I do, I do, I do (11 page)

Zoe slid a glare toward Clara and Juliette, noticing they watched the gangplank, too. And it suddenly occurred to her that they would find other men, other loves, once she had made them widows. But what about her? What man could possibly interest her after Jean Jacques? Men like him came into the life of a Newcastle girl only once, if ever. Except he hadn't been real.

"I'm going to find our stateroom," she announced abruptly, turning from the rail.

Stateroom was a grossly grandiose term for what she discovered. Deep in the bowels of the steamship, she entered a closet-sized cubicle barely large enough to contain a cot and a two-decker bunk bed. As a concession to gender, they'd been issued a cracked chamber pot painted with daisies and a cloudy mirror that hung above a shelf supporting a lone washbasin.

"Oh, my heavens," Juliette breathed, appearing in the doorway. Her gray eyes widened in an expression of shock and dismay that was becoming annoyingly familiar.

"This would be cramped for one person, let alone all of us," Clara observed tightly, stepping past Juliette and blocking the light from a single smoky oil lamp.

Making little whimpering sounds, Juliette collapsed on the bottom bunk. "Three weeks of this? I can't endure it!"

Maybe she'd give herself the pleasure of shooting Juliette, too, right after she shot Jean Jacques, Zoe decided. Then she'd shoot Clara, just for good measure. Of course, if the other wives were dead, maybe she wouldn't shoot Jean Jacques after all. Maybe they could…

What was she thinking? Giving her head a disgusted shake, she set her bag on the plank floor. Inside were her toiletries, a couple of nightgowns, a change of clothing, a warm coat, and heavy underwear because the temperatures would dip as they neared the coast of Alaska.

Juliette said it first. Naturally. "There's no place to lay out our things."

"We can shove our luggage under the cot and bunks," Clara noted briskly. Bending, she removed a hammer from a side pocket on her bag. "I'll put up some nails to hang our hats and capes."

Zoe's mouth dropped. "You packed a hammer and nails for the voyage?" Grudgingly, Zoe conceded she was impressed. There were depths to Clara that she hadn't suspected.

"Be careful you don't drive a hole in the side of the boat and sink it!" Alarm widened Juliette's eyes. "I can't swim."

"If a single nail hole will sink this ship, then we're done for anyway," Clara said around the nails in her mouth. In minutes, she had completed the job. "It's an inside wall," she assured Juliette, inspecting the row of nails. "Now get off that bed. I need one of the slats. If we take one slat from each of the bunks, I don't think the beds will collapse."

Immediately Zoe grasped the plan. "Extra shelves."

Nodding, Clara laid the edge of a slat against the lip of the wainscoting. A few hammer whacks and they each had a shelf.

"Are we going to get in trouble for this?" Juliette asked. "I'm grateful for the innovations, but—" She broke off speaking and placed a hand against her stomach. "Are we moving?"

"Not yet." With a sinking heart, Zoe studied her face. "Why? Are you feeling ill?"

"I'm not sure," Juliette said slowly.

Clara leaned against the wall and covered her face with one big hand. "I don't even want to think about sharing this tiny cell with someone who's seasick."

Far above them, the ship's whistle blasted and the ship rocked and lurched, and the floor slid beneath their feet.

Juliette gasped and gripped the edges of the bunk bed. "I've never been on a boat before."

It turned out none of them had.

"Don't you dare get seasick," Zoe hissed. The room was so tiny and cramped that the smell of the tobacco juice on their skirts overwhelmed every breath. Body heat generated by the three of them had already raised a damp sheen across her forehead. And the greasy smell wafting from the lamp made her feel queasy inside. "I swear, Juliette, if you throw up one time, I'm going to toss you overboard!"

"I'll help you," Clara promised firmly.

An odd rocking, sliding motion told Zoe the
Annasett
was drifting out of her slip. Never in her life had she felt such a strange loss of bearing and gravity. The cape she'd hung on one of Clara's nails swung slightly back and forth. The oil in the lamp base gently sloshed from side to side. As the contents of her stomach were undoubtedly doing.

Cold sweat popped out on her forehead. A nasty taste scalded the back of her throat. Panic flared in her eyes when she heard another blast of the whistle. They were under way.

