Harper's Bride

by Alexis Harrington

  "No, of course I don't. But I've heard about women running roadhouses and dressmaking shops, and making a lot of money at it."

  "How much money do you need?" His tone turned oddly brittle. "I'm not charging you for room and board."

  She took a quiet breath before answering. "I mean no offense, but you said yourself that this is temporary. That when you decide you've had enough you're going back to Oregon. I have to be ready for that day."

  He turned back toward the mirror. "I told you that I'll give you enough to make a new start somewhere else," he mumbled.

  "I really want to have money of my own, as much as I can make. Anyway, I still intend to pay you the twelve hundred dollars Coy owed you, and any other money it's cost you to take in Jenny and me."

  "I don't expect you to cover Logan's debt. I told you that was between him and me, and you're not responsible for it."

  He almost sounded irritated, but she couldn't imagine why. She'd expect him to be glad to get his money back. "Just the same, I will pay you in Coy's place."

  Dylan drew a deep breath and swallowed the surge of bitter annoyance that rose abruptly within him. Coy Logan. He thought that if she mentioned him one more time, he'd search out the bastard and give him the beating he so richly deserved. And she wanted a lot of money? Elizabeth had wanted lots of money too, badly enough to reveal the object of her true love—herself. Why did it seem that the women he'd known in his life put a higher value on cash than anything else?

  He spoke to her reflection in his shaving mirror. "What do you know how to do? Have you got goods to sell, or a skill people will pay for?" He tipped his head back to shave his throat.

  She thought for a moment. "I can't dance or sing if that's what you mean."

  Dylan would dispute that. He didn't know if she could dance, but she had the sweetest voice he'd ever heard. The few times he'd been around when she sang to Jenny, he would sit at the table and pretend to be busy with some task just for the pleasure of listening to her. But for such a timid woman, she was as stubborn as a mule.

  He stole another glance at her as she scrubbed the frying pan. Apparently she had given up trying to keep her hair in a knot and now wore it in long, heavy braid that swung back and forth behind her when she moved.

  In the brief gap of silence, he heard her sigh.

  "I guess I don't know how to do much of anything besides cook and clean. That was all I ever did at home in Portland." She sounded defeated. "I never earned anything for it."

  "Yeah? Why did you get stuck with it?"

  She paused a long moment before answering. "My mother worked as a maid for a wealthy family, so she only came home one day a week. The rest of the time I took care of my brothers and my father." He heard a sharp edge of resentment in her voice.

  "Things weren't so good there, huh?"

  She paused on her way to the landing to throw out the dishwater. "No, they weren't."

  She didn't elaborate, and Dylan didn't ask her to. He knew the story wouldn't be a happy one, and hearing the details would just make it harder to keep his distance.

  And he was having some trouble with that as it was. Sometimes her image rose in his mind when he least wanted to see it. Hell, he was just a man, and having her in his bed, even with that damned rice sack between them, gave him all sorts of notions. He kept telling himself that it was because he hadn't had a woman in months. It had to be that—it had to be the reason he sometimes woke in the middle of the night and propped up on his elbow to watch her sleep.

  Let her find work, he decided, shrugging off the picture in his head. So much the better for him—he wouldn't try to stop her. If she learned a way to make a living, he'd be able to send her on her way without a twinge of conscience over how she would fare alone in the world with an infant. And he could go back home to The Dalles, buy the land he longed for, and get on with his own life.

  He wiped the rest of the soap off his face and put on his shirt. It was nicely ironed. The collar and cuffs bore just a touch of starch, and all the buttons were sewn on. Until Melissa had moved in, he'd usually washed his clothes in a bucket and draped them over the chairs to dry. Then he'd put them on as they'd dried, wrinkled and stiff as boards. This was a luxury. A man could get used to sweet singing and good meals and ironed shirts.

  He stopped himself. Yeah, a man could get used to a lot of things—the scent of a woman's hair, the lure of her body, the teasing softness of her voice. And that was when his troubles would begin.

