ALASKAN BRIDES 01: Yukon Wedding

by Allie Pleiter

  Lana hugged her chest. “But you’d never trust him now. He knows that.”

  “No, he doesn’t. And I won’t tell him.”

  She turned to look at him. “You didn’t go beat him up the minute you heard?”

  Mack walked over to the spade that lay against the house and began banging it softly against his boots to knock off the thick layer of mud. “Some men are safer fooled. I put Nicky on the ferry to Skaguay with my own two fists, and told Caleb to make sure he never finds passage again. I told Nicky that Jameson would have him shot if he admitted to squealing to me, which might even be true. No, it’s better if Jameson never knows how much I know. Then he’ll keep thinking his foolish tricks will work, and never try anything more sinister.” After a moment he added. “I hope.”

  He’d just finished banging the mud off the other boot when Lana straightened up, turned to him and asked, “Well, where is your gold?”

  “What?” He’d nearly bellowed it out in his shock that she’d even ask—but she glared at him and pointed to Georgie’s window. “Do you really think I’d tell you?” he said in a lower voice. “After what happened today?” She had gumption, that woman. He had to give her that much.

  “I am your wife.”

  She had an infuriating way of saying things that made no sense, but saying them in a way that made him feel foolish for not understanding. As if their married state made it obvious why she should have such dangerous information. Only one person on earth knew where Mack’s gold was, and that was Mack himself. And it was going to stay that way, especially now. “My gold is safe, and that’s all you need to know.”

  Her scowl would be amusing on such delicate features if it didn’t look so heartfelt. “We’re supposed to be partners in life. This isn’t going to work if you don’t trust me. And it’s rather obvious that you don’t trust me.”

  “What I don’t trust,” he said as he thrust the shovel into the ground beside him, “is the long line of rascals who’d do anything to make you betray that trust. It’s better if you don’t know. I’d think today would have made that clear.” When that failed to unfurrow her brow, he added, “I have a plan to handle this.”

  She huffed at that. “And I will not be told what that plan is?”

  “It’s best that way, yes.”

  “For whom?”

  Mack looked up to heaven while leaning back against the wall again, questioning God for having ever called him to complicate his life with this woman. “Lana, have you ever heard the old saying, ‘he who has the gold makes the rules’?”

  Her hands planted themselves on her hips with another huff. “I prefer the other golden rule, thank you. The one about treating others the way you’d like to be treated. The one from the Bible. If you’ll excuse me, I believe I hear Georgie waking up.”

  He hadn’t heard a peep from the room around the corner, but he sure wasn’t going to let that get in the way of her quick strides away from him. He’d known she was a handful when he proposed marriage—even the sixth time—but he’d underestimated just how ornery the woman could be. Mack pulled the shovel from its place in the dirt, only to thrust it back in again, frustrated. He wasn’t about to let her turn this into some kind of test, some linchpin on which to hang the success of their marriage. Men didn’t play by the rules here. Treasure Creek was becoming a place where decency and fair play were expected, but that hardly meant everyone lived up to expectations. They wouldn’t just stop looking for his gold any more than Georgie would stop looking for cookies…until Ed gave him blocks.

  Distraction.

  Could it really be that simple? Could he throw the worst of the fortune hunters off his trail by providing another, easier target? Mack squatted down, running his hands over the upturned soil at his feet while he pondered the idea. By the time someone found a decoy treasure he could create and place in easy reach, attention over Lana’s bridal status would have died down. That might buy him time to squelch any false rumors about Jed’s bequest to Lana. Could he find a way to disclose that Jed had died nearly penniless and still keep Lana’s reputation intact? It was possible, given time. More time would also let him think about how to handle the rest of his gold in a way that dealt with the complications of his new family. And the demands of his new wife. It was all a matter of crafting the right plan.

  By the time she called him in for supper, Mack had not only fenced in his wife’s new garden, he’d worked out all the details of his new plan.

