Harper's Bride

by Alexis Harrington

  Dylan could tell himself that he wasn't paying a whit of attention to Melissa, but in his trips to the window if he leaned against the right side of the frame he could see her working there. And he did that often. Her back was to him as she hung shirts on a clothesline, showing off her slim waist and back. Her long braid swung like a hypnotic pendulum over her gently rounded hips. He imagined his hands on those hips, warm beneath his touch while she arched her back against his chest. With the thought came swift, hot arousal that carried his imagination further. He inhaled the sweet scent of her hair and grazed her neck with soft, slow kisses that made her sigh and realize she need not fear him—

  "Dylan, have you gone deef or what?"

  Jolted out of his daydream, Dylan swung around to see Ned Tanner standing at his counter.

  "Sorry, Ned, I didn't hear you come in," he said and left the window, hoping his face didn't look as red as it felt.

  "I came by for more nails. How much are they today?" Ned Tanner had come to Dawson with the first wave of people last fall, arriving just as winter descended upon the North, closing the rivers with ice. He'd opened his restaurant in a tent and had done so well that he now was expanding to a new building on Front Street. Homely, with a pronounced overbite, oiled hair, and a personality to match, he fancied himself to be something of a ladies' man, a notion that gave Rafe Dubois no end of amusement.

  "Same as last time, seven dollars a pound," Dylan said on his way to the storeroom to fetch a fifty-pound keg.

  "That's what I like about you, Dylan," Ned called. "You keep your prices the same even though other folks are raising theirs. Competition, they call it. I call it thievery."

  Dylan carried the nail keg out on his shoulder and set it down next to Ned. "That works for them, I guess. But I paid the same for this keg as the last one I sold you, so I'm charging you the same. I do well enough in this store without getting greedy."

  Ned pointed at the side window. "Say, it looks like you've branched out some, though. Who's that little gal you got running your laundry business for you outside?"

  Dylan stepped behind the counter and put weights in one pan of his gold scales. "It's not my business, it's hers. That'll be three hundred and fifty dollars for the nails."

  Ned brightened up. "Well, a woman of enterprise. She sure is a pretty little thing, and she sings nice, too." He handed Dylan his poke, the same kind of leather pouch that everyone in Dawson used to carry their gold.

  "Yeah, I guess," Dylan muttered, not certain he liked the eager gleam he saw in the man's eye.

  Ned reached up to straighten his tie, then ran a finger over his enormous mustache to smooth it. "There aren't many females up here that look so nice. And she's an ambitious one, too. I might be interested in making the acquaintance of a woman like her."

  "Go talk to Belinda Mulrooney. She's plenty ambitious."

  Ned shuddered. "Naw, Belinda is too danged outspoken and too smart for her own good. She'll never catch a husband—a man doesn't like to feel as if his wife knows more than him,"

  Dylan laughed. Ned might have a hard time finding one who didn't. "I guess it would depend on how smart the man is. It sounds like you want a woman who'll work hard, hand her money over to you, and keep her mouth shut."

  Ned grinned. "The idea sure has its charm, doesn't it? Now what did you say that little gal's name was?"

  Dylan pictured Melissa out there, scrubbing clothes and talking to every damned miner in Dawson. "Her name is Mrs. Harper." He told himself that he was only protecting her from pests like Ned Tanner, but the truth of it was that a surge of unaccountable jealousy boiled up inside him. He didn't like the feeling, but there it was. "And I'd advise you to forget about 'making her acquaintance.' "

  "She's married?"

  "Yeah" Dylan leaned across the counter. "To me." The man laughed. "That's a good one, Dylan."

  "I'm not joking."

  Ned stared at him, mouth agape and buckteeth well displayed. "N-no, I see that. No disrespect intended, Dylan," he mumbled, his face tomato red. "Hell, nobody around here heard that you took a wife."

  "Now you know."

  In that moment Dylan thought that maybe everyone else should know it, too. Melissa might get the sign she had talked about, after all. It would put a damned quick end to notions like Ned Tanner's.

