by J. L. Jarvis
Her blouse was ripped at the shoulder. I lifted the cloth. There were claw marks in her smooth skin. She’d been pawed from her shoulder to chest. I looked her over, head to toe, to make sure there were no other injuries, then I grabbed a chair and guided her to it. I set the revolver down next to me just in case the bear chose to return, and we talked while I took care of her wounds.
She’d been cooking. She’d left the door open because it was such a beautiful day. A bear came into the cabin. It took a swipe at her, but she got to the Colt and shot it. It left. She was lucky. I gently put salve on the cuts where the bear had clawed her. She’d have scars, but the wounds were the sort that would heal. Still, they were deep enough that she winced as I touched her with salve. She watched me as I put the last bit of salve on the top of her breast, and she closed her fingers about my wrist. I set down the salve and looked at her. The look in her eyes went deep into my gut. The danger had brought her emotions too close to the surface. I was in trouble around her under the best of circumstances, so this ripped away any wall I had tried to build between us.
I don’t know who moved first. Our lips touched, and I knew as I kissed her that I’d break her heart and my own with the sorrow and guilt. But by then it was far beyond longing. Selfish hunger took over. I touched her face and drank in the sea green of her eyes. I leaned close and breathed in the warm breath that I’d heard every night, as I tasted her mouth and kissed her vehemently. I put my hands where I wanted, taking no care except to avoid her fresh wounds. She met my fervor with ecstatic anguish. She climbed onto me with her warmth and her softness, and slid me into her. We were caught up with the need for each other and the sounds of our own ragged breaths and quick, guttural moans.
A gun fired and she fell limply against me.
Daniel was there in the doorway, staring. He must have been on his way in when he spotted the Colt on the porch floor. He would have picked it up. We never left it out there. I was distracted, or I wouldn’t have, either. I don’t know whether he heard us or saw us first. He stood staring at me—at Sadie and me on the bed.
Later I would tell everyone that the gun must have slipped from his hand and then fallen to the table and misfired.
The bullet went through my hand, as I held her against me, and into her heart. Wet and warm, the blood spread between Sadie and me. Her green eyes pleaded as she opened her mouth in a soundless cry. And she left me. I clung to her as though I could pull her back to me.
Daniel cried out in a deep, mournful wail. He pulled Sadie from me and held her right there on the edge of the bed, rocking and weeping.
He kept saying her name, and each time it tore through me. I had to get out. I pulled on my pants, but my right hand wouldn’t work. It just hung there. I hadn’t felt the wound until then, when I saw it. There was blood everywhere. I didn’t know it was mine mixed with Sadie’s. It was on me. It was in Sadie’s hair. Her arms hung in awkward angles. I reached over to close her eyes.
“Why did you have to take her?” Daniel whimpered.
I thought he was crying out to God. But he looked right at me. He was my friend. He had trusted me. “Why? What makes you think you can have everything that you want?”
“Daniel...”
“For all of my life, I’ve been there in the shadow. Everyone wanted you. I watched the girls stare when you walked by. You didn’t even notice, but I saw. And I didn’t care being there in your shadow. I didn’t want them. All I wanted was Sadie.”
I felt gut-churning sick. I never knew it was like that with him. In my shadow? He was my friend, almost a brother. I loved him like that. I didn’t see him in a shadow. I didn’t know.
I went outside. I wanted to leave them alone. I wanted to get out and breathe. I went down to the river. The water smeared the blood so it looked fresh. I walked into the river to where it was deep enough to sit down and cup it into my hands and pour it over and over until I was clean, and my tears were mixed in with the water.
Daniel lay Sadie out on his bed. He smoothed her hair out and tucked bloody clumps of it under her shoulders. He kissed her and sat on the edge of the bed.
I stood up in the water. The blood was gone. I was cold. I remembered her warmth around me. How could I remember that and not remember my friend. He’d never in his life let me down—not once. I went back to the cabin to face up to what I’d done. I wasn’t looking for forgiveness. I just went back to face him and say I was sorry.
I stopped in the doorway. He turned to look at me. He was holding the revolver.
