by Jamie Carie
Noah, open the door!
“Nothing is there but the wind,” he answered aloud in a confused voice, but he opened it anyway. He took a deep breath and shouted.
“Hello-o-o! Anybody out there?”
Hearing nothing, seeing nothing, he took a step forward. Something soft yet solid moved under his foot. He jerked back, knelt down, and quickly unburied the still form at his doorstep. “My God …”
He lifted her, noting how light she was, how air-thin her bone structure felt, as if she had been made for flight instead of this earthly gravity, and brought her inside, slamming the door with one hand. Carefully, he carried the seemingly lifeless bundle to the sofa, the only store-bought piece of furniture he owned, and laid her on it. He brushed snow from her chest, revealing an ice-encrusted cloak. The frogged clasp was frozen stiff and unmovable. Noah pushed the folds of the cloak aside and placed his ear over her heart. It took a moment to find it—yes, he heard a faint but steady beat. Taking out a pocketknife, he cut the frogging of the cloak, slid it from under her, and tossed it aside.
Like some angel born of the storm, she was as pale as the snow he had taken her from. Dark, curling, shoulder-length hair tossed wildly about her head. Her face was delicately made, small and sweet. Upswept brows and long, closed lashes made dark slashes of color against the bleached skin in deathly beautiful contrast. Her bloodless lips reminded him how very cold she was. He touched an icy cheek with the backs of his fingers, noticed her wet clothes, and realized the gaping needs of a lone woman in a blizzard with nothing but thin clothes on her back. She was a living, breathing miracle … for the moment, anyway.
Hastening to his hand-hewn bed, Noah jerked off a quilt. Next, he went to his dresser and rummaged for a warm shirt and some woolen socks. She would be lost in the shirt, but it was the best he could provide for the moment.
Kneeling beside her, he carefully covered her with the blanket and began removing ice-encrusted clothes from underneath it. He barely glanced at her garments but noted in the back of his mind how well used they were, as if they had been scrubbed too many times with too much vehemence. A thin white blouse with tiny gray stripes and too many buttons—confound the thing—a gray skirt, one plain white petticoat, gray stockings, and badly worn black ankle-boots completed the ensemble and marked her a greenhorn. Noah shook his head in wonderment at her foolishness. How she had made it to his cabin, which was partway up the slope of a mountain and miles from Juneau, in a snowstorm, wearing no more than this getup, was nothing short of miraculous. Who she was and where she had come from were questions begging answers—answers Noah didn’t know if he ever would learn. She seemed as frail as a spring flower caught in a sudden, mean frost.
Noah dried her and dressed her in his warm garments, his hands clumsy at the task, the back of his neck turning warm at the unfamiliar intimacy. Then he covered her with the quilt. She looked so lost and little in his red flannel shirt, too bright against the white of her throat. He didn’t like it against her small-boned beauty, but it was the warmest thing he owned and he wasn’t about to take it off her now. He reached out to her, first touching her cheek with the backs of his fingers, then brushing gently at the ice in her hair.
She was out cold and Noah knew enough about thawing to be glad for this. It was a painful process. He only hoped it was happening in time. For reasons he really didn’t want to probe, he hated to see her marred in any way by this experience. Blackened feet to hobble on for the rest of one’s life would not set well on this one. Those things belonged to grizzly miners with gap-toothed grins and greedy eyes, not to recently rescued snow princesses.
The teakettle began to whistle, bringing him back to his kitchen and the immediate need of warming her extremities. At the stove, he poured steaming water into a deep porcelain bowl and refilled the kettle from a bucket, putting it back on the stove for the next round. He would need lots of hot water if he were to have a chance of saving her feet. Taking up a soft cloth, he hurried back and knelt down beside the end of the sofa, lifting the bottom of the blanket. He slipped his arm beneath her knees, lifting her legs so that her feet dangled, half-crossing each other. Gently, he lowered her feet, immersing them in the warm water, his eyes taking in the daintiness of her toes and arches of her feet, his gaze traveling up her ankles to slim, shapely legs. Once again, he marveled that someone so thin and elegant could possess enough strength to find his cabin, on foot, in such weather.
