Harper's Bride

by Alexis Harrington

  "No, I guess not," she agreed. "I don't know if there's an answer." He felt her stroke his hair with a light, tentative touch that sent delicious soothing shivers down his back. Inexplicably, in this aftermath of death he felt a need to reaffirm his own existence and everything that made him a man. He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger to tip her face up to his. Her soft, pink mouth lay just within reach of his own, trembling slightly, moist.

  "Melissa," he murmured. "I . . ." But he had no more words. He had only the urge to feel her lips under his, and he pulled her to him to take her in a kiss. The instant they touched, warmth spread through Dylan that soon turned to fire, sweeping along his veins and melting the frost that lay on his heart from watching a man die.

  He put his arm around her waist and held her closer, while he probed the slick warm depths of her mouth with his tongue. A quiet little moan rose from her throat, stoking his arousal to a hard, insistent throb. She felt so good in his arms. He let his hand drift from her chin, down the side of her slender neck to her full breast, where he longed to lay his head.

  Drawing a deep breath, she threaded her arms around his neck and let her weight rest against him.

  Breaking the kiss, he trailed his lips down her throat where her pulse beat as swift as a bird's. Dylan didn't think he'd ever wanted a woman as much as he wanted Melissa right now. Shifting his weight, he took a step back and pulled her with him to rest against the length of his torso.

  The sharp sound of breaking glass interrupted them as effectively as a dousing of cold water. Melissa broke from his embrace and stared at something on the floor behind him. Turning, Dylan saw that he'd bumped into the whiskey bottle he'd left sitting on the edge of the table. Its shattered remains lay in a star-burst puddle of whiskey. The biting odor drifted up to them.

  "I wish you had taken that out of here," she cried, her hand at her mouth. She lifted angry gray eyes to his. "I hate that smell. Oh, God, I just hate it." The remnants of Dylan's passion fizzled away in the face of her outburst.

  She hurried to the sink and grabbed a towel. Then, in her best dress, she sank to her knees and blotted at the whiskey and broken glass.

  He touched her shoulder. "Melissa, I'll do that."

  She shook her head, but wouldn't look up at him. She had shut him out again, apparently for indulging a vice that reminded her of her father and her late husband.

  Reality intruded and shook Dylan. Elizabeth hadn't accepted him for what he was and had worked hard to change him. He wouldn't change for anyone, and he sure as hell wouldn't be forced to suffer for the sins of another man. "Then I'll go."

  Feeling as lost and alone as he had when he'd come up earlier, he stormed to the door, slamming it so hard the windowpanes rattled.

  Chapter Twelve

  Swiping angrily at tears that would not stop, Melissa took off the silk stockings and new chemise she'd bought, then changed into her everyday clothes. She moved woodenly, feeling as if the world and all its trials had settled on her shoulders. She wished she could go to bed and wake up in the morning to discover that the today's events—Rafe's death and the scene with Dylan—had been nothing more than a horrible nightmare.

  But too edgy and overwrought to sleep, she put her irons on the stove to heat, hoping that work would distract her. Dylan's hurtful words had reminded her of the importance of her original goal, to gain independence.

  He'd been right, of course. She'd had no right to tell him what to do—her own bad memories had gotten in the way of her judgment. And regardless of what they had told the world, and despite the fact that she sometimes caught herself thinking otherwise, Dylan was not her husband. His commitment to her and Jenny was a temporary one, and no amount of wishful thinking on her part would change that.

  How, then, had she let him kiss her, fondle her, as if she were a—a strumpet? Deep in her heart, though, Melissa didn't feel cheapened by his touch. Rather, she only longed for more. She had no explanation for the heat and wild yearning he'd evoked from her. The feel of his fingertips on her neck, his palm hot against her breast, his lips on her throat, gentle yet predatory and demanding, beckoning her in a way that she felt compelled to answer—she'd never known anything like it.

  Dipping her hand in a pan of water, she sprinkled a shirt and smoothed it flat on the board. The twill sizzled beneath the hot, heavy iron, raising a cloud of steam. Maybe she wouldn't really make Dylan a good wife anyway, she thought, her tears running faster. She'd driven him out of his own home to deal with his loss by himself.

