Gold Rush Bride

by Debra Lee Brown

  Chapter Fifteen

  Five hundred dollars in two days! Eleven hundred all told. It was more money than Kate had ever seen in her life.

  When she’d borrowed the funds for her journey to America, Aunt Olivia hadn’t actually given her the coin. Instead, her mother’s sister had paid in advance for her passage. Some distant cousin in the shipping business had made all the arrangements ahead. Kate had seen none of the coin, save for a meager amount of pocket change meant for the journey overland.

  Just for good measure, Kate counted the golden eagles again, then swept them into the bulging leather pouch along with the gold nuggets and dust and odd foreign coins she and Will had accepted in payment for the goods they’d sold in the two days since the strike was confirmed at Bear River.

  “It’s enough,” Will said. “Just.”

  Kate pocketed the bag. It was heavy as sin, and weighed her down as she walked. “You’ll make your ship, then. You should be happy.”

  He didn’t look happy. Not by a long shot.

  “It was those men, wasn’t it? Yesterday. Bidding up the prices, fighting over the last shovel we had.” She looked at the empty shelves, felt the weight of the money bag in her pocket, and thanked God they’d done it.

  Will stared out the window at the busy street. “If a man’s fool enough to pay that kind of money for a garden tool, it’s no skin off my back.”

  No, it was something else that was bothering him. She could see it in the set of his jaw, in the restless way he paced back and forth, as if he were an animal in a cage.

  “You…want to leave, don’t you?”

  “Hell, yes. I should have done it weeks ago.”

  He wouldn’t look at her, and she was glad of it, for if he had he would have seen the hurt his words caused her. She shook off the ridiculous melancholy that had colored his mood and now hers, and busied herself sweeping up.

  “When shall we leave?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  She paused, her broom in midstroke. “As soon as that?”

  “I thought you wanted to get out of here.” He flashed her a cool look.

  It had been like that between them these past few days. He’d kept his distance, and she hers. They’d been so busy, she really hadn’t had time to think about what was going to happen once they’d made enough money to get on with their lives.

  “I do want to leave. I mean I have to. My brothers…” She had never told him about the debt. There was no point in it. It wasn’t his problem. It was hers.

  “A man down at Mustart’s said a clipper’s leaving out of Frisco in another week bound for Dublin. About the same time that steamer I plan to be on leaves for Sitka.”

  “It will all work out then, won’t it?” She shot him a tentative glance, but he wasn’t looking at her.

  His gaze was fixed on a buckboard pulled by two fine horses, rattling up the street, surrounded by dozens of men whistling and catcalling.

  Kate strode to the front door, frowning, broom in hand, and pulled it open. Will followed. Her eyes widened as she recognized the garishly dressed woman holding the reins.

  “Looky who’s here, Will.” Matt Robinson stood in the street, grinning from ear to ear as the buckboard rattled to a stop.

  Kate gripped the broom, heat rising to her face, as Rose Beecham and her line girls tossed seductive smiles into the crowd.

  “Howdy, Will,” a pretty young blonde called out. Dressed in bright red silk, she waved to him from the buckboard. Kate recognized her from the afternoon she’d spent waiting for Floyd Canter and his friend to wet their whistles.

  “Oh, yoo-hoo, Will!” Another girl waved to him. Then another.

  Will moved past Kate into the street.

  “And where do you suppose you’re going?” She took a step after him, then thought better of it.

  “To speak to a friend of mine. Do you mind?”

  Rose Beecham flashed her a smile. The woman had been kind to her in Spanish Camp. All the same, Kate caught herself scowling back.

  “You…know those women?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not as well as some of ’em would like, eh, Will?” Matt’s grin broadened, then his face contorted in pain. “Ow!”

  Mei Li stood behind him, gripping what looked to Kate like a railroad spike, her face bloodred, her eyes blacker than midnight.

  “Mei Li, I thought you was—”

  “You come now. I make tea.”

  “Tea? But we wasn’t supposed to get together till tonight. At the party, remember?”

