Mistaking the reason for her hesitation Ringan cupped her elbow gently. It was the first physical contact there had been between them since their nuptial kiss.
‘I dinna want ye worrying about anything,’ he said as Lottie skipped on ahead of them, entering the Eldorado at Marietta’s side. ‘Ye can leave for wherever ye want in the morning. There’s a boat at eight o’clock for Whitehorse. Your uncle canna take Leo and Lottie away from ye now you’re a married woman. And I’ll see ye alright for funds. I’ll arrange a bank account for ye, wherever ye settle.’
‘Yes,’ she said tightly, feeling as if she were dying by inches. ‘You’re very kind. Thank you.’
She wanted to ask him about the twenty-five thousand dollars. She wanted to ask him how on earth he had been able to pay Josh Nelson such a huge sum. She needed to ask him if he was hoping she might one day be able to repay it. She tried to speak but no words would come. All her dreams had finally and irrevocably turned to ashes. She would never live in this wonderful wild country she already loved. She would never work with the Indians. She would never give birth to Ringan Cameron’s babies.
‘We need to go inside,’ he prompted gently, ‘or people will think it a mite odd.’
Crucified by a pain almost beyond bearing she allowed him to lead her up the steps into the Eldorado’s plushly ornate lobby.
Leo rushed to meet her. ‘Where’ve you been? What’s been happening?’ he demanded, hurling himself into her arms. ‘Lucky Jack’s here. He’s leaving for Nome tomorrow and he’s packing his bags. We’re not leaving for Nome, are we? My magic lady isn’t. She likes Dawson and I like Dawson too.’
Before she could even begin to answer his questions Lucky Jack strolled out of what appeared to be an enormous dining-room complete with dance-floor, into the lobby.
Ringan looked swiftly towards Lilli, the pain in her eyes and the tension in her face confirming all his worst fears. She looked like a woman barely holding herself together against an inner disintegration; a woman coping with an anguish of the deepest possible kind.
‘Congratulations,’ Lucky Jack was saying to them breezily. ‘Kitty’s just told me the happy news. Seems as how I did you both a good turn by not being able to get to the Phoenix.’
He shot Lilli his familiar down-slanting smile and then said to Ringan, ‘I was going to pay Nelson off and engage Lilli as housekeeper, here, at the Eldorado. It would have given her and Leo and Lottie a roof over their heads.’
He gave a slight shrug of his shoulders, his grin widening, ‘As it is, this is by far the better solution to her problem, isn’t it? Would you like some champagne? I’ve a shrewd idea Kitty’s trying to show me she doesn’t give a darn about me leaving tomorrow for Nome, but whether that’s the reason behind the extravagance of the wedding breakfast or not, she’s certainly asked the staff here to go to town on it.’
Through the open doors of the dining-room they could see laden tables. Somewhere out of their field of vision a small orchestra was playing. Will and Lettie were circling the floor to a waltz, feasting their eyes on each other. They looked like two people who had been fiercely in love with each other for months and months and months. Kate and Lord Lister began to waltz together as gracefully as if they were in a London ballroom. Saskatchewan Stan began to propel Edie clumsily but enthusiastically around the floor.
The colours of her friends’ dresses blurred and merged. Pink, lemon, white. Lucky Jack had never, ever, intended marrying her. He had been going to pay Josh Nelson off for no other reason than that he wanted her as a housekeeper for one of his hotels.
It was an incredible realization. A realization that, until a few short hours ago, would have totally destroyed her. Now, however, it caused her only a dazed wonderment. How could she have read so much into so little? How could she, from the moment she had entered the Peabody Marriage Bureau, have shown such bad judgment and lack of commonsense? No wonder Lottie had so often looked at her in anxiety and accused her of being unrealistic. Lottie had known the truth about Lucky Jack and Ringan right from the very beginning. She had known that Lucky Jack was a Greek god with feet of clay just as she had always known that Ringan was a big man in every sense of the word.
The waltz came to an end. The orchestra began playing another. Lucky Jack swirled Marietta out on to the dance-floor.
Even if she hadn’t mis-read everything he had said to her so totally, by neglecting to make the arrangement he had promised her he would make with Josh Nelson, he had still let her down in a way which, if it hadn’t been for Ringan, would have been grievous. Kitty, of course, had prophesied he would do so. She thought of him leaving for Nome in the morning and knew that he had let Kitty down; knew too, that he and Kitty had been lovers and that beneath Kitty’s apparent gaiety was a savagely bruised heart.