“Daniel.” I couldn’t get any more than that out. He squeezed the trigger. The blood sprayed all over the wall of the cabin.
The rest I just know from what the neighboring miners told me. They heard a shot. That must have been the one Sadie fired at the bear. They were mad at us for hunting too close. When the second shot fired, they came over to check on us. They found me with two dead bodies and blood on my hand. One of them tied a rag around my right hand. Someone gave me a drink. They said I took the bottle and sat on the step. They didn’t know what had happened, so someone went for the law. I didn’t care. I just sat there and drank. I guess I cussed them out pretty good, ‘cause they left me alone.
After the Mounties took me in and had finished their investigation, some of the miners buried Daniel and Sadie. When they were carrying Daniel out of the cabin, a ring fell from his pocket. A wedding ring. He’d gone into Dawson alone to buy it for Sadie. He never told me. I guess I knew that he’d marry her sooner or later. I just didn’t know he would ask her today.
They buried the ring with him. Someone read something from the Bible. Daniel would have liked that. Someone must have cleaned up the blood in the cabin. I don’t remember. When I came home, the beds were gone—too bloody to clean. They must have burned them. I came home a couple days later. Sadie’s death was an accident. Dan’s was a suicide. They decided it wasn’t my fault, so they let me go.
Emma had stopped typing some time before. Benjamin was leaning against the wall by the window and staring outside. She looked at him with expressionless shock.
“Benjamin, I’m so sorry—”
He went on as if he hadn’t heard.
I stayed drunk—it must have been days. I was passed out on the porch when I felt a wet snout nudge my face. I opened my eyes and sat up. My head pounded. This Siberian Husky was staring at me. Scared the shit out of me. From the looks of him, he’d been through hell, too. He was mangy, just loose flesh hanging on bones. There were scars where he had been whipped. He must have been a sled dog someone had left behind to die. Only he didn’t. He found me instead. What a pair—two sorry creatures that should’ve both died but didn’t. I couldn’t focus too well. His gray fur looked like a shadow, so that’s what I called him. We had an unspoken deal where I got all the whiskey and I gave him the food. It suited us both.
I kept working the mine. I was driven. The claim was all I had left of Daniel. I owed it to him. I guess, in a way, I couldn’t leave Sadie. She was there for me still. I’d get drunk every night and I’d beg her to haunt me. But she never would. I could feel her just out of reach, like she always had been, but I never would see her or touch her again. Daniel had finally protected her from the rest of me.
I missed him. We were friends since before I could remember. We trusted each other. He trusted me. I should have left after Sadie moved in. But you can’t go back and fix things. That’s the hell of it. You just have to relive it for the rest of your life, knowing the ending is always the same. I guess Sadie did haunt me, after all.
With a bitter laugh, Benjamin glanced at Emma, and back to the window. “Not very good travel book reading, is it? Maybe we’ll leave that chapter out.”
Emma was reeling with confused and clamoring emotions. She may have turned her back to society, but she had not abandoned civilization altogether. This would never have happened in the world she had known. She could not have imagined it in any world if his words were not still in her ears. This new wor
ld spun too quickly. With polite words that seemed odd in this instance, she excused herself and tried not to rush from the room.
Once outside, Emma ran. Down the lawn and into the stand of tall pine trees that lay beyond the path down to the lake, she kept running until her foot caught on a root. She tripped and fell down, and she wept.
She had come here to escape and find peace and to sort out the tangles of her life. Before she knew whether she wanted it, her betrothal had been etched in her life. She’d succumbed to the influence—the pressure—of loved ones. Her life had become a labor of meeting expectations imposed by for everyone else but herself. She’d wanted to control her own life, so she ran. And now here she was, again out of control and entangled in someone else’s life.
How had she allowed it to happen? Desire. She had never known it before, and it drove her to feel and to act unlike herself. Even now, part of her longed for the shock that went through her when his unexpected glance fell upon her. She longed for it more, until seeing it was not enough. She wanted his touch, for the charged sense of his presence before their skin touched. She was like a crazed opium addict who craved what could only be found in the shadows. His adventurer’s life had excited her. She’d thought she would hate it. A lady could do nothing else but despise that which assaulted her proper perception of life. He told savage and dangerous stories that filled her with fear. And exhilaration. His love consumed proper reason. His passion, the thought of it, made her shudder with longing.
