I do, I do, I do

by Maggie Osborne

  "Ben? Juliette?" Clara called to them as she retied the scarf that held down her hat and protected her mouth and nose. "The others will be waiting."

  Clara's intrusion reminded Juliette that she and Ben could never be more than just friends. "I'm content with your friendship," she murmured in a voice filled with regret. She wished they really could be more than friends. She loved his easy confident stance and the way his jacket emphasized the breadth of his shoulders. "I wonder how you'd look without that awful shaggy beard." Dismay rounded her lips. "I didn't mean… What I meant was…"

  He laughed and then grinned at her. "If you don't like the beard, it's as good as gone."

  "Oh, but I didn't say that. I just—"

  Clara took one of her arms, and Zoe took the other. "We're going." Clara looked over her shoulder. "Ben Dare, do we have to drag you along, too?"

  "I hope you ladies enjoyed a good night's sleep," Ben said, falling in behind them. "It's going to be a long, hard day."

  The first time Zoe explained sledding, Juliette had listened in horror. The second time through, she had committed Zoe's instructions to memory. She had promised herself that running along behind a dogsled wouldn't be as awful as it sounded.

  But it was. To begin with, she could barely see over the four hundred pounds of goods piled on the sled she guided. Until she realized the dogs would follow the sleds ahead, she worried that she couldn't see well enough to guide them effectively, assuming that she could guide them at all. In rapid order she learned that a more important concern was keeping up with the others.

  After the sled shot forward, pulling out of her grip, and she fell flat on the ice, Tom again showed her how to run. Not on her tiptoes, as she'd tried to do, but flat-footed in a rhythmic side-by-side, almost shuffling-forward motion. Once she practiced, she discovered she could maintain a pace that was faster than she would have believed herself capable of setting.

  During the first hour her thoughts vacillated between worrying how thick the ice was to feeling self-conscious about Ben observing her waddling run.

  In the second hour, she watched sleds with blankets rigged as sails zip past her, and envied the sailors because they could stand on the back runners and let the wind carry them.

  When they stopped at noon for hot coffee, she asked Tom why they couldn't have sails, too.

  "When the wind dies you'll see why the dogs are a better choice for the long run." Extending a paddle over the flames of a small hot fire, he toasted a slice of bread and cheese. "Without wind, the men will have to pull the sleds themselves."

  "How are you little ladies doing?" Bear Barrett asked. His voice boomed across the lake, and a few people looked their way. "Are your legs holding up?"

  Gentlemen didn't mention legs in the presence of ladies, but Juliette liked Bear just the same. Initially, his size and scarred face had frightened her, but now she thought of him as a cheerful and kind man. He made her think of a shaggy-haired Viking, golden and warlike in his zest for life, intensely loyal to those of his own tribe.

  When Tom shouted and halloed to another party, waving them toward the fire, Juliette's heart squeezed in her chest. The party was made up of men. They would have seen her naked on the shore or would certainly have heard about it.

  Bear studied her expression before he dropped a huge hand on her shoulder. "No one is going to say one damned word about you falling through the ice," he said gently, with surprising tact.

  Her lip trembled, and she spoke in a whisper. She would die of humiliation if anyone referred to her nakedness. "But what if they do make a comment?"

  "Then Ben Dare is going to whup the innards out of them. Ben put out the word. If anyone upsets you, they'll answer with blood and bruises, by God. And me and Tom will be standing right behind Ben, ready to step in if he wants a little assistance."

  "Ben did that?" Turning toward the sleds, she watched him tying a new set of burlap bags over the dog's feet to protect their paws from patches of jagged ice.

  The party of men drawing up to the fire were additional clients of Tom's. Juliette caught them sliding glances in her direction, but as Bear had promised, none of them uttered an impolite word.

  Learning that Ben was willing to fight any man who offended her cast him as more of a hero than she already believed he was. This turn of mind surprised her. Until this journey Juliette hadn't known the sort of men who engaged in violence and hadn't wanted to. She felt certain that Jean Jacques would never have joined the brawl on the shore.