‘We dinna have to go in and dance,’ Ringan said, cursing Lucky Jack and the effect he had had on Lilli from the bottom of his soul. ‘I’ve a room booked at The Fairview. Ye can take the bed and I’ll take the couch.’
The despair emanating from her in waves, increased. On the Eldorado’s dance floor Kate and Lettie and Edie were dancing with their new husbands. Susan was standing hand in hand with hers. All of them were blissfully happy. Wherever they were going to sleep tonight, none of them would be sleeping alone whilst their bridegroom slept on a couch.
Tiredness merged with her misery and despair, nearly swamping her. She was certainly too tired to dance and to pretend to a happiness she was so far from feeling. The lonely bed it would have to be. And in the morning? Had she really no other alternative but to return to Whitehorse and from there to San Francisco or Vancouver or Seattle? Her head ached. She was too tired to think straight. Too tired to feel anything but an overwhelming sense of loss. ‘I’d like to go to The Fairview, please,’ she said stiltedly.
As they turned to leave the lobby, Marietta left Lucky Jack alone on the dance floor and hurried after them. ‘Don’t worry about Leo and Lottie tonight,’ she said breathlessly, catching hold of Lilli’s arm. ‘They can stay with me in the room Kitty has given me at the Gold Nugget.’
‘Thank you, Marietta.’ Incredibly, she had forgotten all about Lottie and Leo and the problem of where they would sleep that night.
Ringan had continued to walk towards the lobby’s door and as Marietta saw Lilli’s unnatural paleness and the deep, dark circles of strain which were beginning to appear below her eyes, she said urgently in a low voice, ‘Sweet saints’alive! From what Lottie told me I thought you were happy with the way things have turned out! You’re not still grieving over Lucky Jack, are you?’
‘No.’ There was no doubting the sincerity of the vehemence in her denial. ‘No, it’s just that …’ She looked quickly over her shoulder but Ringan was now yards away from them, his back still towards them. ‘He doesn’t love me,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘He simply saved me from an intolerable situation as he might have saved Edie or Kate or even Rosalind Nettlesham. He’s suggested I leave Dawson in the morning for Whitehorse and I think that’s what I’m going to have to do, Marietta. I can’t stay here now, can I? Not if he doesn’t want me here.’
Ringan had turned, making what Lilli now thought of as his ‘Scottish noise’in his throat, in order to gain her attention.
‘Bye, Marietta. If I do leave I’ll write to you at the Gold Nugget.’ The thought of not being cheered daily by Marietta’s friendship was almost too much for her to bear. Swiftly she turned away, walking rapidly towards Ringan and the door.
‘Ye’ll miss her I dinna doubt,’ he said gently, reading the cause of her distress right for once.
‘Yes.’ Her voice was muffled, thick with tears.
‘Hst,’ he said, cupping her arm gently as they began to walk down the street, his heart hurting on account of her distress, ‘Ye’re over-tired. Things’ll not seem so bad in the morning.’
She made an inarticulate sound that could have meant anything and his jaw tightened. This wasn’t how he had wanted it t
o be. It was their wedding night and he wanted to be dancing with her as joyously as Perry and Will and Saskatchewan Stan were dancing with their brides. And when it came to walking to The Fairview he wanted to be doing so with his arm around her waist and her head nestling lovingly on his shoulder.
Dear God in heaven! There had been moments, in the Phoenix, when he had believed all his hopes were possible. The moment when their eyes had met as he swung her down from the obscenity of a stage she had sat on to be auctioned; the moment when he had given her the posy of forget-me-nots; the moment when he had kissed her. And then they had entered the Eldorado and he had seen the anguish in her eyes as Lucky Jack had strode towards them, and he had known that all his hopes were vain.
As they entered The Fairview a figure not unlike Kitty hurried to meet them. ‘Congratulations!’ she said, beaming at them, ‘One-legged Pete gave me the news a half hour ago. It sure didn’t take you long to make an impression on Dawson, Mr Cameron! First time anyone’s married at the Phoenix in full Highland fig that’s for sure!’