She grasped for logic in what he had told her. The ending was tragic and needless. Why had they let it begin? They should have stopped it while they still had their senses. But she thought of how Benjamin had removed himself time after time from temptation. For weeks, perhaps months, he had worked to exhaustion and avoided her presence. When circumstances forced them together, they’d spoken of harmless, everyday things. He had assiduously honored his friendship with Daniel for so long, until desire grew stronger than friendship. And that troubled Emma. How could she trust him not to hurt her? He made her heart pound, both with wanting and fear of the wanting. She had trusted his actions toward her, never thinking that actions and heart could so sharply divide. Would his feelings stay steady and true? Would his heart be constant? She had to know. Her own heart was at stake.
Why had he told her? She had been happy with him, believing that love could grow, simple and true. She had glimpsed love, or hope of it, of a kind she would never have known with Lord Clayworth. But Lord Clayworth would never have shocked her like this. Her heart would have been safe with him. Safe from desire. But Benjamin filled her with troubling doubts. They had followed no predictable path through a courtship according to rules or tradition. Theirs was the coming together of hearts and of minds with no pretense. Like the man, his love was unpredictable and unrefined. It was honest. But his words now changed everything. She no longer felt safe. What they shared was now reckless and raw. His past lodged itself between them. They could not be the same anymore. Why had he told her and ruined what they had shared?
Benjamin wanted to run after Emma, but something stopped him. He had shattered her image of him, but what else could he have done? The weight of the burden oppressed him. He was embroiled in emotions that haunted and kept him from her. When he faced her, his secret was there between them. She was open and trusting, believing in him when he did not deserve it. He knew it would horrify her when she knew what had happened. From then on, she would look at him and see violence in his love, not the beauty. And yet he had told her.
He had carried the burden of the tragic Klondike deaths for months, and would do so for the rest of his life. He had not planned to love Emma. He had never expected to feel again. When Emma came into his life, she awakened and redefined love. But his past was between them. She would have found out from someone. One day he would see her look differently at him. Repulsed and betrayed, she would never trust him again. The sight of her pain would have destroyed him. Even though he knew with near certainty that he had lost her, he might keep her trust. When he saw her again, she would look into his eyes without love. But perhaps he had never deserved it. At least this way he might not see hate.
Snow fell in a fine chalky dust from a pallid gray sky. Only the lake water moved with a scarcely perceptible ripple. Elsewhere hung the quiet of cold. He watched from the window. Into the shelter of pines she had run. With a shawl in the clutch of her hand, and revulsion concealed in her eyes, she had fled. He had expected no less.
He wanted to chase and overtake her with the strength of his body. He could seduce her disgust, warm her desire until it was pliant, but never her heart. And that was why he would not go to her now. While he wanted her body, he needed her heart. It was there that he knew he could find acceptance and hope of forgiveness. And love. All distant hopes were with her, and beyond his grasp.
But as the clock rang again, he realized that he could not leave her out there in the snow. He would force himself upon her only long enough to bring her inside to the warmth of a fire. After that, he would leave her alone for as long as she wanted. It could be forever.
Chapter 7
He found Emma at the foot of the tree where she had fallen, clutching her knees to her chest. He hooked his arm about her waist and pulled her to her feet.
“Why did you tell me?” She shook her head, and pressed his chest to push away, but his arms were strong and securely about her. She was shivering, and he was warm.
“Let’s get you inside.”
He took of his coat off and put it about her. “There’s a fire and some coffee.” He led her back toward the house. After a few steps, she moved away and kept walking.
It was a subtle but clear move, which Benjamin accepted. “We can talk, or not talk—whatever you want.”
Snow fell thickly about. They walked together, not touching, over blades of grass crushed by past snows, and now thinly powdered anew. Inside, a fire blazed in the great stone fireplace. Benjamin pulled the Morris chair and ottoman close to the fire for Emma, and tucked blankets about her. She took the mug of hot coffee he’d offered. Both hands warm around it, she sipped, then looked up in surprise.