  In the cradle Jenny's cranky wailing grew worse. Sighing, Melissa set the iron back on the stove and went to give the cradle a nudge to make it rock. It was so unlike the baby to be this cross, but everyone else here had had a hard day. Melissa supposed Jenny was entitled to one as well.

  But when Melissa picked up Jenny, the baby felt hot with fever, and instead of quieting, her squalls grew louder. Melissa touched frantic hands to the little girl's head and face.

  "Oh, God—oh, Jenny, honey. You're burning up!" No wonder she had been so irritable all afternoon.

  Melissa clutched the baby to her, uncertain of what to do. She had no experience in caring for a sick child—for all of her short life Jenny had been healthy. How she wished for a mother or grandmother or sister to consult, someone who could tell her what should be done. The baby in her arms was so hot—

  With only maternal instinct to guide her, she laid the baby in the center of the small table and snatched a washcloth and an enamel pan from the shelf. Hardly taking her eyes from Jenny, she hurried to the tin sink and pumped water into the basin.

  She charged back to the table, sloshing water on the floor. What was Jenny sick with? Melissa wondered as she wrung out the cloth to put on the baby's forehead. The town was full of illness and disease, and nowhere was it worse than in Lousetown across the river.

  Over there, the lights did not shine brightly. The wealth and excess of Dawson's Klondike Kings were absent. Sewage oozed through the narrow, muddy streets, spreading sickness. People without money, or the hope of escape, crowded together in tents and in squalid, makeshift dwellings. These luckless stampeders lived in filth and poverty, and died from typhoid and cholera. Maybe some contagion had found its way to Jenny. It might have even been one of Melissa's customers who had carried some miasma to her as she lay sleeping in her little nook.

  The cold compresses seemed to have no effect, and the baby's wails continued. Maybe she was hungry, Melissa thought. With shaking fingers she ripped at her bodice and sent buttons flying across the table. But again and again, Jenny turned her face from Melissa's breast, refusing to eat. She kept screaming, the likes of which Melissa had never heard from her before. She tried to soothe Jenny every way she could think of, but after nearly a half hour of more cold cloths and rocking, the little girl showed no improvement. If anything, she seemed worse.

  With Jenny in her arms, Melissa went to the open window and looked out on the twilit street below. There crowds still elbowed each other on their way to the saloons, dance halls, and the opera house. Her child needed a doctor, but Melissa didn't want to take her out, possibly exposing her to the chill night air or something else that might aggravate her condition.

  Perhaps she could hail someone on the street to send a doctor here. Scanning the passing faces for a likely rescuer, she saw a man with kind eyes. "Excuse me! Please, I need help!" she called down.

  But he didn't hear her and soon passed from view.

  "My little girl is sick—can someone bring a doctor?" No one looked up at her window. Two more tries with a louder voice yielded nothing. Apparently her words couldn't carry over the clash of voices and music and tramping feet.

  Whirling away from the window, she cursed herself for making Dylan leave. She'd never seen him drunk—so what if he'd stayed here and had a drink or two? It seemed so trivial now in the face of this calamity. Jenny's life was in danger.

  Her only remaining choice was to go down to the street and stop
someone. Melissa carried Jenny back to her cradle, then ran to the door and flew down the steps, nearly tripping on her cumbersome skirts.

  Emerging from the side street, she almost collided with a young man pulling a tired-looking mule behind him. His face was familiar, and she recalled that she had done laundry for him once.

  "Whoa, careful there, ma'am." He shot out a hand to steady her, then his eyes dropped to her open bodice.

  Too frantic for much modesty, with a trembling hand Melissa dragged the-edges of her dress together to cover her camisole. "Oh please," she babbled. "Please, I need help for my little girl. She's burning up with fever. Can you get a doctor?"

  Apparently galvanized by her urgency, he tugged at the brim of his hat and nodded shortly. "Yes, ma'am! I'll find Doc Garvin. He fixed me up when I caught my hand chopping wood." He held up a hand that was missing its index finger. "Come on, Susannah," he said and tugged on the mule's lead to get it started.

  Melissa turned and ran back up the stairs to Jenny. When she flung open the door, the baby was still yelling, but Melissa thought she sounded weaker. She picked her up and pressed her hot, silky head to her own cheek.

