Page 21 of I Do, I Do, I Do
Clara made a face. “Lordy, I hate going down there!”
Their cubicle trapped the heat, stench, and dismal ambience of a nightmare. Sleep was next to impossible because of Zoe’s continual retching and moaning. Never in her life had Juliette seen anyone as sick as Zoe Wilder. Zoe begged to die, and Juliette believed it likely that she would.
“You know what the captain said. We have to get some food into her.”
“I don’t mind that part,” Clara said unhappily. “It’s emptying the chamber pots.” They had three now. “And cleaning up. And bathing her. And just trying to breathe in there.” Tossing back her head, she inhaled deeply, pulling the fresh sea breeze deep into her lungs before she squared her shoulders and marched off with firm but reluctant steps.
When she reflected on it, Juliette experienced a thrill of triumph that it wasn’t she who was sick and begging to die. If someone asked at the end of her life what her proudest moment had been, she would think: Zoe Wilder got seasick, and I didn’t. Ha!
Halfheartedly castigating herself for feeling superior at Zoe’s expense, Juliette considered going to the mess hall to escape the blowing smoke and the noise of the fight. But the mess hall would be crowded with men. Most were respectful and tried to curtail swearing and coarse language in her presence, but she knew she made them uncomfortable. Moreover, they believed she had no business going to Alaska. She believed it, too.
“Beautiful,” a voice said softly at her side.
Stiffening, she straightened abruptly and glanced at the tall man who appeared next to her on the rail, noting a corner of the green scarf sticking out of his shirt pocket. His beard was fuller now, coming in the same luxuriant brown as his hair. But what she noticed most were his eyes, a brilliant blue that made her think of Aunt Kibble’s bright prizewinning delphiniums.
“The sea. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Ordinarily she would not have dreamed of striking up a conversation with a stranger. But these were not ordinary circumstances. After two weeks packed together as tightly as a paper of pins, no one was really a stranger anymore. All the faces were familiar.
“Indeed,” she murmured uneasily. She had never excelled at conversing with strangers, particularly men. She always imagined a tiny Aunt Kibble sitting on one shoulder and a tiny version of her mother perched on her other shoulder, both listening and observing with critical expressions, waiting for her to err.
“Permit me to introduce myself. I’m Benjamin Dare, from San Francisco, California.” Removing his hat, he held it against his chest and studied her face with an expectant expression.
The tiny Aunt Kibbletsked in disapproval as Juliette hesitantly offered her own name, giving it as Miss March. For the duration of the journey, she and the others had agreed to call themselves by their maiden names rather than raise gossip and scurrilous speculation by identifying themselves each as Mrs. Jean Jacques Villette.
“Do you mind if I smoke, Miss March?”
So he didn’t intend to leave immediately. And she couldn’t continue her stroll since the fistfight was still in progress. “Please do.” Her father had smoked cheroots. The scented smoke was her strongest memory of him. Besides, it seemed churlish to protest when the stack’s black smoke hung thick across the decks.
“We seem to run into each other rather frequently,” he said, waving out a match.
“I beg your pardon?” She would have set herself on fire before admitting that she, too, had noticed.
In view of her ongoing experience with chamber pots and retching fellow wives, his clean soapy scent pleased her enormously. And she liked the pleasant rumble of his deep voice. He wore the ubiquitous denims and flannel shirts favored by the majority of passengers, but on him the prospector’s uniform seemed exotic and appealing.
“We stayed at the same hotel in Seattle,” he explained. “And I saw you in the Yesler Park and again at the outfitting store. Now we’re aboard the same ship. It’s an interesting set of coincidences.”
She thought so, too, but made no comment, keeping her gaze on the sea while she watched him from the edge of her eyes. It was flattering that he had noticed and remembered her. Surprising that she had noticed and remembered him. But she definitely had.
“I’m puzzled to find a lady such as yourself traveling to the Yukon. If you’ll pardon a personal observation, you don’t seem the type of person to seek your fortune in the gold fields.”
“Good heavens!” She met his blue eyes directly. “You can’t think that I…” The notion was hilarious. “No indeed, Mr. Dare, I have no intention of panning or digging for gold.”
Most people looked at others without really seeing more than an overall impression. But Ben Dare looked at her with an intensity that made her think he saw deep inside her. Flustered, Juliette resisted an urge to pat her hair and wet her lips. Even Jean Jacques had not gazed at her with such total absorption. An odd warmth spread through her stomach and she hastily lowered her eyes, frowning and biting her lip.
From atop her shoulder her tiny mother advised her to nod politely and walk away, and Aunt Kibble warned that it was no one’s business but her own that she traveled to the Yukon in search of a philandering husband. Either caution was unnecessary. She would no more have confided in a strange man than she would have adjusted her corset in public. Not even if the man had intent blue eyes and a well-shaped mouth and made her feel strangely tingly.
After coughing into her hand, she asked, “Do you intend to search for gold, Mr. Dare?”
Despite the beard and clothing, he didn’t impress her as a prospector type. If he were clean-shaven and dressed differently, she would have guessed that his air of easy authority suggested he moved in the business world. He seemed too well spoken to be a laborer. And he lacked the feverish nervousness common to the other stampeders, that odd blend of eagerness and desperation.
“Certainly.”
“Oh.” Disappointment sharpened the word. Without being aware, she had set him above the other passengers. She had wanted his objectives to be loftier than the pursuit of fortune. Discovering that she had thought about him at all startled her.
Her sudden frown caused him to laugh, and she was struck by the rich timbre of his voice and how handsome he was. Dark hair, blue blue eyes, broad shoulders, a tall lean body. Such observations flooded her cheeks with hot pink, and she abruptly turned aside, pretending an interest in a coil of rope.
“With the exception of yourself and presumably your companions,” he said, “everyone here intends to make his fortune in the Klondike.”
