Harper's Bride

by Alexis Harrington

  But even more disturbing to him was his body's response to seeing her in his bed. Her long, pale hair fanned out over the pillows, and the swell of her breasts strained against her flimsy chemise. She was too thin, so unlike the Eliz—

  Impatiently, he turned on his heel and saw the baby. He took a step closer. She slept in her little crate, like a soft flower bud. A hint of long-forgotten tenderness brushed his soul as he looked at her. Oh, she was kind of cute, he supposed. Her hands were clenched into fists on either side of her downy head, and he stared at them, fascinated by their tiny perfection. She looked like her mother, lucky girl, and not Coy Logan.

  Pushing aside one of the canvas curtains, he saw the sun resting on the horizon, as low as it would set at this time of year. In three hours it would begin to rise again, and three hours after that, his work day would begin.

  Sighing, he turned his back to Melissa and sat on his side of the bed to pull off his boots. Then he stripped to his drawers and lay down between the hard rice sack and the edge of the mattress, feeling like a stranger in his own place. He stretched out on his back, with his hands under his head. The faint fragrance of soap drifted to him from the other side of the bed.

  Dylan knew it would be a long night.

  Chapter Three

  The next morning, Melissa woke with a start, disoriented and groggy. Her bleary gaze shot from a timbered ceiling overhead to a fur-covered throw at her feet. A pair of jeans hung over the end of the bed, and she saw a belt looped over a branchlike bedpost. Where was she? Then it all came back to her. This was Dylan Harper's room.

  Peeking over the hump of the rice sack, she saw that Dylan was already gone, but the scent of buckskin and man lingered in the bedding.

  She must have finally drifted off during the night, she realized, but she was exhausted just the same. Lying there, vigilant and as taut as a fiddle string for hours, she'd been aware of his every breath. Her muscles had drawn even tighter whenever he moved. She couldn't forget about his reputation—everyone knew about Dylan Harper, and they walked a wide path around him.

  Once, she had chanced a quick look at him. There he lay with no shirt, in his drawers, for heaven's sake, and all that long, sun-streaked hair. Certainly none of the men she had ever known, not her father or her brothers, not Coy, had ever refrained from crude behavior in front of her—and Dylan's behavior was not really crude. But it seemed to her that stripping to his underwear in her presence when they had just met was shocking. That she had also slept in her underwear wasn't the same—hers covered more. And he had seemed to have no trouble sleeping at all, she thought grumpily. He'd rolled toward the rice sack and had even thrown a muscled arm around the thing, as if he were embracing it. God, that could have been her, she thought, glad she'd erected the barricade between them. Asleep he'd looked different, not quite as forbidding, although a slight frown had crimped his brow even in sleep, as if some worry that he bore never let him truly rest.

  At least he'd left her alone, and she was glad for that. She climbed out of the bare-ticking bed and plucked Jenny from her crate. Creaky pain shot through her arms and shoulders, reminding her of last night's exertion with the heavy sack. Melissa had given little thought to its weight at the time, but now her arms and shoulders ached from dragging it up to the bed.

  "How's my button?" she whispered with a smile. The baby waved her fists sleepily. No matter how tired or discouraged Melissa might be, Jenny never failed to lighten her heart. In her mind the baby was her reward for enduring Coy, and for that single reason she did not entirely regret marrying him.

  Jenny gurgled at her and smiled back. Thank God she slept through most nights and wasn't a fussy baby. Whenever she had cried around her father, and it hadn't been often, he'd threatened to smack both her and Melissa if she couldn't quiet her, "and right now, damn it." Although he had never hit the baby, Melissa had feared it was only a matter of time. She had never struck anyone herself, but if that day had come, if Coy had once raised a hand to her Jenny, she believed she would have killed him.

