These Golden Pleasures

by Valerie Sherwood

  So it was with a serious face that she stood on the dark beach alongside fancy women with their big leg-o’-mutton sleeves and gaudy dresses, and hip-booted miners staring out to sea. As Roxanne watched, surrounded by almost the entire population of Nome, she saw the ship cast anchor off the ice pack, saw a crewman jump onto an ice floe. They watched him approach, probing with a long pole through the ice to find a path for the smaller landing craft that followed.

  When the first small craft, filled with exuberant passengers, landed, a general cheer went up from the beach. Roxanne, peering at the men who waded ashore in the icy water, shouted out her own cheer. For there, sloshing toward her, looking just as he had in Dawson, was a golden giant with smiling blue eyes—Leighton Clarke..

  She fought her way through the crowded beach toward him. He was easy to find—he was taller than anybody else. Then Leighton saw her and moved purposefully through the throng.

  “Roxanne,” he yelled over the heads of people standing between them, “I heard about Denby’s death in Dawson, and I came as soon as the ice broke.”

  “You . . . heard?” She looked at him blankly.

  They had to shout over the din.

  “It was in the papers. Dawson’s got a telegraph office now, telephone, three newspapers, churches, banks. It’s one of the biggest Canadian cities west of Winnepeg.”

  Roxanne looked up at him, her eyes brimming. She didn’t care about Dawson’s surging growth; returned to her was the lovely golden giant she’d missed so much. When Leighton managed to edge by the obstructing crowd, she threw herself into his arms.

  “Oh, Leighton,” she cried out of the hurt in her heart, “I’m so glad you’ve come.”

  His strong arms enfolded her. “There, there, Roxanne,” he soothed her gently. “There’s nothing to cry about. I’m here now. I’m going to take care of you.”

  Against his big chest she found release for all those pent-up tears she had not shed. She sobbed and sobbed as he held her, soothed her, amid the jostling crowd.

  “You’ll forget, Roxanne,” he told her earnestly. “In time you’ll forget him.” He could not know that it was not for Denby but for Rhodes she wept. Leighton was so good. Her soft body sagged against him until her sobs were stilled, and then she dried her eyes and looked up at him trustingly. In that moment, as their eyes met, they melted together as one.

  That look was an acknowledgment that since Denby no longer stood in the way, they could become lovers.

  Another ship was due to leave later in the day. It would be carrying little but passengers—some of them lucky miners laden down with gold, bent on rollicking home to the States to spend their fortunes. When the ship left for Seattle, Roxanne and Leighton would be sailing with her.

  With Leighton, Roxanne went back to Josie’s to see Rhodes one last time. Having left Leighton downstairs in the front room talking to the girls, she passed the doctor leaving as she went up. Rhodes was better, the doctor said cheerfully. Soon he’d be talking to her good as new. Roxanne winced. Where Rhodes was concerned, she was a coward. She didn’t want him talking to her. She didn’t want to hear the things he’d say, didn’t want to face the stormy accusation in his green eyes. She looked down at him lying asleep in the bed, planted a last wistful kiss on his forehead, and fled. She didn’t want to be there when he woke up.

  In the hall outside his door she ran into Josie, resplendent in black lace and magenta taffeta. “I meant to work and get money to pay you for keeping Rhodes and me here, Josie,” she choked. “But now I’m leaving Nome. I’ve got a friend waiting downstairs. I could borrow money from him to pay you now, or I could send you—”

  “Ain’t no call to give me money, Rox,” said Josie briskly. “I’ve enjoyed havin’ you around. And anyway, I promised Case back in Dawson if I ever ran across you, I’d look out for you.”

  “You didn’t tell me that you and Case were friends.”

  Josie nodded emphatically. “We’d have come to Alaska on the same boat, but I found there wasn’t room for my girls, so I had to take a later one.”

  Roxanne’s eyes widened. “You were the madam he got out of jail?”

  “Sure as hell was,” said Josie with feeling. “I owe Case a lot.”