As soon as the water cooled, he lifted her feet, dried them carefully, and wrapped them in another blanket. They had reddened in the process, but he wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one; it was a bad case of frostbite, anyway.
After laying a couple of logs on the fire to keep the room warm, he concentrated on the next greatest concern, her hands. Kneeling beside her, he began soaking the reddened, chapped hands. Hard-working hands, certainly, but something more. One wrist had a long scar around it. He stared at an especially ugly welt on the inside of the other wrist, thinking of a burn he’d once had, but this was much worse. It looked like a recent injury. He wondered what might have caused it, and indignation and protectiveness rose within him. This wasn’t caused by physical labor; she had been mistreated, he was sure of it. A deep disquiet settled over him as he immersed one hand at a time, warming them in the water. He then rubbed a sweet-smelling ointment into her wrists, his thumbs making tiny, gentle circles where pieces to her past lay vulnerable to his gaze. Her skin turned rosy under his care, making him feel slightly better.
Tired, Noah pulled the rocker over to the sofa, fell into it, and stared at her. If only she weren’t so still. If only she would shiver or move, anything aside from the tiny rise and fall of her chest. Then he could breathe easier. Then he could find his own rest.
The minutes that held the answer to whether she would live or die ticked loudly from the mantle clock. Time would tell. It sounded so deceptively easy, that phrase. The waiting was anything but easy, but he had done all he knew to do. He needed more than the raw, elemental laws of wilderness survival. He needed help. His head fell back against the chair as he prayed for her—prayed that her life would be spared, prayed that her feet would recover, prayed pleading mantras, not knowing better words except to remind God of the many miracles He had done and ask Him to do another.
It was a struggle to stay awake. He let his eyelids fall shut. Just to close his eyes for a little while. Just to rest them.
He must have fallen asleep because the next thing he knew he was jerking upright in his chair with dreams of snow angels fading from his mind. He looked toward the girl.
She was so still—too still. Coming fully awake in a panic, he realized her chest wasn’t moving in the faint but steady rise and fall of the past hours. Falling to his knees, he moved to her side and laid his ear upon her chest. He could feel how cold she was, even through the thick shirt, sending a spike of fear through him. Something was wrong. She seemed worse than an hour ago. The clock’s ticking was louder than her heartbeat, making him wish for something to throw at it to still its insistence. He gripped the edge of the sofa with one hand and leaned over her, pressing his ear harder. Just as he was about to back away and give up, there it was. So faint, so erratic—her heart sounded like it was … freezing. Behind his closed eyes he saw it in his mind, he could see her heart seizing up and freezing solid.
“No,” he cried, leaning over her and roughly gathering her into his arms, willing his own warmth to seep into her flesh. “God, no. Don’t let her die!”
Suddenly, he was tearing open her shirt and then his, turning her toward him as he climbed up to lie next to her on the sofa, side by side, pressing his warm chest to her shockingly cold one. He pulled the quilt over their heads and then grasped the back of her head with his hands—hands that had hacked a life out of frozen wilderness, hands that had unsuccessfully worked the plow and then fallen back on the knowledge of the smooth barrel of his hunting gun, hands that had been lifted in worship and made fists to the s
ky in desperation, hands that had known the struggle between life and death in the hard place that was Alaska—he grasped her silky hair, bringing her head to his, her lips to his, so that he could breathe his own warm, living breath into her. He didn’t know what he was doing. It was crazy, it was wrong … but it seemed right.
Call to her.
“Call to her? I don’t know her name!” he screamed.
