I do, I do, I do

by Maggie Osborne

  Was she free to accept his invitation? A frown tugged Zoe's mouth and brow, and she pressed her wedding ring through her glove. Exactly how married was she? She didn't know what the legalities might be, but the facts were that she had exchanged marriage vows with a man who was not dead and whom she had not divorced. She had a husband looking for gold somewhere out there in the Klondike wilderness.

  "Zoe?"

  "I'm thinking about it."

  A slow smile lifted one corner of his lips. "This isn't a difficult decision."

  "Actually, it is."

  "Do you have other pressing matters? Appointments? Engagements? Urgent tasks?"

  He knew she didn't have a thing to do except wait for his Indians to finish relaying the outfits from Canyon City to Sheep Camp. "Are other people going with us to view the glaciers?"

  "No."

  She pushed at the fingers of her gloves and then brushed at her skirt. Certainly she was beyond the age and innocence of needing a chaperon. But a married woman didn't go off in private with a single man, not if maintaining her good name and reputation were important to her.

  But no one except Juliette and Clara knew that Zoe was married. And no one knew exactly how married she might be. All three marriages couldn't count. So did Jean Jacques's first marriage to Juliette count the most, or did his last marriage to her count the most?

  "I brought fresh fish pulled out of the Taiya this very morning. Potatoes for roasting. Biscuits made with my secret recipe. And for the finish, bread pudding with raisins. Will that help you make up your mind? "

  When she saw his grin, she laughed at how silly she must appear from his viewpoint. Tom was a family friend; they had known each other since childhood. Where was the harm in spending an afternoon together? He might well have invited her to accompany him to examine the glaciers even if he'd known that she was Mrs. Jean Jacques Villette. His invitation was a gesture of friendship, not courtship.

  "I'd love to see the glaciers," she said.

  "Good. What finally made up your mind? Was it my legendary biscuits or my devastating smile?"

  "Neither," she said, laughing up at him. "I've started a letter home, and I'm telling Ma that I've run into you. She'll want to know all about your packing business, how long you've been in Alaska, and what are your plans for the future. I don't dare mail my letter without including your news."

  She hoped that mentioning Tom would soften Ma's shock at learning that her only daughter was in the Yukon chasing after a no-good husband. She hadn't mentioned the no-good part, but Ma would read between the lines and suspect that all was not as it should be in Zoe's marriage. A few hints would prepare the way for future shocks and revelations.

  "Be sure to post any mail before you leave Sheep Camp. From here on, mail delivery will be spotty at best and more likely nonexistent." Tom nudged the gelding close to the rock and instructed Zoe to stand and jump on behind him.

  Zoe hesitated only a minute, then raised her skirt high enough to swing a leg over and plop herself behind him. He kept his gaze steadfastly forward, and if he caught a glimpse of the heavy woolen knickers beneath her skirt, he gave no sign.

  They rode away from the river and up a sparsely wooded slope. Once this side of the divide had been thickly forested, but now the trees had gone up in smoke, having fueled thousands of campfires since the gold rush began.

  After almost sliding off the horse, Zoe stopped being silly and wrapped her arms around Tom's waist and hung on. He stiffened when she first touched him and then relaxed as if having her arms around him was the most natural thing in the world. In truth, she really didn't feel much of his body—mostly she felt and pressed against the heavy weatherproofed duster he wore.

  They zigzagged up and up and up until the tents and telegraph poles were lost to view beneath layers of smoke and low-lying clouds.

  "Can you hear the glaciers?" Tom asked after a while.

  "I think so." A faint, eerie creaking made gooseflesh stand up on her skin. And she knew she would never be able to describe the ghostly groan of the glaciers grinding forward at a slow, inexorable pace.

  Awed by the sheer frozen mass, Zoe didn't speak when Tom reined inside the blue shadow of an ice wall and then helped her to the ground.

  "How long has this glacier been a glacier?"

  "Why are you whispering?"

  "I don't know," she said, taking a cloth from him and spreading it over the flattest boulder she could find. One day years and years from now, this boulder would be engulfed by the glacier. No memory of their picnic would remain.

