Northern Lights Trilogy (126 page)

He would gladly play Saint Nicholas this year, buying his way into their young hearts to win them over. He truly liked the children and was drawn to his girls. But he knew they sensed the adults’ reticence about him, and he needed a way to counteract it. The gifts would be just right. Kaatje had carefully kept the children away from
him while she weighed her decision, but the girls had sneaked over to the mercantile one day, just to tell him that they always wanted a father and were glad he was near. He knew that the children would likely be his greatest ally, his most opportune avenue to winning Kaatje back. Because she wanted a family most of all.

As always, there was a part of him that wanted it too. A house of their own, a roaring fire, a chance to tell the girls Norwegian folk tales his mother had told him as a child. Beyond the wealth that Kaatje was accumulating, he liked the prospect of having a hearth and home. And perhaps he could choose a new business, spend a little of Kaatje’s cash on it, something that would entail travel, so he would not tire again of that hearth and home. A little excursion now and then would be just the thing, giving him the best of both worlds.

If she would just let go of her fears and give him one more chance. He was so close. At least Tora and Trent were gone, he mused, stuffing a moist piece of turkey into his mouth. They were difficult, those two. It increased his odds, having them depart on an extended honeymoon. With any luck, he’d have Kaatje and his ducks in a row by the time they returned, when it would be too late for them to protest. He knew Kaatje and her loyal heart; once she decided on him, it was done. He wiped his bread in the last remnants of gravy, then sat back in sated pleasure. “That was wonderful, Kaatje, Elsa, girls,” he said, nodding at each of them. “A fine, fine meal.”

“Yes,” Karl echoed. “One of the best in a long while.”

“As it should be,” Kaatje said, rising. “I will go and get the cream whipped for the pumpkin pie.”

“Pie!” Kristian squealed, pinching his younger sister in his excitement.

“Mama!” she complained.

“You two—in fact, all of you children—help us clear the table. You, too, Charles. You can bring back dessert plates and forks.” They obediently rose as a group and followed the women out to the kitchen.
When the door swung shut behind them, leaving Karl and Soren alone for a moment, Karl stared over at him.

“You have something to say, Karl?” Soren asked, pleased by his own bored tone.

“At least one thing. Watch your step.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“I bet you have. It’s because everyone but you knows that Kaatje is a treasure. As I see it, you’re little better than a pirate.”

“Did you work all day to come up with that?” Soren asked in disdain. “Surely you can do better.”

The children came back through the doors, armed with small plates and forks, as well as coffee cups and saucers. Soren chanced one more comment. “You think you know me. You have no idea who I am.”

“That’s what I fear,” Karl returned, never looking away.

James watched them through the restaurant windows, even as the snow fell. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Kaatje was in greater danger than ever now that she was closer to giving in to Soren. And all he could do was stand guard and watch. He was like a soldier with no weapon, even kept from using his fists. All he could hope for was that his spirit, head, and heart would win someday over Soren. But how? And was it terrible for him to wish for such a thing?

He was a man of God, a man who prided himself on his ethics. And here he was, pursuing a married woman. Not actively, of course, but with the diligence of a first love. Kaatje seemed that way to him; he had been married before, and to a special woman, but this time it was fresh, new again in a way he would’ve considered impossible. “I’m like a new-broke horse,” he muttered to himself. “Learning the ways of love all over again, after years away from it.”

James wished he had never ventured giving his heart away again. It was much safer, and much less painful, to stay by himself or in the company of Kadachan. On the river, in the mountains, he had never felt this kind of fear, something that threatened to break him in two.
Not the mother grizzly, nor a terrible lightning storm. Not the ice floes that nearly toppled their boat, nor the rapids that pulled men under and held them there until they had no more breath to hold. This, this thing he felt for Kaatje had been like climbing a mountain peak and gazing over a verdant, unexplored valley…a summer sun’s warmth on his chest. But now he was falling from that peak, the sun searing his skin.

Shamed by the tears on his cheeks, he ducked around a corner and gazed up at the gray sky releasing fat snowflakes that hit his face and melted. “Lord, Lord,” he cried, “help me. Help me to make wise choices here. I fell in love with Kaatje, but is it better for me simply to leave? Am I getting in the way of a marriage you once blessed?”

There was no answer to his heart, just the muffled silence of a late fall snowstorm.

He turned and held his body away from the building with his forehead, the slight pain from the pressure expressing a tiny bit of what he felt inside. It was ripping him apart, this thing between him and Kaatje, or rather the thing that had only had the slightest first breath before a windstorm stole it away. It was like a faint memory, a hope against the odds. And now it was over.

“It’s over, James,” he told himself. “It’s over. Get on with your life. You saw him there tonight. He’s made it. He’s made it in. The rest will be easy.”

But as he turned to walk away with one last glance toward the Storm Roadhouse, the children laughing, the women serving pie, he could not leave.

What was wrong here? Why could he not make a decision and stick with it? Everything in his upbringing, his morals, told him to remove himself, that a woman belonged with her husband, and that was that. But Soren Janssen had broken all the rules, leaving her for years with children—on a farm, of all places—to fend for themselves. He took up with another woman. And he showed up only when Kaatje had come through town, boasting of a reward and, therefore, showing
she was a woman of some means. No, James just couldn’t leave it alone. He knew something was wrong, something more than just unrequited love.