  Mrs. Harper’s Laundry

  *~*~*

  "Good afternoon, Mrs. Harper."

  Melissa looked up from the blue work shirt on her scrub board to find Rafe Dubois standing there.

  "Mr. Dubois, how nice to see you." She had a special fondness for the lawyer, especially since he'd liberated her from Coy. Further, she enjoyed his elegant manners and turn of phrase. They were so different from what she was accustomed to. Coy would have made some derisive remark about his "ten-dollar words," given the chance to express his opinion.

  "I must admit that I'm a bit surprised you've undertaken this venture."

  "I'm not sure you should be," she replied, taking up the shirt again. "Women have always worked. I've always worked. This time I'd like to be paid for it."

  Rafe lowered himself to an upended packing crate that served as her guest chair, moving as if his every joint ached. Then considering her for a moment, he nodded and chuckled. "I suppose you're right. You must forgive me—I'm from a part of the world where women do indeed work hard, sometimes from morning until long after sunset. But custom prevents them from allowing it to show. In fact, they would be considered unladylike if they did. Rather, they are to be viewed as delicate flowers who tire easily, faint with little provocation, and must be sheltered from the world. They retire to shuttered porches and sitting rooms in the heat of the day, to do fine needlework or sip tea." He laughed again. "I was stunned to discover just how strong many of the fair gender can be."

  She wasn't surprised by his veiled objection to her laundry business. She'd sensed his disapproval yesterday. Plunging the shirt into clear rinse water, she laughed. "Mr. Dubois, if women sat on their tuffets like Miss Muffett, sewing a fine seam and drinking tea, not much would get done. There would be no clothes washed or meals cooked or children reared." Wringing out the shirt, she flung it over the clothesline and groped in her pocket for clothespins.

  Rafe gestured at the crowd moving in both directions on Front Street. "But in a frontier mining town, the public location of your business might create a problem for you."

  She took a clothespin out of her mouth. "Mr. Dubois, I hope you know how much I appreciate everything you and Dylan have done for Jenny and me. I don't know what might have happened to us if not for you both. But I don't want to have to depend on anyone except myself." She faltered a moment, hating the little catch she heard in her voice. "Dylan has plans for his future that don't have anything to do with us. He's told me that he'll leave here when he's had enough of it. Where will that leave us if I don't do something now? To be alone in the world with a child to care for, and no way to do it . . ." She couldn't finish the sentence.

  Rafe glanced at Jenny, sleeping in her little nook, then rose stiffly from his seat. "I certainly see your point, dear madam." He patted her arm, then turned to leave. "I see your point."

  *~*~*

  By the end of the day the front of Melissa's dress was wet from waist to knees, her back ached as if it would snap, and her hands were chapped. Except for quick breaks to tend the baby and have lunch herself, she had worked twelve hours.

  At seven in the evening, under a sun as bright as midafternoon back home, she trudged upstairs with Dylan's clothes and a bundle of ironing in one arm, and Jenny in the other. She felt almost as weary as she had the day she'd crossed Chilkoot Pass on the journey up here. The muscles in her shoulders and arms ached from the scrubbing and wringing, and her hands shook a bit from the strain.

  But even in her exhaustion she smiled to herself. Inside her apron pocket was a small leather pouch that contained nearly forty dollars in gold dust. And that was something she hadn't gotten for crossing the pass. Forty doll
ars! Back home, laborers received about a dollar and a quarter a day.

  In her whole life Melissa had never had more than a dollar she could call her own. This gold dust she had earned herself, and no one would drink it up or take it from her.

  Unless, of course, Dylan Harper took a mind to do just that. At the thought, Melissa pressed a protective hand over the bulge in her pocket, knowing even as she did that she wouldn't stand a prayer against him if he decided to take her money. Or anything else, for that matter. He was a big, strapping man—every inch of him hardened to lean muscle by hard work. She would do well to remember that he held the upper hand in their arrangement, and that he could change the rules to suit him anytime he wanted.