  "Help is coming, button. The doctor is coming." Jenny was so small, so new—her life hadn't even begun yet. Melissa struggled to hold a demon of fear at bay, the one that whispered to her that babies died every day. Fevers, measles, influenza and more—they snatched away young lives to leave behind heartbroken mothers and gray-faced fathers.

  No, not her child, God, she prayed fiercely. Not her Jenny. If she were taken, Melissa thought she might as well be dead too.

  If she lost her baby, she would have no one.

  *~*~*

  Dylan sat with Seamus McGinty at the back table in the Yukon Girl Saloon. The place was as busy as any other night, and a dense layer of tobacco smoke hung over the crowd of gambling, drinking, dancing miners. Dylan couldn't decide if Rafe would have appreciated this atmosphere for his wake, but for his own part, he wished he had somewhere else to go.

  After trying to remember the number of times Rafe Dubois had sat at this very table, Seamus had declared that no one would be allowed to sit at this shrine henceforth. Then the husky, blue-eyed Irishman had required Dylan to witness that oath with a shot from his cherished bottle of poteen. Angel's tears, Seamus called it, and had drunk nearly half of it lamenting the news of Rafe's passing.

  Dylan thought he'd never seen a man who so enjoyed mourning.

  "Angel's tears, Dylan," he repeated, and lifted his glass, "to send him off proper, and may God speed him on his way. Jaysus, they're crying in heaven tonight, they are."

  "I think you're right, Seamus." Dylan raised his glass too, but he still nursed his first drink. The Irish moonshine was powerful stuff that tasted as if it could blister a man's insides.

  He really wished he could get foolishly, insensibly drunk, to forget about Rafe's death and Melissa's shrewish rejection that had driven him to sit here with McGinty when he'd have rather been with her. What the hell did she want from him, anyway? He'd done everything he could for her, given the circumstances, and still she had made him leave.

  But mingled with the dull anger over being banished from his own home was the memory of Melissa in his arms—soft, warm, and so damned womanly he'd wanted to carry her to his bed right then and there. To show her how a man—a real man—made love to a woman, wild but tender, conquering her not with brute force, but with her own desire. Just the thought sent the blood coursing to his groin again.

  "Dylan, man," Seamus said, interrupting his thoughts, "will ye be drinking that poteen or sipping at it like a kid with a sarsaparilla?"

  Dylan looked at his glass and picked it up. "What the hell," he muttered, "she's already mad at me." He held the glass to his mouth, ready to pour the fiery liquor down his throat, when a miner elbowed his way through the crowd to the table.

  "Hey, McGinty, have you seen Doc Garvin?" he panted.

  The Irishman looked him up and down, amusement mingling with his tragic expression of mourning. "What's your hurry, son? You lose another finger?"

  The miner shook his head, then pointed over his shoulder. "I need to find him for that singing laundry lady. Her baby is ailing."

  Dylan froze, his fingers locked around his glass. "The singing laundry lady? The one next door?"

  The miner nodded. "Yeah, that's her. She flew down her stairs and stopped me on the street, looking as pale and wild-haired as a ghost. She said her little girl is sick with a fever."

  Gripped by the greatest terror he'd ever known, Dylan jumped from his chair and knocked it over. His heart pounded in his chest, and adrenaline sent a prickly feeling shooting down his arms and legs. He whirled to face Seamus. "Is Garvin in here?"

  "Yeah, I think he's at a table by the window, eating his dinner," McGinty replied, looking stunned as well.

  Dylan plowed back through the crowd with the miner on his heels. Several tables were lined up along the front windows, and all of them were occupied.

  "Which one is he?" Dylan demanded, dutching the miner's sleeve.

  The other man peered at the faces of the diners. "I-I'm not sure now. I haven't seen him for a while, and I was pretty shook up at the time, getting my finger chopped off and all."

  Impatient, Dylan turned away. "Doc Garvin," he thundered. His voice carried over the blur of all the other conversations, rising above the din of the piano amid shuffling feet and clinking glasses. The noisy saloon fell silent. "Is Dr. Garvin here?"

  At the farthest table, a customer with a weary youngster's face held up his hand. "I'm Dr. Garvin."

