As she sat, she did some mental calculations and realized that with the bonus Big Alex had given her, she now had almost one thousand dollars in gold.
One thousand dollars! she marveled, looking out on the rainy day. In Portland she and Jenny could live for two years or more with that much money.
But her first obligation was to pay back Dylan. Earning this gold hasn't been easy, but it had been quick, and she would be able to make more as long as there were dirty clothes in Dawson.
She had some competition now, but she still had more work than she had time for. She had one advantage, however, that the competition did not—a clientele who loved to hear her sing. Melissa had no business experience, but she was smart enough to realize that her singing was an asset that cost her nothing. She didn't go so far as to give performances, but her habit of entertaining Jenny had brought her customers from all over the region. Lottie Oatley, who sang for the miners with her sister, Polly, had even visited her one day and offered her a job in their concert hall.
But Melissa was satisfied to continue with her laundry business. Now if only her heart could find the same contentment. She resisted the urge to look back over her shoulder toward Dylan's side window, as she'd done so many times in the last few days. She never found him there—that was good. Wasn't it?
Since he'd bought her the cradle for Jenny, Dylan had been in her thoughts during almost every waking moment that didn't require her undivided attention. Her thoughts about him concerned more than just how nice he'd been to her, too. She'd actually found herself beginning to regret the rice sack that served as a barrier between them in his bed. Were all men careless and rough during intimacy? she wondered. Or would it be different with Dylan? Just considering the idea made her cheeks flame hotly.
Melissa's thoughts were interrupted when she heard the splash of approaching boots. She looked up to see the familiar red wool coat of Sergeant Foster Hagen of the North West Mounted Police. He was tall and ramrod straight, with riveting silver eyes and a carefully waxed handlebar mustache. He wore his Mountie hat squarely over his brow, completing his no-nonsense appearance. Though the rain had picked up its pace and soaked his uniform, he gave no indication of discomfort, accustomed as he was to all kinds of weather, fair or foul.
And while his bearing made him noticeable, she wasn't likely to forget him in any case. He had been the arresting officer who sent Coy to the government woodpile.
He glanced up at her sign on the side of the building, and then at her again. "You are Mrs. Coy Logan, are you not?"
She rose from her seat. God, what had Coy done now? she wondered anxiously. "Yes, I am, but I don't know where my husband is, Sergeant. Except for a short . . . visit two days ago, I haven't seen him in weeks."
"Oh, I know where he is, ma'am. Please"—he gestured at her soap crate—"won't you be seated again?"
Melissa's hands turned ice cold, and she closed them into fists at her sides. He must have done something really bad this time—dear God, maybe he'd been given a blue ticket, banishment from the Territory. She didn't care if that was the case, but as his wife, perhaps the authorities could force her and Jenny to leave as well. "I would rather stand, Sergeant, if you don't mind."
He nodded stiffly, and for a moment his proper military demeanor shifted uncertainly. He looked up at the sign again, and then at her. "Well, Mrs. Lo . . . ma'am, it is my regrettable duty to inform you—"
Melissa tightened her fists.
"—that your husband, Coy Logan, died early this morning at St. Mary's Hospital. Pneumonia, I believe Father William said it was."
The air whooshed out of her lungs, and she stared at the sergeant. "He—he's dead? Coy is dead?"
He inclined his head, and a trickle of rain ran from the wide brim of his hat. "Yes, ma'am, I'm afraid so. You say you haven't seen your husband lately?"
Melissa looked, down at the wooden pallet under her feet. She swallowed and swallowed, but her throat was suddenly as dry as cotton. "Except for a minute two days ago, I-I hadn't seen him in weeks. Coy thought that he could do better in Dawson without the burden of a wife and child. So he left me here." She didn't lie, but despite her shock, she was careful not to mention the details of her illegal divorce.
The unflappable Mountie looked distinctly uncomfortable. He slapped his gloves against the palm of his hand and twiddled with his impeccable mustache. "Yes, well, we found him passed out behind one of the saloons last night. Apparently he regained consciousness long enough to tell one of the sisters where you could be found."