  Lana looked up from her list after dinner to steal a glimpse of Mack as he sat on the hearth rug. He was helping Georgie play with the blocks Ed had gotten for him. She didn’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed that he’d taken them away from Georgie to sand them after dinner. Georgie had understandably screamed at this, but Mack firmly announced that Ed missed too many of the sharper edges. Disaster loomed until Georgie found the sanding sound hysterical, giggling as if the scratch-scratch ticked his ears. Now she was watching Mack make a big show of sanding each one, handing it to Georgie when it passed final inspection. “All smooth,” he said, running Georgie’s finger down the edge of the final block, a big triangle.

  “Oov,” Georgie repeated, grabbing Mack’s finger to do the same, then holding the block up to her with a triumphant grin. “Oov, Mama!”

  “That’s right. Go show Mama your new blocks,” Mack’s voice pitched to a groan as he hauled his large frame off the floor. “What’s that?” Mack pointed to the list Lana had been creating.

  “It’s a list of students. I figure we have eleven in town now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that doubles by the time the fall comes. Folks are clamoring for a decent school up here. It will make Treasure Creek a very desirable place to live. If you get school up and running even a few days a week over the summer, more families will settle in before winter.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it like that. A schoolhouse under construction is good, but actual lessons could be even better I suppose.” Mack sat down and ran his finger over the list.

  “The first number is their age,” Lana explained. “The second is my guess at which reader they’ll use.”

  He sat back in the chair. “You’ll need more of the first-and second-year books.”

  She smiled, feeling the victory sparkle down her spine. “I will?”

  “You will.”

  “You’re agreeing to let me teach?”

  “I prefer to say I’ve honored my promise to keep an open mind.”

  Lana nearly gasped. Jed had broken so many promises to her that she’d forgotten how good it would feel to have Mack keep one of his. Lana flipped to another page in what she’d begun to call her “Lesson Planner.”

  “One hour, two days a week,” she said as she showed him the little calendar she’d drawn. “That’s all we need to start.” She actually welcomed the idea of partnering with him, surprising as it was. “You can announce it at church on Sunday and—thank you, Georgie—our first class can be Tuesday.” Georgie began handing blocks to her and to Mack in turns, sharing his new toys between them. Like they were a real family.

  Mack eyed her. “You’ve got it all—thank you, Georgie—worked out, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, and I’m sharing my plan with you. See how this works?”

  He made that grunting sound she had come to understand as I’m not going to answer that. She was just about to offer her commentary when Georgie beat her to it: he looked at Mack and made a perfectly ridiculous grunt about two octaves higher.

  Mack had the good sense to look outnumbered, muttered something about his evening walk and grabbed his hat.

  Chapter Eight

  Lana should not know anything about the gold or its location. Mack told himself that over and over as he went on his nightly walk around Treasure Creek. They didn’t have that kind of a marriage to start with—it wasn’t as if he was depriving her of some kind of promised intimacy. This marriage had been about protection from the start. It shouldn’t stop being about protection just because
she was relentless.

  She was too bold. What might have happened if anyone smarter than Nicky Peacock had been pressed into service to threaten her? The trouble with Lana was that she didn’t know how much she didn’t know. She probably thought she’d seen the worst of Jed’s behavior back before he died. The truth of the matter was that Mack had gone to great lengths to hide the worst of Jed’s behavior. Jameson was far from the darkest of Jed’s “associates.” Jed not only died penniless, as Lana thought, but he died deep in debt—and to some of the Yukon’s most unsavory lenders. Lana had no idea how many of Jed’s debts Mack had paid off, and it was best if it stayed that way. She should never know that if Mack hadn’t stepped in, there was a good chance she’d be dead.

