I do, I do, I do

by Maggie Osborne

  "What do you know about penguins?"

  "In a bad mood, are we?" Tom asked, lifting an eyebrow. He'd pulled his scarf away from his mouth and she could see his smile.

  "I'm either too hot or too cold. I've been stuck in that tent for a week. Juliette is driving me crazy. We're all starting to repeat ourselves. We've had no exercise. And I'm so sick of Alaskan strawberries and dough cakes that I could scream."

  Alaskan strawberries was the name given to the pink half-cooked beans that everyone in camp joked about when they weren't complaining. No one had the energy to cook much else even if they could have found more interesting fare among the tumbled boxes of iced-over goods.

  "When are we going to get out of here?" At least a hundred people had turned back. They might not have given up if it hadn't been so late in the year, if they could have sailed across the lakes and down the rivers. But the frigid temperatures and the long walk over ice had discouraged them. Zoe had watched them go with envy in her heart.

  "A few folks left for Dawson today." Tom fell into step beside her, making walking on snowshoes look easy and graceful. "There's no reason our party can't depart tomorrow morning."

  "Good." She wanted to get to Dawson, find Jean Jacques, do what she'd come to do, then go home if they didn't hang her as they probably would. She wanted to sit in Ma's snug kitchen, pour her heart out, and let her family comfort her. She wanted her life back the way it was before she met Jean Jacques and before she ran into Tom Price.

  Jean Jacques had deceived her and ruined her, but he'd made her feel like a lady. Tom confused her and reminded her of a background she wanted to rise above. Good sense advised her to forget both of them.

  Head down, she listened to the cold squeak of the snow beneath her boots, heard the rhythmic schwoosh of Tom's snowshoes. She couldn't think of a single thing to say to him.

  When they reached the shore of the lake, Tom paused and pushed back the fur-lined hood of his coat. Mist gathered in front of his lips when he spoke. "That was some kind of fight you started last week," he said, shaking his head and grinning. "I never saw anything like it."

  Zoe closed her eyes and cringed inside her layers of clothing. When she felt uncertain about her behavior, she asked herself: Would Juliette do this? Never in a hundred years would Juliette have punched a man in the nose and started a brawl. Only a low-bred person would do such a thing.

  "I was proud of you, Zoe." Tom pushed his hands in his coat pockets and gazed down at her with soft eyes. "If you hadn't gotten to Horvath first, I would have flattened him."

  She turned away, focusing on the men loading sleds out on the lake. "I'm ashamed of myself," she said in a low voice. How was she ever going to better herself if she couldn't control the Newcastle in her?

  Tom took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. "There's no reason to be ashamed of standing up for your friend."

  Juliette was not her friend. They could barely tolerate each other. Although she'd thought about it at length, she didn't know why she'd flown at Jake Horvath like an avenging angel. It was nothing to her if some vulgar-mouthed man made scurrilous comments about Juliette. But at the time it happened, she had cared deeply, had cared enough to bust the man's nose. She still didn't understand what had come over her.

  "Ladies don't get into fistfights."

  "Is that what's bothering you?" His fingers tightened on her shoulders hard enough that she felt the pressure through all the layers. "The standards are different up here, Zoe. If you aren't a fighter, you won't succeed in the Yukon. And you might die. Qualities like toughness and loyalty are prized."

  "Is that how you see me?" she asked, horrified. "As tough?"

  "You bet I do. You're tough enough to go after what you want. Tough enough to fight for what you believe in. It takes strength to make your way in a big city like Seattle, and you've been doing it. It takes strength to set your sights on a place like Dawson City and endure what it takes to get there."

  The praise made her feel a little better, and then a lot worse as she realized he praised her for the wrong things. There was nothing admirable about starting a brawl.

  He grinned down at her. "You and Clara are becoming legends. There isn't a man on the trail who wants to get crossways with either of you. Everyone knows you can shoot that rifle you keep in the tent, and now they know you throw a mean right fist."

  You could take the girl out of Newcastle, but you couldn't take Newcastle out of the girl. What a fool she had been to believe that Jean Jacques really thought she was genteel.