  *~*~*

  After dragging the rest of the wash downstairs, Melissa put Jenny in her crate and set the box on a chair next to the washtub. The morning clouds had burned off, and the sun began to emerge. Dylan had put up an awning to create a roomy shelter, and strung rope between two pairs of poles to give her a clothesline. A little stove that he'd set up just behind the building provided her with a place to heat water.

  It wasn't the best arrangement—she didn't know what she'd do come fall when the weather began to grow cold. And it felt strange to do wash in full view of the passing throng, who had only to look down the side street to see her working here. For now, though, the days were mild and this spot would have to serve.

  Up and down Front Street the incessant racket of hammers and saws echoed as new three- and four-story buildings rose from the place that, until a little over a year ago as Dylan had pointed out, had been nothing more than a few tents and a moose pasture. At least the muddy streets had finally begun to dry out under the June sun.

  Jenny gurgled and waved her fists, apparently pleased with her change of location. Looking at her, Melissa felt her heart swell with love. She was such a beautiful child, so full of promise, her future bright with whatever possibilities Melissa would be able to give her.

  "Would you like to hear a song, button?" Melissa asked as she plunged her hands into the soapy tub to scrub a diaper. She took up Stephen Foster's ode to Jeannie, but changed her name to Jenny, and her light brown hair to pale blond. The little girl smiled and watched her, fascinated, as though she understood the words.

  After she washed her own things, she began Dylan's clothes. They carried the scent of him, not an unpleasant smell, and one that Melissa had come to recognize, just as she knew the sound of his footsteps on the plank flooring in the store. While she worked, she sang softly, as much to amuse herself as to keep the baby happy. Melissa was in the middle of "Shenandoah" when she looked up and saw a man standing just at the edge of the awning.

  She sprang up straight from the washtub, her heart lurching around in her chest. "Wh-what do you want?"

  He looked like any of the other grimy, tired men she saw on Front Street, bearded and wearing a battered hat. He was about thirty, she thought, perhaps a few years older than Dylan.

  " 'Scuse me, ma'am, I don't mean no harm. I was just passing by"—he pointed his thumb over his shoulder toward the duckboards—"and I thought I heard singing."

  Melissa put herself between the stranger and Jenny. "I was singing to the baby," she said while mentally calculating the distance to the front door of Harper's Trading.

  He nodded, his face shadowed by a trace of melancholy. The clearing sky behind him contrasted with his expression. "It sounded so sweet, I just wanted to listen for a minute. Sort of reminded me of home, that's all."

  Melissa relaxed slightly. "Have you been gone long?" She didn't bother to ask if he'd come from far away. Everyone had traveled a long distance to get to this place.

  He nodded. "Yes, ma'am, I left Sacramento just about a year ago now, but it seems ten times that. The missus and my two girls are waiting there for me. I promised I'd come home a rich man." He chuckled humorlessly. "I guess I can't go yet, but I sure miss them."

  "I imagine they'd rather that you were there with them, rich or not."

  "Oh . . . after I talked so big about what a grand life we'd have, and all the fine things we could buy, I don't feel like I can go home a failure." His rueful smile all but admitted the foolishness of his logic. />
  He sounded determined and yet hopeless at the same time, and Melissa could think of nothing else to tell him. "Well, good luck to you. I hope you don't have to be away from your family much longer."

  "Thank you for the singing, ma'am. And good luck with your business, too." He gestured at her washtub.

  "Oh, no, not a business. This is just my family's wash. My baby's." She glanced at Dylan's wet shirt in her hands. "And my husband's."

  The stranger looked down at his own muddy clothes, and then at her. "Ma'am, forgive me if I seem like I'm getting above myself, but— Being out in the gold fields most of the time, I don't get any clothes washed regular-like. Generally, I wear them till I can't stand them no more, then I buy new duds and throw the old ones away. I guess it seems like a waste of money. Would you consider— Well, ma'am, could you be persuaded to do laundry for me if I paid you?"

  Someone wanted to pay her to wash clothes? All these years she had performed such work in exchange for nothing more than a roof over her head.

  "I should probably ask my husband," she said. Melissa was unaccustomed to being permitted to think for herself. In fact, none of the men she had known believed a woman capable of intelligent thought.

