Forget-Me-Not Bride (11 page)

‘But how can you possibly
know
?' she demanded, putting her thoughts into words. ‘You've never
been
to Dawson. You …'

‘My brother is practically
mayor
of Dawson,' Miss Nettlesham said loftily. ‘The gentleman I am to marry is a close friend of his. Dawson may have been a rough pioneer town three years ago but believe me, Miss Stullen, there is an
aristocracy
there now.'

Lilli didn't bother to ask if Miss Nettlesham's brother was a leading light of Dawson's so-called ‘aristocracy'. She knew what the answer would be. She knew also that she was wasting her time in hoping to have a moonlit encounter with Jack Coolidge. From beneath their feet, in the saloon, came raucous laughter as around crowded tables men played poker and rummy. No doubt Lucky Jack was also playing cards or shooting dice. It was time for her to abandon hope and go to bed. In the morning she would ask Susan Bumby what she knew about Jack Coolidge and his business enterprises. Susan would be a far more reliable source of information than Miss Nettlesham. Susan
lived
in Dawson. She was a sourdough.

‘Goodnight,' she said crisply, knowing that sourdoughs were the true aristocrats of Dawson and doubting if Miss know-all Nettlesham was even familiar with the term.

When she slipped quietly into the cabin it was to find everyone,

even Lettie, fast asleep. Gently she removed Leo's thumb from his

mouth and tucked Lottie's blanket higher around her shoulders.

Then she undressed, pulled a cambric nightdress over her head and climbed into the bunk above Lettie's.

Perhaps because of her nap earlier in the day, sleep refused to come. She wondered what was happening in the Mosely household. Her uncle would now be very well aware she had taken Leo and Lottie from the house. What would he have done? Employed someone to search for them? Reported them to the police as being missing? Engaged a lawyer in order to issue some kind of legal court order demanding their return? Knowing her uncle, he had probably taken all three courses of action. He would certainly have made it legally impossible for her to return to San Francisco and keep Leo and Lottie in her care.

She turned on her side, queasily trying to ignore the
Senator's
increasing pitch and roll. And what about Miss Nettlesham's allegation that Kitty Dufresne was Lucky Jack's paramour? What if it were correct? What if Kitty Dufresne weren't simply a business associate or employee? She fisted her pillow, trying to break up its uncomfortable bulk. If all her intuitive feelings about Fate and Destiny were wrong, where would that leave her? The answer came with sickening certainty. It would leave her having to fulfil her obligation to the Peabody Marriage Bureau; marrying a man she did not know and would probably never want to know.

She slept restlessly and by the time Leo woke her, demanding to be taken up on deck, she still hadn't arrived at a solution to her dilemma. She could hardly follow Marietta's example and renege on her obligation to the marriage bureau to become a dance-hall girl. And she couldn't emulate Susan Bumby and apply for a position as a kindergarten-teacher. Teaching staff for Dawson's small school were appointed by the superintendent of education for the Yukon. And the superintendent would hardly appoint someone as unqualified as herself.

‘Come
on
,' Leo demanded impatiently, tugging at her hand. ‘It's stuffy down here. I want to talk to Lucky Jack again. I want him to teach me some card-tricks. Please say you've changed your mind, Lilli, and that he can teach me some card-tricks!'

At the thought of running into Jack Coolidge taking an early morning stroll Lilli began to fish through her carpet-bag for a clean shirtwaist. The one she retrieved was caramel-coloured with a high mandarin neck and long, full sleeves, cinched tightly at the wrist.

‘Come
on
,' Leo demanded again in an agony of impatience as she tucked the blouse into her cream serge skirt. She ignored him, lacing up her meticulously polished brown boots, thinking with longing of Marietta's beige boots. Beige was just the shade to tone with caramel and cream.

‘We might be able to go ashore today,' Leo was saying, both hands tight around the cabin's door-knob. ‘Miss Bumby says the
Senator
will be calling in at Seattle for more passengers and fuel. If we can go ashore, can I go ashore with Miss Bumby? She always has candy in her pockets and she tells wonderful stories of
cheechakos
and mushers and sourdoughs.'

Lilli had no idea what a
cheechako
or a musher was. She brushed her thick, blue-black hair, anchoring it in a neat twist on top of her head with tortoiseshell pins. Ignoring his request that she allow Jack Coolidge to teach him card-tricks, she said instead, ‘Tell me what a
cheechako
is? Is it an Alaskan bird? An Alaskan Indian?'

