Harper's Bride (21 page)

He would just have to suffer through it.

*~*~*

Had the clock that sat on Dylan's trunk ever
sounded so loud? Melissa wondered. She lay in the darkness,
listening to the timepiece noisily tick off the minutes that
dragged by. The room had a chill tonight, and she burrowed down
beneath the light blanket

She suspected that Dylan was awake as well,
and envisioned them lying in his bed like two tailor's dummies,
stiff and tense.

How could she sleep after he'd walked in on
her while she was practically in the altogether? It was bound to
happen sooner or later, she supposed, considering their tight
living quarters. The embarrassment of being seen in her underwear,
though, was only a pinprick compared to the other feelings roiling
inside her.

With each passing day, she felt a womanliness
ripening within her, a sensation she'd never fully experienced
before. Coy had not summoned such feelings, not before she married
him and certainly not after. This restlessness, this itchy
yearning, seemed to be caused by just one man: Dylan Harper.

She rolled over, turning her back to the rice
sack. But nothing could come of how she felt about him.

He'd made that plain. And maybe it was for
the best.

The next day Dylan stood downstairs in the
store, feeling as if his eyelids weighed five pounds each and were
made of sandpaper. Irritable from lack of sleep, he wished business
were a little slower today, but he'd been busy from the moment he
unlocked the front door. At least it kept him from going to the
side window to look for Melissa.

"Mister, have you got any tenpenny nails? I'm
building me more sluice boxes."

"Harper, you'd better give me another bottle
of that Electricatin' Liniment. My back's killin' me from all that
digging, and I used up the last of that stuff on my horse. Oh, and
throw in a canned ham while you're at it, and some Eagle's
condensed. I ain't payin' no thirty dollars a gallon for fresh
milk."

"You ready to sell me that new hammer I need,
Dylan?"

The goods and gold changed hands at a brisk
pace, but Dylan's mind was not on business.

He thought he must have dozed off sometime
during the night, but only after he lay on his side of the rice
sack for what seemed like hours. He alternately cursed and blessed
the barrier between himself and Melissa. If it hadn't been there,
he wasn't sure he would have remained the disinterested gentleman
that he'd promised to be that afternoon on the duck-boards outside
of the saloon.

He hadn't talked to Melissa yet today. When
he'd left this morning to come down here, she still slept, with the
blanket pulled up to the collar of her nightgown. But her pale
hair, loose from its braid, had flowed across her pillow and over
the edge of the mattress, making him think of a lovely sleeping
princess in an old legend.

He shook his head. Brother, if that wasn't a
lot of moony drivel. Tonight he had to sit across the table from
her at the Fairview Hotel and pretend that she had no affect on
him.

Just get through this, he told himself again.
Just get through this. In a couple of months or so it would all be
over. He'd sell this place, buy himself a steamboat ticket back to
Portland, and get passage to The Dalles. Melissa Logan would be
just a memory of a good deed he'd been talked into.

At least he hoped so.

As the afternoon wore on, traffic finally
slowed, and he decided he'd close early to go buy himself a bath
and a shave. It might not feel altogether bad to dress for dinner
again. At least he didn't have to do it every damned day, as he had
back home.

Just as he was about to move the lard bucket
he used for a doorstop, Melissa walked in with the baby in her
arms. Jenny gave him a big smile that went straight to his
heart

"Oh, are you leaving?" Melissa asked, her
delicate brows rising with the question.

If she was here, he really didn't want to.
God, but she was pretty, he thought. She looked better every day,
like a neglected flower that had finally found its way to sunlight.
A rosy glow tinted her cheeks and lips, and her gray eyes were
bright and clear. Even her hair seemed to shine. And her clothes
only hinted at the lush shape that lay beneath them. Her slender
waist would fit perfectly between his hands. Her hips were sweetly
curved like the swell of a wave. And those full breasts, ripe with
milk . . . Jesus, he was driving himself crazy thinking about
her.

"I was just going to run an errand, but help
yourself to anything you want."

"I didn't come down to shop, Dylan. I'm going
upstairs now to get ready for dinner." She glanced at his plain
work shirt and at his knife. "I wondered if you wanted me to iron
something for you to wear."