  Mei Li flashed angry eyes at the line girls who sat giggling like a gaggle of primped-up geese playing at peacocks. After thirty seconds of arguing, Mei Li waving the railroad spike and uttering some choice Chinese phrases, Matt acquiesced and followed her up the street toward her shanty.

  “What party?” Kate said, as Matt’s words sunk in.

  “To celebrate the gold strike. Down in the clearing. Tonight.” Will nodded along the street to the place where they’d so hastily married just three weeks ago.

  “It’ll be a wild time, Miz Crockett.” Rose Beecham smiled at her from her perch on the buckboard. “You oughtta come. Your husband’ll be there. Won’tcha, Will?”

  “I’ll be there,” Will said.

  “Wild time, indeed.” Kate spun on her heel and started for the front door.

  “Some of the fine men of Tinderbox are settin’ up our tents there now. Come see us, Miz Crockett. I might could loan you somethin’ prettylike to wear.”

  Whirling toward the buckboard, Kate gripped the broom so hard she half expected it to snap in two. “I’ll do no such shameless thing.”

  The line girls cackled with laughter. Will just stood there, staring at her. If she didn’t know him better and the foul mood he’d been in for days now, she could swear that was a smile she saw threatening to erupt on his lips.

  She’d give him something to smile about. Wild time, indeed! “I’ll be inside,” she said. “Packing.”

  Will leaned against a naked oak at the edge of the clearing and gazed, unfocused, at the bonfire blazing in the center. Men danced around it to the lively strains of Mustart’s fiddle, mostly with each other. Except for Rose and her girls, Will could count the women present on one hand.

  Kate wasn’t one of them.

  For the tenth time in as many minutes, he peered up the dark street toward the store. The soft lamplight flickering from inside earlier that evening was now extinguished.

  Kate had spent the afternoon packing what little she intended to take home with her to Ireland. She’d hardly spoken to him the rest of the day, and when the sun went down and it was time to join the festivities, he purposely hadn’t asked her to accompany him.

  It was better this way. He’d started to distance himself from her days ago, and now, at last, she seemed to be doing the same. It was all for the best. She had a life to go back to, and he had one to get on with.

  Nonetheless, he found himself drawing the painted miniature out of his pocket and gazing at her image. The image of a woman who in one breath fought off a grizzly and in the next sang a lullaby to a sleeping child.

  He ground his teeth and closed his fist over the image.

  “She ain’t comin’.”

  He knew who’d spoken without having to look up. Rose Beecham’s cloying perfume was unmistakable. He shook off his confused emotions and smiled at her.

  “Here, this’ll warm you up.” Rose offered him a shot of what looked like Cheng’s homemade brandy. “Take it.”

  “No. You go ahead.”

  “Suit yourself.” She slugged it back and set the empty glass on a stump. “Fifteen dollars a shot, but the Chinaman cut me a deal.”

  Tents had been staked around the clearing’s perimeter, housing makeshift gaming hells, saloons and places where hungry miners could buy an outrageously priced meal. The air was thick with the smell of roasted meat and whiskey, and perfume wafting from the tents where Rose’s girls drove hard bargains with rec
kless men.

  The blonde who’d waved at Will that afternoon from the buckboard, crooked her finger at him, beckoning him inside.

  Rose cackled. “Go on, Will. It’s on the house. After seein’ you and your wife together, well, it don’t take a mastermind to figure out you ain’t gettin’ what a man needs from a gal. Not from her anyway.”

  He thought about it as the blonde batted her lashes at him. Maybe that was exactly what he needed. It had been a long time. Too long. And sleeping on a hard floor not ten feet from a woman who addled his brain so fierce he didn’t know what to think anymore only made it worse.

  “Mr. Crockett got exactly what he bargained for.”

  Will spun toward the familiar Irish lilt, his stomach tightening. Kate stood behind them, just inside the cover of the trees. The light from the blaze danced in her eyes and set her auburn hair afire.

  “I can see that,” Rose said, looking her up and down. “Guess I’ll be movin’ along, then.”

