Forget-Me-Not Bride (22 page)

Ringan made the little noise in his throat that Lottie thought of as his ‘Scottish'noise.

‘And then Uncle Herbert said he was going to change Leo's surname to his own and make-believe that Leo was his son. He told Lilli she was to leave the house and Lilli knew that once she did so he would never let her see us again. And so when she left the house she took us with her,' Lottie finished simply.

‘Your sister's a verra feisty young lady,' Ringan said, wondering how any man, given a little family like the Stullens to care for, could have been so crass as to have earned their contempt instead of their affection.

‘We had to go quickly,' Lottie continued, raising her face up to the afternoon sun and the dizzying summits of the mountains, ‘because Uncle Herbert had told Lilli she had to be out of the house that very day. Lilli went to every employment bureau in San Francisco but no-one would give her a job – or not a job that would pay her enough to keep us all. And so she became a Peabody bride.'

Ringan nearly toppled off the observation platform in shock. ‘A
bride
? But I didna ken your sister was married. She doesna wear a ring …'

‘Oh, she's not married yet. Peabody brides don't marry until they reach Dawson. Then there's a kind of auction and …'

‘
Auction
?' There wasn't only shock in his voice and on his face, there was disbelief. Then, as understanding dawned as to what just kind of a bride a Peabody bride was, disbelief gave way to rage so white-hot Lottie thought he was going to explode.

‘I know. It's medieval, isn't it?' she said, tossing a wayward braid back over her shoulder. ‘But you don't have to worry. It isn't going to happen to Lilli. And I don't think it's going to happen to anyone else, unless it's to Lettie. Miss Bumby is being paid attentions by the Reverend Mr Jenkinson. Miss Salway is suddenly being paid attentions by an English lord. Marietta isn't going to marry anyone but is going to be a dance-hall girl and Edie is either going to be a maid somewhere where Marietta can look after her, or she's going to live with us.'

‘Live with you where, and with whom?' Ringan demanded, his hand grasping the observation platform rail so tightly the knuckles were white. Another thought occurred to him and he said, his voice raw, ‘Your sister isna thinking of becoming a dance-hall girl too, is she?'

Lottie giggled. ‘No, silly. Dance-hall girls aren't respectable. Which is a pity, because Marietta says they have a lot of fun.'

Ringan blanched. Dear Lord a-mighty, what kind of a conversation was this to be having with a ten-year-old girl? First of all wee Lottie was chatting about young women being auctioned off to men like so many lumps of meat and then she was talking enviously of dance-hall girls!

Not feeling able to embark on an explanation as to just why she shouldn't be aspiring to such a racy profession he brought the conversation back to a far more pressing subject. ‘Just why is there no need for me or anyone else to worry after your sister?' he asked, dimly aware that the thin little footpath flanking the track was that of the original route taken by the pioneers of three and four years ago.

‘Mr Coolidge is going to offer for her,' Lottie said, a note of resigned acceptance in her voice. ‘Lilli's in love with him so I suppose it will be all right but it doesn't
feel
all right.'

Ringan kept silent. It didn't feel all right to him either. It felt gut-sickeningly wrong.

‘The problem is, Mr Coolidge is ever so careless about things that matter,' Lottie continued, troubled, ‘When Leo fell overboard it was because Mr Coolidge wasn't keeping an eye on him as he had promised to. And even though it was a terrible crush leaving the ship, he didn't think to look for us and help us.'

‘No, well, maybe he had other obligations,' Ringan said, staggered by her perceptiveness and wondering just what her opinion was of himself.

‘But if he's in love with Lilli, she should come first, shouldn't she?' Lottie persisted.

‘Aye,' Ringan said, wishing he knew just what kind of a story Coolidge had spun to Lilli. It didn't seem likely to him that a man with Lucky Jack's reputation would have fallen irrevocably in love and proposed marriage, all in the space of a few short days aboard ship. On the other hand, what did Lucky Jack have to gain by deceiving her in such a manner? Seduction was the obvious answer, but with Lilli Stullen sharing a cabin with her younger brother and sister and a fellow Peabody bride, seduction would not be very easy to accomplish.

He thought back to the scene in the hotel dining-room. Where sex was concerned, he doubted Coolidge was living in a state of deprivation. If the beautiful, mature red-head who had been seated at his table wasn't his mistress, he would eat his hat.

