I do, I do, I do

by Maggie Osborne

  He was angry and hurt that she would risk their future. She saw it in his expression. Saw the questions in his eyes. And she knew she could offer him an explanation that he might accept, but it wouldn't be the truth.

  "Zoe, I've respected your privacy." He spoke to her as if he'd forgotten about the others. "But if you'd gotten yourself killed today, I would have punished myself for the rest of my life because I didn't insist on trying to help you with whatever problem made you pack a rifle and be so reckless with your life. Darlin', it's time for some answers."

  Shoulders sagging, she pushed her palm against her forehead. "I am so sick of deception," she said in a low voice. Raising her lashes, she cast a beseeching glance at Clara and Juliette. "Please. I can't go on like this. I need to tell Tom the truth, and he needs to hear it."

  Clara and Juliette returned her stare, then each slowly nodded. Clara edged away from Bear's arm. "Ja, the time has come," she said with a deep sigh.

  Stepping away from Ben, Juliette turned her eyes down the path. Bright pink colored her cheeks. "I've dreaded this moment with all my heart. And I've longed to get it over with."

  Frowning and puzzled, Tom stared at her. "Zoe?"

  She drew her shoulders up and back. Her heart pounded so loudly that she was certain everyone could hear. After glancing toward the men standing around Horvath's unfinished cabin and hoping they wouldn't overhear, she met Tom's gaze.

  "You know that I came here looking for someone. A man. His name is Jean Jacques Villette, and I came to kill him. That's why I brought the rifle."

  No one said a word.

  "Why do you want to kill Villette?" Tom asked finally.

  Her lashes fluttered and then steadied. "You said you'd heard I was married, but I told you that I wasn't. I lied to you, Tom. Jean Jacques Villette is my husband."

  "He's my husband, too," Clara admitted reluctantly, looking at her shoes.

  Juliette kept her eyes fixed on the path. "And mine."

  * * *

  Chapter 21

  It was time for explanations, but Horvath's cabin was not the place. They returned to Mr. Dame's and settled in the kitchen with the men ranged along one side of the table and the women along the other. They stared at one another with expressions of helplessness on one side and disbelief and anger on the other.

  "So that's our story," Zoe finished, looking down at her hands pressed flat against the tabletop. "That's why we're traveling to Dawson, to confront and shoot Jean Jacques Villette for what he did to us."

  "Punishing him doesn't seem as important now," Clara sighed, pushing a frizzy cloud of red hair back from her cheek.

  "I know." Juliette glanced at Ben's stony face, then quickly looked away. "I don't care anymore why Jean Jacques married all of us. If he walked in here this minute, I wouldn't have anything to say to him."

  "Villette isn't going to walk in the door, and you won't find him in Dawson either," Tom stated flatly. His green eyes didn't move from Zoe's face.

  Zoe wet her lips. "How can you sound so certain?"

  "Because I know where he is. That first day on the Dyea beach—if you had trusted an old friend who loved you—if you hadn't lied to me—I could have taken you right to Villette."

  All three women sucked in a breath and leaned forward to stare. "He was in Dyea?" Zoe asked, her heart in her throat.

  "Villette hired my Indians to pack him to Chilkoot and over the pass. But he didn't climb Chilkoot, he returned to Dyea. That's where I met him. He wanted a partial refund since my people wouldn't have to haul his outfit up and over the pass. He said he was ill, and I sent him to old Doc Popov. Doc Popov thought Villette was suffering from consumption and advised him to return on the first steamer heading for the outside."

  "I think I see where this story is leading," Ben said in a tight voice.

  Bear nodded. "The son of a bitch sailed on the Annasett."

  When Tom confirmed it, Zoe's face went white. She heard Clara and Juliette gasp.

  "Jean Jacques was at Dyea when we arrived," she whispered. "Everything we've been through has been for nothing." Losing weight and worrying about scurvy, the cold food and frozen nights, Juliette almost drowning, Clara getting shot, being utterly exhausted, the continual range of bruises and bumps and never being warm, the fear of getting hurt, the continual anxiety—all of it. "And it's my fault."