  While Tom built a fire with wood he'd brought from below, he told her what he knew about glaciers, and Zoe listened carefully so she could tell Ma in her letter.

  "Are you cold?" he asked at the finish.

  "A little," she admitted.

  "Pull on your nose, that will warm it."

  Laughing, she did as he suggested. "Would you like some help preparing our lunch?"

  "Nope. I invited you." After explaining that the two large potatoes were partially cooked already, he pushed them into the coals beneath the flames. "There's hot beer in my canteen."

  She didn't think she'd like hot beer, but it turned out she did. She suspected she would have welcomed anything warm.

  They touched their mugs together, and Tom said, "Here's to old friends, the best friends." He gazed into her eyes and continued looking at her while he took a swallow of the beer. "You're still the prettiest girl in Newcastle."

  "This isn't Newcastle," she said. But she blushed with pleasure. "Ma used to say, 'that Price boy could talk an angel out of her wings.' " Zoe smiled. "It was a compliment to you and maybe a warning to me."

  Immediately she regretted passing along Ma's comment, which seemed to link them together in a way she hadn't intended. Uncharacteristically flustered, she set out plates and utensils.

  "Did you bring salt?"

  "Salt and butter for the potatoes are in my saddlebags."

  "Butter?"

  "Enjoy it. Butter is going to get very scarce, and it will cost the earth if you do find any."

  While they waited for the potatoes to finish baking, they sat on rocks in the shadow of the glacier and drank hot beer.

  "Tell me what you're doing in Alaska, Tom Price."

  "You probably know that I went into the mine about the same time as your brother Jack. I worked there for a few years," he said, refilling their mugs from the canteen. "I told myself I'd get out, leave Newcastle and seek my fortune elsewhere, but I didn't do it. My friends were in Newcastle, and that was more important. Eventually I moved into one of the houses on Shaft D Lane, and I started accumulating debt at the company store."

  "My family knows about that."

  "You remember Saturday nights."

  "Payday."

  "The night for drinking, fighting, and carousing." He smiled and shrugged. "Well, a bunch of us were at Ned's place, and I'll admit I'd had a few. Some company men came in, and after a while they asked if we were the skags who were talking strike. One thing led to another and—"

  "—And a brawl erupted," Zoe finished for him. She'd heard depressingly similar stories every weekend during her growing-up years. And helped Ma doctor the black eyes and split lips, cuts and bruises, and scraped knuckles.

  Tom nodded. "Turns out I gave better than I got. Seems I damned near killed one of the company men. Which meant the end of my days at the mine. I had to forfeit my last pay packet, got tossed out of the house on Shaft D Lane, and I was given thirty days to clear my debt at the company store or go to jail."

  "I think Jack told me about this." The story was coming back to her as Tom related it.

  He sat with his legs apart, an elbow on the flat boulder, and his hat thumbed to the back of his head. Dark curls dropped on his forehead.

  "Times were hard, and people talked about a national depression. I couldn't find work in Seattle. At the end of thirty days, I stowed away on a Russian trawler. I thought I'd end in the Orient somewh
ere, but the Russians came up here." He shrugged again. "I fished with the Russians for a while, made enough money to clear my debt back home. Eventually I bought a boat and started fishing for myself."

  Zoe tried to imagine him as a seaman, captaining his own outfit. She had no difficulty picturing him at the helm of a fishing boat. Tom was the type of man who would be successful at whatever he undertook, particularly if he was the man in control. She suspected he made a better employer than employee.

  "When the stampede to the Yukon began, I saw an opportunity. Not to join the prospectors, but to help them get where they're going. So 1 leased out my boat and started packing." He met her gaze. "I've made a fortune, Zoe." He shook his head and laughed.

  "A fortune," she repeated in a low voice.

  "Well, not a fortune like the Van Hootens have. I wouldn't say I'm wealthy, but I've put aside enough to buy a house and business when the stampede ends or after they get the train over the pass at Skagway, probably next year. I own a boat, a business, and I have investments. I'm proud of that."