“There’s a little whiskey in there to help warm you.”
She drank from it dutifully.
He stood a considerate distance away and gazed. When he could stand it no more, he put another log on the fire, and then turned to leave. As he walked past, he put his hand on her shoulder and with a gentle squeeze, left her alone.
“Why did you have to tell me?”
Benjamin stopped at the doorway. The room was quiet except for the crackle of flames on the logs. He thought he might leave her as though he had not heard. She had to be as weary as he was. But he owed her the answers she sought, so he came back and sat on the floor by her chair. He stared into the fire, not at her. “It was the truth, and you had to know it.”
“I didn’t want to.”
A husky sigh seemed to come from his soul. “Someone would have told you eventually.”
“I would rather have waited.”
With a sad smile, he shook his head. “No. Waiting would have just made it worse. You needed to hear it from me. Otherwise, you would have hated me.”
“What if I hate you now?”
“I expected you would.” A sad look softened his eyes.
Emma’s world had stopped with a jolt. Was this the love she had longed for so much that she’d left home and a life that was safe? This love was cruel. She had found what she’d longed for, and now she was even more lost than before.
There he sat by her, and stared at the fire. The loose waves of his black hair were tousled, the fringes of which lay on his neck, a neck thick where it sloped to his shoulders. His muscular strength had not protected her from this. Love conquered all? No, love was pain, whether stabbing or aching. And the heart was a fool, for she loved him.
Emma wearily reached out and touched his hair with her fingertips. He leaned into her touch and reached a gentle hand
to her wrist. He turned his cheek to her palm and pressed his lips to her fingers. She did not see his face, but she knew its despairing expression.
“Stay, Emma.”
He looked at her with his vivid blue eyes. There was something there still that reflected her soul, and she could not be free of it. Emma should have been torn. She was lost and entangled, unsure of her future, and yet she was sure of her answer. This frightened her most. She was not merely drawn to him now. Without thought or decision, she knew she would stay.
“I wish I could leave you.” She leaned back in the chair and exhaled.
He would not yield to the urge to sweep her into his arms and to bury his face in her hair and her neck. He would give her the time that she needed. And if could be patient enough, they might find their way back to each other. At least now there was hope. He had survived on much less.
In the Yukon, he had seen men who were too weak to endure the bitter wilderness. Some died. Some gave up and turned back. Others dug deep in their souls and found the power to survive. You could see it in some. It shone, bright in their eyes. Emma had it. He had it, as well. He would not give up hope for her love. She might not fully believe it, but his heart was hers now, and she now had the power to break it.
Days went by. They were careful and quiet together. There was no talk of the past or the future, for now. They both had their own wounds, and the new ones he’d caused. With care, they found solace of each other’s company.
Slowly they built a new foundation together, apart from his past. Emma had tormented herself by trying to make sense of what he had done in the Yukon. She had formed shifting conclusions, all right in their way, but conflicting. In the end, the facts won her over. Benjamin had met Sadie first. It was Daniel who had stepped in without thinking, and Benjamin who had—out of friendship for Daniel—stepped aside when he saw how Daniel felt. When she was able to set aside her own selfish feelings, Emma came to feel sorry for Sadie. Her heart had been Benjamin’s from the start. When he showed no feelings for her, she responded to Daniel’s attentions. Emma might have done the same, had she been lonely and so far from home. From the way Benjamin described him, Daniel was a kind and considerate man who would have made a good husband in any woman’s eyes. But hearts do not listen to logical minds. So she made the choice to settle for Daniel, and kept her heart hidden safely away. It was not an entirely unselfish choice. Daniel offered escape from her life as a dance hall girl, and she took it. She was good to him, and worked hard to earn her share of the mine. Sadie honored Daniel’s devotion, and Benjamin honored his friendship—until one weak moment when self-control snapped. They betrayed Daniel. Perhaps they betrayed themselves most of all by not admitting the truth from the start.