Page 62 of I Do, I Do, I Do
Zoe waved a tin of coffee in one hand and a slice of toast and cheese in the other. “You? Condone violence? As I live and breathe. Is violence covered in the etiquette books?”
“Never mind. Where did you get the toasted cheese?”
“I fixed it for her,” Tom called from the campfire.
“I didn’t ask you to,” Zoe snapped.
Tom smiled at Juliette. “Miss Wilder and I are courting. I’m showing her how thoughtful I am and how helpful I’d be around a house.”
Juliette and Clara stepped backward and stared at Zoe.
Even the ash and grease could not hide Zoe’s bright red flush of anger. “We arenotcourting! Do you hear me, Tom Price? We arenot, as in never ever not possibly, courting!”
Juliette glanced toward Ben over by the dogs, and Clara shot a look at Bear, who was talking and laughing with the men in the second party. Both men had positioned themselves facing the women. As they always did, Juliette abruptly realized.
Tom smiled. “Would you like more toast and cheese, darlin’?”
Zoe sputtered, then shook her head fiercely and stomped away, heading toward Ben and the dogs.
“Fortunately I admire obstinate women, and God knows that woman is obstinate. But if she were easy to woo, she wouldn’t be worth having.” He winked at Juliette, then placed another slice of bread and cheese on his paddle and held it over the flames.
Clara blinked. “They’re courting. When did this happen? Did Zoe suddenly get unmarried? I’d like to know how she did that.”
Throughout the afternoon, Juliette thought about Zoe and Tom courting and, despite Zoe’s protests, the long smoky glances between them. And clearly Clara and Bear were circling each other. The air fairly sizzled between those two. And then she thought about Ben Dare.
“I amnotcourting,” Zoe continued to insist after they had eaten supper and retired to their tent to fall into their cots.
“I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t forget why we’re here,” Clara said, covering a yawn. Her long red woolen underwear clashed with her carroty hair, which had frizzed around her head like a halo. “As long as you remember to shoot our no-good weasel of a husband, you can court all you want to. Makes no never mind to me.”
“What’s the matter with you?” Zoe looked up from stabbing a needle at the blisters on her heel. “Juliette, give Clara the lecture about how we’re married, about propriety, about not being free to get on with our lives. I’m too exhausted to do it.”
Juliette turned her washrag between her fingers, frowning at the smears of ash and grease. The gunk had helped protect against the raw wind and cold, but her face still felt chapped and burned.
“Before I fell in the lake, I would have given the ‘lecture’ as you refer to it, but I’m not sure I believe it anymore.”
Zoe and Clara stopped what they were doing and stared. Both looked faintly ridiculous in their shapeless long johns with hair streaming down their backs and the light of the lantern turning their faces as red and painful-looking as Juliette’s.
“Now I’m thinking that people should grab hold of whatever happiness comes their way and do it while they can.” She tossed the washrag toward their laundry bucket. “Tom’s a good, decent man. He’s honest, respected, a hard worker, and he’s successful. The two of you have the same background, the same values, and the same way of looking at things. Now think about our husband. Not only has he vanished, he’s a liar, a seducer, and a thief. But he wasn’t from Newcastle,” she added, looking hard at Zoe. “That’s his only virtue.”
“Juliette March! I don’t believe you’re saying these things!”
Clara sprinkled talc on her head and pulled a brush through her hair. The talc freshened her scalp and pulled oil from the tresses, but it also dried out her hair. Crackling noises sounded under the brush, and tendrils floated upward, snapping with static. “Any fool with eyes in her head can see that Tom loves you. He probably always has. If you weren’t so stubborn, if you’d let it happen, you’d love him back.”
Zoe jabbed the needle into her sewing kit. “You two have gone snow-mad. Have you forgotten that I intend to shoot Jean Jacques?” She patted the long lump of the rifle beneath her sleeping bag. “Then the Canadian Mounties will hang me or stand me up in front of a firing squad or whatever they do to execute murderers. I don’t have a future.”
“All the more reason to take whatever happiness you can while you still have time. I agree with Juliette.”
“I couldn’t possibly. Tom is fromNewcastle!”
Juliette folded her hands across her red woolen lap. “Remember the story you told us about the Owner’s Day Parade?” she asked softly. “And the people in the carriages who looked down their noses at you and your family?”
“I’m not likely to forget, am I?”
“Tell me, Zoe. How are you different from the people in the carriages?” Juliette watched Zoe’s mouth drop and her eyes flare. “It sounds as if you, too, think the people in Newcastle are no better than dirt. It sounds like you also see your friends and neighbors as objects of scorn and denigration.”
“My God!” Zoe stared and swallowed hard.
“If you and Tom are representative of the people in Newcastle, it seems to me that you’d be proud. Maybe the residents are poor, but they sound like good-hearted, hardworking people. Why are you ashamed of that? Why do you believe the carriage people’s opinion instead of listening to your own heart?” She reached to Zoe’s cot and pressed her shaking hand. “You don’t have to ride in a carriage to be a snob,” she said gently. “Please. Think about that when you see Tom tomorrow.”