  “So do I,” said Roxanne sadly.

  “But what’s this about you leavin’ Nome, Rox?”

  “Yes,” Roxanne sighed. “With Leighton, the man who’s waiting for me downstairs, Josie. On the ship that leaves today.”

  “Why are you runnin’ away?” demanded Josie, bewildered. “The way you looked when you dragged this Rhodes fellow in, the wild way you acted when you thought he might die, I figgered you and he—” She broke off, studying Roxanne’s set white face. “Someone’s bound to tell Rhodes you left Nome with another man,” she warned.

  “He won’t care,” said Roxanne, her voice bleak. “It’s what he expects of me. He’ll tell you that.”

  Josie peered sharply at her. “Rox, you sure ain’t what people say you are.”

  “Neither are you, Josie.” Impulsively, Roxanne hugged that magenta taffeta figure. “Oh, Josie, take good care of him for me, won’t you?”

  “Well, I must admit he looks to be the kind of man I’d like to have around the house,” grinned Josie. “Not that he’ll stay long after he’s up and about. He’ll be hot-footin’ it after you again!”

  “No,” sighed Roxanne. “Never again. Though he’s fair-minded and this time he’ll say we’re even . . . I’ll never see him again, Josie.” Her eyes filled with tears and she could not speak. With a wave, she hurried downstairs to where Leighton was waiting. She found him seated on Josie’s red plush sofa talking to doll-faced Tiger Lil in what sounded like Chinese. The girl’s limpid oriental eyes were very animated, and she moved her shoulders expressively as she talked, so that her red silk negligee fell away from the golden skin of her firm round breasts. Josie, who had followed Roxanne down the stairs, frowned at Tiger Lil and jerked her head toward the door. With an angry look, the Chinese girl jumped up, her red silk negligee swishing, and went out a door, banging it.

  Leighton rose to greet Roxanne, but his smiling gaze followed the Chinese girl’s retreat. “I must say you have interesting friends,” he murmured to Josie.

  Roxanne said in a teary voice, “Come on, we have a boat to catch, remember?” and took her broken heart into the street. Josie’s “Good luck, Rox—but I think you’re makin’ a mistake” followed her as they trudged past the saloons, down to the shore and the waiting ship.

  Book III

  The Adventuress

  Part One:

  The Departure

  Chapter 31

  Roxanne stood by the rail beside Leighton and watched the dark sands and the lights of the tent-and-driftwood city that was Nome slip away behind them. Past chunks of ice in the dark northern sea they glided as the steamer struck out for Seattle, for the States, for home. In silence, Roxanne looked back and saw Alaska receding. She would always remember it as a land of crystal white, beautiful and dangerous, a land of snow and ice and gold and heartbreak.

  There was a new hardness in her eyes. She had lost Rhodes, lost him as surely as if he were dead—lost him not once but twice. It made her see the world in a different light. But Denby was gone too. She no longer had to look out for him. She would make her own way.

  She had come to Alaska a wife, hoping somehow to resurrect her battered marriage. She left it a widow in the prime of her beauty.

  She had come to Alaska still hopeful that life had something to offer her. She left it an adventuress, determined to take what she wanted.

  Night had fallen, and as the steamer moved across Norton Sound into the cold waters of the Bering Sea, Roxanne brooded over those distant lights of Nome reflected in the dark, almost still water across the ice floes.

  The Alaskan venture was over; Dawson and Nome lay behind her. With Leighton she would sail to warmer seas. Of the men who had loved her, one lay dead in an icy crevasse, one was headed back t
o the Kansas prairies, one was dealing out the cards in self-imposed exile in Dawson, and one, the most important one of all, was recovering—his broken head and body slowly mending—in the raw boom town of Nome. She had brought none of them luck, she thought, but she would be good for Leighton, that much she promised herself. She would do her golden giant no harm.

