"Did I stomp your toes?"
Like an idiot she peered down at her sturdy shoes. "I don't believe so."
"Excellent." Bowing slightly, he made a flourish with his hat. "Bernard T. Barrett at your service." A grin revealed teeth as white as baking soda. "Everyone calls me Bear."
Clara could see why. His voice seemed to growl out of a barrel chest and he had twinkly brown-bear eyes.
She would have told him her name, too, but she suddenly heard the silence behind her and realized Juliette and Zoe were watching and listening. Juliette at least would be shocked to her toes if Clara, a married woman, offered her name to a stranger.
Smiling down at her, he made another flourish, then tapped his hat onto the back of his head. "Well, then. If you're sure I didn't injure you."
"It was nothing. Really. I turned too fast and wasn't looking where I was going." Clara dipped her head. Mr. Barrett kept gazing at her. Staring, actually.
"You sure are a pretty little thing," he remarked in a booming voice, causing several men to look up and give her the once-over. Before she could take offense, Bernard T. Barrett grinned, bowed slightly, then moved away from her through the piles of boxes and sacks, his strides as big as the rest of him.
An hour later, during a demonstration emphasizing the dangers of camp stoves, Clara gave up trying not to think about him. She couldn't get over the fact that Mr. Bernard T. Barrett had complimented her as a pretty little thing.
In twenty-six years, no one had ever described Clara Klaus as little. The word ravished her and sent a shiver of delight coursing through her body followed by a pang of regret. Where had men like Bernard T. Barrett been when she was single? She just knew that he didn't have a string of Mmes Barrett trailing out behind him. Her heart understood with rock-solid certainty that he wasn't that kind of low-down, good-for-nothing man.
"Clara, are you paying attention?" Zoe glared at her. "We all need to know how to operate this stove, because we'll each have our turn at using it."
"Wait a minute." Juliette's gray eyes rounded in horror. "You don't expect me to cook. Oh, my heavens. You do."
Clara listened to Zoe's sharp reply with half an ear. As far as Clara could discern, Juliette had not acknowledged the man across the street. Judging by Juliette's demeanor, she was entirely indifferent to a handsome man's intent interest.
Which meant that Juliette was a far better person than she, Clara thought with a sigh of irritation. She cast another surreptitious glance in the direction Bernard T. Barrett had taken. She would never see Mr. Barrett again, and that was just as well. After all, she was sort of married.
Bracing herself, she thought of her thieving husband and waited for the anvil of pain to squash her as it usually did when she grieved over Jean Jacques.
The pain came, but it didn't quite squash her. For the first time since Juliette had appeared and ruined her life, Clara sensed that a moment might come when she could think about Jean Jacques without the anguish of wanting to hold him or kill him.
Possibly. Maybe.
* * *
Chapter 5
The piers at the foot of First Avenue were crammed with men jammed shoulder to shoulder trying to shout or push their way on board the Annasett. Hoping to catch the attention of an armed crew member guarding the bottom of the gangplank, Zoe waved her ticket above her hat. It was useless to shout as everyone was yelling. And, she realized, she was too short for her waving ticket to be noticed in the chaotic melee.
Peering over her shoulder, she screamed at Juliette and Clara to stay right behind her. Then she lowered her head and went to work with her elbows, opening a path. When one man stepped back in surprise or anger, she slipped in front of him and jabbed at the next one. By the time she reached the gangplank, her hat was askew, splatters of tobacco juice soiled her skirts, and her elbows were bruised from banging against ribs, but she presented her ticket with a triumphant flourish.
The crewman's eyebrows soared at the sight of three ticketed women, but he grinned and waved them on board with a look that said he thought they were crazy.
Once on deck, Juliette gripped the railing and stared down at the crush of men shouting and shoving on the pier, all hoping to be the one chosen to fill a last-minute vacancy.
"What if our outfits didn't get loaded?" she asked, speaking next to Clara's ear to be heard.
" That's why we had them sent to the dock yesterday. To make certain no mishap occurred," Clara reminded her.
