Forget-Me-Not Bride (27 page)

‘What? Smack a tiny wee mite like this?' With a pair of scissors from his bag he severed the cord. ‘I'd be damned to hell before I'd commit such a crime.'

‘But …'

He threw the baby up into the air. There were cries of protest from the two old women. Hazily Lilli wondered how long they had been there. Not once through the birth had she been aware of their presence.

The baby dropped into Ringan's hands, its mouth opening wide in a gasp of shock, its lungs filling. The puny, healthy, enraged cries that followed were the most beautiful sounds Lilli had ever heard.

‘Isn't he grand?' Ringan said with a grin, holding the bawling baby high in his hands as if it were a trophy. The best, most magnificent trophy in the world. ‘Isn't he just the bonniest little laddie you've ever seen?'

The baby was red, wrinkled, and still streaked in mucus. ‘Yes,' she said, laughing through tears of emotion. ‘Yes, Ringan. He's the bonniest thing I've ever seen in my life.'

‘
Cameron
!' From outside the tepee footsteps approached, Lord Lister's cultured voice carrying clearly, ‘Stoddart says he's waited as long as he can and that he can't wait any longer. He's right, y'know. We need to be underway. Either you board now or you‘ll have to stay here till the next steamer puts in for wood.'

The two old crones were already busily seeing to the after-birth. Nana's mother was again fully conscious, her eyes fixed longingly on her son.

‘We'll be right with you!' Ringan called back, laying the squalling baby in its mother's arms.

Lilli picked up his instruments and put them in his bag. Then, as Ringan turned away from mother and child, she retrieved what remained of her and Kate's petticoats.

‘You deserve a bloody medal,' Lord Lister said baldly as Ringan stepped out of the tepee. ‘I'd as soon face the Boers single-handed as do what you've just done.'

Ringan grinned. ‘Then you dinna show very good judgment,' he said, his battered doctor's bag easy in his hand, his sense of well-being euphoric. He had done that which he had thought he would never do again. He had brought a child into the world. A child who, if it hadn't been for him, would very probably have died, taking its mother's life with it. In the most unexpected way possible, the decision that had been tormenting him had been resolved for him. Of
course
he was going to continue practising the profession he had been trained for. And he was going to practise it amongst Indians. He had seen more disease and sickness in his short walk through the camp than he would have seen in a year on the streets of a Canadian or an American city. He knew now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, where his future lay. And the knowledge elated him.

‘You'll not find many people curious about what you've been up to,' Lord Lister said as they neared the river-bank. ‘Kate thought you wouldn't want people to know what it was that was keeping you in the camp and they think you've merely been powwowing.'

Lilli could see Marietta and Edie standing at the
Casca's
rails. And Lucky Jack. ‘I've something I want to say to you before we board the
Casca
,' she said urgently to Ringan as Lord Lister strode a little ahead of them. ‘I want to … to apologise.'

He turned his head so that his eyes met hers, his eyebrows rising. ‘Apologise? I canna imagine what you have to apologise to me about.' His grey eyes, usually so cool and clear, had darkened in perplexity.

‘Someone slandered you to me aboard the
Senator
,' she said, wondering how she could have ever have allowed the slander to affect her behaviour towards him. ‘They didn't do it maliciously, they were merely passing on a piece of information they believed to be true. I only half-believed it when I was told it, but I know now there was no truth in it at all. And I'm ashamed that I even half-believed it.'

Lord Lister was already in the small boat waiting to ferry them out to the
Senator
.

Ringan stopped walking, his eyes holding hers. Perspiration still sheened her face. Tendrils of hair had escaped from the twist on top of her head and were curling down to her shoulders. The sleeves of her caramel coloured shirtwaist were pushed high, like a washerwoman's, and there was a smear of blood on her cream serge skirt. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and why the hell she was in love with a rogue like Lucky Jack Coolidge he couldn't begin to imagine. ‘If you've been told I'm an ex-prisoner, then I'm verra afraid you were told the truth,' he said slowly, wondering if any other woman in the world had eyes of a such a pure, clear, forget-me-not blue.