  "I don't want to talk about this," she said, walking out onto the ice. Clara had reported that it was a foot thick now. Clara seemed to know everything, which was one of her annoying traits. "Tell me what we're supposed to do."

  Tom followed, and she sensed that he watched her with a puzzled frown.

  For the next hour, he worked with her on the sleds. Four of his clients had turned back midway to Crater Lake, therefore he had extra sleds and dogs.

  "With fewer clients and goods to transport, we'll be able to move faster."

  The plan was for the Chilkats to attach canvas sails to the extra sleds and let the wind blow the piles of goods across the lake. With any luck, the Indians would make such good time that camp would be set up by the time Zoe and her companions arrived. They would drive dog-powered sleds.

  "So why do I need to know how to rig a sail?"

  "Every survival skill you learn is like money in the bank."

  That sounded reasonable. "Why do our sleds have wooden runners instead of metal like so many of the others," she asked, looking around.

  "Metal runners stick to the ice in extreme cold."

  He showed her how to water the wooden runners and coat them with a sheath of ice. Then demonstrated how to hitch the dogs. Showed her where to stand, how to guide the animals. At the end of an hour, the information had begun to blur. The one thing that stuck in Zoe's memory was the warning that the sled driver did not add her weight to the load. The driver ran along behind, guiding the sled.

  "There's not much to worry about. The dogs will follow the sled ahead of them. I'll drive the lead sled, and Bear Barrett has agreed to bring up the rear. Ben Dare will drive a sled behind Juliette to keep an eye on her. You and the ladies shouldn't run into any trouble."

  She stared at him. "Let me make sure I understand. I'm going to run behind a sled all the way to Long Lake. Then run across Long Lake to Deep Lake. Then run across Deep Lake to Linderman Lake. Then run over Linderman Lake to Lake Bennett."

  Laughing at her expression, he nodded. "The alternative is to camp here until the spring melt, then take a boat or a raft downriver."

  "Neither possibility sounds appealing." But remembering her experience aboard the Annasett made running a hundred miles sound almost desirable. "You know, this really makes me mad." Her cheeks were fiery with cold, yet she was sweating inside her coat. The dogs frightened her a little. She didn't know if a foot of ice was thick enough. And she simply couldn't imagine running behind a sled for a hundred miles, except she expected it would be a grueling experience. "No one tells you about all this before you leave the States." She waved an arm at the lake. "I'll bet half of these people wouldn't be here if they'd known the truth about what to expect."

  Tom tugged her muffler away from her mouth, bent, and kissed her quickly. "You're tough, remember?"

  "You kissed me!" Startled and angry, she shoved him away and then glared. "In public!" After scrubbing her mitten across the tingle throbbing in her lips, she made a hissing sound. "How dare you compromise me like that!"

  "I've thought about what you said up at the glaciers. And I've thought about fate bringing us together again. I want to be more than just a friend, Zoe. So I've decided to commence a courtship." His green eyes were clear and serious. "As for kissing you in public, that was deliberate. I'm staking my territory. I doubt I'm the only one who thinks you're a fine-looking woman with spunk and spirit. So I'm sending any rivals a signal th
at I won't tolerate anyone else courting you."

  He had lost his senses. "I don't want to be courted!" she insisted, when she stopped sputtering. "I thought I made that clear."

  "You did." He unhitched the dogs from the sled he'd used for demonstration and handed the trace lines to one of the Chilkats. "Changing your mind is one of my courtship objectives."

  "One of your objectives?" She was still indignant and sputtering. Furious that he had compromised her in front of all the men on the ice. He'd treated her as if she were common and vulgar. "If I wasn't wearing gloves and mittens, I'd slap your face!"

  He laughed. "Piss and vinegar. I like that in a woman."

  Angry and exasperated, she started toward the shore, praying she wouldn't slip and ruin what she hoped was a dramatic exit by sprawling on the ice.

  "Teach the others what I showed you today," he called after her. "And Zoe?" She refused to look back. "I've made up my mind. It's going to be you and me. You might as well accept it."

