Page 78 of I Do, I Do, I Do
“Because it would mean a lot to me if you wouldn’t lollygag on this next leg of the journey.”
“I don’t lollygag! I go as fast as I can.”
“Well, go faster. I’m in a hurry to reach Lake Bennett.”
“Why is that?” Juliette paused in folding clean laundry, and her eyebrows rose. “What’s at Lake Bennett?”
Clara smiled. “That’s none of your business.”
“Clara Klaus!” Juliette stared at her and then laughed. “I suppose the next question is, what are you going to wear?”
“I guess I can admit that I’ve been invited to dinner and it’s been requested that I wear my arm-wrestling ensemble.”
“I suspect that’s an excellent choice.” Juliette sat down beside her. “Clara, are you very sure?” she asked in a low voice. “I’ve never been so miserable as I am since Ben and I…since we…” Her cheeks flamed.
“But you’ve never been as happy either.”
Juliette tilted her head back. “You know, sometimes I wonder if the three of us aren’t bad influences on each other. I wonder if we don’t somehow give each other permission to do things we wouldn’t dream of doing on our own.”
“I would dream of being with Bear whether or not you and Zoe were here.” She’d been longing for that man from the day she bumped into him.
“And I would dream of being with Ben. But I don’t know if I actually would have been brave enough to do it.”
Clara took Juliette’s hand. “I think you would. You’re not the same person you were when we met. None of us are. This trip has changed all of us in ways we’ll be discovering for years.”
“Perhaps. But Clara, let me say one more thing.” Juliette’s gray eyes filled with sympathy. “You know that loving Bear can’t end well.”
“I didn’t say I loved him.”
“You don’t have to.”
Juliette was right. After all the weeks they had spent living together in a confined space, they knew each other’s expressions, moods, emotions. Clara had known that Juliette and Zoe were in love probably before they had known it themselves. Now they were reading the signs in her.
The next day as she manhandled her sled down the treacherous frozen Linderman Rapids, she asked herself if she really did love Bear Barrett. She had, after all, been wrong before.
The answer came without hesitation. She loved him. She loved the big brawling size of him and his scarred beautiful face. The sound of his booming laughter made her smile. He would probably laugh now if she told him that he was chivalrous, but he was the type of man who turned gentle and protective toward women. She admired him for being a self-made man, appreciated that he wasn’t too proud to talk business with her or take her advice. Best of all, he didn’t see her as an asset sheet, he didn’t want anything from her except her mind and body. Both of which, she decided, she was willing to give.
They would have to have a little talk about respectability when they had that fireside chat he’d mentioned.
Lake Bennett was the largest camp Clara had seen since leaving Dyea. Here the Skagway and the Chilkoot trails converged, spilling a tide of stampeders onto the shoreline. A layer of smoke overhung at least a thousand tents.
Some of the stampeders would push on to Dawson by sled, risking blizzards, frostbite, hungry wild animals, and getting lost. Most would rest on the frozen shore of the lake, using the time until spring to build rafts or boats. Many would drown in the Yukon River after the melt. It happened every year.
“We’ve been so fortunate that no one in our party has been killed,” Clara said. Everyone had minor scrapes, bruises, and sprains, but no major injuries, thank heaven.
“Hold still,” Juliette ordered, her mouth full of pins.
She was pinning Clara’s dress at the waist and shoulders. It needed to be taken in. Clara had lost weight on the journey—they all had.
Both women looked at the tent flap as Zoe blew inside, bringing a swirl of snowflakes along with her. “I got it,” she said triumphantly. She started to remove her scarf, hat, mittens, coat, and two sweaters. The temperature had sunk to twenty below zero and remained there. “But I think your friendship with Mrs. Eddington is forever compromised. It was bad enough that you bought one pessary from her. She can’t think why you’d need two.”
“Why didn’t you tell her it was for you?”
“Me?” Zoe placed a hand on her breast and fluttered her eyelashes. “I’m a married woman. Maybe I already own what’s required.”
Clara rolled her eyes. “No one knows you’re married, but everyone knows you and Tom are carrying on. All they have to do is look at the two of you. So don’t tell me about being married.”
Juliette shifted to reach another part of Clara’s waist. “Why does Mrs. Eddington have a seemingly endless supply of…those things? It’s not decent.”