She turned her attention to Lilli. ‘The name is Belinda Mulroney and I’m right pleased to meet you. I’ve been in Dawson ever since the spring of ’97. I floated down the Yukon on a raft with two Indians in order to reach it and I’ve never regretted it once. I didn’t know Mr Cameron would be honeymooning here when he booked in and so he wasn’t given the honeymoon suite. However, I’ve rectified that omission and you’ll find yourselves in the best room The Fairview can provide, and that’s saying a lot.’
As she led the way upstairs to the bedrooms she continued inundating them with information almost nonstop. ‘Despite all Lucky Jack’s claims for the Eldorado, The Fairview is the finest and best-appointed hostelry in town. All my twenty-two rooms are steam-heated, my table silver is sterling and my china is bone. I brought the whole lot, cut-glass chandelier, brass bedsteads, everything, over the Chilkoot and then down the Yukon on fifteen flat-bottomed boats.’
On reaching the top of the stairs she began to lead the way down a crimson-carpeted corridor, silk skirts swishing around her ankles. ‘I’ve had the girls fill your bath with hot water and put champagne on ice. Mrs Cameron’s travelling-bag has been brought over from the Phoenix. I always have had a soft spot for Peabody brides but a Peabody bride who’s a friend of Kitty Dufresne’s is a Peabody bride worth pushing the boat out for. Now …’ she flung a mahogany door open. ‘Is there anything else you folks might be wanting?’
Ringan looked at Lilli’s pale, strained face. ‘A bite to eat would be verra welcome,’ he said tentatively, ‘A sandwich, perhaps?’
‘A sandwich is the most uncomplicated request I’ve ever received. If you’re so easily pleased Mr Cameron, Mrs Cameron is one hell of a lucky lady!’
Mrs Cameron had already stepped inside the bridal suite and was looking around it in horror. The fittings were sumptuous. How they had all been manhandled over the Chilkoot she couldn’t even begin to imagine. The brass-headed bed was vast, its pillows in their lace-trimmed pillow-cases, plump. The bedspread was virginally white, the sheets satin-edged. On a mahogany chest was an ice-bucket containing a bottle of champagne. On a marble-top wash-stand was a rose-painted jug and washing-bowl. There was a mahogany inlaid wardrobe on bracket feet, a matching tallboy, a dark green velvet upholstered chair with a buttoned tub back and through an open door leading off from the bedroom, a claw-footed bath, steam rising from its contents. What there was not, was a couch.
The door closed as Ringan entered the room and Belinda Mulroney departed. He stood, feet set wide apart, his kilt still swinging slightly, his hands on his hipbones as he looked around the room Belinda had well-intentionally moved him into.
He registered the absence of a couch and the smallness of the chair with a sinking heart. He could hardly demand they be moved back into his previous room with its single bed and couch. If he did, the news would be all over Dawson by the morning and Josh Nelson might well take the line that Lilli’s marriage was null and void.
‘Dinna fret, I’ll sleep in the chair,’ he said easily, not wanting to cause her more distress than she was already suffering on account of Lucky Jack.
‘I wasn’t fretting.’ It was true. Her initial horror had been on his behalf. She hadn’t wanted him to be embarrassed. She hadn’t wanted their few hours together to be marred by even more awkwardness.
Carefully she set her wedding bouquet down on the bed. Wearily she sat down beside it. There was so much she wanted to ask him, so much she wanted to find out about him before she left on the steamer in the morning. And she had no alternative but to leave. They were man and wife. She couldn’t build a life for herself in Dawson separate from him. The consequent talk and speculation, added to speculation about his jail-bird past, would damn him utterly amongst his new neighbours.
‘As we’ve been given champagne, it would be a shame to waste it,’ Ringan said practically, walking across to the chest, his swinging kilt magnificently accentuating his strong, well-shaped calves.
It was a typically Scottish, typically thrifty remark and she wondered again about the ease with which he had paid Josh Nelson twentyfive thousand dollars.
‘The money,’ she said hesitantly as he eased the champagne cork from the bottle, ‘at the Phoenix. How did you …? I’ll never be able to repay …’
He poured champagne into a fluted glass and handed it to her. ‘My grandfather was one of Britain’s railway kings. My father invested the wealth he inherited wisely.’ The tone of his voice altered as he added dryly, ‘And for the last ten years I’ve had no opportunity at all of spending the even greater wealth he left to me.’
