Page 52 of I Do, I Do, I Do
“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 sayingif—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.
“I trust Tom not to tell anyone!”
“And maybe he wouldn’t, but maybe he’d let it slip. I’d like to tell Bear the truth, too. I had an opportunity to admit I was married, and I didn’t. That doesn’t feel good to me either. But it would feel worse to admit I’d lied to him. And I don’t want to risk everyone knowing our private business!”
“I’d like to tell Mr. Dare the truth, too,” Juliette said slowly. “But I think I’ve inadvertently and completely innocently led him to mistakenly suspect that I might be a tiny bit interested in his company.”
Clara sighed and sipped from a canteen of cold coffee.
“If he now discovered that I was married, what would he think of me? He’d think I was a promiscuous wife. He’d think I have the morals of a dog.”
“Which wouldn’t be true,” Clara said after a minute, wondering if Bear would think that, too. “Jean Jacques had the morals of a dog, but we didn’t and don’t. And the truth is, we don’t know our legal situation. We should have consulted an attorney, but we were in too much of a hurry to get up here and find that louse. My point is, it’s possible that none of us are really married.”
“We’re really married. We went through the ceremony. And the wedding night.” Juliette’s cheeks flamed again.
“But was the marriage legal and binding? For all we know we might be free to marry again if we wished. We might be free to get on with our lives whether or not we run Jean Jacques to ground. For all we know, it’s perfectly legal, permissible, and moral to spend time with Mr. Barrett. And Mr. Dare and Mr. Price,” she added hastily.
“But maybe it’s not,” Zoe said. “Maybe Juliette’s right, and enjoying another man’s company makes us wicked women.”
“I can’t stand the thought,” Juliette said, raising her gloves to her temples.
They fell silent for several minutes. Then Zoe jumped to her feet, swore, and kicked her cup into the night. “All right, I won’t tell him. But I enjoy Tom’s—friendship—and I’m going to spend time with him. I don’t care what the two of you think.” She glared at Juliette. “When we find Jean Jacques, you can tell him that I have the morals of a dog if you want to. I’d say he’s in no position to cast stones on that score.”
Juliette squared her shoulders. “When we find him, the only thing I’m going to say is ‘I hate you.’ Then I’m going to step aside and let you shoot him.”
“After which one of us claims to be the widow. We go through his effects, and if he has any of our money left, we hire a lawyer to defend Zoe and we split whatever the lawyer doesn’t take,” Clara said in a tight voice. “As for this discussion, married women can have male friends. I’ve always thought so.” Actually she’d always thought the opposite, but recent circumstances had changed her opinion.
Juliette closed her eyes and sighed. “I’ve lost the thread of this conversation. Have we decided anything?”
“We won’t tell anyone how Jean Jacques married us all,” Zoe said. “And we won’t think less of each other for spending time with—our friends.”
“We decided that?”
Clara nodded. “It’s a sensible decision given our circumstances and our uncertain status.”
Clara would have liked to jump to her feet, rush off to find Bear, and plant a kiss on that man when she found him that would sink him to his knees. Her skin felt hot just thinking about grabbing him.
But she was reacting to her resentment that Zoe had kissed Tom and she hadn’t kissed Bear. It wasn’t right or proper for any of them to be kissing anyone. But at least she didn’t have to feel guilty or wonder what Juliette and Zoe were thinking if they came upon her enjoying Bear’s platonic company.
Still, if a kiss happened…Well, it was only fair since Zoe had done it. She couldn’t wait to see him again.
Now that they’d discussed it, Juliette felt less self-conscious and guilty about spending time with Ben, although she hadn’t seen him yet. She still wrestled with doing the right thing. And the right thing was by no means clear-cut. But she needed to know what it was, because every time she had ignored propriety and followed an impulse, she had either ruined part of her life or immersed herself in great difficulties.
But it did seem that she should be free to enjoy Ben’s company. He was merely a friend, after all. Aside from a couple of thrillingly awkward moments, there was nothing romantic between them. No words or sentiments had been exchanged that she would be ashamed to hear repeated in a churchyard. She had conducted herself as a lady. And Ben might be only a prospector, but he knew how to act like a gentleman.
Pushing her gloved hands into her coat pockets, she kicked a stone and watched it skitter across the ice covering Crater Lake. None of the men she’d met on this journey were anywhere near what Aunt Kibble would consider a gentleman. Men of breeding and background did not pin their futures on discovering gold. A true gentleman traveled with a retinue and wouldn’t dream of relinquishing his comforts to sleep in a small tent on frozen ground, eat the same monotonous beans and bacon every day, and wear himself out walking hundreds of miles to reach the Yukon.
She didn’t know Ben Dare’s background, but she reluctantly conceded that he wouldn’t be here if he were a gentleman. On the other hand, he was liberal-minded and regarded women in a way that Juliette had not encountered before. Moreover, he made her feel interesting, and he made her suspect that she had potential to be more than she was. That frightened her a little, but it flattered her more.