  But the men around her didn't shy from physical confrontation or disdain it. They were quick to punish insult or offense—and to protect their women. Juliette liked the way their hardness made her feel safe and cherished and respected in a way that good manners alone could not accomplish.

  "I should be ashamed of myself," she muttered. Some of her new attitudes were not for the better.

  "For what?" Zoe asked, looking unhappily down at her boots. "I think I'm getting a blister."

  "For condoning violence."

  Zoe waved a tin of coffee in one hand and a slice of toast and cheese in the other. "You? Condone violence? As I live and breathe. Is violence covered in the etiquette books?"

  "Never mind. Where did you get the toasted cheese?"

  "I fixed it for her," Tom called from the campfire.

  "I didn't ask you to," Zoe snapped.

  Tom smiled at Juliette. "Miss Wilder and I are courting. I'm showing her how thoughtful I am and how helpful I'd be around a house."

  Juliette and Clara stepped backward and stared at Zoe.

  Even the ash and grease could not hide Zoe's bright red flush of anger. "We are not courting! Do you hear me, Tom Price? We are not, as in never ever not possibly, courting!"

  Juliette glanced toward Ben over by the dogs, and Clara shot a look at Bear, who was talking and laughing with the men in the second party. Both men had positioned themselves facing the women. As they always did, Juliette abruptly realized.

  Tom smiled. "Would you like more toast and cheese, darlin'?"

  Zoe sputtered, then shook her head fiercely and stomped away, heading toward Ben and the dogs.

  "Fortunately I admire obstinate women, and God knows that woman is obstinate. But if she were easy to woo, she wouldn't be worth having." He winked at Juliette, then placed another slice of bread and cheese on his paddle and held it over the flames.

  Clara blinked. "They're courting. When did this happen? Did Zoe suddenly get unmarried? I'd like to know how she did that."

  Throughout the afternoon, Juliette thought about Zoe and Tom courting and, despite Zoe's protests, the long smoky glances between them. And clearly Clara and Bear were circling each other. The air fairly sizzled between those two. And then she thought about Ben Dare.

  "I am not courting," Zoe continued to insist after they had eaten supper and retired to their tent to fall into their cots.

  "I don't care what you do as long as you don't forget why we're here," Clara said, covering a yawn. Her long red woolen underwear clashed with her carroty hair, which had frizzed around her head like a halo. "As long as you remember to shoot our no-good weasel of a husband, you can court all you want to. Makes no never mind to me."

  "What's the matter with you?" Zoe looked up from stabbing a needle at the blisters on her heel. "Juliette, give Clara the lecture about how we're married, about propriety, about not being free to get on with our lives. I'm too exhausted to do it."

  Juliette turned her washrag between her fingers, frowning at the smears of ash and grease. The gunk had helped protect against the raw wind and cold, but her face still felt chapped and burned.

  "Before I fell in the lake, I would have given the 'lecture' as you refer to it, but I'm not sure I believe it anymore."

  Zoe and Clara stopped what they were doing and stared. Both looked faintly ridiculous in their shapeless long Johns with hair streaming down their backs and the light of the lantern turning their faces as red and painful-looking as Juliette's.
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br />   "Now I'm thinking that people should grab hold of whatever happiness comes their way and do it while they can." She tossed the washrag toward their laundry bucket. "Tom's a good, decent man. He's honest, respected, a hard worker, and he's successful. The two of you have the same background, the same values, and the same way of looking at things. Now think about our husband. Not only has he vanished, he's a liar, a seducer, and a thief. But he wasn't from Newcastle," she added, looking hard at Zoe. "That's his only virtue."

  "Juliette March! I don't believe you're saying these things!"

  Clara sprinkled talc on her head and pulled a brush through her hair. The talc freshened her scalp and pulled oil from the tresses, but it also dried out her hair. Crackling noises sounded under the brush, and tendrils floated upward, snapping with static. "Any fool with eyes in her head can see that Tom loves you. He probably always has. If you weren't so stubborn, if you'd let it happen, you'd love him back."