Then something took over, a calm panic of sorts, and he began a rhythm. A breath into her mouth and then, in a deep, commanding voice, “Wake up.” Another breath. “Wake up, Come on, wake up!” Another breath. “Come back, sweet one. Come back.” Another breath. “Wake up. Come back to me.” On and on and on until he began seeing odd red dots in his peripheral vision. It was dark under the blanket and hot. He felt the sweat trickle down his back, felt the doubts assailing his mind, telling him how foolish he was, but he kept breathing and talking, breathing and talking until he needed a breath of fresh air so badly, he had to lift the blanket to allow a crack of light and air into their cocoon.
As the light crept in, her face came out of the dark and into shadows. There was enough light to see that she was flushed and a sheen of sweat shone on her forehead. There was moisture on her upper lip, evidence of his efforts. Lifting the blanket a degree more, he saw the small rise and fall of her chest. She was breathing again, breathing on her own.
The hope that had been flickering inside him flared to full life. “Thank you,” he cried out, his voice hoarse from breathing his life into her. Thank you. He lay back down beside her, pulling her close into his arms and sighing heavily into her hair. Thank you. His chin rested on the top of her head. She would live. He didn’t know how, but he was sure now. She would live.
It was the last thought he remembered thinking before a deep sleep overcame him.
* * *
July 7, 1880
Dear Miss Greyson,
I have received your request for my services in locating your daughter, Elizabeth, and am most glad to tell you of my devotion to your cause. Please be assured that I understand the discreet nature of the investigation, and while we may never meet in person, I will keep you abreast of my inquiries and future proceedings by letter.
I have begun my investigation with the names of the local orphanages and schools you supplied in your letter. Please know that your plea has touched this humble investigator’s heart and I will make returning your daughter to you my utmost concern.
Sincerely yours,
Jeremiah Hoglesby
Private Detective for Hire
Two
Whiteness, brightness, hurting her eyes. Conscious thought tried to assert itself, but she quickly rejected it, thinking she must be dreaming still, that the strange sound resonating from the area of her chest couldn’t possibly be a man’s snoring. All she knew for certain was warmth, inviting and cozy. She snuggled her face and then her body deeper into the big pillow at her side, and with a deep sigh she flung an arm around it and drifted back into the cushions of sleep.
Her next sensation was a burning in her feet. She squeezed her eyes tightly closed, vaguely wondering what she had done to them. What kind of scrape had she gotten herself into this time? Elizabeth opened her lids a slit, saw white light, groaned, changed her mind, and squeezed her eyes closed again. Her feet felt on fire. That was the cause of this rude awakening, she realized as she surfaced from one of the deepest and most profound sleeps of her life. Whatever had she done? With an inward sigh of resignation, she turned her head toward the ceiling and tried opening her eyes once more.
Disjointed memories assailed her. Mountain … blizzard … so much snow … so much cold. Had she actually survived it? Her heart pounded in fear that she wasn’t even really alive, that this warmth, this burning, was some form of the afterlife. Then she heard it. A groan and a sudden movement by … by her pillow!
Her head jerked toward the sound and she came face to face with a snoring mouth.
She tried to scream. She really did. Wanted to so badly, but all that came out was a croaky pig-like squeal. She pushed against the huge chest, knocking him from the bed … or sofa, she amended, half-sitting in stultified shock, taking in the surroundings of a cabin. Good heavens, where am I?
The man sat up, suddenly, and looked at her, both frantic and disoriented—as if she were some kind of crisis. Sleepy eyed, tousled golden hair, with deep dimples in lean cheeks … then he frowned at her. Panic hit her hard in the stomach. Who was he? Where was she?
Her gaze dropped to his chest where his shirt hung open, revealing golden skin. Then she noticed the width of his shoulders, the strength of his arms … the size of his hands. She tried desperately to remember … anything. He could break her with little effort at all. Not that she wouldn’t fight. She knew how to kick where it did the most damage and run or hide, still as night, for hours if need be. She could manage him if she had to. Abrupt dizziness hit, making her head pound as if this stranger wielded a hammer. She leaned back against the cushions, a sound of distress escaping her throat.
The man was rubbing his hands over his face, through his hair, and then looking at her with such intensity that she suddenly thought she might be sick.