He continued to pace back and forth for hours, watching when Soren went home, and later Karl, until the front lights were turned down and the front door was locked up for the night. Still energized from the tips of his toes to the ends of his fingertips, he decided he had to find an outlet or he would never sleep. Next door, a man left his snug little house, letting the door slam shut behind him, and walked to the side where he chopped a log into kindling. After a few minutes, he returned inside without ever spying his silent watchman. Chopping wood. Suddenly, it sounded like the antidote this dying man needed.

James strode across the street and around the Storm Roadhouse. He knew that Kaatje and the girls resided on the far side of the hotel; he hoped his chopping would not awaken them. He envisioned Kaatje arising to find a cord of freshly cut wood in the back, and it gave him even more energy.

He was halfway through his fourth log, however, when the back door swung open, bathing him in warm light. He panted in his exertion, small clouds of steam arising before his face. Without speaking, he turned back to the log and with a loud
thwack
split it in two.

“Easing your stomach of a heavy Thanksgiving dinner?” Kaatje asked gently.

“Of sorts,” James evaded, sending the half-log into a neat quarter. “Are you going to chop wood all night?” “I hope not.”

“You didn’t eat much dinner, did you, James?”

He rammed the axe down into the stump and rested his hands on the handle. “Not much.”

“Come in, James. Quit before you wake the neighbors.”

Obediently he followed her indoors. Truth be told, he wanted to be nowhere else.

“Sit,” she said, waving toward a chair. She was in a breakfast coat, from which descended a smooth nightdress of deep red. He averted his eyes, staring at the table while she put a plate before him and on it stacked sliced turkey, dressing, yams, a slice of bread, and then corn. She sat down across from him as he ate. “You don’t have friends who invited you over, do you, James?”

“No.”

“Why did you lie to me?” Her tone told him she knew the answer. He shrugged a little and chewed his food as he studied her. “You had made your decision. I wanted to make it easier for you.” “Where do we go from here, James?”

He thought her question over, looking around the table. His eyes rested on a gift box, in which a generous length of blue-green velvet lay. “From him?” he asked, trying to keep the note of accusation from his tone.

Her eyes told him yes.

“I would say that it is not up to me to decide where we go from here, Kaatje.” He set down his fork, no longer hungry. His stomach was in knots. “I do not trust the man, Kaatje. I want to go away, leave you two to your business, but there’s something amiss.” He leaned back in his chair and blew air out of an
o
through his lips while he ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe it comes from looking out for you for months on the river, but I can’t stand to leave you alone with him. I’d as soon walk away from you now as when that mother bear came tearing toward you.”

Kaatje looked away, biting a fingernail. When she looked back at him, her eyes were sad. “You can’t protect me from every bear out there, James.”

“I can sure as well try. If you’ll let me.”

“I think you had better go, James. If I come to some conclusion, I’ll let you know. For now, know that I’m as confused as you.”

He agreed in silence, heading back toward his hotel without looking back. One more glance at Kaatje and he was liable to break down
in front of her like a newborn baby. What was wrong with him? Clenching his lips in consternation, he decided that the following morning he would find six men to go and work Kaatje’s mine on the Yukon. And if God was with them, they would strike gold. News of a gold strike from a mine that was once his was bound to flush Soren Janssen out, much like smoke in a fox’s hole. Yes, like smoke in a fox’s hole.

James smiled for the first time in weeks.

Kaatje sat on the edge of her bed, staring out the window. Her tears matched the softly falling flakes outside, slowly, gently descending. Her throat closed around a soft sob, and she threw herself into the down pillow, not wanting anyone to hear her cry.

How confused was her heart! One moment she had almost decided to give Soren a chance, a real chance, the next it skittered back to James. How she longed to enter James’s arms to claim him as her own! To send Soren, and the accompanying confusion, away. To know James’s steady ways, his slow smile, his tender look, again on a daily basis. Oh, how she missed him!

And yet she couldn’t. Soren was her first love, her husband, and he was trying. With each day, her trust grew, little by little.

Still, it did not ease her pain at watching James leave her side, step by step. When would he simply give up and go away? And what right did she have to hold him?

E
lsa did not know when they had started to assume that Karl would dine with her every night. It had all started on board their ships, in the race to Juneau, and had simply never stopped. It was comforting, much like the snow that began on Thanksgiving Day and continued on, getting deeper and deeper, just as their love deepened. The drifts had grown to five feet high beside the restaurant by December.

Every morning she awakened to the sound of Soren shoveling the front porch and walk. It was thoughtful of him; she had to give him that. As she languished in bed, her thoughts went from Karl the night before, laughing at something Kristian said, and then whipped back to Soren. With each skid and slide of the shovel, Elsa winced. It was as if he was shoveling his way back into Kaatje’s heart. Yesterday she had come downstairs to see Kaatje give her husband a steaming cup of coffee before he left for the mercantile. She even allowed him to kiss her on the cheek. Since when was Kaatje allowing him to kiss her? It sent a shiver down Elsa’s back.