Page 28 of I Do, I Do, I Do
“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” she said finally, speaking in a faint voice. Zoe had argued there were no stages, but she and Clara hadn’t believed that Alaska would be too uncivilized even for stages. Zoe’s experience was with men preparing to sail to the Klondike, not with those who had returned, so clearly Zoe didn’t know everything.
But Zoe had a way of stating things that made it sound as if she were an authority. If they had known of the impossible hardships Mr. Dare listed, Juliette felt certain none of the Mmes Villette would have departed Seattle. The obstacles Mr. Dare described were insurmountable for women.
Suddenly she felt like weeping. Once or twice she had experienced a euphoric view of herself as an intrepid traveler braving the perils of a hostile land to reach her poor deluded husband. She had liked that image.
Now she grasped the impossibility. Alaska had defeated her before she ever set foot on shore. “Are there others who turn back when they learn of these hardships?” she asked in a whisper.
“TheAnnasettwon’t return to Seattle empty.” He waved toward the mess hall. “Some are already talking about going home.”
“I see.” She, too, would be on theAnnasettwhen the ship turned around. And all she would have accomplished was treating herself to a late-summer cruise, which she had spent confined in a stinking tiny room with two women she wished she’d never met.
She had to tell them what she’d learned. “Excuse me,” she murmured, feeling an urgency build in her chest. “I must speak to my companions.”
It wasn’t fair. For two days she had occupied nearly every moment considering what her bittersweet parting words would be, and speculating how he might say good-bye to her. Now all she could think about was the horrifying knowledge that they were expected to carry their outfits on their backs.
She did the math in her head. If it was approximately seven hundred miles from Dyea to Dawson City—and they had to cover that ground at least ten times to move their outfits—then they would walk a trail that was seven thousand miles long.
Her eyes glazed in shock. She thought of Zoe and for the first time in her life understood the termcrime of passion. At this moment she could happily have fallen on Zoe and strangled her. Juliette should never have listened, should never have agreed to undertake this wasted voyage.
“I have to go,” she said abruptly, blinking at the headache rising hot behind her eyes. “It’s been…I’ve enjoyed…” Abandoning any final tender words that he could remember her by, she turned in a swirl of skirts and rushed to the staircase.
When the little broomlike bristles adorning Miss March’s hat had vanished into the stairwell, Ben frowned, then lit a cigar and turned toward the sea to watch the coastline drawing nearer.
His instinct was correct. She hadn’t the faintest notion of the hardships that lay ahead, which made him wonder why she was traveling to Dawson City in the first place.
She was an interesting woman. Her delicate patrician face and trim figure had been first to catch his eye. He admired her sense of style and her thoroughbred carriage. He knew she’d led a sheltered life of genteel privilege. Yet, here she was in a place few ladies would ever go.
She lacked male relatives to look after her, but someone should have told her what to expect or stopped her from taking this journey.
Most likely she would turn around and return to Seattle now that he’d explained the realities of what lay ahead. On the other hand, maybe not. When he’d observed her in Yesler Park, she had clearly not wanted to be there, had appeared to want to jump from the bench and rush away from the two ladies he now knew as Miss Klaus and Miss Wilder. But she hadn’t.
The same odd behavior had recurred in front of Wilder’s Outfitting Store. She’d paced before the piles of goods in the street, wringing her hands and making faces that suggested a desperate desire not to proceed. But she had.
On board she kept saying, “I can’t go back down there,” meaning the cubicle and Miss Wilder. But she did return to her cabin and to her nursing duties.
Miss March sold herself short. He suspected she resisted challenges because she didn’t believe she could succeed or because the goal frightened or worried her. Then she stiffened her shoulders and went ahead and did the thing.
Therefore he couldn’t predict whether she would return to Seattle or if she would attempt the trail to Chilkoot Pass with her companions.
They, too, were a mystery. He didn’t understand the relationship between the women, and Miss March hadn’t offered an explanation. He’d searched for a family resemblance during the one visit Miss Wilder had managed on deck, but no resemblance existed. Nor did similarity of nature or interest bind them. That Miss Klaus had entered and won the arm-wrestling tournament didn’t surprise him. But it was beyond imagining that Juliette would do such a thing.
Granted, he knew the ladies only superficially, but even their motivations for this journey appeared vastly different. From what he’d gathered from Juliette and Miss Klaus, Miss Wilder was determined to reach Dawson City to achieve some personal goal of a dark nature. Miss Klaus had said with a laugh that she was going to the Klondike looking for her fortune like everyone else. He had no grasp of why Juliette was going.
Frowning, he flipped the cigar toward the waves, and wondered if she knew how puzzling, amusing, contrary, and mysterious she seemed. And he surprised the hell out of himself by wondering if her shining dark hair was as soft as it looked.
Damn it. He wasn’t ready for another woman in his life.
Chapter 7
“I amnotgoing back to Seattle,” Zoe said firmly, staring at herself in the cloudy mirror above her shelf. “I swear I will never set foot on a ship again. Unless there’s an overland route home, I’m going to live and die in Alaska.”
The face in the glass was gaunt and drawn, and for an instant she didn’t recognize herself. Her skin, pulled tight over her cheekbones, emphasized deep half circles that made her eyes look bruised, and her lips were pale and dry. When she pinned on her hat, her fingers brushed brittle lifeless strands. To complete the dismal picture, she’d lost so much weight that her clothing hung on her like the castoffs of a much larger person. She looked a hundred years older than she had three weeks ago when she’d begun this hellish voyage.
Clara shoved their communal crimping iron into her bag, then stood and dusted her hands together. “I’m sick of hearing about how we can’t get ourselves to Dawson City! Other people have gotten there. We can, too.”
First to be dressed and ready to disembark, Juliette sat on the cot, wringing her hands. “Why can’t I make you understand? I must not be explaining the perils well enough.”
“You have explained at stupefying length,” Zoe said, still studying her pathetic reflection in the mirror. “You’ve been explaining since yesterday afternoon. And all last evening. And every minute since we woke up.” If she hadn’t been weak and half-dead, she would have stuffed a scarf down Juliette’s throat. She made a face of disgust at the mirror, then turned to Clara. “I detest asking another favor, but I tried and I’m too weak to carry my bag. Would you take it upstairs?”
