Gold Dust (31 page)

“Sailing isn’t one of your accomplishments?” he asked innocently.

“Sails are of little use in Montana,” she snapped.

“Temper, Katydid. Don’t let a piece of canvas get the best of you. Let me show you how.”

“I suppose you can do it better?”

“Chicago’s on a lake, Katy. A very big lake, with lots of sailboats. I’ve been boating since I was a kid.”

“Oh.”

“Let me demonstrate.”

Katy wondered if it were really necessary for Jonah to trap her in the circle of his arms while he showed her how to raise
and secure the sail. She should have told him in no uncertain terms to back off, sail or no sail. If they were to be friends,
they should stay a friendly distance from each other. The heart
palpitations that came from feeling his breath in her hair, his hard chest pressing into her back, his arms brushing along
her ribs and sometimes—accidentally, Katy was sure—brushing the sides of her breasts: All that went far beyond friendship.

Katy couldn’t quite get a sharp objection out of her mouth. The laughter in Jonah’s eyes told her that her pretense at ignoring
him was as transparent as glass. When the little session of instruction was over, Katy realized that she hadn’t paid a bit
of heed to his tips on sail handling.

A favorable wind pushed them that day almost to the limits of the twenty-six-mile-long lake. They camped that night just two
miles above where Lake Bennett emptied into the channel known as Caribou Crossing. Wearied by the sun and wind and by the
constant struggle to control the boat, they retired early to their tents—Patrick and Jonah to one, Camilla and Katy to the
other. As was his habit, Andy took a blanket and made himself a bed beside the open fire.

“I likes ta sleep without other gents snorin’ in my ear,” he announced when Camilla expressed concern. “Don’t you worry none,
ma’am. I could sleep on a block of ice if’n I had to, and if it rains, it don’t bother me none. I’m a good sleeper.”

Accustomed to Andy’s peculiar ways, Jonah and Katy knew better than to argue.

“Is the boy always so stubborn?” Camilla asked Katy in the privacy of their tent.

“This is nothing,” Katy told her. “On the way up the pass he went off into the woods to sleep. He doesn’t like crowds, I guess.”

A brief, dry chuckle escaped Camilla’s lips. “I guess he’s been doing the same since we’ve been camped together, and I didn’t
notice.”

“You’ve had other things on your mind,” Katy said quietly.

“Yes, I have.”

Camilla had new lines in her face. Her eyes seemed more sunken, her cheeks more hollow. But she never mentioned Liam’s name,
and her rage against Patrick was past. Tonight,
however, was the first sign of Camilla noticing anything in the world other than her grief.

“He’s a nice boy, is that Andy, but wild as a wolf cub.” Camilla smiled slightly. “Someone needs to take him in hand, don’t
you think?”

The light of a maternal crusade brightened some of the shadows around Camilla’s eyes. Katy was glad the Irishwoman was showing
some interest in life again, and could only be glad she had set her sights upon poor Andy and not her.

Her gratitude, however, came a bit too early.

By the time they had sailed through the two-mile channel of Caribou Crossing and into Lake Tagish the next morning, Camilla
had expanded her crusade to include Katy. It had started before breakfast when Andy, with instincts honed no doubt by practice
avoiding his own mother’s attention, deftly dodged Camilla’s insistence that she should mend his clothing.

“No time right now, Miz Burke,” he’d said with false regret. “Got to catch us some fish for breakfast.”

“I’ll go with you,” Katy offered quickly, but Camilla’s gentle hand on her arm made escape impossible.

“Katy, dear, why don’t we start to work on some proper clothing for you? Wouldn’t you like to wear something besides those
terrible trousers?”

Katy watched a grinning Andy escape to the lakeshore with a fishing pole. “I… uh… no,” she said with a sigh. “To tell the
truth, Camilla, I got mad and threw my dresses away after those stupid skirts nearly drowned me at Sheep Camp.”