  The purple-blue calm of Alaska’s bright evenings—it was near ten and still just barely sunset—worked the knots out of Mack’s spirit as he walked. He heard laughter from the Tucker sisters’ cabin, and said a prayer of thanks for the sturdy women’s work on the schoolhouse. He prayed protection over the new baby down the street. A baby was a rare joy up here, and one to be celebrated. He walked past the lamp in Ed Parker’s front window and thanked God for that new friendship. It helped to fill the yawning gap Jed left when he died. As much trouble as Jed had been, Mack was fond of the man’s adventurous spirit and endless optimism. He’d promenaded like a dandy with Lana, up and down the first boardwalk they’d built in Treasure Creek, casting grand visions of the many businesses that would spring up along the road. Back then it was a muddy swath of a path, but listening to Jed, one could almost see the town growing out of the mist. Jed had insisted on being the first customer at every new business—even when Mack had to lend him the gold to do it. As much as it used to drive him crazy, Mack missed Jed’s impulsive theatrical nature. Even when he bore the disastrous consequences. When Georgie made faces at him as the boy did just now, he would see Jed in Georgie’s eyes. They’ll be safe now, Jed, I promise you that.

  He’d made promises to Lana, too, hadn’t he? Mack heard the thought in Lana’s voice inside his head, a sensation so startling he actually shuddered. Honor does not mean share everything, he argued. A man could “cherish and honor” his wife in ways that weren’t likely to get her killed. Women liked gifts and fine words and such things, they didn’t need secrets to feel… He stopped himself from finishing that sentence with the word “loved.” It didn’t apply here. If God was kind, they’d come to a mutual respect, a fortunate affection of sorts, but this wasn’t a romance. Still, Lana had always been appeased—dare he even say “distracted”—by pretty things.

  It reminded him to check in at the post office for something he was expecting from Skaguay. A blazing fire told him Duncan MacDougal, the Scottish blacksmith who’d somehow also taken up a position as Treasure Creek’s postmaster, was still up and working. It had seemed pure foolishness to let a man who worked with fire also keep the mail—the threat of Treasure Creek’s full correspondence going up in smoke gave Mack nightmares for two weeks—but Duncan was an avid stamp collector, and as such pressed Mack endlessly for the unlikely dual position.

  That was the trouble with a place like Treasure Creek. Only the most headstrong, relentless types ever made it this far and fewer still were stubborn enough to stay. The town could be the bravest on earth, but it could also be the most bullheaded place under Heaven.

  “Duncan?” Mack poked his head into the steaming heat of the blacksmith shop.

  “Mack! I was going to come see ye in the mornin’.” The man pulled a bandana from his overalls and wiped his forehead. “Your package arrived from Skaguay. Looks fancy. Get something nice for the new missus on your honeymoon, hmm?”

  Mack said nothing about the honeymoon comment, but only nodded.

  Duncan thrust a twisted arc of orange metal into a hissing bucket of water and shucked the heavy glove off his hand. “Got it on the other side for ye.” They walked together to the other side of Duncan’s cabin, for at Mack’s insistence, Duncan’s wide cabin separated the post office and the blacksmith shop. “Heard you’re sending young Mindown on his way. Can’t say I’m surprised. I can almost tell which ones’ll make it just by lookin’ at them now.”

  “I can, too—” Mack shrugged “—although occasionally one will surprise me. Not Mindown.”

  “No, sir, not Mindown. He’s not for this kind of life, that’s for sure. Better off outside.” “Outside” was a local term for anything nonlocal. Essentially, “outside” was anywhere south and civilized, and Duncan was right, “outsiders” always had a look about them he could spot a mile off.

  Duncan handed him the package, a wide grin splitting his red mustache and beard as he said something in Scottish. “Long and happy life to ye, Mack. Congratulations to you and the new Mrs. Tanner.”

  Step one had been accomplished. Mack walked for another half hour in widening circles around the town, the package heavy in his left coat pocket, before he veered off the streets and ducked into the woods beside the Chilkoot trail to accomplish step two. Twenty minutes later, he walked back down the street toward home with his right coat pocket equally bulging with six gold nuggets from his own private fortune. He’d invent some sort of story of a long-hidden settler’s treasure, and greedy imaginations would take it from there.

  Distraction was a good strategy indeed.