Leo giggled. ‘Silly,' he said, as they left the cabin together and began to walk to the nearest companion-way. ‘A
cheechako
is a tenderfoot. Someone who's never been to Alaska before. And a musher is an old hand who hasn't yet struck it rich.'

On deck the morning air was fresh and balmy, with already an undertone of summer heat.

‘That will be British Columbia,' Leo said knowledgeably, pointing to the green, ragged coastline. ‘I know, ' cos Miss Bumby told me we'd be sailing off the coast of British Columbia today. And soon we'll be in the waters of the Inside Passage and in the
real
North! Miss Bumby says we'll see Indian settlements and forts and …'

Lilli stopped listening. She was glad Leo had formed an attachment to someone who was so educationally helpful to him, but she had more important things on her mind than scenery and sights. She needed to find out if she had been school-girlishly foolish in believing that Lucky Jack was her Destiny. And the only way she could do that was by telling him she was a Peabody bride. His reaction would either be all that her intuition assured her it would be, or it would be indifference. And if it were indifference … If it were indifference then she would have a lot of very hard thinking to do.

‘You can jaw on the deck all day, honey,' Kitty Dufresne said, laying back against a mass of pillows far different in quality from the pillows Lilli and her friends endured. ‘I'm not moving from here until we reach Skagway. Ships and me have never seen eye to eye. They're too damned unpredictable.'

Jack grinned. He was sitting on the edge of Kitty's bed wearing only his pants. As he reached for silk socks and London-made bespoke boots, the well-toned muscles in his shoulders rippled.

Kitty gave a deep, contented sigh. She was glad to be going back to Dawson, for Dawson had become home, but their trip to London, Paris and Rome had been an eye-opener. The castles and chateaux and palazzi they had seen had been the real thing, some of them built three or even four hundred years ago; not imitations erected in a few crazy, goldrich weeks.

As Jack began to pull on a snowy white shirt, the cuffs and front trimmed in hand-made lace, she reflected that, apart from a few minor incidents, Jack had behaved very well in Europe. They had had a minor fracas over the unladylike persistence of a true-blue lady in England. Why some women couldn't just take ‘no'for an answer, Kitty had never been able to understand. As it was, twenty year old Lady Sarah Dunwoody had followed them from London to Paris, so certain of being lovingly welcomed by Jack it had really been quite pathetic. Remembering the incident, Kitty shook her head in disbelief. Maternally she had comforted the distraught girl, given her the kind of straight advice her mother should have given her, and sent her on her way a sadder but wiser young woman; as she had done for so many other girls so often before and would no doubt do many times again.

‘I was accosted by a girl wanting dance-hall work yesterday,' she said, dismissing Lady Sarah Dunwoody from her thoughts and adjusting the fall of her ivory-silk negligée so that it set her creamy-fleshed, magnificent bosom off to even greater advantage. ‘Her name is Marietta Rivere and she's very sparky. Quite classy too. The only snag is she's travelling as a Peabody girl and so if I take her on you'll have to pay off Josh Nelson.' She pulled a face as she said Nelson's name, giving a theatrical shudder. The negligée, slipping even further, revealed a perky rose-red nipple.

Jack slipped his gold watch into his vest pocket as he looked across at her and grinned. For a woman of thirty-five Kitty was in magnificent shape. If she was thinking of engaging the Rivere girl for the
Gold Nugget
, the Rivere girl would have to be in good shape too. ‘I'll be happy to save a female from Nelson's greedy claws,' he said, shrugging an exquisitely tailored jacket on, his shirt still open at his throat. ‘What does she look like? If I see her and recognise her I'll be able to give you my opinion.'

‘Petite. A rather odd face, but attractively odd. Jungle-green eyes. Wide mouth. Foxy hair piled in an
outré
pompadour. Yesterday her blouse was mauve and her skirt turquoise. If she's half the girl I think she is she'll be dressed in something different today, equally cheap but equally sizzling.'

‘She doesn't sound quite the usual Peabody bride,' Jack said, amused by the description. ‘I wonder what Amy Peabody was thinking of? She should have known such an exotic bird would fly her coop.'