Not quite the truth. Trousers seemed a talisman of protection after what had happened at Stone House. If she didn’t dress
like a woman, then she needn’t worry about her woman’s heart and woman’s foolishness. Trousers were more
practical than skirt and petticoats anyway. She didn’t know why she had ever set out on this journey in bothersome women’s
garb.

“An understandable reaction, dear.” Camilla regarded her with an understanding that was all too piercing. “You are a woman,
though, and women are expected to bear with these little inconveniences. We’ll simply make you something more proper to wear.”

Katy sighed. She was lucky there were no yard goods stores in the Yukon wilderness.

By the time they’d breakfasted on the whitefish and grayling that Andy caught, Camilla had solved that problem by deciding
to alter a couple of her own skirts to fit Katy. The Irishwoman still had her eye on Andy, though, surveying with disapproval
the wild reddish hair that stuck out from beneath the boy’s cap, the baggy, dirty flannel shirt, and the threadbare knees
of his britches. While Patrick and Jonah watched in amusement, Andy stayed as far away from Camilla as he could manage.

Once they were on the water, Katy didn’t have much to do besides watch Jonah, for Lake Tagish was a nineteen-mile stretch
of calm water that required little attention to the boat or sail. There were things other than Jonah to watch, of course.
On either side of their watery highway, mountains climbed toward the sky in spectacular ruggedness. Hawks circled on rising
currents of air, and in the late morning a solitary eagle swept over the valley in silent majesty. Flotillas of wild ducks
quacked at them from beyond Andy’s stone-throwing range. Fish jumped. Clouds played chase with the sun, creating shadows that
raced through the valley and over the mountains.

In spite of nature’s entertaining show, Katy’s eyes kept returning to Jonah—Jonah helping Andy set the sail, or talking to
Patrick, both men hunkered on their heels at the rudder and laughing at something that doubtless only men would find amusing.
The onetime tenderfoot had grown as rugged-looking
as the mountains around them—tanned, his jaw darkened with a thick, short growth of beard he no longer bothered to shave.
The warmth of the Indian summer sun had prompted him to shed his jacket, and beneath his shirt hard muscle rolled and stretched
with every movement.

Not that Katy was moved by all that masculinity. Well, maybe she was moved a little, she admitted to herself. At Stone House
she’d proved her susceptibility in no uncertain terms.

That night they dined on duck spitted over the fire—thanks to Katy’s rock sling and Patrick’s willingness to wade into the
lake to retrieve the duck.

“If we had a good hunting dog along,” Jonah commented with a waggle of his brow toward Hunter, “Patrick wouldn’t have to get
wet.”

Hunter pricked his ears at Jonah’s words, then curled comfortably on the warm sand of the shore with an aloof indolence that
communicated better than words that wolves were far above that sort of thing.

The evening passed peacefully. Hopes were beginning to edge upward again, dissipating the dark mood that had gripped all of
them since Liam’s death. Patrick tried to teach Jonah to play the fiddle, without much success. Andy practiced with Katy’s
rock sling while Hunter watched, and Camilla busied herself altering one of her skirts and petticoats to preserve Katy’s propriety.
Katy was suddenly homesick—something she thought she would never be. She wondered if her pa, Olivia, and little David were
back from Paris yet, and what they thought of her leaving on her great adventure.

“Hey, Katydid. Why the long face?” Jonah sat down beside her on the driftwood log she had dragged to the fire to serve as
a bench.

“What long face?”

He placed a fingertip at the corner of her mouth and tugged it downward. “That long face. You look as if someone told you
there was no more gold to be had in the Klondike.”

Katy tried not to shiver at his touch, but the feel of him—just the tip of his finger, even—sent a ribbon of warmth curling
through her, the kind of warmth that made a person shiver instead of sweat.

“No long face,” she denied. “I’m happy as can be. At least I am until Camilla finishes that stupid skirt and petticoat and
steals my britches.”

“Good for Camilla,” Jonah said. He slipped off the log and settled his buttocks into the sand, stretched his arms above his
head and yawned. “You’re too old to be running around in trousers, you know.”

