Forget-Me-Not Bride

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Do you think we’ll be able to camp and hike in the Klondike?’ Leo asked, turning his head and looking up at Ringan hopefully. ‘I’d like to camp. Especially if there were wolves and grizzlies around!’

  ‘I believe wolves and grizzlies are verra mean-tempered animals,’ Ringan said equably, ‘and from what I’ve heard aboard ship, the Klondike is plagued by mosquitos and I wouldna fancy sharing a tent with those wee devils.’ His hands were on the brass rail, his arms splayed. The sleeves of his plaid shirt were rolled to the elbows and the strength of his arm muscles was impressively apparent. Lilli felt a tingle run down her spine. For all his apparent equability, it was a strength he had once unleashed with fatal consequences and there was no way on God’s earth she could ever allow Leo to go camping and hiking with him.

  ‘We could have a wee stroll together at Whitehorse though,’ Ringan was saying to Leo. ‘There are rapids there and I believe they’re verra bonny.’

  ‘Mr Coolidge is taking us to see the rapids,’ Lilli said speedily.

  ‘I’d rather go with Ringan,’ Leo said, blissfully oblivious of the signals she was giving him with her eyes.

  ‘Well you can’t,’ Lilli said with a bluntness that startled even him. ‘Mr Coolidge is going to hire a buggy and Lettie is going to come with us and …’

  As Leo opened his mouth to protest further Ringan Cameron said in his easy-going manner, ‘If arrangements have been made it would be verra impolite to renege on them, young Leo.’

  Lilli felt a shaft of gratitude towards him. That difficulty, at least, had been surmounted.

  ‘Skagway!’ a burly individual standing nearby them suddenly shouted. ‘I can see it clear as day!’

  A great cheer went up and Lilli said in relief, ‘We need to get back to our cabin now to collect our bags.’

  Ringan merely nodded, but there was an odd expression again in his eyes, one almost of concern. Heartily wishing Ringan Cameron was a more comfortable acquaintance, she herded Leo and Lottie to the nearest companion-way.

  ‘No-one else is getting their bags yet,’ Leo complained as she shepherded him down the stairs.

  ‘We are.’

  Lottie’s braids had fallen over her shoulders and she flicked them back again, saying, ‘You’re being awfully bossy, Lilli. What’s the matter? Are you worrying about what’s going to happen when we reach Dawson?’

  ‘No.’ Lilli steered Leo in front of her as they began to negotiate the long narrow corridor that led to their cabin. ‘That’s all been sorted out, Lottie. There’s no longer anything to worry about.’

  ‘Sorted out?’ Lottie hurried after her. ‘How do you mean “sorted out?” Do you mean you’re no longer going to have to marry anyone?’

  Lilli opened the cabin door and Leo tumbled into the minuscule space beyond. She had been waiting for a suitable opportunity to tell Lottie about the understanding that now existed between herself and Lucky Jack but there had never been a suitable opportunity. ‘I am going to marry someone,’ she said, aware that the present moment was far from ideal for such a disclosure. ‘But someone I want to marry.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Lottie said, in a manner far too old for her years. She sat down weakly on Lettie’s bunk. ‘Oh dear God. It’s Mr Coolidge isn’t it? You’re fancying yourself in love with Mr Coolidge.’

  Leo had scrambled up into a top bunk out of the way and was now laying on his tummy, his head and shoulders over the bunk’s edge, looking down at them and listening to them with wide-eyed incredulity.

  ‘You’re ten years old, Lottie!’ Lilli said sharply, rifling through her travel-bag for a clean shirtwaist with which to disembark in. ‘You shouldn’t be taking the Lord’s name in vain and accusing me of ‘fancying’myself to be in love when I’ve told you I am in love!’

  Lottie gripped her hands tightly together in her lap, her face pinched and white. Lilli was being absurdly romantic and impractical again. Mr Coolidge looked rather wonderful and so Lilli though he was wonderful. But she, Lottie, didn’t think he was wonderful. He hadn’t kept an eye on Leo when Leo had been in his care and Leo had nearly drowned as a result. Ringan Cameron had saved Leo’s life and was far, far more wonderful than Mr Coolidge and yet Lilli, at times, was barely civil to him! It was all beyond her understanding.

  ‘You should be very glad for me,’ Lilli was saying, unbuttoning her blouse with such vigour a button sprang free of its moorings. ‘At least I won’t be marrying a stranger!’ She began to fight her way into a crisp, clean shirtwaist. ‘Mr Coolidge is a man of importance in Dawson. He’s a businessman and an hotelier and he’s handsome!’ Her voice was thick with indignation at Lottie’s lack of understanding. ‘As handsome as a Greek god!’

