I do, I do, I do

by Maggie Osborne

  He held her tightly as if he feared she would go careening down the mountain side if he released her. "We're almost to the top. It's only another fifty feet or so."

  It might as well have been a mile. She couldn't do it. She said so, sobbing until no more tears would come. Then she realized she was sitting in the snow with a man's arms around her and his lips against her hair in full view of the hundreds of men dragging themselves up the ice steps. The impropriety of it rocked her, and she pulled back.

  "Don't move too suddenly," Ben warned, concern darkening his eyes. Vapor fanned from his lips and bathed her cheeks in warmth. "You don't want to set off a snow slide. Or fall. There'd be no stopping if you begin to slide." He gripped her arms through her coat sleeves, steadying her on the buried rock.

  His beard had completely filled in and he wore it a bit shaggy like the other prospectors did. And like them, he wore sturdy all-weather trousers today, a loose sweater, and a drill-cloth coat with the heavy lining removed for the climb.

  She brushed the fingers of her gloves across the green scarf tied through a buttonhole of his coat. "Would your wife have made this climb?" she asked. Good heavens. Where had that question sprung from? She tried not to think of his late wife just as she tried not to think of her present husband.

  "Helen? I doubt it." Smiling, he carefully swung his pack around to his chest, then found his canteen and opened the lid. "It's hot coffee," he said, handing her the container.

  Ignoring the line moving to the side of her and the steep life-threatening fall below her boot tips, Juliette lifted the canteen. She hated that they had no cups and had to drink directly from the mouth of the container, but she wanted a hot drink more than she needed to stand on proper manners.

  "Helen would have researched every detail about Chilkoot, about the Yukon, about gold prospecting. She would have loved learning about it, would have loved the idea of being here, but she would never have actually come."

  "Whereas I hate the idea of being here, but I did come," Juliette said unhappily. She accepted the canteen for another sip of coffee, feeling the warmth travel from her throat to her stomach. "Tell me about Mrs. Dare," she said, her voice almost conversational now that she'd caught her breath. "That is, if you're comfortable talking about her and don't mind."

  At the moment it didn't strike her as improbable or strange to be sitting in the snow less than a hundred feet from a windswept Alaskan summit, staring down at a sheer drop while hundreds of men trudged past not three feet away. This was the only place she could be: she lacked the energy to go up and the fall down would probably kill her.

  "Helen was an admirable woman," he said after a moment. "She was tireless in her efforts to promote women's suffrage, and she helped expose the suffering of Chinese women forced into slavery and prostitution."

  Juliette's mouth rounded as he spoke. He had said the word prostitution in her presence. And he spoke in an even tone as if he didn't realize her proper response should be to clap her gloves over her ears and depart, never to speak to him again. Or was that indeed the proper response? Could it be that Aunt Kibble's notions of propriety were more rigid than what the rest of the world imposed? It was something to think about. Later.

  "Do you have children?" she inquired, staring at him in fascination. She envisioned Ben and his wife engaged in stimulating discussions about taboo topics. Obviously he didn't think less of his wife for her interest in subjects proper ladies were not supposed to know about. The freedom of such a relationship staggered her mind.

  "No children."

  Juliette glanced at the green scarf while they sipped coffee and Ben spoke about his late wife. When his voice trailed, they sat in silence.

  Juliette thought about Helen Dare. Juliette knew nothing about prostitution and couldn't have discussed the practice if her life depended on it. As for women's suffrage, she didn't know enough about it to have an opinion. The only thing she could do to earn Ben's admiration was to climb the rest of this damned staircase and reach the summit. Lordy.

  Bowing her head, she touched her fingertips to her forehead and grimaced. Now she was silently swearing. What next? Drinking liquor, smoking cigars, and cursing in public? She was keeping bad company, that was clear. She was picking up egregious habits from Clara and Zoe.

  "Well," she said, drawing a deep breath as he replaced the canteen in his pack. "Are you ready to finish the climb?"

  What a hypocrite she was, conveniently forgetting her earlier tears and protests and making it sound as if she was eager to resume the torture. She refused to consider that she was willing to push her limits to the point of peril in order to compete with a dead woman.