  "Because you didn't trust me," Tom agreed, nodding angrily. "Because you lied to me."

  "You all lied," Ben said in a hard voice, his gaze narrowed on Juliette. "You let us believe you were unattached."

  Ripples ran along Bear's big jaw. "I told you about myself and gave you the choice whether to accept who I am. I didn't hide from you." Clara lowered her head. "If you had given me the courtesy of truth, I would have tipped my hat and moved along. I've done things I'm not proud of, Clara, but until now I've never seduced a married woman." He looked disgusted.

  Tom stood and gave Zoe an expressionless look. "We need a few minutes of privacy."

  Nodding, Zoe led the way into the living room. After a brief hesitation, Clara stood and beckoned Bear toward the bedroom. Juliette and Ben remained in the kitchen.

  Zoe turned to face him in front of the fire. "There were two reasons why I didn't tell you about Jean Jacques." Making fists so he wouldn't see her fingers shaking, she told him about not wanting her ma to learn the truth about Jean Jacques by hearing gossip at the company store.

  Tom's eyebrows soared incredulously. "You didn't trust me enough to ask me not to reveal your business in a letter home? What did you think? That I'd agree to keep your confidence, then break it hours later? Do you think I'm the kind of man who doesn't stand by his promise?"

  Every word he spoke knocked a piece out of her heart. "And I didn't want you to know how stupid I'd been. That's why I lied about being married. I didn't want you to know that I'd been taken in by a fairy tale and clean fingernails. That I'd be so foolish as to see only pretty lies and not the man telling them."

  "What you saw was yourself riding through Newcastle in a carriage showing everyone that you were better than the rest of us," he snapped.

  She winced and lowered her gaze. "I deserve that. Maybe that is what I thought I wanted." How could she ever have been so shallow and blind? She hated it. "And obviously Jean Jacques exploited my snobbery. But Tom, that was then, and this is now. Now I wouldn't give a man like Jean Jacques a second glance. Now I know it's the people who matter, not the place or the things."

  "I don't care about that bastard or why you married him. I care about trust, Zoe. I thought you and I trusted each other because we were both from Newcastle and because we'd known each other for more years than I can remember." He looked at her as if he saw a stranger, and his expression broke her heart. "You trusted me with your life the night we were caught in the storm, but you can't trust me with your secret. If you don't trust me enough to confide something as important as the fact that you're married and gunning for your husband… then what did you and I ever have?"

  "Oh, Tom." Tears strangled her, brimmed in her eyes.

  Turning on his heels, he walked away from the fire. "I'm going out. I'll be back after I've had a chance to think about all of this."

  Her knees collapsed, and she dropped into a chair facing the dying flames. She had known it wouldn't end well. She'd even known he would hate her more for not trusting him than for being married when she came into his arms.

  Looking back, she no longer remembered why it had seemed reasonable to conceal the truth. When she'd tried to explain, her reasons had sounded trivial and insulting. Leaning forward, she buried her face in her hands. If only she could turn back the clock to that day on the Dyea beach. If only, if only.

  "I don't want to know about him," Ben snapped. "The three of you should have contacted an attorney at once. But that's neither here nor there." He paused in pacing the small kitchen to stare at her. "Do you have any idea of the enormity of the scandal if it became known that the owner and president o
f the Bay City Bank seduced a married woman who is one of his investors and depositors?"

  "Ben…"

  "The public demands that bankers be circumspect. Even if the circumstances were known, this situation would be ruinous to me and to my bank."

  "I wanted to tell you." Juliette blinked at tears and wrung her hands. "Surely you can understand why I couldn't."

  "No, Juliette, I don't. Did you believe I would betray you? Who on earth did you suppose I would tell? Did you imagine that I'd distribute broadsides announcing that I was in love with the wife of a bigamist? For God's sake, if you can't trust your banker, who can you trust?"

  Tears spilled down her cheeks and glistened on her lashes. "I love you, Ben. I thought if you knew about Jean Jacques, you'd… you'd withdraw and…" She covered her face with her handkerchief.

