“No, no I—” Pushing past the crewmen and passengers, Will shot to the stern of the ship, but the dinghy had already pushed off. Closing his fist over the painted miniature, he threw a leg over the top rail and jumped.
The autumn sun hissed into the bay, casting a red-gold shimmer across the icy water. Michael haggled with a merchant, while Kate worked alongside Sean and the twins loading provisions onto the riverboat leaving for Sacramento City on the tide. Hetty and the babe were already aboard.
They’d decided to return to the foothills, to make a go of it together as a family. To live out the dream their father had spun, and perhaps spin some dreams of their own.
For the hundredth time that day Kate wondered what Will was doing, if he was happy to be rid of her, to be free—to get on with the life he seemed so determined to live alone.
She wondered, too, if things might have been different between them if she’d been just a wee bit braver. She’d battled a bear in the dark, for God’s sake, but hadn’t the courage to tell a man in the light of day that she loved him.
Without warning, Sean dropped his end of a fifty-pound grain sack they’d been hauling from the dock to the boat, and Kate stifled a curse. “Why’d you do that?”
Sean grinned, then flashed his eyes mischievously past her toward shore. “No reason, Katie, darlin’. It’s just that…well, if I’m not mistaken, I think your husband’s comin’ to call.”
“What?” She dropped her end of the sack and spun in the direction Sean was now pointing. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!”
“Aye, that’s him all right. A wee bit wet around the edges, though, isn’t he?”
Kate watched, openmouthed, as a very wet and very determined looking Will stopped every man in his path and thrust something small into their faces. The miniature, she realized with a shock. Lord, he was looking for her!
“But he don’t look nearly as wicked pissed as he did in that saloon.”
“Saloon?” She flicked Sean a sideways glance. “You didn’t tell me you’d found him in a—” The words died on her lips as Will, not thirty feet from her now, grabbed the next man’s shoulder and spun him around.
The man just happened to be Michael.
“Oh, no.” Kate held her breath, her stomach fluttering wildly, as Will showed the painted miniature to her brother.
Kate knew what was coming a whole second before Michael raised his fist and Will dodged the blow.
“He’s fast,” Sean said, admiration in his voice. “Even hungover. He’d make a grand boxer, Katie.”
Kate shot her brother an icy look. “Go find the twins. Get aboard and wait for me there.”
“What, and miss all the fun?”
“You’re too big to spank, Sean Dennington, but I’m not above a good thrashing.”
“Oh, all right.”
Kate watched, transfixed, as Will and Michael got into it. It took two men to hold her brother back, and all of Will’s self-control, she imagined, to keep from decking him. She could hear Michael swearing all the way down the dock where she stood riveted in place, unable to move.
Then Will saw her.
And her heart did a flip-flop in her chest.
Ignoring Michael’s curses and the amused men cluttering his path, Will moved toward her, his jaw set, the look in his eyes unreadable.
She didn’t know whether to launch herself into his arms or to run. If he’d come merely to see she was safe—to complete, in his own mind, the terms of his obligation to her as her husband, she didn’t think she could bear it. In truth, she knew she couldn’t.
But if he’d come to…
Oh, Lord, the thought of it started her knees to shake under her skirts. She fisted her hands at her sides and focused on her feet planted squarely on the dock to keep herself from fleeing.
He stopped, mercifully, an arm’s length away from her, and pulled a sopping steamship ticket from his pocket. Kate recognized it from that very morning when she’d traded hers in to acquire it.
“You did this,” he said evenly. “Why?”
Though he betrayed not a hint of emotion in his hardened features, she knew the time for half-truths and holding back—at least on her part—had come to an end. “Because you…wanted it so very much.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s not what I wanted at all. I just didn’t know it until today.”
Her heart beat faster.
“When did you find out?” He nodded over his shoulder toward Michael who, from what Kate could tell, was being told the whole of it by a very animated Sean. “That your brothers were here.”
“There was a letter. I discovered it in my father’s things the morning we left Tinderbox. I’d forgotten about it, and I couldn’t read it anyway. I found it again when I went to board the clipper. I asked the shipping clerk to read it to me.”