  There in the cold sea air, they stood at the rail watching the northern lights. A great aurora spanned the heavens like giant, shimmering blue curtains. It was a breathtaking sight.

  Roxanne lifted her chin and looked up at the aurora, suspended majestically above them. Those shimmering blue curtains were opening for her. The next act of the drama of her life was about to begin.

  She turned to look at Leighton, standing possessively beside her. She was his now. His woman. Neither of them had spoken of marriage, both had understood the way it would be.

  Her face softened as she remembered how tenderly the big blond giant had cared for her and Denby during the dangerous crossing of the Chilkoot Pass and the wild journey from the high lakes down the upper Yukon to Dawson City. And how he had kept their spirits up that first terrible winter frozen in at Fort Yukon, had fed them with the wild game he had shot.

  And now Denby was gone and she was his. Leighton’s. She remembered big Marge saying wisely that Leighton had gone up the Koyukuk “trying to get over you.” Marge had known Leighton loved her, even when she herself had not been sure. In his arms she would find solace and comfort for her battered heart.

  Leighton suggested that it was growing late, and they started below deck. But Roxanne stopped, murmuring, “Wait for me in my cabin—there’s something I must do first,” and hurried back to the rail. Slipping off the narrow band of gold that had shackled her to Denby, she dropped it over the side of the ship. The ring sparkled for a moment as it fell, then sank into the dark sea. Roxanne sighed. She did not need a ring to remember Denby; she would forget the bad times and remember only that his was the young intense voice that had once said, I don't care what your name is or what you've done—I love you anyway. She smiled and her eyes frosted over with tears as she thought of the young Denby who had known her for what she was and loved her anyway.

  The chill wind from the ice dried her tears. Steady now, she lifted her head and went on down to meet her new lover.

  She found him waiting in her cabin. He was pacing about, golden head bent, arms behind his back, deep in thought. As she opened the door, he looked up and an anxious frown passed across his usually calm face.

  “Roxanne,” he said abruptly, “there is something I must tell you. First.”

  Roxanne sighed. She was not in any mood for confessions. She had need of a strong shoulder to lean against, soft murmurings to comfort her. But she crossed the room and stood before him, looking up into his face, listening.

  “I must tell you that I can never marry you, Roxanne. I’m already married.”

  A wife! Leighton had a wife! Roxanne sank to a chair and stared at him. Somehow she had not expected that from innocent Leighton.

  “Her name is Allison. We are separated. I met her long ago, loved her long ago. She was a part of my youth, Roxanne. In Washington. Her family lived near mine in the Georgetown section near Dumbarton Oaks. After we married we lived in different parts of the world, wherever my father was stationed. But Allison was ambitious—God help me, I never was. She thought I was throwing away my life. She had dreams of my becoming Ambassador to the Court of St. James— impossible dreams. I disappointed her. When we returned home to Georgetown, she took to seeing other men. I knew about them, but I closed my eyes. Then one night she did not come home at all. She had run away with her lover. I drifted to the West Coast and then to the Klondike. Now you know all about me.”

  As if once he had started, he had to keep talking, Leighton continued. “She’s still a little girl, Roxanne. Charming, spoiled—she never really grew up. She has soft brown hair and trusting gray eyes and the sweetest smile—I could never stand up before that smile; it always rocked me. Whatever she wanted I was willing to do. But becoming Ambassador to England was beyond my grasp—and that was what she really wanted.”

  Roxanne gave him a slightly crooked smile. In his heart Leighton was shackled to someone else—just as she in her heart was shackled to Rhodes. It was fair, she supposed, but it was a blow too.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly. And then with a slight frown, “I suppose you’ve never considered divorce?”

  His voice was muffled and he kept his head averted, but she could see a vein throb in his neck. “It would be like divorcing my right arm. Allison is part of me . . . even if I never see her again.”