She was so startled she spilt some of her champagne on her skirt. ‘You mean you’re rich?’ she said incredulously. ‘You haven’t come to the Klondike seeking a fortune? You already have one?’
He grinned, relieved that he had at least caught her attention and taken her thoughts away from Lucky Jack. ‘Aye,’ he said, filling his own glass to the brim, ‘so no more mention of the money I bid. It isna necessary.’
There was a knock at the door and as he crossed the room to answer it she wondered what other surprises were in store for her. She still knew nothing about the supposed crime he had been convicted of. And she didn’t know how he was going to occupy himself in Dawson. Everyone else was either a prospector or living off the backs of prospectors. By his own admission Ringan didn’t fall into the first category and it was beyond imagination he would ever fall into the second.
An immaculately dressed member of one of Belinda Mulroney’s bar staff entered the room bearing a mammoth silver tray of sandwiches.
The anguish she had been feeling ever since the realisation that, unlike the other Peabody marriages, their marriage was not to be a proper marriage, surged through her with fresh vengeance. If only he felt for her a smidgeon of what she now felt for him, everything would have been so perfect.
The bar-man made a discreet, speedy exit. Ringan recrossed the room towards her, setting the silver salver down beside the ice-bucket. Not for the first time she noticed that all his movements betrayed athletic muscular co-ordination and grace.
‘Tell me about your prison sentence,’ she said quietly. ‘Tell me how you came to be wrongfully convicted.’
His eyes darkened, something very like pain flaring through them. After a long moment he said tautly, ‘I wasna totally wrongfully convicted.’ Several beats of silence filled the room and then he said, ‘I killed a man and, though I didna intend to kill him, when I had done so I felt no remorse.’ His eyes held hers. ‘And I still feel no remorse,’ he said, a pulse throbbing at his jaw-line.
Her mouth was dry. The fizzing champagne in her glass suddenly seemed obscenely inappropriate. ‘Why?’ she asked, still absolutely certain he was morally innocent. ‘Tell me.’
The pulse continued to beat. He had never spoken of Patti’s death with anyone. He took off his jacket and his jabot and then, unbuttoning his shirt at the throat, he said, ‘My m
other died when I was a wee boy and my sister, Patti, was only a bairn. My father was a businessman and always busy with his own affairs. Patti and I were left in the care of nannies and governesses and a strong bond was forged between us.’
Her eyes held his in total empathy. When her own mother had died the bonds tying her to Leo and Lottie had been cast in hoops of steel.
‘Eleven years ago, when she was seventeen and I was a newly qualified doctor in Edinburgh and far from home, she fell in love with a man named Tad Rowntree, a man my father immediately discerned to be a blatant fortune-hunter.
He paused again, his pain agonisingly obvious.
‘They ran away together and my father called Rowntree’s bluff by refusing to give permission for their marriage and striking Patti out of his will.’
There was another long pause and then he said, ‘Patty became pregnant and Rowntree took her to an abortionist. Afterwards, when she lay bleeding to death, he didna even call a doctor.’
He ran his hand through his gleamingly brushed helmet of hair making it thick and tumbled again. ‘When I was told, I did what any man would have done. I sought Rowntree out to give him a beating.’
‘And he died from it?’
Ringan gave a small, bitter laugh. ‘I only hit him the once and that was on his jaw and yes, he died. And though I’ve tried and I’ve tried, I canna be sorry for it.’
The urge to cross the room to him and offer him physical comfort was so strong she had to hug her arms to prevent herself from doing so.
‘She was a verra bonny lassie,’ he said thickly, ‘Like you, she had true Celtic skin, so white it was almost translucent, but her hair was red, not dark. So deep and rich a red ye felt your hand would burn if it touched it.’
This time the silence was deeper and longer than ever before. She wondered if he realised the compliment he had paid her. She wondered what on earth she could say that wouldn’t sound hopelessly inadequate. He had served ten years for inadvertently killing the man who had destroyed his sister. Ten years locked in a prison cell. She thought of his passionate love of nature and the way he had tried to communicate that love to Leo and Lottie and shuddered. For a man who loved wild-life and the open air as much as Ringan did, it had been a savagely hard sentence. No wonder that after such an experience he hadn’t mixed easily with the prospectors aboard the Senator but had stood alone, gazing out to sea for hour after hour.
Forget-Me-Not Bride Page 27