  Zoe jabbed the needle into her sewing kit. "You two have gone snow-mad. Have you forgotten that I intend to shoot Jean Jacques?" She patted the long lump of the rifle beneath her sleeping bag. "Then the Canadian Mounties will hang me or stand me up in front of a firing squad or whatever they do to execute murderers. I don't have a future."

  "All the more reason to take whatever happiness you can while you still have time. I agree with Juliette."

  "I couldn't possibly. Tom is from Newcastle."

  Juliette folded her hands across her red woolen lap. "Remember the story you told us about the Owner's Day Parade?" she asked softly. "And the people in the carriages who looked down their noses at you and your family?"

  "I'm not likely to forget, am I?"

  "Tell me, Zoe. How are you different from the people in the carriages?" Juliette watched Zoe's mouth drop and her eyes flare. "It sounds as if you, too, think the people in Newcastle are no better than dirt. It sounds like you also see your friends and neighbors as objects of scorn and denigration."

  "My God!" Zoe stared and swallowed hard.

  "If you and Tom are representative of the people in Newcastle, it seems to me that you'd be proud. Maybe the residents are poor, but they sound like good-hearted, hardworking people. Why are you ashamed of that? Why do you believe the carriage people's opinion instead of listening to your own heart?" She reached to Zoe's cot and pressed her shaking hand. "You don't have to ride in a carriage to be a snob," she said gently. "Please. Think about that when you see Tom tomorrow."

  "I… I just… My God," Zoe whispered.

  "Me, I am going to sleep," Clara said, yawning widely.

  After Clara blew out the lantern, Juliette lay in the darkness, watching Zoe, who sat with her knees pulled up under her chin staring at the dying glow of the stove.

  Had she been wrong to push Zoe toward Tom? She couldn't think so.

  Her last thought before she'd lost consciousness under the ice had been: I'll never be with Ben. She had thought hard about that and had concluded that propriety killed spontaneity and robbed a person of joy and opportunity. Propriety was for the old, those who had lived their lives. Not for wronged wives.

  "Listen to Juliette," Clara whispered from her cot.

  Good heavens. Juliette almost sat up to stare at them.

  They listened to her advice. Would wonders never cease?

  * * *

  Chapter 15

  To cross the overland stretch between Crater Lake and Long Lake, Tom's Chilkat Indians removed the blanket sails and pulled their sleds by looping a rope over their chests or rigging a harness that fit across their foreheads. On a dare, Zoe tried to pull the load and was surprised to discover that the iced sled runners made it possible for her to move the sled forward.

  "I can pull it," Zoe said, handing the ropes back to Tom, "but only for a few feet, and I'm glad I don't have to." The farther they traveled the less she resented Juliette's charity and the more grateful she felt, although she couldn't bring herself to say so out loud.

  The snow was deep on the steep slopes enclosing Long Lake, covering rugged terrain. Yesterday Clara had walked into the woods to gather firewood, and she had dropped into the snow up to her shoulders. Bear pulled her out, but the incident had caused a commotion, and reminded everyone not to wander off the trail. Which Zoe and Tom had done without really being aware of how far from camp they'd meandered.

  "What time is it?"

  The November days were short, and they had to wait for daylight before starting the day's trek, had to halt and set up camp at about four o'clock. It was a relief not to endure long, exhausting days. On the other hand, their progress was frustratingly slow. At this rate they wouldn't reach Dawson City until early spring.

  "It's about an hour until supper. Why? Are you bored?"

  She smiled. Tom Price was the least boring person she knew. He told wonderful stories about grizzly bears and wildlife, about eccentric prospectors and the rowdy life in the boomtowns. He knew the names of the peaks and lakes and how to do just about everything. He had an opinion on every topic and encouraged her opinions, too.

  "It's not that. I'm starting to become a little concerned. It's dark and the snow is filling in our tracks. Shouldn't we be heading back to camp?"

  "I was about to mention that." Leaning against the sled's load, lantern light softening his face, he crossed his arms over his chest and grinned. "You're pretty, you're a great cook, and I'm sorry."