His eyes warmed then, his face twisting into a painful expression she dared not interpret. “You could have turned your ticket in, kept the money for you and your brothers. Why didn’t you, Kate?”
“Because you were so desperate to get away. Not just from me, but from your father, this place—all of it. You wanted your freedom. It was as simple as that.”
“And you were ready to give it to me, no matter the cost to you.”
He stood there, dripping all over the dock, his black hair plastered to his head, rivulets of seawater slicing down the grim, chiseled features of his face.
“Ní fuaireamar,” he said, stunning her, repeating the words that had slipped from her mouth when he’d made love to her the very first time. “What does it mean, Kate?”
“You’re drunk,” she said, smelling the whiskey on his breath.
“I was, but I’m not now. Tell me.”
She felt her skin grow hot, then icy, all at the same time. Her heart skittered wildly in her chest. “W-why do you want to know?”
“There are things I need to get straight in my own mind.”
“Like…what, supposin’?”
“Like maybe I was the biggest kind of fool—and a coward.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You were neither.” She looked into his eyes and in their warm, lucid depths read many things. “You were just hurting.”
She held her breath as he stepped closer. He took her hand gently in his and brushed a kiss across her palm. “You’re the one who’s been hurting, Kate, and I’m the one who hurt you.”
Now she was the coward.
For a long moment she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t utter a sound, only looked at him, really looked at him, trying to fathom his feelings.
“Kate, what does it mean?”
His hands moved to her hips, and hers flew to his chest where she felt the beating of his heart, strong and sure. He drew her close and their gazes locked.
“Ní fuaireamar,” she breathed. “I love you.”
A tender, dizzying meld of raw emotion shone in his eyes, and at last she knew why he’d come for her.
“Ní fuaireamar,” he repeated, butchering the words, though nothing in her life ever sounded so wonderful. “I love you, too.”
He kissed her, crushing her to him, and she gave herself up to his warmth and strength, the surety of his embrace, the power of her own feelings for him surging through her, making her giddy and weightless.
“I always have, Kate,” he whispered against her lips. “Since the first day.”
She pulled away to look at him. He was soaked to the skin, and now she was, too, though she didn’t care.
“I was too afraid to let myself feel it, to feel anything for anyone, besides the hate I felt for myself.”
“What changed you, Will?”
He smiled at her tenderly and brushed a kiss across her forehead. “You did. Your love did.”
“And your…father?” she asked tentatively.
“I saw him. We talked for a long time.”
Kate closed her eyes for a moment and exhaled in relief. “So then…?”
&n
bsp; “I honestly don’t know. He wasn’t much of a father when I was growing up, and I wasn’t much of a son when I left. All the same, I’d like to give it another shot if he’s willing.”
“Something tells me he will be.”
“You were there.”
Kate nodded, and he smiled.
Distracted by Sean and Michael, who eyed them with respective amounts of amusement and tolerance as they passed, Kate spied the steamship ticket, now reduced to a wet, inky pulp, on the dock where Will had dropped it when he’d taken her into his arms.
“What about Sitka?” she said.
“It’ll still be there next year, if we have a hankering for adventure.”
“We?” Kate held her breath and waited to hear the words from him.
Will laughed. “We’re already married, aren’t we? Be a shame to waste it.”
“Aye, it would. Though I did the askin’ the first time—and what a shameless thing it was, too.”
“No. It was a brave thing, Kate. And I’ll tell you now that the idea had crossed my mind before you sprang it on me—and not just because of the money.”
“I’d hear the words from you, then, Mr. Crockett. All proper.”
She gasped as Will lifted her clean off her feet. Never in their month together had she seen a smile from him quite like the one he gave her now.
“Will you marry me, Mrs. Crockett? That is, will you stay married to me, for as long as we both shall live?”
“Aye, Mr. Crockett.” She couldn’t contain her joy, and kissed him again. “You’ve got yourself a bargain.”
ISBN: 978-1-4603-6006-4
GOLD RUSH BRIDE
Copyright © 2002 by Debra Lee Brown
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