"How safe is this boat?" After straightening her hat and cape, Juliette gazed up at the stack, then scanned the deck. "I was told the Annasett has room for sixty passengers, but there's twice that many standing at the rail."
"I'm guessing we'll share the trip with three hundred fellow travelers," Zoe said with a shrug. "Can't blame the owner for making a profit while he can."
Juliette gasped and her face turned pale. "We'll sink!"
Zoe raised her eyes to the hills of Seattle and fervently wished that Juliette were standing on one of them. All she had heard for the last week was: "I can't do this."
"What if we don't have enough food in the packs?"
"What if we freeze to death?" What if, what if, what if, until Zoe felt like screaming.
She truly did not understand why Juliette undertook a journey that so clearly terrified her. She must have loved Jean Jacques very much to do something she desperately did not want to do in the hope of finding him.
Jealousy whipsawed down Zoe's spine. For several days now, she hadn't imagined Jean Jacques kissing Juliette and Clara every time she looked at them. But at odd moments the images rose with tormenting power, blindsiding her as now.
It made her furious. She wanted to feel nothing but hatred when she thought of Jean Jacques, wanted to imagine no scenes except that of herself firing a bullet into his black heart. Unlike Juliette, Zoe had no questions she wanted to ask, and she didn't care about getting her money back as Clara did. She just wanted revenge, just wanted to kill his butt.
Glaring down at the docks, she watched Bear Barrett stride through the yelling throng, knocking aside smaller men—which included everyone on the pier. She knew him by sight because he came into Uncle Milton's store once or twice a year, ordering supplies to be sent to his place in Dawson City. Coming up the gangplank behind him was the man who had shown an interest in Juliette the day they assembled their outfits. Today, the green scarf he'd worn around his hatband was tied to a belt loop.
Zoe slid a glare toward Clara and Juliette, noticing they watched the gangplank, too. And it suddenly occurred to her that they would find other men, other loves, once she had made them widows. But what about her? What man could possibly interest her after Jean Jacques? Men like him came into the life of a Newcastle girl only once, if ever. Except he hadn't been real.
"I'm going to find our stateroom," she announced abruptly, turning from the rail.
Stateroom was a grossly grandiose term for what she discovered. Deep in the bowels of the steamship, she entered a closet-sized cubicle barely large enough to contain a cot and a two-decker bunk bed. As a concession to gender, they'd been issued a cracked chamber pot painted with daisies and a cloudy mirror that hung above a shelf supporting a lone washbasin.
"Oh, my heavens," Juliette breathed, appearing in the doorway. Her gray eyes widened in an expression of shock and dismay that was becoming annoyingly familiar.
"This would be cramped for one person, let alone all of us," Clara observed tightly, stepping past Juliette and blocking the light from a single smoky oil lamp.
Making little whimpering sounds, Juliette collapsed on the bottom bunk. "Three weeks of this? I can't endure it!"
Maybe she'd give herself the pleasure of shooting Juliette, too, right after she shot Jean Jacques, Zoe decided. Then she'd shoot Clara, just for good measure. Of course, if the other wives were dead, maybe she wouldn't shoot Jean Jacques after all. Maybe they could…
What was she thinking? Giving her head a disgusted shake, she
set her bag on the plank floor. Inside were her toiletries, a couple of nightgowns, a change of clothing, a warm coat, and heavy underwear because the temperatures would dip as they neared the coast of Alaska.
Juliette said it first. Naturally. "There's no place to lay out our things."
"We can shove our luggage under the cot and bunks," Clara noted briskly. Bending, she removed a hammer from a side pocket on her bag. "I'll put up some nails to hang our hats and capes."
Zoe's mouth dropped. "You packed a hammer and nails for the voyage?" Grudgingly, Zoe conceded she was impressed. There were depths to Clara that she hadn't suspected.
"Be careful you don't drive a hole in the side of the boat and sink it!" Alarm widened Juliette's eyes. "I can't swim."
"If a single nail hole will sink this ship, then we're done for anyway," Clara said around the nails in her mouth. In minutes, she had completed the job. "It's an inside wall," she assured Juliette, inspecting the row of nails. "Now get off that bed. I need one of the slats. If we take one slat from each of the bunks, I don't think the beds will collapse."