Something heaved in her stomach. "Oh, God!" Dropping to her knees on the floor, she frantically yanked their bags from under the bunks in a desperate search for the chamber pot.

She found it in the nick of time and gave up her breakfast while Juliette and Clara watched in horror.

There was time for humiliation to crush her before the next wave of nausea sent her back to the chamberpot.

As they did whenever they could escape the cubicle, Juliette and Clara strolled round and round the decks of the shockingly crowded steamship. Oily black smoke blew into their faces when the wind shifted, and when it wasn't actually raining, a good possibility existed that flying sea spray would mist them with tiny annoying droplets. Another irritation was enduring the unending scrutiny of bored men with nothing to do but inflame tempers by staring at fellow passengers.

Juliette paused by the rail rather than approach the crowd of men gathered around a fistfight at the far end of the deck. As usual, the onlookers appeared more interested in wagering on the outcome than in breaking up the brawl. Frowning in disapproval, she tried to imagine Jean Jacques involved in such brutish behavior. He was far too refined.

"You have that Jean Jacques look," Clara commented, shaking her head.

"I wish you'd stop calling it that. Of course I think about my husband, don't you?"

"I try not to."

They gazed down at the water, still choppy from this morning's rain. The sea was never the same, although Juliette had expected it would be. Instead, the color and movement constantly changed. Sometimes the water was green and glassy. Other times, saucy blue waves spit foam at the sky. On three occasions she had watched dolphins arching through the sea like big gray needles stitching an invisible thread.

"It's your turn to check on Zoe."

Clara made a face. "Lordy, I hate going down there!"

Their cubicle trapped the heat, stench, and dismal ambience of a nightmare. Sleep was next to impossible because of Zoe's continual retching and moaning. Never in her life had Juliette seen anyone as sick as Zoe Wilder. Zoe begged to die, and Juliette believed it likely that she would.

"You know what the captain said. We have to get some food into her."

"I don't mind that part," Clara said unhappily. "It's emptying the chamber pots." They had three now. "And cleaning up. And bathing her. And just trying to breathe in there." Tossing back her head, she inhaled deeply, pulling the fresh sea breeze deep into her lungs before she squared her shoulders and marched off with firm but reluctant steps.

When she reflected on it, Juliette experienced a thrill of triumph that it wasn't she who was sick and begging to die. If someone asked at the end of her life what her proudest moment had been, she would think: Zoe Wilder got seasick, and I didn't. Ha!

Halfheartedly castigating herself for feeling superior at Zoe's expense, Juliette considered going to the mess hall to escape the blowing smoke and the noise of the fight. But the mess hall would be crowded with men. Most were respectful and tried to curtail swearing and coarse language in her presence, but she knew she made them uncomfortable. Moreover, they believed she had no business going to Alaska. She believed it, too.

"Beautiful," a voice said softly at her side.

Stiffening, she straightened abruptly and glanced at the tall man who appeared next to her on the rail, noting a corner of the green scarf sticking out of his shirt pocket. His beard was fuller now, coming in the same luxuriant brown as his hair. But what she noticed most were his eyes, a brilliant blue that made her think of Aunt Kibble's bright prizewinning delphiniums.

"The sea. It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Ordinarily she would not have dreamed of striking up a conversation with a stranger. But these were not ordinary circumstances. After two weeks packed together as tightly as a paper of pins, no one was really a stranger anymore. All the faces were familiar.

"Indeed," she murmured uneasily. She had never excelled at conversing with strangers, particularly men. She always imagined a tiny Aunt Kibble sitting on one shoulder and a tiny version of her mother perched on her other shoulder, both listening and observing with critical expressions, waiting for her to err.

"Permit me to introduce myself. I'm Benjamin Dare, from San Francisco, California." Removing his hat, he held it against his chest and studied her face with an expectant expression.

The tiny Aunt Kibble
tsked
in disapproval as Juliette hesitantly offered her own name, giving it as Miss March. For the duration of the journey, she and the others had agreed to call themselves by their maiden names rather than raise gossip and scurrilous speculation by identifying themselves each as Mrs. Jean Jacques Villette.

"Do you mind if I smoke, Miss March?"