  Kate didn’t spare her a glance. “Aye, you do that, Miss Beecham.”

  When they were alone, Will offered her his hand. “You came after all.”

  “Only to satisfy my curiosity.” She ignored his proffered hand and pulled her cloak tighter about her.

  “And…have you?”

  Her face was luminous, her lips ripe as Michigan cherries. She glanced at the revelers, unimpressed. “For the most part.”

  He wondered what had really made her change her mind and come out. He half hoped it was because he was here and she wanted to be with him.

  “But there are still some things you’re wondering about, aren’t there?”

  Her gaze returned to his. It was tentative now, the tiniest bit of vulnerability shining in her eyes, much like the first day he’d met her.

  “Like…what, supposin’?”

  “I don’t know. Like maybe how it is that we’ve lived as man and wife for nearly a month and never once—”

  “Come on, darlin’, dance with me!” A big, burly miner grabbed Kate’s hand and pulled her into the crowd.

  Will shot forward, but two men pulled him back. One of them was Matt.

  “Let her dance with the man. He’s harmless. Besides—” Matt glanced at the boisterous crowd “—ain’t more than a few decent women here.”

  He supposed Matt was right. Still, he didn’t like Kate being manhandled like that. He watched as she paused in the middle of the dance and fanned her blazing cheeks. Mei Li shot into the crowd and snatched the cloak from her shoulders, then returned to her father’s saloon tent.

  “God almighty, Will, she sure is pretty.”

  Will couldn’t take his eyes off her. She wore a dress he’d never seen before. Made of blue calico, it had a prim lace collar and buttoned to the neck. But the way it molded to her body, he felt himself harden just looking at her.

  She danced with a half-dozen other men—Vickery, Dunnett, even Father Flanagan—before Will saw Jed Packett weaving his way through the crowd toward her. His brother Leon stood directly across from Will and Matt, staring at them.

  “Now don’t up and do somethin’ stupid, partner. This here’s supposed to be a party, not a—”

  Will didn’t wait for Matt to finish. He shucked his buckskin jacket and reached Kate a second after Jed Packett tapped the miner with whom she was dancing on the shoulder.

  “Cuttin’ in,” Jed said, and smiled at Kate with a mouthful of bad teeth.

  The miner politely stepped back to allow Jed his turn.

  “I don’t think so, Packett.” Will stepped in front of him.

  “It’s all right,” Kate said. “I don’t mind.”

  “I do.” Will grabbed her hand and jerked her into his arms. The music changed to a waltz and he swept her away, nearly off her feet.

  Jed Packett glared at him, spat a wad of tobacco onto the ground where they’d been standing, then disappeared into the crowd.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Kate said. “It wouldn’t have hurt for me to dance with him.”

  “I didn’t want you dancing with him.”

  “Why not? What does it matter? We’re leaving tomorrow, aren’t we?”

  “Yes.” He pulled her tighter against him as he guided her around the bonfire in time to the music. She felt warm against his body. And good. So very good.

  “You know how to do this,” she said, and looked down at his feet. “Waltz, I mean. Did you learn it in Philadelphia?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I’m not very good at it. We only did step dances back home.”

  “You’re all right.” He flashed a glance at the tight-fitting bodice of her calico dress. “Where’d you get it? The dress?”

  “I traded for it with that woman over there.” She nodded at the wife of one of the miners working the gold strike at Bear River. “We’ve no more need of my father’s cook pots, now do we? Now that we’re leaving.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  Will looked at her, and what he read in her eyes told him she wasn’t thinking about cook pots and calico at all. Still waltzing, he guided her smoothly between two tents into a close stand of pine, just beyond the bonfire’s circle of light.

  The moon shone in her eyes as she met his gaze. He pulled her close, until her breasts were crushed against his chest. His heart was beating nearly out of control. So was hers.

  “What are you doing?” she breathed, her lips inches from his.

  “I don’t know.” He swallowed hard. Every truth he’d based his life on these five years past eluded him as his mouth descended on hers.