  "Maybe I would have kept my distance. Maybe not. Considering how I felt about you, I think I would have thought it through and then said to hell with the possibility of scandal, you're more important. But the choice and the decision should have been mine to make."

  She had no defense. He was right.

  Ben studied her with eyes as unyielding as blue stones. "I would have wagered everything I own that deceit and deception were simply not in your character. I'll spend the rest of my life wondering how I could have been so wrong about you."

  His words drove a dagger into her heart. "Please, Ben. I beg you." She didn't know what she was begging. Understanding? Another chance? She only knew that she felt sick inside. Even knowing this confrontation was inevitable hadn't prepared her for the anguish of seeing herself through his eyes and of knowing that she had lost him.

  He stared at her with a flicker of bewilderment and loss. Then his shoulders pulled back, his expression hardened, and he nodded his head in a half-bow. "Good-bye, Mrs. Villette. We have nothing further to say."

  Without a backward glance he walked out of the kitchen, out of the cabin, and out of her life.

  Juliette crumpled to the floor like a broken doll. Blindly, she stared at the table legs and wished Horvath had shot her. A bullet would have been a thousand times less painful than what she was suffering now.

  At another time Clara would have looked at Bear's sling and her own and would have teased about them being two wounded birds. But the ease of teasing had ended for them and wouldn't come again.

  "I'm sorry," she said in a low voice, sitting on the edge of the bed. "I should have told you about Jean Jacques."

  "I don't want to hear about some son of a bitch that you've been in bed with! But you sure as hell should have told me that you were married!"

  "I don't know if I am. All three marriages can't be legal." Bear paced to the ice-block window and glared out at the gathering darkness. "Damn it, Clara!" He struck the wall with his fist and the whole cabin shook. "I thought you were respectable. And I was so proud that a respectable woman wanted me! I kept telling you who I am, and it didn't scare you off." He pounded his chest. "And damned if something inside didn't start to feel better, something I can't name, but I've carried it all my life."

  "Oh, Bear." She could name the weight in his chest. Shame. Of all the things he might have said, this would hurt the worst when she remembered it later. She had taken away the shame of his upbringing, and now she had flung it back on him.

  "And don't tell me you're not married. You said the vows. You aren't divorced, and you aren't widowed. You have a living husband out there, and you came up here looking for him. Yet you went right on ahead and let me love you."

  There was no way to deflect his words, nothing to say.

  "Do you know why I've never married?" he asked suddenly.

  "I can guess," she said in a whisper.

  "A respectable woman wouldn't want a man with my background, and I don't want the other kind." For a minute his voice went soft. "Honey girl, I thought the sun rose and set on you. I thought you were the finest thing that ever came into my life."

  Now the tears started, rolling silently down her cheeks.

  "But you're no better than me."

  "I was no better than you or anyone else even when you had me up on that pedestal, Bear." She raised her good arm and then let it fall back to her lap. "I'm sorry."

  "I've never pretended to be what I'm not. I would have bet my life that you were the same way. I guessed from the first that the three of you had a secret. But I thought it was something like maybe you'd run off from your families seeking adventure. Or maybe you were all older or younger than you look. That kind of thing. If your secret was substantial, I figured you would have confided in me when I was confiding in you."

  "I wanted to. You don't know how much I wish I had." The tears came faster. She detested it that his last memory would be of her crying, with her eyes red and puffy and her nose running.

  " We might have worked this out, Clara, if you'd trusted me and if you'd been truthful. I don't know. Right now I'm mad, and I'm feeling like I've been had. I think you were correct up there on the mountainside when you said you were lucky. All Villette took was your money. I wish that's all you'd taken from me."

  When she looked up again, he was gone. And her agony began.

  No one slept that night. Eventually they sought the small comfort of warmth and company and gathered together before the fireplace. They wept until their eyes swelled and ached. Until their handkerchiefs soaked through and their bodies felt dry and boneless.

  There was nothing compelling enough to rouse them until Tom returned near what passed for dawn in a Yukon winter. Then Clara and Juliette silently rose to offer Tom and Zoe privacy.