  Lottie raised her eyes to heaven. A Greek god indeed! Still, it did sound as if Lilli was sincerely in love with Mr Coolidge. And if Mr Coolidge had asked her marry him …

  ‘If you’re going to marry Mr Coolidge does that mean you don’t object anymore to his teaching me card-tricks?’ Leo asked hopefully.

  Lilli tucked her shirtwaist beneath the waistband of her cream serge skirt with unnecessary briskness.

  ‘I find that question extremely tactless and ill-timed.’ She thrust her discarded blouse into her travel-bag. ‘Why you and Lottie have to be quite so annoying just when everything is going so well, I can’t imagine. And everything is going well. We’ll be in Dawson within another day or so and …’

  The cabin door burst open and an ashen-faced Marietta stood on the threshold. ‘We’ve got trouble,’ she announced tautly. ‘The pig who terrorised Edie says that when we get to Dawson he’s going to outbid anyone else who fancies marrying her.’ Her oddly attractive, feline face was so grim it was scarcely recognisable. ‘And he’s boasting that he’ll then do whatever the hell he wants with her!’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Where is Edie now?’ Lilli asked urgently, picking up her heavy travel-bag.

  ‘She’s on deck with Kate and Lettie, waiting to disembark.’

  ‘And the pig?’ Lilli felt sick. Somehow she had just known something like this was going to happen and she hadn’t a clue as to what could be done about it. ‘Where is he? And how did you get to know what he’s been saying?’

  ‘He’s still being forcibly kept to his cabin by the captain and crew,’ Marietta said as she gave Leo a hand down from the bunk. ‘He’s had plenty of friends visiting him though and they’ve not been shy of announcing his intentions.’

  Lilli stared at her, appalled. ‘You mean he isn’t afraid of what people will say?’

  Marietta’s wide mouth twisted in an ironic grimace. ‘We’re in the Klondike now, Lilli. Or as near as makes no difference. As far as our male travelling companions are concerned, respect for women is pretty low on their list of priorities. And Edie is a Peabody bride. She’s up for grabs anyway and if the pig wants to do the grabbing …’

  She didn’t finish her sentence. She didn’t have to. Lilli felt the sting of bile in her throat. ‘Up for grabs.’ In those three ugly small words lay the true reality of what it meant to be a Peabody bride. Mrs Amy Peabody’s apparent motherliness, the deceiving cosiness of the bulging photograph albums, the false reassurance of the newspaper article about the radiantly happy Peabody bride and her gold-rich husband, were all red herrings designed to lure naive and indigent young women into the Peabody Bureau’s clutches.

  ‘What are we going to do, Lilli?’ Lottie asked tremulously, her usually happy shining face pinched and pale.

  As she looked across at her, Lilli felt crucified by guilt. Lottie was only ten years old. The anxieties and fears she was experiencing on Edie’s behalf were anxieties and fears she shouldn’t even be conversant with, let alone be burdened with. ‘I don’t know,’ she said thickly, ‘but we’ll think of something.

  Leo held tightly to Marietta’s hand, knowing that something was deeply wrong but not understanding just what. ‘Why does Edie have to marry anyone?’ he asked bewilderedly. ‘Why can’t she live with us or wi
th Marietta?’

  Over his silk-dark mop of hair Marietta and Lilli’s eyes met and held, both wondering if it were a possibility.

  ‘I’ll speak to Kitty Dufresne,’ Marietta said, wondering if Kitty would hire Edie as a maid or a kitchen assistant.

  ‘And I’ll speak to Lucky Jack,’ Lilli said as she led the way out of the cabin.

  ‘Lucky Jack?’ Marietta’s eyebrows shot high into her frizz of fiery hair. ‘Lucky Jack Coolidge? Land’s sakes! He isn’t a beau of yours as well, is he?’

  ‘As well as who?’ Leo asked interestedly as Lilli, struggling to negotiate the narrow corridor with her bulky carpet-bag, didn’t trouble to reply.

  Marietta didn’t belong to the school of thought that believed certain subjects of conversation should be censored for young ears. ‘As well as a very handsome seaman and the very personable Mr Cameron. Thank goodness the voyage is at an end, Leo. If it had continued for much longer there wouldn’t have been a man aboard ship not carrying a torch for your sister!’