He made a sudden move toward her, causing her to shrink back into the cushions of the sofa. His hand was outstretched as if to touch her … she swatted it away before it could reach her, making her hand ache almost as bad as her feet.
“What do think you’re doing?” she croaked.
He seemed confused, as if she couldn’t possibly be talking to him.
She sat back up abruptly, determined to take charge of this astounding set of circumstances, but sitting up all the way was challenge enough. Dizziness overwhelmed her and a hazy blackness loomed in her vision. She quickly dropped her head to her knees, as she knew from experience to do, waiting for it to dissipate. When she felt ready, she cautiously tried again, sitting quietly for a few moments to regain her senses. The man remained quiet, watchful.
The blanket slipped. Elizabeth felt a draft of cold and glanced down, then gasped in shock. She was wearing nothing but a shirt, and it was not even buttoned up … at all. Outrage rose to the surface, making her hot with embarrassment as the thoughts connected themselves. She looked up at him, grasping the sides of the shirt together so tight they threatened to strangle her.
“You! You beast!” She wanted to brand him with every foul-mouthed word she knew or had ever heard, but she was breathless with anger and nausea. And her feet—they felt as if she’d stuck them into the fire and left them there. She tried to reason it out and glare with mortified hatred at him at the same time. The storm had caught her off guard. So stupid! Hours of walking, searching for anything to save her. And then she had seen a light. And then a house. She didn’t remember anything after hitting her head against the wall. But the evidence was obvious. This man had … well, she didn’t know exactly what he had done, but to take advantage of her unconsciousness was contemptible. She looked around the cabin in desperation, noting the door, windows with casings that would open, and places to avoid where she could easily be cornered and trapped. It was all so neat and clean. Her gaze scanned the kitchen area. What she really needed was a weapon. She had to get a weapon.
The man looked at her intently. His gaze dropped to the shirt she was wearing, his shirt, and then back up to her face. A telling red flush filled his face as he looked into her eyes.
“Where are my clothes?” she demanded. “What have you done? Tell me what you did while I was asleep.”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking at her and then behind her at some spot on the wall above her head, as if he couldn’t quite look her in the eye. “Um … I had to get the wet clothes off you … that is … you nearly froze to death. I had to … put on some dry … my shirt was the best I could do.”
She glared at him. “Then why didn’t you button it? It couldn’t keep me warm like this, could it?” She buttoned the shirt with shaking finge
rs as she talked. There had to be more and she would know it or see that he died a slow, painful death, she promised herself. “What about your shirt? What were you doing sleeping with me like that?” His chest and stomach were in full view. She dragged her gaze back to his face as he tried to explain.
“It was buttoned. But I … that is, you were so cold and you … during the night you stopped breathing, I couldn’t find your heartbeat. I’m sorry. I just acted. I thought … well, I just thought the only way to warm you was … my body heat against you.” He looked down at his own bare chest and quickly pulled his shirt closed, reaching for the top button. “I’m sorry.” He looked at her, really looked into her eyes, and said, “I did the only thing I knew to do.”
She didn’t know what to believe. Had he saved her life? Had it really been so innocent? “Why didn’t you button it up after, after you saw that I was breathing? Why did you stay with me like that?” she pressed, feeling close to tears and hating herself for it.
“I fell asleep. I’d been up since dawn chopping wood, and it was well past midnight.”
“Where are my clothes?”
He took a long breath, pointing toward a washstand beside the four-poster bed. The cabin was small, one large room serving as a living room, a kitchen, and a bedroom. Elizabeth looked to the bed covered with a patchwork quilt and saw her clothes hanging there, dripping, giving credence to his words. “They’re hanging over there, drying. In this cold it may take a while, but I expect they’ll be dry by tomorrow. You really shouldn’t be getting up yet, you know.”
“And why shouldn’t I?” she said, latching on to the anger that rode so high, so easy. “You can’t tell me what I can do. I’ll get up if I please.” She attempted it even, so determined and unwilling that he see any weakness, before falling back with a cry of pain.