘All right,' she said, trying not to sound desperately eager, ‘if you're really sure it isn't charity.'

‘Lord, if you say that word again I think I'll scream,' Kate said, exchanging a triumphant wink with Lilli as Lettie began to unbutton the monstrosity she had been wearing day and night since boarding the boat. ‘And I've a nightdress I've replaced too. You may as well have that as well. It will be less for me to carry when we disembark.'

A few minutes later Lettie stood before them in the cramped confines of the cabin, arrayed in her new finery, It was obvious to both Lilli and Lottie that Kate had been fibbing when she had said the dress was too small for her, for the waist was a good two inches or so slack.

‘I'll just tighten that up while you're wearing it, Lettie,' Kate said, a needle and thread already in her hand. ‘And then if you don't mind, I'd like to have a shot at putting your hair in a French knot.'

By the time they left the cabin for breakfast Lettie was a young woman transformed. Her dull looking dark-blonde hair had been brushed to an almost metallic sheen and pinned in a neat, sophisticated knot high on the top of her head. The raspberry-red dress fit her like a glove, the colour draining the sallowness out of her complexion and imparting instead a rosy glow.

‘You look
beautiful
, Lettie,' Leo said when he saw her. ‘Almost like a princess!'

Lettie blushed and told him not to be ridiculous, but she was pleased and her pleasure showed.

‘Did you know Susan has a beau?' Kate said companionably to Lilli as Lettie and Leo walked hand in hand ahead of them. ‘I was going to tell you last night but I couldn't find you anywhere.'

‘Susan?' Lilli couldn't help the surprise in her voice. Susan had admitted that she had
never
had a beau and she couldn't quite imagine Susan being courted by any of the
Senator's
rough and ready prospectors. ‘Are you serious?' she asked, wondering if Kate was teasing her.

‘Absolutely. You may have seen him. He's a clergyman. A Methodist minister.'

Lilli's eyes widened. If what Kate was saying was true, Susan's life might just be about to be transformed. A Methodist minister would be an ideal beau for her and if he were to propose marriage …'

She began to giggle. If he proposed marriage and paid Josh Nelson off it would leave only four Peabody brides available out of a total of seven.

Immediately she entered the crowded, smoky dining-saloon she glimpsed red-gold hair and green plaid. He raised his head, his eyes meeting hers. Discomfort swept through her. He thought her fast. He had seen her embrace with Jack the previous night and he had leapt to quite erroneous conclusions. As he gave her a brief, acknowledging nod she wished fiercely she had an engagement ring on her finger.
Then
he wouldn't think her fast.

Answering his nod with a polite, brittle smile she sat down beside Lettie. Life was exceedingly infuriating at times. She was, after all, engaged in an unofficial kind of way to Lucky Jack. And she would have been an odd sort of woman if, after the man she had fallen in love with had declared he would never stand by and watch her marry another man, she hadn't responded with a display of physical affection. Logically she knew she had no reason to feel as if she had behaved in a shameless manner. Illogically, the disbelief and then the shock she had seen in Ringan Cameron's eyes made her feel as if she had done so.

‘Mr Jenkinson has never been north before,' Susan said, eager to impart every last bit of knowledge about the man who had begun to show an interest in her. ‘He is replacing the incumbent minister and hopes to be remaining in Dawson for a considerable length of time. He is a lepidopterist and …'

Pleased as she was for Susan, Lilli's attention wandered. She wondered where and when Lucky Jack breakfasted. The woman Marietta had said was his business partner never appeared in the dining-saloon, or anywhere else for that matter, and she couldn't help wondering if they took breakfast together. A frown creased her forehead. Breakfast was an odd meal to share
tête-à-tête
with someone of the opposite sex, even if that someone was a professional colleague.

‘Mr Jenkinson is over there,' Kate hissed to Lilli, wondering again where Lilli had been the previous evening when Susan had revealed her burgeoning romantic friendship.

Dutifully Lilli looked across a sea of male heads to where the clerically dressed Mr Jenkinson was helping himself to bacon. He was older than she had expected, in late middle age, and had a moon-face and an earnest manner.

‘Does he know Susan's circumstances?' Lilli asked doubtfully, keeping her voice low so that Susan shouldn't hear her. ‘Does he know that she's a Peabody bride?'

‘Not yet. He knows that she's a kindergarten-teacher though. And that she's a resident of Dawson.'

The chatter at the other end of the table had lessened and it was impossible to continue their conversation without being overheard.

As Lilli continued with her breakfast she reflected that it was a miracle any Peabody bride ever arrived in Dawson without already being spoken for. There were so many men heading north, men who knew what a dearth of women awaited them, that any single young woman could have her pick of beaus.

Certainly she could have done so. From the moment she had stepped aboard the
Senator's
gangplank she had been aware of the droves of men eyeing her with unabashed interest. And she wasn't the only one. According to Kate, Marietta had nearly caused a stampede when she had played quoits with Lottie and Leo. Kate herself hadn't been neglected. The young man Lilli had overheard telling his friends about nuggets as big as rocks persistently tried to engage her in conversation and his khaki-dressed companion, who proved to be an Englishman with a cut-glass accent, also blatantly followed her about the boat.

‘I wonder if we should make another attempt at befriending Miss Nettlesham,' Kate said ruminatively. ‘I didn't see her all day yesterday and it can't be much fun for her, cooped up in a cabin all day.'

Marietta raised her eyes to heaven.

Susan said dryly: ‘If she is cooped up she has only herself to blame.'

Edie said, ‘I don't like her. She frightens me.'

‘You've got to learn not to be frightened,' Lettie said bluntly.

‘You're frightened of too many things, Edie. Woods, the sea, Miss Nettlesham …'

‘And men,' Edie added tentatively. ‘I'm frightened of men, Lettie.'

She was wearing a a dress with a sailor-collar. It was too tight across her plump bosom and bizarrely childish in style and looked as if it might have been regulation orphanage wear.

Once again the entire table stared at her, appalled.

‘I don't like their beards,' Edie said defensively, knowing something was wrong but not knowing what. ‘And their deep voices. They always sound angry and I get frightened when people are angry with me.'

‘Sweet Jesus,' Kate said softly beneath her breath. It wasn't a blasphemy but a prayer of supplication.

‘If I could get my hands on those orphanage authorities I'd murder every last one of them!' Marietta said, her green eyes feral.

Lilli chewed the corner of her lip meditatively. Josh Nelson was going to be paid off for both herself and, presumably, Marietta. If Susan's romance with her clergyman flourished then he might even by paid off a third time. Why shouldn't he also be paid off for Edie? Between the five of them they would surely be able to offer her a home and she could perhaps find work as a maid or a waitress. She wondered what kind of amount Josh Nelson would find acceptable. It would have to cover the cost of the voyage of course and a little more to compensate the marriage bureau, but if they all clubbed together, especially if people like Lucky Jack and the Reverend Mr Jenkinson also chipped in, it might just be possible.

Later, as she sat with Kate on a seat looking out over the stern, she said, ‘Do you think if we all put together we might be able to pay the marriage bureau off where Edie is concerned? She doesn't have a clue as to what is to happen to her when we reach Dawson and she's not mentally or emotionally fitted for marriage. Especially marriage to a stranger.'

Kate's kind, sensible face was sombre. ‘I think the kind of amount bridegrooms pay to the Peabody would be completely beyond us. Don't forget we're talking about men who use gold for currency. In an auctioneering situation the amount bid could either be embarrassingly low or astronomically high and I imagine Mr Nelson would prefer to gamble on the chance that it might be astronomically high.'