  It wasn't a pleasant thought. Yet, even so, Melissa couldn't help but recall how kind he'd been to her thus far. Until fate had flung her into Dylan's path, she'd believed that the years of grinding poverty had nearly smothered out all the hope in her, and that her marriage to Coy had finished the job. But she felt hope stirring again, coming to life after years of silence. Maybe today was just the beginning of something a bit better.

  "We're going to be all right, little Jenny," she whispered to the sleeping baby, then kissed her silky cheek. "I think we might be all right."

  Apparently all the activity and new sights had worn out the little girl, because she slept the deep, untroubled sleep of childhood. Melissa couldn't help but smile. The baby's tender mouth made suckling motions, but otherwise she was far away in a dreamy landscape.

  Inside the small room Melissa dumped the load of dry wash on the bed and put Jenny down in her crate. Dylan hadn't come upstairs yet, and she was relieved he hadn't. With all the goings on, she hadn't given a thought to dinner yet. Heavens, she hadn't even stoked the fire in the stove.

  Eyeing the kitchen chair with yearning, she decided to sit for a moment, just to take the ache out of her back. But she didn't have time to dawdle—if Dylan's meals weren't ready when he wanted them, or if she didn't do the other chores he expected of her, she worried that he'd put an end to her business. She couldn't risk that.

  After a brief rest Melissa hurried to the bed to sort out and fold Dylan's clothes. Holding up one of his shirts, she paused to study it. She let her hand skim over the fabric and envisioned the span of his shoulders, the length of his torso. Putting the shirt aside to be ironed, she picked up a pair of his denims, lean-waisted and long-legged.

  She knew so little about the man who wore these clothes. Outwardly, he was handsome, rugged, and tall. His features were even and well proportioned. But what life he'd come from and why he was here were mysteries to her. He'd been in Dawson before the gold rush began, so Klondike fever hadn't been what brought him North.

  He was by turns, gentle and savage. He had taken her in when he didn't have to, and in doing so had let Coy, a worthless deadbeat, wriggle out of a large debt that Dylan didn't expect to be repaid. Yet when a man in his store had attacked his integrity, his reaction had been swift, violent, and frightening.

  But the one thing Melissa found the most troubling was her growing attraction to Dylan. She told herself it was only a silly, girlish infatuation for the man because he'd been kind to her and Jenny. That he was almost as fearsome as he'd been the first day she met him. And the arguments nearly worked. But not quite.

  Something in her made her breath catch when Dylan was near. And it wasn't giggling or girlish at all.

  Impatiently, Melissa shook off the thoughts and hastily folded his shirts and jeans. Her most important task was to keep her mind on her own business and her future a tall, blond man was not part of either. Nor were she and Jenny part of his plans. He'd made that clear from the beginning, and after all, legally she was still bound to Coy.

  She carried Dylan's clothes to the big trunk at the end of the bed, where he stowed his belongings. Lifting the lid released the heavily masculine scents of buckskin and shaving soap that she found alluring. It was like sniffing freshly ground coffee, or the sweet odor of pipe tobacco. Inside, she discovered the usually neat contents in a tangled hodgepodge of drawers, socks, pants, shirts, and long johns. She remembered his plowing through the trunk early this morning. He'd dressed in a hurry to meet a steamer captain down at the waterfront.

  She was tempted to leave this mess as she'd found it. She had worked hard all day, and this was an extra chore she didn't want. But she couldn't very well throw tidy things on top of the jumble and slam the lid closed. Sighing, she knelt in front of the trunk and began repacking everything. When she pulled out a pair of buckskins, something metallic fell out of their folds and clattered to the floor.

  Glancing down, she saw a small oval picture frame lying on the planking. It held a photograph of a beautiful dark-haired young woman. Slowly, Melissa picked it up to study it. The woman wore her hair up, but the style couldn't disguise its rich, heavy waves. The low-cut neckline of her gown revealed a long, slim throat graced with a strand of pearls. Matching pearl eardrops hung from her small lobes, and in her face, captured for all time by the photographer, Melissa saw supreme self-confidence. She looked like a woman who had never asked for a man's permission in her life, and was accustomed to having her own way.