Obviously she still didn't believe he owned
anything else but boots and buckskins. "Don't worry, I'll leave the
knife at home."

She flushed a becoming shade of pink. "I
didn't mean to sound critical—"

He pushed the lard bucket away and waved her
out the door. "Just think about what you'd like to order for
din—"

"Mr. Harper? Are you Dylan Harper?" A
flush-faced young man came running toward them from the street,
dodging wagons and pedestrians. He was breathless and looked as
though he were coining to report a fire.

"Yes, I'm Dylan Harper."

The young man pressed his hand to his side.
"I have an urgent message for you." He pulled a folded note from
his pocket.

Dylan felt his heartbeat double in his chest.
He grabbed the paper and opened it.

I would like to see you, my good friend.
RD.

He looked up at the other man. "Did Rafe
Dubois give you this?"

"No, sir. Miss Mulrooney herself put it in my
hand. She only said to deliver this note with all possible speed
and to tell you that it's urgent. I'm to bring you back to the
hotel with me."

"Dylan?" Melissa questioned worriedly.

"You and Jenny wait for me here," he told
her, not looking up from the spidery handwriting on the note. "I
need to find out what this is about."

But Dylan figured he already knew.

*~*~*

At the Fairview Hotel, Dylan followed
Belinda's clerk to Rafe's room. This end of the hallway was quiet,
although through the front part he could hear the buzz of voices
behind what were really nothing more than curtained cubicles with
paper glued on.

The clerk gestured at the door and hurried
away, as if he didn't want to know what was on the other side of
it. Taking a deep breath, Dylan lifted his hand and knocked
lightly.

Belinda herself, dressed in purple taffeta
but looking drawn and pale, opened the door. The canvas walls
surrounding the door frame shivered slightly, like the painted
backdrop of a stage play.

"How is he?" Dylan murmured.

She shook her head and stepped out into the
hallway. "I don't think it will be long, Dylan. I have to get back
to the front. You'll stay with him for a while?"

He nodded. A cold knot of dread formed in his
stomach at the finality of her words. Walking into the room with
leaden feet, he heard Belinda close the door behind him.

Inside, the two window shades were pulled
against a bright afternoon sun, creating a gloomy sanctum. There
was a closed-up, musty odor in here, even though the building was
less than two months old. Dylan had smelled that odor once or twice
before—it had preceded death.

Though his eyes were closed and he wore a
striped nightshirt, Rafe lay propped on pillows in a polished brass
bed. In fact, there were so many pillows behind him, he was
practically sitting up. Seeing that, at first Dylan thought that
the situation wasn't as critical as he'd feared. Maybe this was
just a passing malady, and Rafe would recover.

But when he pulled a chair dose to the bed
and sat down, he realized his hopes were groundless, and the icy
knot inside him grew colder still. The lawyer's breathing was as
labored as he'd ever heard, and his lips had a faint blue cast. His
crepey skin looked like putty-colored wax with a day's growth of
beard, and his face was oddly puffy, especially around the eyes.
Seeing him now, it was hard to believe that he was only thirty-four
years old.

"Rafe, it's me, Dylan."

His eyes opened a slit, then, as if satisfied
that Dylan was there, he closed them again.

"Glad you came." His words were slurred and
slow in coming. "I guess my luck . . . has finally run out. I
always knew . . . it would."

"God, Rafe, shouldn't I get a doctor?" Dylan
asked, straining against his helplessness. He wasn't accustomed to
just sitting by and doing nothing. "If there's a chance one could
help—"

"Been and gone . . . been and gone. 'Sorry,
friend . . . your heart has failed.' Not a startling revelation. It
was never . . . a secret that I would die."

No, it hadn't been. But Dylan hadn't known
that he would be around to see his friend off on his final journey.
In his mind he'd believed Rafe would always be there, sitting at a
card table in the Yukon Girl, or leaning against the bar with a
bottle and a glass. It seemed to him that one way or another, over
the years he had lost everyone and everything that mattered to him.
A fever had taken his mother. Elizabeth had been lost to greed. His
horses were forfeited. And now Rafe. Sometimes he wondered if that
was all life was about—loss.