Lottie gave a deep sigh and, as Ringan seemed unable, or unwilling, to explain Jack Coolidge's behaviour, she changed the subject, saying, ‘Is that Dead Horse Gulch down there? Miss Bumby told Leo it was called Dead Horse Gulch because so many pack animals struggling up the trail fell into it and died.'

‘And I trod up that trail in the winter of '97,' Saskatchewan Stan was saying to his spellbound audience. ‘Why, the snow blew down the valley in screaming gusts but the trail itself was so hard-packed by tramping feet that no wind could budge it. No, sirree. It just packed down as hard as cement until in some places it was ten feet higher than the loose snow on either side of us.'

‘And what happened if anyone fell off the trail?' Lettie asked, trying to imagine the hell it had been before the railway had been built.

Stan grinned. ‘Why, if a man and his sled was upset into the drifts the man climbing behind him would take his place and the shovel-stiff in the snow would have to wait till there was a gap in the chain before he could take his place in it again.‘

‘Did you ever fall off into the snow, Mr Saskatchewan Stan?' Edie asked, her eyes like saucers. ‘I hope you didn't. I wouldn't like for you to have fallen off into the snow.'

Beneath his stubbly beard Stan flushed as red as a beetroot. ‘I ain't never fallen off nowhere I couldn't get back from Miss,' he said, turning a battered black hat round and round in his hands.

Remembering Stan's confession as to feeling ‘jittery'when with pretty ladies, Lilli's mouth twitched at the corners. Until Edie's guileless interruption he had been doing remarkably well. Now, however, he seemed to become acutely aware of the sex of his audience.

‘It's been nice speaking with you ladies, real nice,' he said, his composure fast deserting him. ‘I wouldn't have troubled you if you hadn't been friends of Miss Stullen's, what with Miss Stullen being a friend of my friend, Lucky Jack, and all.'

The shabby black hat was revolving faster and faster in his gnarled, calloused hands. Lilli could see a gleam of dull green on the edge of the brim and couldn't help wondering if it was mildew.

‘So I'll just mush along now,' Stan was saying, backing out of the carriage clumsily. ‘I guess Lucky Jack will have a poker game in play. I always did like a game of poker. Not that I'm a gambling man, you understand. No, sirree. I'm just a plain old shovel-stiff …'

‘He's rather a lamb, isn't he?' Marietta said, amusement thick in her voice as Stan finally blundered on his way. ‘It must be quite a strange sensation for men like him, men who crossed the Pass by foot, covering the same trail in the comfort of a train.'

Lilli nodded agreement, but unlike Lettie and Edie she didn't begin chatting about the trail, or the stupendous views, or the grimness of the gulch plunging away on their left-hand side. Her thoughts were elsewhere, centred firmly on Lucky Jack.

A poker-game. Was that what was taking up his attention at the present moment? Was that why he hadn't walked through the train looking for her? The irritation which had been growing ever since she had been obliged to carry her heavy bag off the
Senator
and to the hotel and then on to the train, surged into something disturbingly close to resentment. And if he were playing poker, was he doing so in Kitty Dufresne's company? And if he could play poker in Kitty Dufresne's company, why hadn't he asked her, Lilli, to sit with him and so that he could play poker in
her
company?

She looked over Leo's thick shock of hair to where the International Border Post on the summit could now be seen. The answer was, of course, that she had made no secret of the fact that she disapproved of his displaying his prowess at cards in front of Leo.
That
was why they were not at the present moment seated next to each other.

A Mountie came into sight, his scarlet tunic eye-catchingly exotic. Her resentment ebbed but a flame of irritation remained. It was all right making excuses for his remaining in Kitty Dufresne's company and not hers, but why did he have to play poker at all? Why couldn't he have kept her and Leo and Lottie company, telling them stories of the Trail and Dead Horse Gulch as Saskatchewan Stan had done?

‘Look, Marietta! Look! There's a Mountie!' Edie exclaimed excitedly.

‘Don't go overboard about him,' Marietta said in affectionate amusement, ‘We'll be seeing a whole lot more now we're in Canadian territory.'