  After she fed Jenny and gave her a clean diaper, Melissa washed, this time avoiding her reflection, and put her old clothes back on. Between bites of a cold biscuit from last night's dinner, she spread her carefully mended skirt between her hands and looked at it. The gray muslin was so thin in some places she could see her white petticoat showing through the sheer spots. She dropped the folds and sighed. Melissa had never owned fine things; no one in Slabtown did. People like the Pettigreaves, the family her mother had worked for, had indoor plumbing and electric lights, and even an automobile with a man to drive them around in it. Her mother had told her about their wonderful hillside house on Park Place—it even had an elevator—and the lavish parties they gave with such exotic foods as lobster and oysters and goose liver paste. Once, Melissa had even gotten to taste a bit of lobster when her mother brought it home, wrapped in clean waxed paper. The paper was another luxurious convenience that she had only seen before on blocks of butter.

  No, Melissa had not grown up with fine things; most of her life had been one of want and making do. But she'd always had sheets on her bed, even if they had been as thin and translucent as onionskin. And never had she faced having no other clothes to put on her back until now. She glanced down again to her shabby skirt. Dylan had said he'd take her out to buy things for herself and the baby, and it bothered her to accept them. Yet just as she was without clothes, she was also without choice. For Jenny, she thought; she had to do it for her.

  The door opened suddenly, startling her, and Dylan Harper walked in. This time she hadn't heard his approach on the stairs. He had to duck under the top of the door frame, she noticed. His tall, lean-muscled form dominated the room, dwarfing everything else in it, and his intense eyes swept the room, resting briefly on the rice sack in his bed. Finally, he shot her a probing look before she dropped her gaze. She retreated a step.

  "Ready to go down to Wall Street?" he asked, as if he had read her mind.

  She nodded, and with obvious stiffness, picked up Jenny who slept on unconcernedly. She felt his eyes on her, but didn't look up. Dylan stood aside to let them pass, then followed her down the narrow staircase. With each step she took, Melissa was aware of him behind her, his physical presence and the strength he emanated was a force to be reckoned with. She just prayed she could reckon with it later.

  Below, the crowd continued to wander the knee-deep morass that was the street. The morning sun was warm, and a breeze blew in from the rivers, but the mud was slow to dry out. Dylan walked between her and the busy, jostling herd, sheltering her from a careless elbow and the pack animals that slogged by.

  "Did you sleep all right last night?" he asked, breaking the silence between them. She felt his boot heels reverberating on the boards under her own feet.

  "Yes, thank you," she said.

  "And did the rice help?"

  Melissa glanced up quickly; was that anger she heard in his voice? But his handsome face wore a faintly amused expression. "Well, um, I thought—it seemed like the right thing to do, I guess."

  He lifted his hat and resettled it. "You must be stronger than you look—that sack weighs seventy-five pounds. And it takes up a lot of room. I never had the urge for more than two in my bed."

  His insinuation brought heat to Melissa's cheeks. A man with his good looks certainly wouldn't suffer for female company. But the range of this man's reputation that Melissa had heard about did not extend to women, she realized. He was known only to have a drink or two in the saloon with Rafe Dubois, or by himself, and then go on his way. The few saloon girls and camp followers who approached him were given a smile and sometimes a tip, and nothing more, it was said. If he had dalliances with women, he kept it very quiet. But as she walked beside him on the duckboards, she sensed a raw, restless energy that was so powerful, she quailed a bit. And whenever her arm brushed his on the narrow walkway, she felt a peculiar quickening in her chest.

  But she forgot about Dylan Harper a
nd everything else on her mind when they turned the corner toward the waterfront. Laid out before them was Wall Street, and beyond that, Broadway Avenue. Thinking they would have escaped the crowd down here, Melissa halted, amazed at the display that stretched for blocks. Lining these streets were people selling all manner of goods, and the throng swarming Front Street surged down here to see the marketplace. It had the air of a bazaar, as vendors told of their wares from every booth and tent. Patrolling the proceedings were a few scarlet-coated Mounties.

  Although Melissa had been in Dawson nearly two months, she had seen none of this up close. Everyone wanted cash down here, Coy had said, and saw no point in going. The display was astounding.

  "Lady, gentleman," a young man called to them, "I have fresh grapes here, and tomatoes. Sir, how about a glass of pink lemonade to refresh yourself and your wife?"