‘For the Lord's sake, hurry both of you!' Lord Lister shouted impatiently. ‘I don't want to be left kicking my heels here for the next few days!'

Both of them ignored him.

‘No, it wasn't that.'

The mid-day sun was flaming his hair with gleams of gold and copper and she saw that his long eye-lashes, dark auburn at the tips, were almost blond at the roots.

‘I knew about that even before you rescued Leo,' she said, wondering why she had ever thought red hair on a man, less than attractive.

He stood very still. In a nearby bush two birds wrangled furiously.

‘My informant told me you had been imprisoned for murder,' she said simply, ‘And I know you couldn't have murdered anyone. I know that if anyone ever died at your hands they would have done so by accident.'

‘Come
on
!' Lord Lister exhorted as the
Casca's
whistle shrilled. ‘The boat's going to sail, don't y'know!'

Ringan's eyes held her's. He didn't speak. He couldn't. The emotions raging through him were far too shattering to be articulated.

The
Casca's
whistle shrilled again. Tearing her eyes from his, Lilli gave her hand to Lord Lister and, her emotions in tumult, allowed him to help her into the waiting boat.

All through the short boat ride her emotions were in tumult. The time she had spent with Ringan Cameron in the Indian tepee had been the most extraordinary of her life. She had felt utterly in tune with him and with what he was trying to achieve. And together, what they had achieved had been marvellous. She wondered what Nana's mother would call her son. She wondered if she would one day be able to return to the camp and see him.

She looked across to where Ringan was sitting, his doctor's bag between his feet, and her breath came quick in her throat. He was an amazing man. A big man in every sense of the word. She wondered why, when he had tended her after she had been hit by The Pig, he hadn't admitted to her that he was a doctor. Was it because of his jailbird past? Or was it just the natural reserve of a Highlander? There was so much she didn't know about him and wanted to know, but one thing she
did
know was that she liked him. She liked him very much indeed.

‘What
have
you all been doing?' Marietta shouted down to them, hanging over the deck rails as the boat rocked against the
Casca's
side. ‘We thought you'd at least been eaten by bears!'

Lilli laughed up at her and then Lord Lister was on his feet, steadying her as she stepped from the rocking boat onto the
Casca's
ladder. Before beginning to climb she looked over her shoulder at Ringan. Beneath his thick tumble of curly red hair his eyes met hers. Shock stabbed through her. A few moments ago, when they had walked from the Indian camp to the river-bank, he had been euphoric. Now the skin was taut across his cheekbones and beneath his rusty moustache his mouth was a tight line of pain. He looked like a man on the brink of an abyss; a man faced with a realization totally unacceptable to him.

Deeply disconcerted she climbed the ladder. Was he worried that gossip would spread of how he had left the
Casca
carrying a doctor's bag? And if so, why? Were there legal difficulties which made it impossible for him to openly practise his profession? What if …'

‘What in blazes have you been doing?' Lucky Jack demanded, his eyes dark with concern as he helped her aboard the
Casca
. ‘And if you wanted to get so friendly with the Indians why didn't you ask me to accompany you?'

For once his touch didn't drive every other thought from her brain. She was aware of Lord Lister stepping onto the deck behind her. In another second or so Ringan would be following him.

‘You were playing cards,' she said, wondering when she would next have an opportunity to talk in private to Ringan. She wanted to ask him what it was that was so deeply troubling him. They were, after all, friends now. Shared experience had forged a bond of profound camaraderie between them.

‘We're dining with Captain Stoddart and Kitty,' Lucky Jack was saying to her as they walked towards the companionway leading down to the cabins. ‘Privately, of course. No use in ruining your reputation now when we've so carefully avoided doing so for so long.'

Lilli was barely listening to him. She had too many other things on her mind to worry overmuch about the arrangements for dinner. She now knew what it was she wanted to do when she had settled in Dawson. She wanted to work with the Indians. She wanted to teach bright-eyed intelligent children like Nana to read and write in English so that they could better communicate with the Americans and Canadians and Europeans now living alongside them in the Yukon Valley.