  She kissed him back with an explosion of passion and innocence, need and desire, that was headier than any drug he could imagine. His hands moved over her compliant body, molding it to his own as if they were made to fit together. In wild abandon their tongues mated. When he felt her hands on his buttocks, he knew there was no going back. He held her fast and pressed his hardness against her. The breath rushed from her lips as she felt every inch of him.

  “You do want me, then?” she breathed. “Say that you do.”

  He kissed her hard, letting loose a visceral groan from deep inside him. “I want you more than anything.”

  She opened her eyes and looked into his. “We’ll find a way, then. A way for me to stay with you. A way for us to—”

  His body turned to cold stone in her arms. He knew she felt the change in him. She swallowed her words, her brows furrowing in confusion.

  He shook off the hunger threatening to tear him apart, to make him do things he knew he’d regret later. Gently but firmly he pushed her away from him. “My ship leaves in a week. You can’t come with me, Kate.”

  “But you said—”

  “No.” He shook his head. “You misunderstood. I want you, but—” He didn’t want to hurt her, but it was too late for that, now. “Just for the one night.”

  The lie was like a knife to his gut.

  She took a step back, her lips parted, her expression one not of surprise but of raw pain, the kind he knew she’d tried to hide from him in the past. She wasn’t hiding now.

  “I told you before,” he forced himself to go on. “I don’t want a wife. Or a family.”

  It took every ounce of his determination to turn away from her. He slipped between the tents into the crowd, the revelers whirling around him in a stink of whiskey and sweat, a haze of color and heat causing his vision to blur and his head to throb.

  Christ, he was in love with her.

  And had been all this time. He’d known it but didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to believe it. It wasn’t going to happen. Not now. Not ever.

  The blonde who’d flirted with him earlier stood just outside her tent chatting with a prospective customer. Without a second thought, Will marched up to her, grabbed her roughly by the arm and pulled her inside.

  Kate forced herself to remain in the cover of the trees a full minute after Will had gone. She wavered a bit on her feet, eyes closed, breathing in and out,
fighting to get a grip on her emotions.

  What had she been thinking? The things she’d said to him. The words spilling out of her like that. She fisted her hands at her sides and cursed her own foolishness. Did she really think he’d want her for his wife?

  For one shining moment she had thought exactly that. I want you more than anything.

  “Kate Dennington, you’re a bigger fool than you know.”

  Aye, and as if she could just stay here with him. Abandon her brothers, forget about the debt, just as easy as you please. Even if he wanted her, she couldn’t stay.

  Collecting herself, she tipped her chin high and walked with purpose back to the party. She’d pay her respects to Mrs. Vickery, to Mei Li and Mr. Cheng, and then she’d go. In a few short hours she’d be gone from this place forever. Would that she’d never seen Tinderbox or had ever heard the name Will Crockett.

  Men begged her to dance with them as she pushed her way through the crowd. She ignored them and kept moving. Mei Li waved to her from outside her father’s saloon tent. Kate strode toward her. When Mei Li read the hardness in her expression, she frowned.

  “Hey, little lady.” A man grabbed her from behind.

  “Let me go!” Kate wrestled out of his grasp. She whirled on him and came face-to-face with Jed Packett.

  “I can’t dance with you now, I’m sorry.” She started to turn away, and he grabbed her arm.

  “It ain’t a dance I want. In fact, I don’t want nothin’ from ya.”

  “Then what?” She flashed her eyes at his less than gentle grip on her.

  “It’s your husband, Miz Crockett.”

  “What about him?”

  Jed nodded toward a tent she didn’t recognize. “I think you’d best see for yourself.”

  “Let go of me! I’m not interested in—” Before she realized his intent, Packett steered her toward the tent, jerked open the flap and pushed her inside.

  Kate skidded to a stop in the soft dirt, her heart racing. There was no lantern in the tent, just soft light filtering through the heavy canvas walls from the bonfire outside.

  A man sat on a makeshift bed with one of Rose Beecham’s whores on his lap. He was kissing her, his hands groping her scantily clad body. When the tart came up for air, Kate got a clear glimpse of the man’s face.