Immediately Zoe grasped the plan. "Extra shelves."
Nodding, Clara laid the edge of a slat against the lip of the wainscoting. A few hammer whacks and they each had a shelf.
"Are we going to get in trouble for this?" Juliette asked. "I'm grateful for the innovations, but—" She broke off speaking and placed a hand against her stomach. "Are we moving?"
"Not yet." With a sinking heart, Zoe studied her face. "Why? Are you feeling ill?"
"I'm not sure," Juliette said slowly.
Clara leaned against the wall and covered her face with one big hand. "I don't even want to think about sharing this tiny cell with someone who's seasick."
Far above them, the ship's whistle blasted and the ship rocked and lurched, and the floor slid beneath their feet.
Juliette gasped and gripped the edges of the bunk bed. "I've never been on a boat before."
It turned out none of them had.
"Don't you dare get seasick," Zoe hissed. The room was so tiny and cramped that the smell of the tobacco juice on their skirts overwhelmed every breath. Body heat generated by the three of them had already raised a damp sheen across her forehead. And the greasy smell wafting from the lamp made her feel queasy inside. "I swear, Juliette, if you throw up one time, I'm going to toss you overboard!"
"I'll help you," Clara promised firmly.
An odd rocking, sliding motion told Zoe the Annasett was drifting out of her slip. Never in her life had she felt such a strange loss of bearing and gravity. The cape she'd hung on one of Clara's nails swung slightly back and forth. The oil in the lamp base gently sloshed from side to side. As the contents of her stomach were undoubtedly doing.
Cold sweat popped out on her forehead. A nasty taste scalded the back of her throat. Panic flared in her eyes when she heard another blast of the whistle. They were under way.
Something heaved in her stomach. "Oh, God!" Dropping to her knees on the floor, she frantically yanked their bags from under the bunks in a desperate search for the chamber pot.
She found it in the nick of time and gave up her breakfast while Juliette and Clara watched in horror.
There was time for humiliation to crush her before the next wave of nausea sent her back to the chamberpot.
As they did whenever they could escape the cubicle, Juliette and Clara strolled round and round the decks of the shockingly crowded steamship. Oily black smoke blew into their faces when the wind shifted, and when it wasn't actually raining, a good possibility existed that flying sea spray would mist them with tiny annoying droplets. Another irritation was enduring the unending scrutiny of bored men with nothing to do but inflame tempers by staring at fellow passengers.
Juliette paused by the rail rather than approach the crowd of men gathered around a fistfight at the far end of the deck. As usual, the onlookers appeared more interested in wagering on the outcome than in breaking up the brawl. Frowning in disapproval, she tried to imagine Jean Jacques involved in such brutish behavior. He was far too refined.
"You have that Jean Jacques look," Clara commented, shaking her head.
"I wish you'd stop calling it that. Of course I think about my husband, don't you?"
"I try not to."
They gazed down at the water, still choppy from this morning's rain. The sea was never the same, although Juliette had expected it would be. Instead, the color and movement constantly changed. Sometimes the water was green and glassy. Other times, saucy blue waves spit foam at the sky. On three occasions she had watched dolphins arching through the sea like big gray needles stitching an invisible thread.
"It's your turn to check on Zoe."
Clara made a face. "Lordy, I hate going down there!"
Their cubicle trapped the heat, stench, and dismal ambience of a nightmare. Sleep was next to impossible because of Zoe's continual retching and moaning. Never in her life had Juliette seen anyone as sick as Zoe Wilder. Zoe begged to die, and Juliette believed it likely that she would.
"You know what the captain said. We have to get some food into her."
"I don't mind that part," Clara said unhappily. "It's emptying the chamber pots." They had three now. "And cleaning up. And bathing her. And just trying to breathe in there." Tossing back her head, she inhaled deeply, pulling the fresh sea breeze deep into her lungs before she squared her shoulders and marched off with firm but reluctant steps.