  "I'm proud for you," she said softly, staring at his fingernails. His nails were clean; there was no black miner's line. He had broken away from Newcastle, and he had prospered. Maybe fate had placed him in her path to underscore the extent of her pride and stupidity. She had waited for dross when gold had been right under her nose.

  "Stay here while I check on the potatoes. Sorry to bore you with the long version of the Tom Price story."

  "I wasn't bored." She watched him prepare the fish for grilling and supposed his cooking expertise came from camping. "Tom? Do you think you would have gotten out of Newcastle if the brawl with the company men hadn't happened?"

  "I doubt it. Why would I? Everything and everyone who's important to me is in Newcastle." He shrugged, turned the fish on the grill over the fire. "Ma and two of my sisters still live in the hollow. My pa is buried on the hill. Given my druthers, I would have stayed in Newcastle."

  Zoe gasped, and her spine snapped upright. "With all your prosperity and your accomplishments—you'd rather be working at the mine in Newcastle?"

  "Conditions at the mine improve a little every year. Still, it's a hard life, I know that. But no man works alone. You have your mates there with you. And friends to share a pint after the whistle blows the shift change. There's Saturday nights at Ned's Place and sometimes a dance. And Sunday morning in the Price pew or explain to the Reverend Greer why not." He smiled.

  "I don't believe this. Everyone in Newcastle wants out except you." She stared at him.

  He studied her face with a curious expression. "Do you really believe that?"

  "Of course I do! You're a perfect example of why people want to leave. You couldn't have made your fortune in Newcastle!"

  Tom placed the fish on plates, added the potatoes, and heaped biscuits on the side. After serving Zoe and emptying the canteen into their beer mugs, he sat across from her at the flat rock.

  "I'm glad I've prospered," he said after a minute. "I'll have things and I'll live a life I couldn't have lived if I'd remained in Newcastle and worked at the mine. But I've paid a price, Zoe. These have been lonely years. I don't have a wife and family like Jack does or like other friends do. I know a lot of people up here, but I don't know any of them well enough to tell them the story I just told you. Or to expect they would care if they heard it."

  "But you've made something of yourself," Zoe argued. "You're better than you would have been if you'd stayed home."

  His brow lifted, and he tilted his head. "I'm different, not better. I'm different because I've had experiences I couldn't have had in Newcastle. But I'm the same person I was, and I'd be that person no matter where I lived. Same as you."

  That's what she hated and what she fought against. The idea that Newcastle was part of her, like ground-in dirt, and it always would be. "Don't you remember the Owner's Day Parade? They still have that parade, Tom. All the owner's friends and colleagues driving past in their fancy carriages, looking at us like we're trash, like we're there for their amusement." A long violent shudder shook down her spine. "I want to be better than trash. Better than someone to pity and laugh at."

  "Why do you care what those people think? No one can make you feel diminished, Zoe, unless you let them doit."

  "You're wrong," she said flatly. "But that isn't the point. The point is to improve yourself. I believe that people can overcome their backgrounds. I believe people can better themselves through education, or hard work, or… marriage." Her cheeks grew hot. Marrying to improve her lot hadn't worked out for her, but for some it might be a successful tactic. Tactic? No. She had married Jean Jacques because she'd believed she loved him. She felt sure of that.

  Tom considered her comments. "You might better your finances or your position, but I don't think you make yourself a better person by accumulating money or learning more or by marrying well. We are who we are, and that's a mixture of the values we grew up with and our experiences and what we believe in and what we think is important. These values don't change with more education or harder work or a brilliant match."

  He looked at her across the cloth spread atop the boulder. "And a person's values don't change with the scenery. If you're a loyal person in Newcastle, you'll be a loyal person in New York City. If you're honest in Newcastle, you'll be honest in Alaska." His gaze met hers. "You and me, we're never going to welcome debt, Zoe. We'll always remember our families scraping to pay the company store. That's going to be true no matter where we are in life or what we're doing or who we're married to. That's just one example of who we are, and an example of the Newcastle in us. And it's not a bad thing. You'll find good people and solid values in Newcastle. I don't see Newcastle as a background we have to 'overcome,' as you put it."