She raised her eyes again. "Did he . . . do you know if he left any message for me? Or for his daughter?"
Now Sergeant Hagen shifted from one foot to the other, while a puddle formed around his boots. "Nothing I would repe— No, I don't believe he did, Mrs. Logan. I'm truly sorry. The sisters said he had no money or personal effects."
"Do you know, that is, should I arrange for a funeral?"
"No, that won't be necessary. There was some confusion and, well, he was already buried in our potter's field before I had a chance to find you."
"Potter's field—does that mean his grave isn't marked?"
"Yes, it does." He tipped his wet hat deferentially and added, "My sincere condolences, ma'am." Then he walked back through the mud to Front Street.
Coy was dead.
She was a widow.
Just like that. Melissa sat down hard on the soap crate. The man who had married her and taken her from her unhappy home in Portland, who had fathered her baby and brought her to this wilderness outpost was gone.
He'd looked dissipated a couple of days ago, but her horror upon seeing him again had been so great that she hadn't realized he was ill. She folded her hands tightly in her lap. Maybe that had been why he'd come around that day. He must have known he was sick, and he'd expected her to take care of him.
Of all the things she had thought might happen to him, she'd never imagined that he'd pass from this earth as a charity patient to be buried in a pauper's unmarked grave. Try though she might, Melissa couldn't rouse any grief, or any other emotion but one. And she struggled to push it to the back of her mind because it was heartless and unworthy.
Feeling suddenly very cold, she stood again and went to fetch the child she had conceived with the late Coy Logan.
*~*~*
When Melissa walked into the store, one look at her chalky face told Dylan that something was wrong. Rafe, who sat pitching cards at a chamber pot again, obviously noticed it too—the ten of clubs took a wild turn and fell far short of its intended target.
"Melissa," Dylan said, "are you all right?"
She moved like a sleepwalker across the floor to Jenny's crate, which they'd brought downstairs to use in the store. Picking up the baby, she touched her cheek to the little girl's silky head.
Dylan stepped out from behind the counter. "Melissa," he repeated, worried. He reached out and grasped her arm. Standing this close to her, he could smell the rain in her hair. "Did Logan come back?"
She shook her head. "No. He won't bother us anymore." Her gray eyes were as blank as a wall. "Coy is dead."
For one wild moment, while he looked at her paper-white face and fragments of thought tumbled around in his head, he wondered if she had killed Logan. He tightened his grip on her slim arm. "Dead?"
"Sergeant Hagen said it was pneumonia." She went on to explain the Mountie's news in a dull monotone.
Rafe used his cane to push himself from the chair. With decorous gravity he led Melissa back to the now vacant seat. “Please sit down, dear madam. This is quite a shock, I'm sure.” He offered to bring her a glass of water and a headache powder, which she declined. Then he collected his deck of cards from the enamel pot, stepped away from her, and withdrew his gold pocket watch. "I am due at a card game at the Pioneer Saloon," he said to Dylan in a low, winded voice. "I hope I have the kind of luck that has just been left on your doorstep."
"What are you talking about?" Dylan murmured back.
Rafe gave him his jack-o'-lantern grin. "I imagine it will dawn on you later." Patting Melissa's arm on the way out, he left the store.
Dylan returned his attention to her. "Coffee? It's been sitting on the stove since the morning."
"That's all right. I don't mind."
He poured a cup of the bitter black liquid and gave it to her. She held it without drinking it, as if she were a mannequin in a shop window. Pulling up a stool, he sat down, wishing he could think of something eloquent to say. Under the circumstances it didn't seem right to tell her he was glad that Logan would never pester her again.
"I'm sorry, Melissa."
At that, she looked up at him with eyes glittering with tears. God, did she still care about that no good—?