  Dylan didn't want to insult the man by voicing his first impression, but despite his formal suit Garvin appeared to be no older than sixteen. Dylan looked at the miner for confirmation.

  "Yessir, that's him."

  Dylan strode forward. "There's a sick baby who needs your help."

  Dr. Garvin nodded, then gestured at his barely touched chicken dinner. "I'll be right with you as soon as I finish eating."

  Dylan clamped his hand on the man's wrist. "I'm sorry to interrupt your dinner, Doc, but I need you to come with me now. That little girl won't wait."

  Dr. Garvin glanced at Dylan, then at the long knife tied to his thigh. Tossing his fork onto his plate, he wiped his hands on his napkin and picked up his bag from the opposite chair.

  "Very well, then. Let's go."

  *~*~*

  When Dylan led Dr. Garvin up the dusk-shrouded stairs, the first thing he heard was a peculiar squalling sound coming from the other side of the door. It was a baby's cry, sort of, but so unlike anything he'd heard from Jenny, he wondered if there was a mountain lion cub inside.

  Dylan opened the door, and he saw Melissa, pacing in a circle with the baby clutched to her. She looked ashen, and her hair hung in fine, pale strands around her face, just as the miner had said. The front of her dress gaped open, revealing her plain camisole beneath.

  As soon as she saw him, she stopped. Her earlier anger was gone, and the terror he felt in his own heart was written on her face. "Oh, Dylan, Jenny is sick with something—she has a fever and—"

  He gripped her shoulders lightly. "I know, honey, I heard about it. I brought Dr. Garvin."

  She pulled away from his hands and lurched toward the young man following behind, apparently just now seeing him. The agony of fear and heartbreak was in her voice. "Doctor, please—you must save my child. She won't eat and she's burning with fever. It just started today."

  Putting down his bag, Dr. Garvin took off his coat and draped it over the back of one of the chairs. "Bring her to the table, madam, and also a lamp if you have one."

  Dylan grabbed the oil lamp from the small table near the window. Melissa hovered at the edge of its light, her trembling hands tightly interlaced at her mouth.

  Dr. Garvin appeared calm, and he made comforting noises as he poked and prodded the screaming Jenny, who thrashed and kicked, but his grave expression gave Dylan another icy knot in his
stomach. It was the same feeling he'd had this afternoon when he'd seen Rafe. Then the doctor unbuttoned the baby's dress to reveal an angry red rash on her chest.

  "Oh, dear God," Melissa gasped. Dylan felt as if his heart had plummeted to his feet.

  "Her temperature is one hundred and five," the doctor said. Melissa moaned and Dylan winced. "But children her age routinely get and survive high fevers that would be much harder on an adult. Her pulse is very rapid, though."

  "But what's wrong with her? Is it measles?" Melissa asked.

  The young doctor shook his head. "No, I believe she has scarlet fever. Everything points to it—the sudden onset, her high fever and pulse. Her throat is inflamed, and now this rash— Some people call the fever scarlatina."

  "Scarlatina," Melissa repeated parrotlike. "Scarlatina." For a moment she looked so dazed Dylan thought she might faint. He put his hand under her elbow, meaning to catch her if she did.

  "How would she get this fever, Doc?" Dylan asked. "I haven't heard of anyone being sick with it around here."

  Dr. Garvin wrapped up Jenny again and put her in Melissa's arms. "It's hard to say. Obviously she came in contact with it somehow. The contagion can cling to rooms and clothing with great tenacity. It's more common in children than adults, and I can't say I've seen much of it in Dawson. But there are people from all over the world in this town, and there are a lot of other fevers here, too. I'm really not surprised by this."

  "You say it's carried on clothes?" Melissa asked, her voice high and tight.

  "It can be."

  Dylan saw her stricken look, and his heart clenched in his chest. She would blame herself for the baby's fever.

  "B-but she'll get well?" Melissa asked. "You have medicine you can give her?"

  The doctor sighed. "Ma'am, I believe you'd rather I tell you the truth than a lie."

  She nodded her head almost imperceptibly. "Scarlatina often has a bad outcome. And the medications I'd give to a grown man would kill a baby." What little color that remained in Melissa's face drained away.