  "If you are," he said, meeting her gaze.

  It seemed they looked into each other's eyes for an eternity, unconsciously leaning toward each other, lost in pools of escalating speculation. Then Juliette turned aside, her cheeks flushed with more than cold. She was no longer an innocent. Now she knew what the fluttery feeling in her stomach meant. And the dry hot taste in her mouth. And the bitter sweetness of longing. And she recognized the desire in Ben's eyes.

  "We should be ashamed of ourselves," she whispered.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  He shouldn't look at her that way after just speaking of his late wife. Moreover, Juliette was a married woman. Neither of them should be thinking about long kisses and sweet caresses.

  Rising quickly but cautiously, driven by conflicting wishes to escape what she saw in his gaze and to impress him, Juliette smiled at the first man to glance up and said, "Excuse me, please." When the man halted in surprise, she stepped in line in front of him, waved Ben forward, then politely thanked the man who had opened a space for them.

  During the next forty-five minutes, a long empty stretch opened between Juliette and the man in front of her as her pace slackened. The line behind her slowed to a snail's crawl.

  Finally, Zoe and Clara pulled her up the last four ice steps and into the wind and ground fog sweeping the summit. They held her upright until her legs stopped shaking and she could support her weight.

  "I'm going to faint," she whispered, hanging on to them.

  "You're tired and hungry and cold. The wretched wind cuts like a knife." Clara greeted Ben, then adjusted Juliette's scarf around her cold-stinging cheeks. "A pound of wood is fifty cents up here, it's an extravagant luxury. But Bear and Tom chipped in to buy enough wood for an hour's fire. We've been waiting for you and Mr. Dare."

  "How did you know we'd be together?" Juliette asked.

  Clara rolled her eyes, implying that of course she assumed Juliette and Ben would be together. Shock widened Juliette's eyes. Was her growing affection for him that obvious? And what did Clara and Zoe think about it? Did they consider her a fallen woman? Disreputable?

  Brooding, she followed Clara and Zoe through hundreds of piles of goods and the drifting wisps of fog. Ben slipped an arm around Juliette's waist to support her, but she froze at his touch and then politely stepped away.

  When Bear spotted them he grinned and gave a booming "Hoorah! You made it. Tom? Light the fire. I promised a certain lady a cup of hot coffee, and she's been waiting a while now."

  Fully recovered from the exhausting climb, Clara laughed and made a remark about the ash and grease on Bear's face. Zoe brushed snow off a tree stump, then sat arguing with Tom over how best to arrange the precious wood for the hottest fire. Ben rifled through Bear's goods to find camp stools.

  And suddenly tears blurred Juliette's vision. Because of these people, she had reached the summit.

  She, who had never ventured more than half a mile from Linda Vista, was standing on top of Chilkoot Pass in Alaska. She, who disliked and feared new experiences, had just done something that few women would ever do. And that several men had failed to do.

  Her swimming eyes widened with awe and wonder. Climbing Chilkoot Pass, succeeding, was a feat she would be proud of all of her life. But she couldn't have done it without Benjamin, Bear, Tom, and her hu
sband's other wives.

  She would have gone sentimental, let the tears fall, and gushed gratitude except she was a bit irked that none of them had congratulated her or applauded her success. They seemed to take it for granted that she had eventually reached the top, and didn't appear to think it remarkable.

  On the other hand, she thought as she held her gloves to the heat of the fire, maybe the feat wasn't all that remarkable. She was no longer the person she had been. It seemed a lifetime ago that she had taken to bed in sick anxiety at the thought of moving to Oregon with Jean Jacques. She could no longer quite remember why moving to Oregon had frightened her so.

  When everyone had coffee, Bear raised his cup in a salute. "Only six hundred and some miles to go," he said, laughing at the chorus of groans.

  Juliette's bubble of self-congratulation burst abruptly.

  "I know," Ben said, smiling down at her. "You think you can't do it."

  She started to agree, then her chin came up. "Maybe I can."

  The others laughed, but Ben nodded and said softly, "I know you can."