He put a hand on the thin forearm lying on
top of the blankets. "Is there anything you'd like me to do for
you? Any debts paid or scores settled? Anything?"

Rafe grew a deep, ragged breath and glanced
at Dylan again. The sunken, drowsy look in his eyes was more
pronounced than it had been just the day before. "The Lemieux
case—the parish magistrate will hear it tomorrow . . . Mon coeur
est sans espoir . . . "

He rambled like a man talking in his sleep.
Dylan leaned forward a bit, waiting for Rafe's mind to clear. "Do
you want me to get Father William?" The priest was eternally busy,
but if Rafe wanted to see him, Dylan would offer the man whatever
donation he asked for his hospital.

"No, that's not it," he replied, sounding
lucid again, but weaker. "That poke there on the bureau . . .
there's some gold dust in it. Give it to . . . give it to
Melissa."

Dylan was surprised. "Melissa?"

The conversation was interrupted by a
strangling coughing fit from Rafe. When he finally recovered his
wind, he was soaked with sweat and his energy was just about gone.
"Yes, damn it . . . give it to her. She might need it."

"Okay, Rafe, okay. I'll take care of it."

Apparently satisfied, he drew in another
noisy, labored breath. He made a feeble effort to smile, but even
that seemed to be beyond the exhausted man. "We had a hell of a
good . . . time, didn't we?" Dylan smiled and nodded, feeling his
throat tighten. "That we did."

"And you've been a good friend. I doubt that
was . . . always easy. I tend to drink a bit."

Dylan wished he could laugh at the
understatement. "You're a true friend, too, Rafe."

"It's over now. I'm not afraid, but . . .
God, I wish I'd done everything . . . differently, and this isn't a
good time to discover that. I want you to . . . think about your
own life . . . don't waste it on old grievances. Don't waste it at
all."

Dylan gave his arm a light squeeze, then
released it. He was horrified to find that his fingers had left
impressions in Rafe's flesh, but he didn't seem to notice.

A few moments of silence fell between them,
and Dylan watched Rafe's chest labor in his effort to breathe.

"Priscilla . . ." He spoke so faintly, Dylan
couldn't have called it a whisper. "Tell Priscilla . . . that I'm
sorry . . . tell her I love . . ."

Those were the last words that Rafe Dubois
spoke. A rattle began to sound in his throat. Then he exhaled a
final time.

An unearthly stillness settled over the
room.

Suddenly, Dylan found himself alone.

He stood and put his hand on Rafe's chest and
felt no movement, no heartbeat. Then he sank back into the chair,
feeling far older than his own twenty-nine years.

*~*~*

When he left Rafe's room, Dylan found Belinda
in the busy hotel bar and told her that he'd arrange for the
undertaker.

She signaled for a bottle and one glass and
led him to a relatively quiet corner table. The sound of the lobby
orchestra carried easily through the fabric walls. Overhead, her
cut-glass chandeliers sparkled with electric light

"Dylan, I'm sorry. I know you two were
friends." She pointed out one of the bartenders. "I had Andrew,
there, look in on him, but he said it was hopeless."

About to pour a drink, he set the bottle down
on the table, hard. His emotions were raw and his temper short.
"Christ, Belinda, in this whole town couldn't you have found a real
doctor? Since when is a goddamned bartender an expert about whether
a man will live or die?" he snapped.

A woman not known for her patience, she
demonstrated exceptional restraint in the face of his rudeness. The
only change in her expression was a slight lowering of her brows.
"All of my bartenders are American doctors and dentists. They can't
get British licenses to practice here so I gave them jobs mixing
drinks instead of medicines."

Feeling foolish, he rubbed the back of his
neck and sighed. "Sorry—I didn't know."

She picked up the whiskey bottle and poured
his shot for him. "That's all right," she said, then looked up at
him and winked. "Just pay your tab when you leave." She pushed
herself away from the table and went back to work.

Dylan drank his shot and paid six dollars for
it. Apparently no one drank for free in Belinda's place, regardless
of the circumstances or the occasion. After he left the hotel, he
made arrangements with an undertaker on Second Avenue to collect
Rafe's remains and organize the funeral. Then he stepped back out
into the sunny glare and jostling crowds on Front Street and began
walking, with no particular destination.