Still deep in thoughts of Lucky Jack, Lilli's irritation once again deepened, this time into a sickening niggle of doubt. When the hideous accident with Leo had occurred it had occurred because Lucky Jack's attention had been on a card game and not on Leo. She pursed her lips. There was obviously a thoughtless side to her Greek god but it was, surely, a thoughtlessness he would grow out of when they were all living together as a family.

‘That must be Lake Bennett,' Lettie said as a serpentine-green lake came into view, surrounding mountains reflected mirror-like in its glacial depths.

The train chugged on, down the long, thin crescent of the lake and into a patchy forest ablaze with crimson drifts of fireweed.

Lilli continued to stare silently out of the window as Marietta and Lettie and Edie laughed and chatted. The trouble with falling in love so very quickly was that it made some things so hard to imagine. She couldn't, for instance, imagine Lucky Jack in a family situation, which was silly when he was so obviously her soul-mate and when she was going to marry him.

The forest gave way to open country. Rivers gushed down through canyons, rapids threw up spume yards high, lakes shimmered like burnished shields.

Lilli stared at them unseeingly. One fact she could draw comfort from was Lucky Jack's easy-going nature. Her mother had always said that easy-going men made the best husbands. Repressing the unworthy thought that Lucky Jack might just be a little
too
easy-going, Lilli looked down at her clasped hands, wondering what her left hand would look like with a wedding ring gracing it; wondering what the future held for her as Mrs Jack Coolidge.

‘And so here we are,' the Reverend Mr Jenkinson said sunnily as they all emerged from the train onto the platform at Whitehorse station, ‘on the very brink of the Yukon!'

‘Welcome to Whitehorse, ladies!' a top-hatted man called to them as he walked towards them from the direction of a hotel, the name
White Pass
emblazoned above its doorway. ‘Are you the mail-order brides? If so, I'm Jess Winthrop, manager of the White Pass Hotel, and there's rooms booked for all of you for tonight.'

Mr Jenkinson's sunny smile vanished. ‘Mail-order brides?' he exclaimed indignantly, ‘
Mail-order brides
? How dare you sir! Miss Bumby is an esteemed resident of Dawson and a member of the teaching profession and her companions are equally respectable young ladies.'

Silence hung in the air.

All the blood drained from Susan's heavy-featured face. Lord Lister was standing only a few feet away from Kate, and Kate looked equally appalled. Marietta looked outraged. Edie looked bewildered. Lettie's face was inscrutable.

‘Then if that's the case I've three good rooms I can relet,' Mr Winthrop said dryly, wondering just what sort of a respectable young lady the ginger-haired piece in shocking pink and mulberry was. She certainly wasn't a school-teacher, that was for sure.

‘I don't think that will be necessary, Mr Winthrop,' Lilli said pleasantly. ‘The Peabody Bureau has, I believe, reserved rooms for those of us travelling to Dawson under its auspices. Is there someone who can carry our bags for us?'

Mr Winthrop grinned at her, revealing yellowing incisors. He should have had the sense to realise that such a classy looking little group wouldn't want a preacher knowing their business. He corrected himself. A classy and peculiar group. One saucy piece, one stunner, two passable looking, one downright ugly, one who looked as if she wasn't altogether right in the head and, just for good measure, two children.

‘Leave your bags right where they are ma'am and I'll have'em carried over to the hotel in two shakes of a cat's tail,' he said obligingly. ‘And now, ladies. This way if you please.'

As they walked across the dusty road Lilli saw Lord Lister step a little nearer to Kate and say something to her very quietly. Too quietly for anyone else to hear. Kate's eyes sparkled with happiness, her appalled expression of a few moments ago replaced by one of glowing radiance.

Lilli felt a surge of pleasure. So … It really was true that Lord Lister was making romantic approaches to Kate. Well, he could do far worse. Kate was as sweet-natured as she was sweet-looking and she possessed natural grace and dignity. If Lord Lister should ask her to marry him the transition from Peabody bride to Lady Lister was one she would be able to make with remarkable ease.

She shot him a covert look as they mounted the hotel's rickety steps. Not only did Lord Lister have the glamour and prestige of his title to recommend him as a prospective husband, he was also extraordinarily good-looking. His eyes were grey and long-lashed, his mid-brown hair thick and sleek and smooth. There was a faint hollow under his cheek-bones and the line of his nose was aristocratically straight.