‘Did you really see bears, Lilli?' Edie was asking round-eyed as she and Marietta accompanied them towards the cabins. ‘Mr Saskatchewan Stan says he once flushed a brown bear from giant blueberry bushes and the bear ran and ran it was so scairt of him!'

Lilli frowned slightly. Hadn't Mr Jenkinson said something about starting a school for Indian children in Dawson? Such a school would surely not come under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Education Authority. When it came to teaching staff, Mr Jenkinson would be able to engage whoever he chose.

‘Unless you're a Highland Scot the word is scared, Edie. Not scairt,' Marietta said, wondering what on earth Lilli was thinking about to be so totally self-absorbed, she didn't seem to be even aware of the proprietal way Lucky Jack Coolidge was shepherding her towards her cabin. She looked across at him, hoping to catch his eye. He was handsome enough to ruin a nun. Her mouth twitched into a naughty smile. She would be more than happy for him to ruin her, any time or any place. Or she would be if he wasn't Lilli's beau.

‘The children are invited to dinner as well,' Lucky Jack said as they reached Lilli's cabin door. ‘Stoddart likes children. He has five of his own.'

With great difficulty Lilli dragged her attention away from the dizzying prospect of doing something truly useful with her life. ‘Has he? I wonder why he doesn't have them with him aboard the
Casca
? It would be easy for him to, wouldn't it?'

Lucky Jack shot her a down-slanting smile and for the first time since she had re-boarded the
Casca
she registered the reality of his presence at her side. Her heart felt as if it were flipping over within her breast. He had been worried about her. He had been concerned. And he had arranged for them to be able to dine together in near privacy that evening.

She smiled sunnily back at him, loving the gold flecks in his amber-brown eyes; loving the way his wheat-gold hair curled low in the nape of his neck; at the way his gold earring made him look for all the world like a swashbuckling pirate.

It was only later, when she was telling Marietta and Edie what had happened in the Indian camp, that it occurred to her to wonder what Lucky Jack's reaction would be when she told him of her plans. And to wonder what the situation now was between Susan and Mr Jenkinson.

‘Terrible,' Marietta said succinctly. ‘Susan's in her cabin sobbing her eyes out. Mr Jenkinson is up on deck, looking so traumatized it wouldn't surprise me if he didn't throw himself overboard. Lettie's tried talking to him but she didn't get anywhere. She says he seems too shocked to even speak. She's with Susan now but I don't see what comfort she can give her. The romance is off. Methodist ministers do not, apparently, marry mail-order brides, no matter how suitable as a minster's wife the bride may be.'

Lilli's throat was too tight for speech. Tears glittered on her eyelashes. Poor Susan. She had been so near to happiness and now it was as far beyond her reach as ever.

‘Does Kate know?' she asked at last.

Marietta nodded, her usually animated little monkey-face sombre. ‘Yes. But what's she's going to do where Lord Lister is concerned she hasn't yet said.'

‘I'm not going to tell him,' Kate said an hour later as she joined Marietta and Edie on deck.

‘But if you don't tell him, how can he decide whether he's going to pay off Josh Nelson and marry you?' Marietta asked, perplexed.

Kate's high-necked, midnight-blue dress seemed to draw all the colour from her face. ‘He can't,' she said brokenly, ‘but neither will he be able to reject me as Mr Jenkinson has rejected Susan. And I couldn't bear it if he rejected me. I couldn't live with such pain.'

‘But I still don't see …' Marietta persisted, more perplexed than ever.

Kate pressed a hand against her throat. I'm going to tell Perry …'

‘Perry?' Lilli interrupted.

‘Peregrine. Lord Lister.' Kate's voice was barely audible. ‘I'm going to tell Perry that I'm already affianced and that once we reach Dawson I will no longer be able to continue my … my friendship with him. That way I will always be able to pretend to myself that perhaps he
would
have wanted to pay off Mr Nelson and marry me. And for the rest of my life I'll be able to remember these precious days we've spent together with joy. My memories won't be tarnished, as Susan's memories are going to be, by rejection and heartache.'

‘But what if you tell him and he
doesn't
reject you?' Marietta demanded explosively. ‘Isn't that a possibility worth gambling on? Lord, if it was me, I'd gamble
everything
on it!'