  Then she remembered Belinda Mulrooney and her enterprising spirit, and the germ of the idea she'd discussed with Dylan began to take hold. Melissa could probably do very well in a town with thousands of men who were far away from the domestic services of home. This might be just the chance she was looking for.

  "On second thought, I'll do your wash, Mr. . . ."

  "Willis, ma'am, John Willis."

  "I'm . . ." She faltered a moment. "I'm Mrs. Harper, Mr. Willis. Bring your clothes." In one of the most daring decisions Melissa had ever made, she added, "And tell your friends to bring theirs, too."

  *~*~*

  "I'm going to need a lot of soap, I guess, and starch, and a couple more washtubs." Melissa ticked the items off on her fingers as she paced in front of Dylan's counter. She'd hurried into the store with Jenny, anxious to get her new venture under way. The prospect of planning for her own destiny was terrifying but exciting, too. "Oh, and I'll need to string more clothesline. I guess I'll have to get a pair of those gold scales too, since I'm starting tomorrow." She stopped then and considered both Rafe and Dylan. She realized that she was the only one talking, and an alarm sounded in her mind. In making her grand plans she'd forgotten how much men disliked women to think for themselves. "That is, if it's all right with you. I'll still take care of the chores upstairs."

  Dylan shrugged indifferently, shifting his sun-blond hair. "I don't care what you do with your time as long as you keep your end of your bargain with me." He took a sip from a thick-lipped white coffee mug, then began piling bars of yellow soap in front of her on the counter.

  "I can do both," she hurried to assure him. "I can still cook and clean for you, and do this, too."

  "Then do what you want."

  She shifted Jenny to her shoulder. "Maybe I should have a sign painted. You know, so people will know I'm here. MRS. HARPER'S LAUNDRY, or something like that. Are signs expensive?" It was a silly question, she realized—everything in the Yukon was expensive.

  Dylan hoisted a forty-pound crate of Kingford's Silver Gloss Starch to the counter. "You don't need a sign. I can promise that you won't lack for business. Once the word gets out, you'll be buried under a pile of dirty clothes." His tone had that funny brittle edge that she'd heard once or twice before.

  He didn't like the idea. She could tell by his voice and the flinty expression in his eyes. She didn't even think that Rafe liked it—he sent Dylan a look that was even more forbidding than his friend's hard, blank expression. But at least Dylan didn't object outright, and she had gained enough wary confidence in him to believe that he wasn't simply waiting until they were alone to explode in a boiling fury.

  About that time Jenny started fussing for her afternoon meal, and Melissa welcomed the chance to escape. "Oh, dear, I'll have to come back for everything."

  "I'll put it under the stairs for you," Dylan said, and her last thought of him was that he was the most complex man she had ever known.

  *~*~*

  Dylan watched Melissa leave, and heard the swish of her calico skirt as it brushed around the door frame. This was a hell of a change from the silent, terrified rag doll he'd met three weeks ago. She was still too thin, but her new clothes helped to hide that.

  With no little effort, Rafe unfolded his long cadaverous frame from the straight-backed chair that now took the place of the rocker. Dylan could hear his breathing again today. "I'd almost believed that I made the right decision in giving Melissa and her child over to your protection." Walking to the counter, he removed a small silver flask from the inside pocket in his coat and took a drink from it. "I admit that I'm wondering if I did the right thing."

  Dylan stared at him. "Why?"

  "I'd hoped that you'd make her life a little easier—obviously that woman has been sorely abused. But now I find that she feels she has to wash clothes in the street to earn her own way. She'll be prey to every unsavory opportunist in Dawson. What did you say to give her the impression that she has to work?" Rafe's slow, melodic drawl could cut like a whip when he was peeved.

  "Not a goddamned thing! And she won't be in the street," Dylan retorted, surprised that Rafe would care about his relationship with Melissa. "This was her idea, not mine. She told me she wants to earn as much money as she can."

  The lawyer coughed, then drew a gasping breath that sounded like his last. "Have you wondered why that is?" he asked when the fit had passed.