"But I'm not sorry," she said. He heard anger and fear creeping into her voice. "I'm not sorry at all. I'm glad he's dead, and I shouldn't be. I feel so guilty about it. Remorse is one of the only feelings that elevates us above animals, and I feel no remorse for Coy." She leaped from the chair so suddenly, Dylan worried that she might drop Jenny. But she put the coffee on the counter and with a kiss, laid the baby in her crate.
"You don't have to be sorry, Melissa," he said. "He chose his own path and made his own decisions. He was a grown man, even if he didn't act like one."
Color returned to her face, and fury, perhaps a lifetime's worth, erupted in her. "But he's dead now. I should be able to forgive him. Forgive the times he hit me and belittled me and ordered me around like I was a—a dog. I should overlook the names he called me—stupid, dummy, wh-whore. Just like my father!" She paced the plank flooring, and her damp skirts slapped against her ankles. She held her hands interlaced in front of her as if she appealed for understanding, while tears streaked her face. "I can't forgive any of it. I never loved Coy, but if he'd treated me decently, I could have been a good wife to him. Maybe I could have even learned to like him. Instead, I hated him and I wished him dead so many times that now it's come true!"
The mousey, timid female Dylan had first met was completely gone. In her place stood a person outraged by the wrongs she had endured. She scrubbed her tear-wet face.
At that moment Ned Tanner walked into the store, raindrops beading on his oiled hair. His curious, eager gaze swept over Melissa, who looked as wild-eyed as a harpy. Dylan jumped from his stool and literally pushed Ned back out to the duckboards.
"But Dylan, I need a new ham—"
"I'm closed, Ned," he barked and slammed the door.
The interruption took some of the fire out of her tirade. Dylan gripped her shoulders on her next pass over the flooring. She wasn't a small woman, but she felt as delicate as a bird beneath his touch.
"Honey, you know you can't wish someone dead. It doesn't work that way. And it doesn't matter if you don't forgive him. That he died didn't change what he did to you. Logan was a drunk and a bully, and he was headed for a bad end." Dylan thought back to the raging fury that had coursed through his own veins when he'd held his knife to Logan's scrawny neck. "If he hadn't died of pneumonia, somebody probably would have killed him eventually."
She turned her face up to his, and the anguish he saw in her expression twisted his heart. He hoped that Coy Logan was in hell, getting his worthless ass fried for what he'd done to Melissa.
"But in a way, if I can't at least be sorry that he's dead, it makes me no better than he was."
He shook his head. "It makes you human. It's human to be angry at someone who hurts you."
"Do you think so, Dylan?"
Oh, she had a way of looking at a man as if he knew more than God himself. "Sure. Otherwise you'd be a martyr. And martyrs are so tiresome."
She gave him a wobbly little smile that went straight to his soul. "Maybe."
He dropped an arm over her shoulders. "You'll never forget how he treated you, but I'm betting that after enough time goes by the memory of it will fade. It will be a part of your life that's in the past." He nodded at Jenny. "And she won't remember it at all."
"That matters more than anything," Melissa agreed. "It was so horrible to hear my father call my mother those awful names and treat her like she was his servant. He—he must have been kind to me some times in my life, but I can't remember them. I only remember the bad times."
He sighed. "Maybe someday they'll fade too." Though their pasts were vastly different—hers one of poverty and his, privilege—neither of them had good memories to hold to their hearts. And as he looked down into her face, for just this moment it seemed as if they had only each other.
Giving in to the greedy urge to hold her, Dylan enfolded her in his arms. To his surprise, she relaxed in his embrace, and his body responded with a pounding ache that made him think about flinging the rice sack upstairs out the window. Her lips, soft and pink, were just inches from his own. Her hair, fragrant with rain and soap, lay against his jaw. The other night he'd called himself a fool for nearly kissing her, and he'd promised it would never happen again. Right now, with her so close to him, sweet-smelling and soft beneath his touch, he couldn't remember why . . .
Melissa felt Dylan's finger under her chin, tipping her face up to his, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. She stood mesmerized by his eyes, entranced by the long, sun-streaked hair that brushed his wide shoulders. Just above the hollow in his throat she saw his pulse beating, strong, steady. His wild maleness called out to her, asking her femininity to answer.