  "Are you telling me that you didn't care about those people looking at you like you were a worthless piece of trash?"

  "I'm telling you that I don't accept their opinion, if that's what their opinion is. I know the people at home. Those swells in the parade don't know anyone in Newcastle except the mine owner. When it comes to my friends and neighbors, I trust my own opinion more than anyone else's."

  "Since you're so enamored of the place, maybe that's where you should buy a house and business when the Yukon boom goes bust and you return to the outside." Her voice snapped and crackled in the cold air. "But I'm never going back to Newcastle."

  Tom laughed. "I'll always have ties to home, but Newcastle is strictly a company town, and I don't aim to buck the company again." They finished their lunch in silence, then he said, "So, Zoe Wilder. Why are you in Alaska?"

  She wished he hadn't said that a person who was honest in Newcastle would be honest in Alaska. The best she could offer was a half-truth. "I'm looking for a man," she said after a pause.

  "Ah, I see," he said in an offhand tone. But she knew he didn't see. "Would that be a specific man? Or do you mean you're looking for a man in the sense of seeking a husband?"

  "A specific man," she said reluctantly, knowing she couldn't reveal much more without betraying her promise to Juliette and Clara. And she didn't want Tom to know that she had lied about not being married or that she was hunting a runaway husband.

  "What's the man's name? Maybe I know him."

  For Tom to know Jean Jacques, Jean Jacques would have had to go to Dyea instead of Skagway. He would have had to hire packers to get him over Chilkoot, and he would have had to choose Tom's company from the dozen or more packing companies in Dyea. Finally, he would have had to speak to Tom instead of one of Tom's employees. Certainly, such a chain of events could have happened, but Zoe thought it unlikely. She hoped it was.

  "I doubt you know him," she said, wishing she had evaded his question in the first place.

  "Zoe? Look at me." When she glanced up, his green eyes were clear and steady. "You can trust me."

  "It isn't that I don't trust you," she said, rising from the rock she sat on. "I don't care to discuss this subject with anyone, not just you.
"

  "You're saying it's none of my business." A grin widened his mouth, and then he laughed. "Now there's a reason I understand."

  "I'm getting cold, and I'm concerned that my traveling companions are worried that I didn't turn up for lunch."

  Rising, he picked up their plates and utensils. "We don't see things quite the same, do we? It's funny. I felt certain that we would."

  Oddly, she had also assumed they would agree on everything. She felt let down. Disappointed. Tom's expression told her he felt the same way.

  They scattered the wood ash in front of the glacier, almost like an offering before they packed away the plates and mugs. Zoe waited beside the gelding while Tom buried a handful of food scraps.

  When he returned, he walked toward her with a purposeful stride, his gaze on her face. Before she understood what he intended, Tom had placed his cold hands on either side of her face and tipped her mouth up to his.

  "For years I've promised myself if I ever had a chance to kiss Zoe Wilder, I'd do it or kick myself forever after. I never thought that chance would come."

  He gave her a moment to understand, a moment to pull away. But surprise and—curiosity, perhaps?—rooted her to the frozen ground. Her gaze locked to his, and her eyes widened—her lips parted.

  He didn't hurry. When he realized she wouldn't step free, he stroked the back of his hand across her cheek, traced his thumb along the curve of her lower lip.

  Gently he pulled her past the edges of his duster and into his body, reached beneath her cape to circle his hands around her waist.

  Zoe drew a quick sharp breath. This was wrong. She knew it, knew she should pull away before they crossed a line they could not uncross. But his green gaze trapped hers and held her powerless to resist.

  His hands on her waist pressed her tighter against the hard length of his body, slowly, deliberately. There was no awkwardness, no need for adjustment. They fit together easily, magically. Tom held her close until they began to feel each other's heat along their hips and stomachs, and he gazed into her eyes while nerves ignited and two mouths dried.

  Finally, when Zoe feared the tremble building inside would erupt into outer shaking, when she thought her heart might pound through her chest, he lowered his mouth to hers.