  She wanted to kiss him for his faith in her. Wanted to kiss him because she dreamed about it night and day. But of course she didn't. From now on she would not let herself forget that she was married. She would try to regain Clara and Zoe's respect.

  But she gazed into his eyes and felt his warm breath on her cheek, and oh, how she wished that she were free.

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  One of the objectives for this trip had been to push himself physically, Ben reminded himself as he redistributed the weight of his backpack. He carried essentials, a twenty-pound arctic sleeping bag, matches, a canteen of coffee, beef jerky, and dried apples. An extra pair of dry socks and gloves, a pocketknife, and a candle stub were in the side flap.

  Now that he was seasoned to the trail, his shoulders no longer felt as if they would fall off after a long day of toting his pack over terrain that would have been difficult in summer and was treacherous now that snow concealed loose rocks large and small. Still, he felt the strain and muscle fatigue at the end of the day in his shoulders and legs.

  As he had hoped, a yearlong numbness was gradually giving way to the rigors of the journey and the beauty of the wilderness. Yesterday he'd observed a family of caribou near dusk, and this morning rabbits had scampered across the snow when he startled them by rolling out of his sleeping bag. It was impossible to ignore the biting cold air on his face and at the back of his throat. Impossible not to feel a satisfying exhaustion that led to a sound night's sleep.

  The smell of coffee first thing in the morning was a pleasure he had forgotten. And after a long fatiguing day, he would have sworn his beans and bacon were the tastiest dinner he'd ever wolfed down. He was more aware of what happened around him; he even wondered if his hearing had improved.

  Not all of the changes were positive. There were evenings when he pulled the sleeping bag up around his ears and suddenly realized he had not thought about Helen all day. The first time it happened, he'd stepped outside his tent, too upset to sleep. The second time he'd walked to keep warm and had struggled with feelings of guilt. How could he pass an entire day without thinking about her, without remembering that she was gone?

  From there, he worried over questions that could never be answered. Had he found the best doctors and treatments for her? Had he made her last days as comfortable as possible? Done the right things, said the right things? Should he have left San Francisco or should he have remained near the cemetery?

  And what would Helen have thought of Miss March? Would she have felt shocked and betrayed by his interest in Juliette? Would she believe a year of mourning wasn't enough? Would Helen have expected him to spend the rest of his life alone?

  Juliette, he thought, frowning, forming her name in his mind as he searched for his cache of goods, brought to the camp by the Indian packers. Once he'd found it, he began to set up his small tent. Miss Juliette March was an intriguing, maddening enigma.

  Since the day they'd climbed Chilkoot, Juliette had kept her distance, and when he did maneuver a moment alone, she behaved cordially, but erected a barrier of politeness between them. It was as if the startling incidents of closeness had never occurred. As if she had never wept in his arms. As if they had never sat on the side of a snowy mountain and stared at each other with growing desire. He felt certain he had not mistaken the signals sent by her parted lips and quickened breathing. And he well remembered his own rush of desire. It was the first time he had experienced a stirring since Helen was diagnosed.

  Juliette's withdrawal baffled him. During the days of descending into a treeless valley he'd searched his memory for any offense he might have given. The only incident that came to mind was talking about Helen the day they climbed Chilkoot.

  Listening to him speak about Helen hadn't seemed to upset Miss March at the time, but perhaps she had thought about it later and had taken offense. There were women who considered it insulting for a man to speak glowingly of another woman in their presence. If Miss March was such a woman, and this was the only reason he could think of to explain her behavior, he was glad he had discovered it now, because Helen would always be part of his life and memories.

  If a few words about someone he had cared for was enough to drive Juliette away, then so be it. But it was disappointing.

  The trail descended on a sharp incline past frozen waterfalls to the shore of Crater Lake. Within a month deep snow would conceal the huge stones and jagged rocks that were still visible and still difficult to climb over or around. Even Clara found the going hard.

  "Did you hear about Mr. Coleman?" she inquired over a cold supper. The steep mountainsides no longer grew so much as a stick, and shrewd vendors charged a fortune for firewood. At her suggestion, they had decided to buy firewood only every other night. This was a no-fire night.