  Dylan knew perfectly well why, and the reason made him feel guilty somehow. But he wasn't of a mind to discuss his earlier conversation with Melissa. He shrugged. "Well, what woman doesn't want money?" he asked. "At least she's willing to work for it." Rafe shrugged and took another drink. "I wouldn't subject my wife to that."

  Feeling beleaguered by the interrogation, Dylan snapped, "She's not my wife!" From the first day he'd agreed to this temporary alliance with Melissa, he'd had the uneasy suspicion that his friend viewed the arrangement as permanent "And I don't want one."

  Rafe gazed at the street through the open door, as though another voice called to him. "Dylan, do you ever think about your own death?" The anger had left his voice.

  Puzzled by the change of subject, he replied, "Sure, once in a while."

  "Probably on those nights that seem to have no end, when the rest of the world sleeps but you can't? All kinds of thoughts are apt to cross a person's mind in the hours that should belong to Morpheus."

  Dylan had to admire his friend's classical education. "True, but it isn't a subject that I dwell on."

  Rafe nodded. "Probably not. Nearly every man dies with regrets, though." He tapped his thin chest "Keeping this heart, faulty though it is, all to myself is one of mine." It was as frank a comment as he'd ever made. He considered Dylan with dark, deep-set eyes. "Don't let it be one of yours."

  Chapter Six

  Dylan proved to be right. The first morning that Melissa stepped outside to begin her business, a swarm of helpless masculinity with dirty clothes beat a path to her washtubs as if called by a siren's song. How word got around so quickly she didn't know. John Willis, her first customer, could not have been responsible for all of it.

  Certainly, any woman with a washtub and soap could go into the laundry business, and several had. But with thirty thousand people, mostly men, in and around Dawson, there was more than enough work for all.

  Even when Melissa had lived in Portland with her father and four brothers, she had never seen so much filthy, mud-caked laundry in her life. The long, sweltering day was an endless cycle of heating water, scrubbing, rinsing, and hanging wet wash. The area surrounding the back stairs became a cat's cradle of clothesline strung in every possible place, with clean shirts, pants, and underwear flapping in the breeze.

  To make things a bit easier for her, Dylan had broken down the sid
es of a tea crate to make flooring so she wouldn't have to stand in the mud. From another box he'd fashioned a little nook for Jenny that kept the baby within easy sight and reach. These were small blessings when she discovered how hard the work would be.

  To lessen the drudgery, and because Jenny seemed to like it so much, Melissa sang through most of her day. Although she kept her voice low, now and then miners would straggle down the side street to find its source, as had John Willis.

  It was in the middle of "Lorena," however, that she looked up to see three men standing in a triangle of shade near the building on the other side of the narrow street. Two of them brushed at their damp eyes self-consciously. The third blew his nose with a trumpeting honk on a large red handkerchief.

  Melissa cut off Lorena's sad lament in mid-verse, baffled.

  The man with the red hankie stepped forward. "You'll have to excuse us, ma'am. That song has made many a soldier and weary traveler homesick. I 'spect we're no different."

  She straightened and put her hands to her stiff back "Oh, dear, I'm sorry. Really, I'm just singing to my little girl. She doesn't know the song is sad."

  "But I bet she knows what an angel's singin' sounds like now," one of the other men said, his voice breaking slightly.

  At the extravagant compliment, Melissa felt herself blush and dropped her gaze back to the washtub. Heavens, what a fuss Dawson miners made over her little songs. She had lived her whole life trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible and didn't care for being the center of attention. The men moved along after that, but returned two hours later with their wash.

  *~*~*

  Curious, despite his resolve that Melissa's laundry business didn't concern him, Dylan found all kinds of reasons to walk by the side window in the store. He had a few dozen parade-size American flags nailed to sticks that he'd bought in time for the coming Independence Day—they'd make a good display right here in this empty keg near the window. Was it going to rain? he wondered a few minutes later, and ambled back to the glass to look out at the bright, cloudless sky. Shortly after checking on the weather, Dylan saw Sailor Bill Partridge walking by and was drawn to the window yet again. It was said that the man spent all of his money on clothes and that he never wore the same suit twice.