There was that insidious curl of heat again, starting between her legs and shooting upward through her stomach to her heart.
That yawny stretch of Jonah’s must have showcased every damned manly muscle in his arms and chest.

“I like trousers,” she argued. “You try running around in skirts and see how much you like it.”

He let his eyes wander over her legs and hips in a manner that made her want to squirm. “I think I like you in trousers better
than I would like me in skirts.”

Katy had to laugh at the image of his hairy ankles peeking from beneath a frilly hem. He laughed with her. Suddenly she wanted
to reach out and feel the texture of his beard, but she didn’t. Such a gesture would be expected of a lover, or a wife, but
not a friend, and she had made her choice. He was doing his part by treating her like the sister Patrick Burke still believed
she was—unless Camilla had filled him in on their little deception. Still, Katy was suspicious of all the times in the last
few days that Jonah had brushed close by her with seeming innocence, the opportunities he took for small touches, his comments
and smiles that might have been innocently spoken to a true sister but had double, seductive meanings for one who wasn’t.
Katy wondered what Olivia would tell her to do about Jonah. Would her pa like him? Probably not. In many ways, Jonah was like
her pa—ways that Gabe O’Connell probably wouldn’t appreciate.

Jonah got to his feet and brushed the sand from his trousers. “Gonna go check the nets,” he said. “Maybe a nice trout or salmon
decided to sacrifice itself for tomorrow’s breakfast. You coming?”

“Sure,” Katy said.

He put his arm around her when they left the heat of the fire. Katy felt the effect of his touch from her shoulders to her
toes. In the moonlight, Jonah’s grin looked wicked and knowing. Her imagination was playing games with her, Katy told herself.
Or maybe the one playing games was Jonah.

Jonah had been called a variety of uncomplimentary names in his life, but no one had ever called him a quitter. On the contrary,
in journalistic and political circles in Chicago, he had a reputation as a bulldog—once he got hold of something he seldom
let go.

Unfortunately, he frequently had the finesse of a bulldog as well. He’d certainly done a fair job of spooking Katy with his
charge into the subject of marriage—not once, but twice. His mistake was in assuming she was like almost every other young
woman in having marriage at the top of her priorities. He should have known better. Katy was like no other woman he’d ever
met. That was part of her allure. But in spite of her skittishness, he had no intention of giving up, and the more he watched
her, the more certain he was that Katy was worth fighting for.

Watching Katy had become Jonah’s favorite pastime. As they sailed through the dawn pinks and roses that painted the quiet
waters of Lake Tagish, Katy sat in the bow with Camilla, enduring the woman’s instruction in needlework. Jonah watched them,
his mouth curling in amusement. Katy had no use for sewing or other such feminine pursuits; she’d told him often enough. But
she was kind enough to let Camilla assuage her maternal needs with Katy as victim. When they stopped for the noon meal, he
watched her practicing the rock sling with Andy. The two of them together
looked like kids out for a lark. Katy could out-imp the boy who was king of the imps. Sometimes she looked like a boy herself
in her britches and loose-fitting shirt. Other times she looked so much like a woman that Jonah could scarcely catch his breath.
She sang through his blood and smiled at him in his dreams—the woman whose innocent ardor had been a flame in the night, whose
guileless passion had touched off a chord of response that still hummed through every fiber of his body.

The sailed out of Lake Tagish and over six miles of river into Lake Marsh without incident. Days marched by as the miles fell
behind them. Mornings were cold and misty, and in the early hours a scum of ice covered rain puddles and the camp wash water,
a reminder that the arctic winter was breathing down their necks. Generally, though, the weather was kind. Morning clouds
and fog gave way to blue skies and sunshine by noon. Heavily laden though it was with five people, a wolf, and two tons of
supplies, the boat proved a worthy craft with no leaks and a comfortable steadiness under sail. Fish were plentiful and easily
caught, and the shores were rich with cranberries, blueberries, pineberries, and wild currants.