  Leo giggled, because Marietta always made him giggle, and with his hand in hers followed Lilli and Lottie up onto the crowded deck.

  The crush was horrendous. Every man seemed to have a ton of equipment with him. Newcomers hoisted bedding-rolls and bags of flour and frying-pans. Men who had already struck it rich and were returning after spending the winter in warmer climes were burdened with gigantic brass-cornered leather suitcases and parcels and crates bearing labels as diverse as London, Paris and Rome.

  With a colossal shudder the Senator’s gangplank was lowered. Lottie’s sailor’s hat was nearly knocked from her head as the stampede to be amongst the first ashore began.

  ‘Where is Lettie?’ Lilli shouted across to Marietta. ‘Do you think she’s alright?’

  ‘She’s with Kate and the others,’ Marietta shouted back. ‘I’m going to have to leave you now to go and get my own bags. Will you be okay?’

  Lilli nodded, certain that at any moment Lucky Jack would be at her side.

  ‘There’s Ringan!’ Lottie said suddenly as they were buffeted about on all sides. ‘Look! Over there! He’ll help us!’

  ‘We don’t need help!’ Lilli said exasperatedly as Lottie began to wave to attract Ringan Cameron’s attention. ‘And please don’t refer to Mr Cameron by his christian name, Lottie. It’s not at all polite.’

  Vainly she searched the sea of heads in search of one wheat-gold and Homburg-hatted, but the only figure forging his way through the crush to her side was copper-haired and bare-headed.

  ‘Can I be of any assistance?’ he asked as he reached her side, his voice as always thick with a Highland burr. There was something else in his voice as well. Something Lilli couldn’t quite define. Was it reluctance? The thought sent the blood boiling through her veins.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said crisply.

  ‘Yes, please,’ Lottie and Leo chorused.

  He frowned slightly, wondering if Lilli Stullen’s negative reply was because she didn’t want to receive assistance which might arouse Lucky Jack Coolidge’s annoyance or if it was something less easy to accept; if it was because she had heard gossip as to his jail-bird past.

  The temptation to simply accept her refusal and leave her to struggle with her bag was almost overpowering, but it wasn’t only Lilli Stullen who was struggling with a heavy bag. It was little Lottie also.

  ‘If you’re waiting for someone, I’ll leave you to wait for them,’ he said diplomatically, ‘but the bag wee Lottie’s carrying is too heavy for a child.’ He removed it from Lottie’s unprotesting hands. ‘I’ll take care of it for her till she’s safely aboard the train.’ He hesitated. The arrangements for all passengers bound for Dawson was that they would partake of a late lunch at the Golden North Hotel, Skagway, before boarding the train which would take them on the next stage of their journey. Tables at the Golden North would, however, be limited, and by insisting on struggling with her heavy carpet-bag Lilli Stullen was running the risk of arriving there too late to be fed at all. ‘Taking your bag as well wouldna be a problem,’ he said as the stampede for the gangplank continued.

  Over the sea of heads Lilli could see Miss Nettlesham’s tall, thin figure being uncomfortably jostled as she stepped on to the gangplank. A little way ahead of her Susan was being accompanied off the ship by the Reverend Mr Jenkinson. Behind her, Kate and Lettie and Edie could be seen, all of them battling not to be knocked off their feet.

  She turned her head slightly looking to see if, coming from the direction of the nearest companion-way, Marietta was also being buffeted in the crush. There was no sign of her distinctive fox-red hair but with vast relief she saw Lucky Jack making his way towards her, two slick-suited men on either side of him.

  She turned again to face Ringan Cameron. ‘Thank you for the offer,’ she said, smiling radiantly, her inner happiness such she would have found it impossible not to smile, ‘but I can manage.’

  Ringan shrugged, gave Leo and Lottie a friendly grin and, slinging the heavy bag over his shoulder and holding it by the thumb as if it weighed no more than a jacket, turned away from her.

  Lilli stared after him for a few seconds, the annoyance he so often aroused in her surfacing yet again. His friendly grin hadn’t been directed at herself. To herself he was always faultlessly polite but … reserved? Was that the word she was looking for? Unbending? Or was he simply dour? A dour Scot who had a naturally easy manner with children and who was uncommonly gentle with frightened, mentally-retarded young women such as Edie?

  Shrugging him from her thoughts she heaved the weight of her heavy carpet-bag from one hand to the other and turned to greet Lucky Jack. He wasn’t there. Bewildered, she scanned the forest of heads, a forest that was fast beginning to thin. There was no sign of him. Swinging round she looked in the direction of the gangplank.