When she reflected on it, Juliette experienced a thrill of triumph that it wasn't she who was sick and begging to die. If someone asked at the end of her life what her proudest moment had been, she would think: Zoe Wilder got seasick, and I didn't. Ha!
Halfheartedly castigating herself for feeling superior at Zoe's expense, Juliette considered going to the mess hall to escape the blowing smoke and the noise of the fight. But the mess hall would be crowded with men. Most were respectful and tried to curtail swearing and coarse language in her presence, but she knew she made them uncomfortable. Moreover, they believed she had no business going to Alaska. She believed it, too.
"Beautiful," a voice said softly at her side.
Stiffening, she straightened abruptly and glanced at the tall man who appeared next to her on the rail, noting a corner of the green scarf sticking out of his shirt pocket. His beard was fuller now, coming in the same luxuriant brown as his hair. But what she noticed most were his eyes, a brilliant blue that made her think of Aunt Kibble's bright prizewinning delphiniums.
"The sea. It's beautiful, isn't it?"
Ordinarily she would not have dreamed of striking up a conversation with a stranger. But these were not ordinary circumstances. After two weeks packed together as tightly as a paper of pins, no one was really a stranger anymore. All the faces were familiar.
"Indeed," she murmured uneasily. She had never excelled at conversing with strangers, particularly men. She always imagined a tiny Aunt Kibble sitting on one shoulder and a tiny version of her mother perched on her other shoulder, both listening and observing with critical expressions, waiting for her to err.
"Permit me to introduce myself. I'm Benjamin Dare, from San Francisco, California." Removing his hat, he held it against his chest and studied her face with an expectant expression.
The tiny Aunt Kibble tsked in disapproval as Juliette hesitantly offered her own name, giving it as Miss March. For the duration of the journey, she and the others had agreed to call themselves by their maiden names rather than raise gossip and scurrilous speculation by identifying themselves each as Mrs. Jean Jacques Villette.
"Do you mind if I smoke, Miss March?"
So he didn't intend to leave immediately. And she couldn't continue her stroll since the fistfight was still in progress. "Please do." Her father had smoked cheroots. The scented smoke was her strongest memory of him. Besides, it seemed churlish to protest when the stack's black smoke hung thick across the decks.
"We seem to run into each other rather frequently," he sai
d, waving out a match.
"I beg your pardon?" She would have set herself on fire before admitting that she, too, had noticed.
In view of her ongoing experience with chamber pots and retching fellow wives, his clean soapy scent pleased her enormously. And she liked the pleasant rumble of his deep voice. He wore the ubiquitous denims and flannel shirts favored by the majority of passengers, but on him the prospector's uniform seemed exotic and appealing.
"We stayed at the same hotel in Seattle," he explained. "And I saw you in the Yesler Park and again at the outfitting store. Now we're aboard the same ship. It's an interesting set of coincidences."
She thought so, too, but made no comment, keeping her gaze on the sea while she watched him from the edge of her eyes. It was flattering that he had noticed and remembered her. Surprising that she had noticed and remembered him. But she definitely had.
"I'm puzzled to find a lady such as yourself traveling to the Yukon. If you'll pardon a personal observation, you don't seem the type of person to seek your fortune in the gold fields."
"Good heavens!" She met his blue eyes directly. "You can't think that I…" The notion was hilarious. "No indeed, Mr. Dare, I have no intention of panning or digging for gold."
Most people looked at others without really seeing more than an overall impression. But Ben Dare looked at her with an intensity that made her think he saw deep inside her. Flustered, Juliette resisted an urge to pat her hair and wet her lips. Even Jean Jacques had not gazed at her with such total absorption. An odd warmth spread through her stomach and she hastily lowered her eyes, frowning and biting her lip.
From atop her shoulder her tiny mother advised her to nod politely and walk away, and Aunt Kibble warned that it was no one's business but her own that she traveled to the Yukon in search of a philandering husband. Either caution was unnecessary. She would no more have confided in a strange man than she would have adjusted her corset in public. Not even if the man had intent blue eyes and a well-shaped mouth and made her feel strangely tingly.
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