  "Never!" she shouted over her shoulder.

  She had made one disastrous mistake; she wasn't going to make another.

  * * *

  Chapter 14

  In one of her beloved books, Juliette had read that a person's past flashed before her eyes while she was drowning. It hadn't happened that way for her. Her life had passed in review later, while she was recovering from deep racking chills and trying to cope with the shock of nearly dying.

  What she examined was a safe sheltered life, predictable and monotonous. She had drifted through the years doing the same things day after day, week after week, with little variation. No challenges obstructed her path. Nothing alarming occurred, nothing exciting happened. She had sleepwalked through her boring routines, shying away from new experiences.

  In retrospect, marrying in haste and impulse was more understandable than it had first appeared. Now she remembered the quiet desperation she'd felt as the years passed and she began to feel she was wasting her life. She remembered thinking that she had passed silently through the world and only Aunt Kibble would care when the end came. One of her pastimes had been to wonder what sort of epitaph would mark her tombstone.

  Miss Juliette March never committed an improper act.

  Here lies what's-her-name, gone but not forgotten.

  She never went anywhere, never did anything.

  In the end, marrying Jean Jacques, and all that had followed, had changed so much in her life, yet it had changed little.

  She still fretted and worried about propriety and appearances. There was still no one who loved her or who would mourn her passing if she had drowned in Crater Lake. Yes, she had left Linda Vista. She was here in the Yukon, and she had climbed Chilkoot Pass, but not willingly, and she'd complained and resented every step. She had stepped out of monotony, but she'd lacked the sense to enjoy her new experiences.

  Worse, once the confrontation with Jean Jacques lay behind her, she could so easily lapse into the same deadening routine she'd endured before her uncharacteristic break with convention.

  She absolutely could not let that happen.

  "Juliette? Come out of there so we can strike the tent. Everything else is packed."

  She looked around the small wedge tent. The furnishings, such as they were, had been packed, but she could imagine the cots, the heavy stove made of Russian sheet iron, the piles of coats, hats, gloves. The camping equipment, their toiletries.

  She hated sleeping in a bag atop a narrow cot, hated the cramped quarters, hated being too hot or too frozen. She detested wearing the same clothing day after day, loathed the awful beans and bacon and biscuits they lived on. Not being able to wash her hair and having to rely on spit baths was a hideous imposition. And most of the time Clara and Zoe rubbed her nerves raw.

  However, if it hadn't been for the foregoing circumstances, traveling in the Yukon wouldn't have been too horrible. At least she could now say that she had been somewhere and had done something. She'd made a start at changing her life. But there was more to be done if she truly wanted to change.

  "Juliette? Damn it, what are you doing in there?"

  "I'm coming!"

  She stepped into a pearlescent frozen world. A light shower of new snow had powdered last week's drifts.

  The sky was the color of old silver. If one had to run across the ice behind a dog sled, this was as good a day as any to do it. Thinking about the ice made her heart stop until she ground her teeth and shook away the thought. Others had already left Crater Lake, traveling across the ice with no mishap. But most had decided to camp on the shore until spring. For a moment she wholeheartedly wished she could stay, too.

  When she lifted her head and looked at Clara and Zoe she couldn't believe her eyes. "Good heavens! What have you done to yourselves?" They wore hideous gray masks.

  "It's ash and bacon grease," Clara said. Before Juliette could protest, she'd rubbed the muck on Juliette's face. "We're going to be exposed to wind and raw temperatures out there on the ice. Tom gave us eyeglasses, too. To protect against glare."

  Juliette stared at the blue-tinted glasses Zoe wore over the gunk on her face. Her face was framed by the fur trimming her sealskin hood, and she looked like a creature out of a nightmare. Now Juliette did, too. Her shoulders sagged.

  To complete the indignity, here came Ben Dare, looking rugged and handsome in a fur-lined jacket and heavy boots that rose almost to his knees. She was going to have to speak to him. And she would have to thank him for saving her life. And she would do it looking like a demented monster in a bad dream.