  Ruefully, she understood. In silence she leaned over and unbuttoned her shoes, kicked them off and leaned over to remove her garters and stockings. Leighton could hear the silk rasp against her elegant legs, but he did not turn to watch her. Perhaps the talk of Allison had made him feel shy. She stood up. “These hooks down the back of my dress, I can’t manage them alone.” It wasn’t true, but it would bring him closer. She could no longer bear the subject of Allison.

  Obediently he came to her and worked on the hooks, fumbling with them awkwardly. As the last one came free, Roxanne shrugged the dress off and tossed it on a chair. As she stood in her petticoat, her back to Leighton, she felt his big hands close over the bare skin of her shoulders, felt his touch tinglingly. Very gently he turned her around to face him, lifted her up with an easy gesture and sat down with her on his lap, burying his face in her blond hair.

  “Thank you, Roxanne. For understanding.” His voice was humble.

  She ran her fingers through his hair, thick and golden. “I’m a realist, Leighton,” she said with a sigh. It might not be true, but she hoped it was. “I think we’ll be happier together than apart.”

  He lifted his head and smiled down at her. Once again he was the steady blue-eyed giant who had guided them down the wild rivers. “I know it’s very soon after—but ... I have wanted you for so long,” he said and bent down and kissed her parted mouth. Roxanne snuggled against him. He thought he was comforting her for Denby’s death, she knew. But it was the loss of Rhodes for which she needed to be comforted—Rhodes, who had walked across her heart in dusty boots and left an indelible mark. But she would not tell Leighton that. Her good golden giant must think her only a grieving widow who had endured scarring experiences in the Alaskan wilds.

  Pensively, she let him ease her out of her petticoat and combination, so that she sat on his lap nude, her elegant legs dangling against his trouser legs. His expression was blissful, and his big gentle hands stroked her all over. She felt almost inclined to purr, so warm and enveloping were his strong arms, so resilient the big shoulder on which she leaned. In those arms it would be easy to relax, to seek love, to drowse off and dream.

  But, as she rested against his deep chest, quiet and docile under his exploring touch, her breath came raggedly faster. Always tinder to the match, her body responded to him, gave him back for each caress its sweet promises of passion. Feeling her response, his arms gripped her more firmly and his lips moved with urgency, trailing down her neck and down the tingling column of her spine, until she turned her torso about and pulled his face against her own and murmured little broken phrases from the language of love. He might have taken her in that fiery instant, but there was a quietude to Leighton’s lovemaking that night, the gentleness of touching loved things that made him unique in her brief experience. Only once did he reveal the triumph that must be roaring through his veins—and that was when he rose, scooping her up as he did so and, lifting her naked form lightly, tossed her exuberantly in the air. He caught her as gently as one might a baby and bore her to the softness of the big bunk.

  He stood studying her loveliness with smiling eyes for a moment. Then, with a shyness Roxanne found appealing, he took off his clothes and joined her in the bunk. He had taken a long time about it. She wondered if Allison had ever felt impatient.

&nbs
p; But once those steely arms had closed around her, all impatience was at end. Tenderly, possessively, with charm and grace, Leighton took her to him, melded her body to his own. Smoothly, lovingly he made her his, cradling her so that his weight rested upon his own encircling arms, and only the sensuous length of his big form moved against her, within her. Desires rising, she wound her arms about his neck to draw him closer, heard her own breath sob in her throat as his naked passions drove him fiercely onward, and she, too, was borne on wings of pleasure to heights that rivaled the aurora. Eyes closed, she seemed to float and drift and soar in ecstasy. Finally, gently, she came to earth in Leighton’s arms.

  Still lying in those arms—lazy arms now, with gentle hands that savored her body, lingering, urging—she felt that she had found the enfolding arms that would shut out the world. They were the arms that would heal the wounds life had given her. Those hands, which caressed her fiery body so gently, would take her own trembling hand and lead her into a happier golden land. Beside Leighton she would walk proudly.

  “I wish I had known you long ago,” she sighed and snuggled against his powerful naked chest.

  “And what would have been so different?” he asked, stroking her long blond hair.