  "There's no cause to go. Stay seated," Tom said gruffly. He directed his next remarks to a spot directly above Zoe's head. "When Villette returned to Dyea, he left his outfit at Chilkoot. My Indians decided it was more of a priority to pack our customers over the pass than to cause them delay by bringing back the outfit of someone giving up. Before Villette boarded the Annasett for Seattle, he directed me to ship his outfit to Loma Grande, California, on the next steamer out. Which I did."

  "California," Juliette murmured with a sigh.

  "How ill was he?" Clara inquired.

  "I've seen men a whole lot sicker climb Chilkoot and go on to Dawson," Tom said in a flat voice. "But Doc Popov did diagnose consumption, and Doc did advise Villette to be on the next steamer out." He shrugged and pushed his hands into his coat pockets. "Frankly I don't care if Villette had a foot in the grave or if he exaggerated a cough as an excuse to go home."

  Zoe turned her head toward the fire. Juliette touched her temples as if she had a headache. Clara cradled her sling next to her body.

  "How soon do you want to leave?"

  They all stiffened and stared at him with startled expressions.

  "I guess there's no reason to continue on to Dawson," Clara said finally, breaking a lengthy silence.

  Juliette raised shaking fingertips to her lips. "No reason at all."

  "I suppose we can leave as soon as Clara's shoulder and side are fully healed and she's up to running behind a sled," Zoe said, speaking to the fire.

  Tom stood before them, a handsome weathered man, tall with authority, his expression as hard as the ice on the lake.

  "Since you won't be staying in Dawson, you don't need a year's worth of goods and foodstuffs. You can lighten the sleds considerably by selling off everything you won't need during a rough fast run for Dyea. If you lighten your outfits sufficiently, we can put Clara in one of the sleds. You could depart as early as tomorrow morning."

  Zoe looked at the others, then gripped her hands in her lap. "I guess we could be ready by then." The others nodded. She gazed up at him, her heart in her eyes. "Will you take us back?"

  "No. Luc will be in charge of getting you to Dyea and on board the next ship out." Tom's gaze locked to hers. "Good-bye, Zoe. When you see your brother Jack, give him my regards."

  He hesitated as if there were more to say, then he muttered beneath his breath, nodded to Clara a
nd Juliette, and tipped his hat on his head. The door closed softly behind him.

  "We're going home," Zoe whispered when the silence became too much to bear. "Tomorrow." A tear hovered on her lashes and then zigzagged down her cheek.

  Juliette pressed her handkerchief to her face. "I thought I couldn't cry anymore. I thought all the tears were gone."

  Clara walked to the window and leaned forward as if she could see through the ice. "I'd hoped it wouldn't end like this. This is too abrupt, too… I don't know." Despair choked her voice. "One minute I am someone's sun, and an hour later I am his darkness. How can that happen so fast? How can I survive this?"

  Clara was touched by the number of people who gathered to see them off and wish them well. Mrs. Eddington and her husband came, and most of the women on the trail. She recognized the men she had beaten in the arm-wrestling tournament, exchanged grins with a couple of men she had laid low during the infamous brawl. But the face she longed to see wasn't there.

  She kept hoping Bear would appear until Luc locked the straps over the thick blankets covering her and shouted the order for the sleds to move out. Only then did she allow herself to admit that Bear wouldn't stop her from leaving.

  Then, once they were under way, she hoped he would come after her. Their pace was set by Juliette, the slowest member of their party. Bear could easily have caught up. But he didn't.

  Her last hope was to find him waiting at their evening campsite, impatiently looking for the first sled, intending to surprise her.

  "I know what you're hoping," Juliette said sadly after she'd arrived and inspected the site. "But they aren't coming."

  "Look." Zoe's voice sounded peculiar. "The Chilkats are setting up our tent, and it appears that Henry is going to cook."

  Overhearing the comment, Luc walked toward them with a smile. "Mr. Tom told us to take very good care of you ladies. Treat you like rich clients."

  Zoe's face paled beneath the ash and grease, and she abruptly walked away.