So he didn't intend to leave immediately. And she couldn't continue her stroll since the fistfight was still in progress. "Please do." Her father had smoked cheroots. The scented smoke was her strongest memory of him. Besides, it seemed churlish to protest when the stack's black smoke hung thick across the decks.

"We seem to run into each other rather frequently," he said, waving out a match.

"I beg your pardon?" She would have set herself on fire before admitting that she, too, had noticed.

In view of her ongoing experience with chamber pots and retching fellow wives, his clean soapy scent pleased her enormously. And she liked the pleasant rumble of his deep voice. He wore the ubiquitous denims and flannel shirts favored by the majority of passengers, but on him the prospector's uniform seemed exotic and appealing.

"We stayed at the same hotel in Seattle," he explained. "And I saw you in the Yesler Park and again at the outfitting store. Now we're aboard the same ship. It's an interesting set of coincidences."

She thought so, too, but made no comment, keeping her gaze on the sea while she watched him from the edge of her eyes. It was flattering that he had noticed and remembered her. Surprising that she had noticed and remembered him. But she definitely had.

"I'm puzzled to find a lady such as yourself traveling to the Yukon. If you'll pardon a personal observation, you don't seem the type of person to seek your fortune in the gold fields."

"Good heavens!" She met his blue eyes directly. "You can't think that I…" The notion was hilarious. "No indeed, Mr. Dare, I have no intention of panning or digging for gold."

Most people looked at others without really seeing more than an overall impression. But Ben Dare looked at her with an intensity that made her think he saw deep inside her. Flustered, Juliette resisted an urge to pat her hair and wet her lips. Even Jean Jacques had not gazed at her with such total absorption. An odd warmth spread through her stomach and she hastily lowered her eyes, frowning and biting her lip.

From atop her shoulder her tiny mother advised her to nod politely and walk away, and Aunt Kibble warned that it was no one's business but her own that she traveled to the Yukon in search of a philandering husband. Either caution was unnecessary. She would no more have confided in a strange man than she would have adjusted her corset in public. Not even if the man had intent blue eyes and a well-shaped mouth and made her feel strangely tingly.

After coughing into her hand, she asked, "Do you intend to search for gold, Mr. Dare?"

Despite the beard and clothing, he didn't impress her as a prospector type. If he were clean-shaven and dressed differently, she would have guessed that his air of easy authority suggested he moved in the business world. He seemed too well spoken to be a laborer. And he lacked the feverish nervousness common to the other stampeders, that odd blend of eagerness and desperation.

"Certainly."

"Oh." Disappointment sharpened the word. Without being aware, she had set him above the other passengers. She had wanted his objectives to be loftier than the pursuit of fortune. Discovering that she had thought about him at all startled her.

Her sudden frown caused him to laugh, and she was struck by the rich timbre of his voice and how handsome he was. Dark hair, blue blue eyes, broad shoulders, a tall lean body. Such observations flooded her cheeks with hot pink, and she abruptly turned aside, pretending an interest in a coil of rope.

"With the exception of yourself and presumably your companions," he said, "everyone here intends to make his fortune in the Klondike."

"Intends or hopes?"

"Hope is the more accurate word. And most will be disappointed. I've heard that nearly every foot of Klondike creek front has already been claimed." He leaned his forearms on the rail and blew a smoke ring into the sea breeze. "It's the original discoverers who reap a bonanza, and the first claimants to follow. But a year later… Well, I doubt those who make it to Dawson will find enough gold to justify the journey."

Surprise arched her eyebrows. "But… if that's true, then why are you going?"

Instantly she wished she could withdraw the question. Direct and personal questions were an embarrassing breach of good manners. She didn't know what had come over her, or maybe she did. She was picking up disgraceful habits from Jean Jacques's other wives.

"A year ago my wife died of meningitis." His fingers rose to brush the green scarf at his shirt pocket.

"I'm sorry," Juliette murmured.

In her experience this conversation was unprecedented. People did not share personal details on such brief acquaintance. While she felt wildly flattered that he had taken her into his confidence, it simply was not done.

However, she had read books about long voyages and instant intimacy was portrayed as rather common. Being contained for long periods within a small space led passengers to confide in one another, the suggestion being that intimacy was possible and permissible as they would part ways at the conclusion of the voyage, never to see one another again.