  "Oxen! Look at these fine beasts!" A gap-toothed man pointed to a pair of sharp-horned bovines in a small pen. "No hard overland passage for them, no, sir and no, ma'am. They made the trip on a steamship and are ready for work in the gold fields—"

  "Rifles, friends, and good ones, too! A gross of them—one hundred and forty-four rifles for a dollar! Just a token payment, they're almost free!" Of course they were cheap. It was illegal to carry a gun in Dawson.

  "What price would you pay to save your immortal soul from this greedy, godless place in the Arctic?" thundered a man dressed in ministerial black. "I bring you Bibles, God's own word right here, on sale for coin or gold dust—"

  Dylan took Melissa's elbow to guide her past the displays of clothes, furs, jewels, opera glasses, patent-leather shoes, dime novels, ostrich feathers, and complete sets of Shakespeare with gilt edges. Against the blue sky, signs flapped in the breeze over tents, advertising dentistry and medical doctors, palmistry, and massage. There were dry goods and music, fresh-baked bread and ice cream made from condensed milk—as of yet, no dairy cows had arrived in town. There were seventeen-dollar brooms and twenty-five-cent slickers. One man offered a rare, recent copy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for fifty dollars—and got it. Newspapers and reading material were scarce.

  And everyone called out about their goods at the same time.

  "Mercy," she said, left nearly breathless by the noisy commotion around her. Across the way a particularly loud man's voice made her flinch. She had never learned to ignore a man yelling.

  "Yeah, I hate crowds too," Dylan said, his expression grim. "We'll find what you need and get out of here."

  She clutched Jenny to her, and Dylan took her elbow to guide her. Coy had always walked ahead of her and left her to manage on her own. Although she could not ignore Dylan's size and height as he towered over her, she appreciated his help.

  But she was still wary of him.

  "What are these people doing here? Are they here because it's Saturday?" she asked, puzzled by the display. Back home in the summer, she saw farmers come to town to sell their crops on Saturdays. "They can't have come all the way up here to do this."

  He gave a hard push to a mule that came too close. "No, most of them made the same trip you did, to search for gold. They dragged tons of this stuff over the mountains and down rivers. And most of them found out there are no claims left to stake." He scanned the vast emporium. "But I get the feeling that for a lot of these people, the main goal was just to get here. Now that they've done that, they don't know what else to do. They're sort of lost." He lifted a hand and made a sweeping gesture at the crowd. "They're selling everything they can to raise enough money to go home. Rafe is right—this is folly."

  Aside from the brooms and newspaper, most of the things here were inexpensive. Melissa chose two serviceable dresses, two nightgowns, and a pair of shoes for herself. They were the first clothes she'd ever owned that weren't hand-me-downs. She bought some white muslin to make dresses for Jenny, and a ten-yard length of real diaper fabric folded in a paper wrapper that read Sears, Roebuck. She also bought two sets of ready-made sheets for the bed. Dylan paid for the purchases as they went.

  "Thank you," she said. "I don't want to keep you from your store, and I-I'm going to need to feed the baby pretty soon."

  Dylan stared at her, and she worried that she had spent too much or said the wrong thing. "Is that all you're going to get?" Dylan asked. "Don't you want some other things, you know, female doodads?"

  "Like what?" she asked, surprised.

  "Well, like—" He strode ahead of her and stopped at a booth that had women's silver-backed mirrors, combs, and brushes displayed on a plaid wool blanket. A few cut-crystal perfume atomizers dotted the presentation. He gestured at the assortment. "Like this."

  The man selling the vanity sets brightened. "Step right over here, ma'am, and see. These fine brushes and mirrors were made for Queen Victoria herself— " Dylan gave him a skeptical look. "Well, they come a far piece to get here."

  Melissa shifted Jenny in her arms and approached the booth. She did not want to be any more indentured to Dylan Harper than she already was. How on earth would she ever pay him back if she kept digging a deeper hole of debt? Reaching out her free hand, she let her fingertips trace over the intricate designs on the silver handles that gleamed with the blue sky overhead. Still, she supposed a body had to have a hairbrush and comb. They were such basic possessions.