  "Is it true he was killed?" Juliette asked, directing a tired frown down at her plate. Tonight's fare was canned corned beef, reconstituted dried cabbage, and cold dough cakes.

  Clara had made the dough cakes yesterday when they had a fire. Mrs. Eddington, whom they'd met back at Sheep Camp, had told her how. You opened a sack of flour, tossed in some snow, salt, and baking powder, stirred it all together, then pulled off globs and fried the globs in bacon fat. Clara thought the result tasted like paste, but she had to admit the dough cakes were filling.

  "Mr. Coleman is dead?" Zoe asked in surprise. "Isn't he the fellow who gave us each a piece of licorice a couple of days ago? He was a nice man."

  Tilting her dough cake to the light of the lantern, Clara spread a teaspoon of berry jam over the top. The jam improved the taste a little. "He was about fifty yards below one of those idiots who are packing hundreds of pounds on a sled, even though there really isn't enough snow depth yet. The weight drives the runners through the snow and into the ground below."

  "Tom told me about that," Zoe said. "The runners can hit rough ground, which often causes the sled to flip end over end and send it hurtling down the slope."

  Juliette nodded. "Mrs. Eddington's husband insists there should be a rule allowing only the smooth-bottomed sleds instead of those with runners."

  "But the flat-bottomed sleds are responsible for pressing down the snow and creating long dangerous stretches of glassy ice." Zoe shook her head. "Several people have fallen and broken bones in those sections. It almost happened to me."

  "Do you want to hear about Mr. Coleman or not?" Clara asked irritably.

  Zoe spread her hands. "He got hit by a fully packed runaway sled. What else could it be? I'm sorry to hear it."

  They were beginning to recognize many of the other cheechakos and identify names with faces. What was making Clara irritable, however, was not meeting new people—that was interesting. Her irritation stemmed from not seeing much of the people she already knew. Namely Bernard T. Barrett.

  "Does it seem to you that we haven't seen much of Mr. Barrett, Mr. Price, or Mr. Dare? It appears they'
ve abandoned us," she added lightly, trying to make it sound like she'd only just noticed and didn't really care.

  "I, for one, think it's good that we're not seeing as much of those gentlemen," Juliette said in the prissy voice that made Clara crazy. "When you implied that it was natural for Mr. Dare and me to be together, I realized I was spending entirely too much time with him. I am, after all, a married woman. And so are you."

  Zoe finished her meal and scrubbed her plate with a handful of snow. "I think we should talk about that."

  "I don't want to talk about Jean Jacques," Clara snapped. Thinking about that low-down no-good had given her the fury and the energy to climb Chilkoot Pass. She planned to cheer when Zoe shot him.

  "I'd like to tell Tom the truth." Zoe held up a hand. "Just hear me out. Tom's a longtime family friend, and I don't feel right about misrepresenting myself to him. He asked outright if I was married, and I lied. That doesn't feel good. And there was," her face turned redder than could be accounted for by the frigid temperature, "something else that happened that wouldn't have happened if he'd known I was married."

  Now that was interesting, Clara thought. And the incident wasn't difficult to figure out. Tom and Zoe must have kissed. Instant resentment stiffened her spine. Zoe had kissed another man. But she had not. And she had certainly wanted to. Well, damn. If she'd known the others were out there kissing men they were not married to…

  "Have you kissed Ben?" she demanded, glaring at Juliette.

  Juliette flashed as scarlet as Zoe. "Certainly not! Is that what you did, Zoe? You kissed Mr. Price? How could you! Even though Jean Jacques is a worthless scoundrel, he's still our legal husband. You're still one of his wives."

  Zoe tossed her tin plate into the crate it had come out of. "I didn't say I'd kissed Tom. If I did—and I'm saying if—it would have been an accident. And that's my point. If I told him the truth, no further accidents would happen!"

  Clara waved a hand at a thousand tents pitched along the lakeshore. "If you tell our story to Tom, how long do you think it will take for us to be laughingstocks? The gossip and scandal will run through this camp just like that." She snapped her fingers, the effect diluted by her gloves.