Kitty shrugged. ‘She's still going to get her dough, isn't she?' she said practically as he began to head for the state-room door.

He turned, a hand on the doorhandle. ‘Only if I think the goods are worth the outlay.'

‘Pah!' A smile dimpled the corner of her mouth. Where girls for the
Gold Nugget
were concerned she made the decisions and they both knew it. ‘Don't break any hearts,' she admonished as he opened the door and blew her a kiss.

‘I shall behave like a choirboy. My only vice today is going to be in teaching little Leo Stullen how to hold his own at poker.'

A lock of sun-gold hair had fallen low across his brow and Kitty reflected that it would be easy to imagine him as a choirboy. Easy but not very realistic. ‘I thought you said his sister had hit the roof when you had suggested teaching the kid card-tricks?' The rose-red nipple wobbled teasingly as she pushed herself into a more comfortable position against the pillows.

Jack's grin deepened. Was she knowingly trying to lure him into staying with her a little longer? If so, she wasn't going to succeed. No matter how great the temptation, he wanted a little fresh sea air. And he wanted to be entertained by Lilli Stullen's refreshing naivety. ‘Those were simply tricks. This time I'm going to teach him a life-skill.'

Kitty hooted with laughter and threw a pillow at the closing door. A life-skill indeed! He was more likely going to be put the kid on the road to ruin. She adjusted her negligée, covering the peeping nipple. Just as long as he didn't ruin the sister. She didn't want to be comforting any more sobbing females for a while. She picked a coffee-cream out of a box of Belgian chocolates lying by her side. All that really mattered was that he didn't break
her
heart. And after the length of time they had been together, and all they had gone through together, she was as sure as god made little green apples that he never would.

When Lilli took Leo and Lottie into the crowded dining-saloon for breakfast there was no sign of Miss Nettlesham.

‘She obviously meant it when she said she wasn't going to be seen in public with us again,' Kate Salway said wryly, pouring Leo a beaker of milk.

‘She talked to Lilli last night,' Edie offered, eager to be helpful. ‘I know because they were on the hurricane-deck and I was sitting beneath the stairs.'

Lilli's eyes widened fractionally at the disclosure. Thank goodness she hadn't been enjoying a rendezvous with her Greek god!

‘A nice man told me yesterday that we were all very lucky,' Edie confided, making up for her silence of the previous morning. ‘We're going to be some of the first people ever to ride the new railway. He said there's nothing to be scared of but I
am
scared. I've never been on a train and he said it goes ever so fast.'

‘I'll hold your hand, honey,' Marietta said, buttering a great slab of bread. Her blouse today was a vibrant yellow, her skirt a searing orange.

It occurred to Lilli that now would be a good time to clarify exactly what their travel arrangements were. She still didn't even know where their voyage came to an end. ‘What railway?' she asked, forking crisp bacon on to Lottie's plate. ‘Where does it go from? Where does it go to?'

‘It goes to Dawson, silly,' Edie said, giggling. ‘Even
I
know that!'

‘We disembark at Skagway,' Marietta said, hoping she would have the chance of another conversation with Kitty Dufresne before Skagway was reached. Kitty had intimated that she
might
be suitable as a dance-hall girl but hadn't yet actually offered her a job. ‘From there we go by train, over the White Pass, to Whitehorse.'

‘Whitehorse is at the head of the navigational waters of the Yukon,' Susan Bumby added, ever the school-mistress.

‘And from there we sail down the Yukon to Dawson.' Marietta's eyes sparkled naughtily, ‘Just like Cleopatra and her handmaidens sailing down the Nile,' she said, causing Edie to giggle yet again and Susan Bumby to blush scarlet.

It was Lottie who first noticed Lilli had become the object of a fellow passenger's attention. She squeezed hold of Lilli's hand. ‘Someone is looking at you,' she whispered. ‘A man at the next table with hair nearly the colour of Marietta's.'

Even though commonsense told her the description couldn't possibly apply to Lucky Jack Coolidge, Lilli's heart practically leapt into her throat. Eagerly she looked across to the next table, but the eyes that met hers were not teasing and gold-flecked. They were sombre and, at a guess, dark green or grey. They belonged to the red-haired man who had been pointed out to her as being a recently released convict. Swiftly she looked back down again at her plate, disappointment surging through her.