  "Yes, they're very nice," she agreed with the merchant. Glancing up, she noticed the man studying the bruise on her cheek. Then he looked Dylan up and down with obvious censure.

  Dylan saw it too, and he felt his own face flush. Clearly, the peddler held the same low opinion as did Dylan about a man who would raise a hand to a woman.

  Damn it, he hadn't wanted to get involved with this washed-out female to begin with. But his sense of honor—and Rafe's noble prodding—had put him in the role of her protector. He wasn't the one who had hit her, and it irked him that anyone would think he had. But what could he say about it? Nothing. He picked up the most expensive vanity set and an atomizer, and paid the man quickly to escape his silent criticism. Dylan wasn't in the mood for it. Taking Melissa's elbow, he steered her onward to a rack of dresses.

  Last night had been long and mostly sleepless, although he thought he'd dozed for a while. Feeling like the second biggest heel in Dawson—after all, he wasn't worse than Coy Logan—Dylan had had trouble keeping his mind from straying to the other side of his bed where Melissa lay. It was hard not to; aside from a saloon girl or two, he hadn't slept with a woman since Eliz— Here it was, two years later, and he couldn't say her name aloud, or even think it without feeling a twisting viper of betrayal gnaw at his gut. Even now, after everything that had happened, in those twilight moments between wakefulness and sleep, he still saw her face play across his eyelids, the sweet lushness of her body, her ink-black hair. She had tried to change him, bend him to her way of doing things. And when he would not yield—

  "Go ahead and find a couple more frocks," he told Melissa gruffly. Whether he liked it or not, he felt responsible for her, and he couldn't very well let her and the baby go around in rags and flour sacking.

  She lifted her face to his, and he got another dose of her eyes, gray and clear. What was it he saw in them? He sensed that there was another woman behind them, a completely different one from the skittish, colorless female the world saw.

  "Oh, but you've already spent too much," she said, pushing at the strands of hair that had again come loose from the knot at the back of her head. "As it is, I owe you money for today, and for Coy. I don't want anything I can't pay for."

  "Never mind about that for now," he said, annoyed at her mention of Logan. Even though he'd dumped her on Dylan's front step, she still wanted to shoulder his obligation. He had to admire her pride, but if he ever saw that money again, and he certainly didn't expect to, it would not come from her. "You'll work for me, just like I told you yesterday. But you can't wear the same thing day after day. You should probably have a shawl, too. It gets cold here at night sometimes, even in summer."
/>   "Of course, whatever you think best—" She looked as though she would have said more, but apparently changed her mind and dropped her gaze again.

  Dylan sighed. She had probably learned her meekness just to get by in life. He supposed that a lot of men would be more than pleased with her cowed, docile obedience.

  But Dylan Harper was not most men.

  *~*~*

  Dylan carried Melissa's purchases for her as they made their way back through town to the store. Walking next to him, she could not help but notice the wickedly long knife sheathed in leather and resting against his thigh. That he might actually use it was a frightening prospect, and but she thought it suited him. She knew nothing about him, but he seemed as though he might have lived much closer to nature than she had. His long, sun-streaked hair and easy, graceful gait did not suggest a man who had spent his days behind a desk or even a counter. Yet his wildness was tempered, and he possessed better manners than the few men of her acquaintance. With his long legs, he'd be able to walk much faster than she, but she thought that he made an effort to keep from getting too far ahead of her.

  When he did gain the lead, she found herself studying his wide shoulders and straight back. Then her gaze drifted down to his lean hips and backside, which were highlighted by the snug black pants he wore today. Melissa didn't really know much about men; her marriage to Coy had not been very enlightening, and what little she had learned at Coy's hands wasn't good. But Dylan bore a magnetic sensuality that she detected, even in her ignorance. He was powerfully and cleanly built, and she supposed that some women might find him appealing.

  As for herself, Melissa felt certain that she would never want a husband again. But what people wanted and what they got did not always agree.

  Returning to Front Street, she found it quiet for now. The carnival atmosphere that poured out of every saloon and dance hall along the wide, muddy thoroughfare each night wouldn't get started again until mid-afternoon.