  Lana was still poring over books when he returned to the cabin. Georgie made so much commotion while awake that the place always seemed doubly peaceful once he went to sleep. Finally dark and near midnight, the small hearth fire filled the room with a golden glow. She’d made tea; he could smell its tang even before he saw the china cup on the table beside her. She’d insisted on at least one real teacup to hold her over until the china arrived from Seattle. Mack’s big hands would never manage the delicate cups, and, as he preferred coffee anyway, some tin mugs would remain, even when the tin plates gave way to patterned china. He secretly hoped their arrival would be delayed, as too much of his store stock had already been.

  “I stopped by to see Duncan on my walk.” He pulled the package from his coat pocket when he hung up his hat. “I had something made for you while we were in Skaguay, and it’s arrived.”

  She closed the book and set it on her lap as she glanced up. She looked like such a lady, perched on that chair by the fire, tea and book at her side. She could have been anywhere in any fancy city, her hair piled high and her lacy collar frothy around her neck like that, but she was here in his house. Just now, as it did every once in a while since they’d married, the unlikeliness of it all struck him. He was a married man. Married to this beautiful woman. Despite the tea and the strange scents and the constant cluttered commotion of Georgie, there was something admittedly nice about coming home to…well, to her. And the food? Well, he just hadn’t counted on how good that would be.

  He handed the package to her. “I suppose I should have had them put it in some kind of pretty box or something, but I didn’t think of it ’til just now.”

  She smiled, and the radiance did something to him he hadn’t expected. Lana loved presents more than any adult he’d ever met. “It’s just fine the way it is.”

  Normally, when Mack set a plan in motion, he rarely had a second thought. His endeavors were so carefully thought out that regrets or doubts never entered the picture. And when he’d had this made, it seemed the perfect gesture. Suddenly, as she worked the all-too-plain brown wrapper off the package, Mack felt an unfamiliar pang of anxiety. Had he done the wrong thing?

  He watched her every move as she unfolded the soft cloth around the brooch. It was a delicate sun-burst pattern, two thin four-pointed stars overlaid on a lacy background. Filigree, the jeweler had called it, with a small colored stone set in the tip of each point. He’d seen it in the window of a shop, and while it was the same size and shape as the brooch she’d always worn, it was different in style. It seemed like a good way to replace her broken pin, the one Jed had given her on their third anniversary back when he was flush with gold. The
one Georgie had broken the day she’d said yes to being Mrs. Mack Tanner. This bauble gave her something like the old, but still new. Not much of a man for symbolism, the gesture seemed to say what he wanted to say to her about their life together. Replacing the old broken one as best he could, but knowing it could never be repaired completely.

  It had seemed such a wise token then. It seemed pure folly now. He drew in a breath to explain his thinking, then realized to say the thoughts out loud would make them sound even more foolish.

  Lana was very, very quiet. He was thankful she didn’t look up, for he was afraid to see her eyes. She ran her fingers around the oval shape of it, and he knew she recognized the similar shape of her old brooch. What ever made him think that was a good idea? He’d always been awful at this sort of thing. It seemed impossible to know if she would smile or run from the room in tears.

  She did both. When she finally looked up—which seemed like a dozen years—her eyes were brimmed with tears, but she smiled. A broken, unsteady smile, but a smile all the same. “A new one,” she said softly. Usually a sharp judge of character, Mack was completely unable to gauge her response.

  “Do you like it?” he asked, then wanted to whack his forehead for the clumsy, boyish question. He realized he dreaded her answer either way.

  “It looks almost like a golden compass, doesn’t it?” Her remark was overbright and forced.

  “I thought, since your old one is broken…” Again, why were such foolish thoughts jumping out of his mouth?

  “Yes,” she said quickly, as if to stop him from finishing the sentence. She swallowed hard, and he felt it lodge in his own chest. Trying to replace Jed’s pin had been an arrogant mistake. “Thank you,” she said after another telling gulp of air. She gathered up the package and stood up. “Thank you,” she said again, and only just barely managed to add “Good night,” before she went into the room she shared with Georgie and shut the door. She left her teacup half full on the table.