When his mouth covered hers, thoughts of Coy and her father and Dawson retreated like fog under a blazing sun. His lips were hot and full and soft, and the feel of them was like nothing she'd ever known. The peculiar quickening that she had felt around him before doubled its tempo now, suffusing her body with heat and restlessness. He traced her lips with his tongue, silky and warm, so that they were as moist as his own. Melissa's pulse jumped and her breath deepened. He tasted ever so faintly of coffee, and smelled of buckskin and freshly cut wood. Returning his kiss, she reached up timidly to put her arms around his neck, bringing her torso in contact with his. At her touch, he drew in a swift, deep breath.
Nothing existed for Melissa but Dylan and his kiss.
Jenny began fussing for her dinner then, and the moment ended.
Melissa pulled back, feeling a little awkward. "I guess she's getting—"
"You'll want to be feeding—" They both spoke at the same time.
He smiled. "Will you be all right now?"
"Yes." She smiled shyly.
Leaning over, he put a light kiss on her cheek. "You go on, then. I'll be up a little later for dinner."
She plucked Jenny from the crate and cast a lingering look at him. "Then I won't rush to get it started."
He opened the door for her, and as Melissa walked out to the duckboard, she realized that she felt a lot better.
That was due mostly, she knew, to Dylan Harper.
*~*~*
It took a while, but mingled with the turmoil in her heart over her feelings for Dylan, and the stunning news of Coy's death, Melissa finally realized one important thing.
She was free.
Not just because Rafe Dubois had said so in the Yukon Girl Saloon. And not simply because she had stopped using her husband's name.
She was truly free—an independent woman. Coy Logan would never appear at her washtubs again, demanding that she come with him. He would never hit her again or call her names or make any other demands of her.
She had the right and the freedom to live her life as she saw fit, to raise Jenny and give her every advantage she could afford. Just how she would do it, and what it would entail, she didn't know yet. That evening after dinner, while the baby slept in her new cradle, a conversation with Dylan made her stop and think about it.
"What do you want from life?" he asked. He sat at the table with his chair tipped back against the wall. From the window a shaft of evening sunlight fell across the chiseled planes of his face, touching his lashes with gold.
Melissa sat across f
rom him, taking small, careful finishing stitches on a new dress she'd made for Jenny. What did she want? She had never really stopped to think about it, although she supposed the truth had been there all along.
"To be safe and comfortable." She paused to wet the end of her thread before putting it through the needle's eye. "I never wanted to be rich, really. Well, I guess I used to daydream about the grand house where my mother worked, and I'd pretend that I lived there and had servants to wait on me and a driver to take me around in an automobile. But that was like putting myself in a fairy tale."
"Safe and comfortable. That sounds reasonable. I just want to raise horses."
"Horses?" This was a revelation, she thought. As far as she knew, he didn't even own a horse in Dawson.
"It's all I ever wanted."
"You must have wanted a wife, a family?" Melissa blessed the opportunity to pose the question.
He frowned. "At one time I thought I did. I know better now."
Disappointed by his ambiguous reply, she asked, "How did you get interested in horses?"
"My father and brother were all caught up in their banking and mortgages and damnable loan foreclosures. Even if they had been less ruthless, that wasn't the kind of business I wanted to be in. I told the old man that I could make a success of horse breeding if he'd let me give it a try. I invested everything I had to get started, and his bank loaned me the rest. When he realized that I could make money at it, he agreed to let me use his stables."
"Who did you sell the horses to?"
"A couple of the ranchers in the area took a few. But most of them went to the army at Fort Vancouver. These weren't nags rescued from the glue pot—I sold them fine, blooded horseflesh that were to be ridden by officers."
She adjusted her thimble. "You must have come North with a lot of money."
He shook his head. "I was down to about four mares and a stallion when I left The Dalles. I'd sold the rest to pay off most of that bank loan—I hated having that thing hanging over my head. Then I planned to rebuild my stock. But those plans fell through."
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