  Melissa sat back on her heels. A sweetheart? she wondered. A wife? That was an unsettling thought, but of course, it was possible. Many of the men up here had left behind wives and families. The picture frame itself was silver, wrought with intricate detail that bespoke the photograph's importance. But as Melissa considered the woman's image, she thought that something about her seemed slightly off kilter.

  Beautiful though she was, she didn't look as if she were the type to attract Dylan Harper. She didn't know why; if she'd thought she knew little about Dylan before, now she felt even more ignorant.

  Melissa wiped the glass with the hem of her apron and examined the picture again. Had he held this woman's hand? Stroked the curve of her cheek with a gentle touch? Almost unconsciously, Melissa reached up to graze her fingertips over the nearly healed bruise on her own cheek.

  Had he held her in his arms and kissed her? Suddenly, the door opened and Melissa, still kneeling before the trunk with the photograph clutched in her hand, looked up to find Dylan towering over her. She'd been so engrossed with her own thoughts, she hadn't heard him come up the stairs. Flooded with guilt and frozen by spontaneous terror, she felt the hot blood of embarrassment fill her cheeks.

  He was a giant glaring down at her—a wild, frowning man with a long torso set upon longer legs. "Did you find what you were looking for, Melissa?"

  She glanced at the pile of clothes, and then at the photograph as if seeing it for the first time. She realized how this must look—as if she were snooping through his belongings, and, oh, God, maybe even stealing something. Hastily, she dropped the picture frame back into the trunk as though it were a burning coal.

  "I—" she began, but her voice was just a dry croak. Her throat felt as if it were closing. She gripped one of his shirts that she'd washed earlier and held it out. "I was just folding your things. Th-they were all— I wasn't prying! Truly I wasn't. The photograph was tangled in your clothes and it fell out." To her horror, she felt her eyes begin to sting with rising tears. She was so tired, she didn't have much strength to completely stop them, so she turned her head and quickly brushed them away.

  He took the shirt from her and stuffed it into the trunk along with everything else, then dropped the lid. "From now on, leave my clothes out. I'll put them away," he said, his voice deadly quiet.

  She looked at his set, blank face, but could see nothing there, not accusation, not clemency. It was as if his thoughts were far away. Miserable, she nodded and rose from her knees to begin dinner.

  Dylan flopped on the bed and sighed, his stomach drawing into a knot. Plainly, she was still afraid of him, but he hadn't meant to scare her.

  She wasn't being nosy, he supposed, but he didn't like her poking around in his gear. He might not have minded so much if she hadn't dug up that photograph.


  He hadn't looked at Elizabeth's picture since the night he threw it in his with his clothes almost three years ago, and he wished he hadn't seen it just now. He still remembered that night so clearly—Griff Harper ordering him off the property, the hired hands scurrying for the bunkhouse in the face of that final, and ugliest, explosive family battle. After gathering up his belongings in a fit of white-hot fury, Dylan had gotten on his horse and galloped through the moonlight down to the dock in town to wait for the steamboat that would carry him downriver and away from The Dalles. Before he'd left, he paid a kid to take his gelding back to the house; he'd wanted nothing that Griff Harper thought belonged to him.

  Dylan had managed to bury most of the memories, but not the one of beautiful, scheming Elizabeth. It was dumb, he supposed, to hang onto her photograph. It only reminded him of what a damned fool he'd been to let himself fall prey to her manipulating. But she had been so good at it, so accomplished, he never once suspected that she didn't care about him.

  Ned Tanner didn't want a woman who was smarter than he was? He had news for Ned—there were far worse trials a woman could heap upon a man, and no one knew that better than Dylan.

  He glanced up at Melissa as she peeled potatoes. "How did your first day go?" he asked, breaking the silence.

  Keeping her back to him, she pumped water into the pot holding the quartered potatoes. Her movements were guarded, as if her arms were stiff. He wondered if she might be sore from the unaccustomed work.

  "I washed a lot of clothes."

  Dylan already knew that. He tried to imagine Elizabeth standing over a washtub for hours, doing laundry for less-than-fastidious miners, but the picture wouldn't even form in his mind.