  He considered her, a twinkle of amusement softening his grim expression. "Before we leave, could you and I talk?"

  Beneath the mask of ash and grease her cheeks burned hot. She didn't remember being naked in his arms, but she could imagine it. Had done nothing for a week but imagine it. Visualizing Ben pressing her naked breasts against his bare chest, and rubbing his hands on her shoulders and back and arms made her squirm and feel feverish and tingly all over her body. In a secret part of her mind, she resented being unable to recall the most shameful moment of her entire life. It seemed that fate ought to let her remember the two of them being naked together.

  "Juliette," he said in a low voice. Behind him Clara and Zoe had begun to strike the tent while the Chilkats loaded their piles of goods onto sleds. "When I thought I'd lost you, too…" His gloved hands curled into fists at his sides. "We need to work this out. Helen was an important part of my life for eight years. I can't pretend the marriage didn't happen or that I didn't care for her."

  Juliette's head came up, and she stared. She had spent countless hours trying to guess what they would say to each other. Not once had it entered her mind that he would talk about his late wife. She had supposed they would make an excruciatingly awkward attempt to discuss the day of her near drowning, and be swamped by embarrassment.

  "Why are you talking about Mrs. Dare?" The words emerged in a blurted rush.

  "I know you don't want to hear about her, but—"

  "Ben, I enjoyed hearing about your late wife. She sounds like a remarkable woman. I just don't understand why you're talking about her now."

  He tried to see her expression through the lenses of the blue-tinted glasses Clara had insisted she wear. "You were upset when I talked about Helen the day we climbed Chilkoot Pass."

  "Why on earth would you think that? I felt nothing but admiration for Mrs. Dare, and envious of the life you had together." Envious? She hadn't fully realized it then, but that's exactly what she felt. Ben had loved his wife and had stood by her, unlike some husbands she could name.

  Now he looked puzzled. "You've seemed distant since Chilkoot. I felt you preferred not to see me, and assumed it was because talking about Helen offended you in some way."

  This was nearly as embarrassing as discussing their nakedness would have been. She pressed her lips together and looked at the snowy ground. "I… thought we were spending too much time together. I felt that Clara and Zoe disap
proved."

  He tilted his head to stare at the sky. "Sometimes I'm an idiot. Of course you're concerned about appearances."

  "I've lost someone, too. I understand wanting to talk about a loved one. And don't you remember? It was me who asked you to speak about Mrs. Dare."

  His eyebrows came together in an expression of curiosity. "I didn't know you'd lost someone."

  Their talk was edging toward dangerous territory. "He's been gone for a year now," she said uncomfortably.

  "I'm sorry. Was it a brother? Your father?"

  She could say that she'd lost her father, and it wouldn't exactly be a lie. But she cared too much to mislead him completely. "No," she answered, looking for an escape. "Oh, I see that Clara and Zoe are ready to leave."

  Ben's frown deepened and his gaze narrowed, and she felt his jealousy. Amazement widened her eyes, and a tiny thrill made her shiver. Suddenly she felt like a femme fatale, an entirely new experience. And she profoundly wished that she could remember their naked moment on the shore. A femme fatale should remember such events.

  Clara and Zoe gave the tent to the Chilkats and cast a pointed glance toward Crater Lake and then back at Juliette.

  "Ben," she said, speaking rapidly. "Thank you for saving my life at the risk of your own." He could have bobbed up under the ice and drowned before breaking free. The frigid temperature could have paralyzed him and cost him his life. "I'm forever grateful. I… I was thinking about you right before I fell into the water." This new femme fatale persona was amazingly brazen and brave.

  Her tinted glasses made his eyes flash cobalt blue, and he looked so handsome that he stopped her breath in her throat.

  "I was thinking how foolish I'd been to worry about the impropriety of us seeing each other. We're friends, after all. At least I think—I hope we're friends," she added, feeling flustered. She was new at femme fatale assertiveness.

  His hands opened and closed, and she had a sudden light-headed notion that he wanted to take her into his arms. "If I have my way, you and I are going to be more than friends," he said in a low, intimate voice that almost made her swoon.