  There was no longer any sign of Ringan Cameron’s tall, broad-shouldered figure but three men, all similarly-suited, were just about to step onto the gangplank. As she watched she saw the man on the right-hand side of the Homburg-hatted man in the middle jovially slap his companion’s back. The Homburg-hatted man threw back his head, obviously laughing uproariously. Blue cigar smoke rose in a cloud above all three of them.

  The word Lilli muttered beneath her breath was not one she was in the habit of using. And it wasn’t directed at Lucky Jack. When she had seen him heading in her direction she had simply assumed that he had seen her and that he was making his way towards her. And he hadn’t seen her. He no doubt thought she was way ahead of him, with Lettie and Kate and Edie.

  ‘I didn’t know ladies said words like that,’ Leo said naively, as impatient to be off the Senator as he had been to board her.

  ‘They don’t and I shouldn’t have,’ Lilli retorted, even crosser with herself than she had been a few moments earlier. ‘Come on, pet lamb, if we don’t get a move on we’re going to be the last passengers to disembark.’

  ‘Where did you learn a word like that?’ Lottie asked curiously, grateful she wasn’t still lugging a cumbersome travel-bag.

  Lilli was just about to reprimand her for asking such an improper question when innate good humour and sense of proportion came to her aid. ‘From Pa’s fellow ranch-hands when we were in Wyoming.’ There was the suspicion of a giggle in her voice. ‘But you’re not to start using it, Lottie. And Leo mustn’t either!’

  She put a hand on the rail flanking the gangplank and, as she stepped onto the gangplank and saw the view in front of her, she sucked in her breath. ‘Oh my, Lottie! Look at that. Just look at that!’ She wasn’t referring to Skagway, which at first glance looked to be rackety and ramshackle, but at its setting. Behind the untidy conglomeration of wooden-built houses, saloons, and stores the mountains rose in dazzling, snow-covered splendour. Mountains they would shortly be crossing.

  ‘How on earth did men traverse them by foot?’ Lottie asked, reading Lilli’s thoughts.

  Lilli shook her head, not knowing the answer, overcome by the kn
owledge that one of the men who had done so was Lucky Jack. As she thought of his feat of endurance her admiration for him was boundless. There was far more to Lucky Jack Coolidge than some people seemed to think.

  ‘Why didn’t you let Ri … Mr Cameron carry your bags off the ship for you?’ Lottie asked musingly, breaking in on her thoughts.

  Lilli stepped off the gangplank and onto dry land. ‘I thought Mr Coolidge was on his way over to us.’ The air was dazzling in its purity. The brassy-blue bowl of the sky cast a limpid haze on the snow-covered slopes of the White Pass and lower down, on the grass-covered foothills, drifts of lupins and forget-me-nots stretched as far as the eye could see. ‘I thought he’d seen us,’ she continued as they began to walk on a rickety sidewalk towards the Golden North Hotel, ‘but I was mistaken.’

  Lottie chewed the corner of her lip thoughtfully for a moment and then said, ‘It shouldn’t have mattered whether he had seen us or not. If he’s your beau, he should have sought you out. If Ri … If Mr Cameron was your beau he would have sought you out.’

  ‘I’m getting tired of hearing about Mr Cameron!’ Lilli said sharply, stepping a neatly booted foot onto the first of the steps leading to the Golden North’s entrance. ‘Mr Cameron isn’t quite the Mr Perfect you obviously think he is, though as to why he isn’t, I can’t tell you. On the subject of Mr Cameron you’ll just have to trust me. And I’m getting tired of your constant criticism of Lucky Jack! Lucky Jack is being an absolute … an absolute … saviour to us. If it weren’t for him I would have to fulfil my obligations to the marriage bureau and marry any Tom, Dick or Harry!’

  Lottie bit the corner of her lip even harder. In saying that Ringan wasn’t Mr Perfect Lilli was obviously referring to his history as an ex-convict. Not for the first time she wondered just where Lilli had first gleaned that particular piece of incredible information. She, Lottie, didn’t believe it was true for a moment and neither did Leo. Ringan Cameron was a hero, not a criminal, anyone with half an eye could see that. As to Lucky Jack Coolidge … She sighed heavily and straightened her sailor-hat. If Lilli was in love with him and if he loved her in return, then Lilli was right and she, Lottie, would have to stop being so critical of him.