  "' What?" Just looking at this man made her mind wander into dangerous areas. If she had a nickel for every time she had relived his kiss, she would be a rich woman.

  "My pa says the way to get along with women is to tell them every day that they're pretty, they're good cooks, and you're sorry for whatever you did even if you don't know what it was."

  Zoe laughed and leaned against the fragrant trunk of a snowy pine. During the past few days she'd been seeing Tom in a new light and had concluded that he was everything Juliette had said. By dropping her armor, she recognized all the good things she admired in her pa and brothers. He was strong, dogmatic, honest, stubborn, and a leader with pride to spare. Tom was everything she had ever wanted in a man—except he was from Newcastle.

  But that didn't matter anymore. It never should have mattered.

  Juliette's stunning observation that Zoe was like the carriage people in the Owner's Day Parade had shocked her. And, as with all great revelations, she instantly recognized the bedrock truth. She had chosen to see through the eyes of the carriage people, and she'd been ashamed of her family, friends, and of herself. That shame had created a desperate need to shake off her background and the people in it like a bad dream. Worse (and to her everlasting regret), she'd worried that Jean Jacques's servants would laugh and dismiss her family as shanty trash.

  That she had been ashamed of her family made her stomach cramp and ache. How could she have been so shallow and small? Even as a barefoot child with wild hair and mended clothing, she would never have denigrated someone because his circumstances were less than hers. She wouldn't have apologized for good people living a hard life. But that's what she had done as an adult.

  Oh, she had shaken off Newcastle, all right. She had held herself high and told herself that she was better than the people she loved. She'd left town as soon as she could. She had taken classes to educate herself and speak well. And she had congratulated herself that she had finally risen above a background that shamed and embarrassed her.

  "—do know the reason, and I'm truly sorry."

  Giving her head a shake, she studied the lantern light sharpening the angles of Tom's strong face, her gaze settling on his mouth. "I'm sorry. I was woolgathering."

  "I said we're lost."

  "What?" Abruptly she straightened away from the tree trunk.

  "Actually we're not completely lost; I have a fair idea where we are. But it would be foolish and dangerous to search for the trail with snow and darkness obscuring the landmarks."

  The snow had thickened while Zoe let her thoughts drift, and now thei
r tracks were obliterated. Snow had collected along Tom's hat brim and atop the goods stacked on the sled.

  Her chest constricted and suddenly she felt the cold stinging her cheeks and chilling her feet. But she kept her voice level, not wanting to betray anxiety when Tom didn't. "What will we do?"

  The sourdoughs loved to tell grisly tales of men lost in snowstorms, their bodies not found until the spring melt. Equally terrifying were the stories of frostbite and amputated limbs. She knew it could happen, because three days ago she'd seen a man whose nose had been lost to frostbite. His disfigurement had horrified her.

  Tom stepped forward and clasped her shoulders, his expression reassuring. "I won't tell you the situation isn't serious. But I will tell you we should survive with no ill effects. It's just one night."

  One night in the open. Fear dried her throat. She gripped the lapels of his coat and willed her heart to stop pounding so she could speak. "We'll freeze. They'll never find us." Lord, she sounded like Juliette.

  Tom patted her back, his touch a caress. "We'll be fine, darlin'. Don't you worry."

  His confidence assured and irritated her. Then she pulled her thoughts together and reminded herself that this was not Tom's first trek through the wilderness. He would know what to do. When she raised her head, her mouth almost met his, and she drew a quick tingling breath, then stepped away and dusted her gloves together.

  "All right," she said, aware that he was looking at her as if he, too, remembered a kiss that had seared her. She hoped her voice sounded steadier to him than it did to her own ears. "What should we do? And how can I help?" It would be a cold and miserable night, the worst night of her life, but she would be with Tom, and she trusted him to get them through it.

  "Let's see what we have to work with," he said, untying the ropes securing the boxes and crates on the sled. "It's one of my sleds. If we're lucky… excellent!" He hefted an ax in his hand, then found a hatchet and gave it to Zoe. "I'll build a lean-to while you cut some pine boughs. Don't wander too far."