Yukon Wedding
Allie Pleiter
A gold-rush town is no place for a single mother. But widow Lana Bristow won't abandon the only home her son has ever known. She'll fight to remain in Treasure Creek, Alaska–even if it means wedding Mack Tanner, the man she blames for her husband's death.Mack sees marriage as his duty, the only way to protect his former business partner's family. Yet what starts as an obligation changes as his spoiled socialite bride proves to be a woman of strength and grace. A woman who shows Mack the only treasure he needs is her heart.
Here was her husband-to-be.
Lana grabbed the rail for support as she nearly tripped down the last stair.
It seemed as if the entire hotel staff and guests had turned out for the occasion—the parlor was filled with peering eyes. Lana felt very much on display, even here among strangers. Mack was right—she’d never have survived this charade in the middle of Treasure Creek.
“You’re a fine sight,” he said as she stepped onto the parlor rug. His voice was tight and unsteady.
“You cut a fine figure yourself,” she managed, then gulped at how foolish the words sounded. He really had surprised her, however. In all the muddy making-do of Treasure Creek, she’d completely forgotten the way he could command a room when formally dressed. Half her bridesmaids had swooned over him at her wedding. Her first wedding.
Stop that. You can’t think about that now. This is a new life.
ALASKAN BRIDES: Women of the Gold Rush find that love is the greatest treasure of all.
Yukon Wedding—Allie Pleiter, April 2011
ALLIE PLEITER
Enthusiastic but slightly untidy mother of two, RITA
Award finalist Allie Pleiter writes both fiction and nonfiction. An avid knitter and unreformed chocoholic, she spends her days writing books, drinking coffee and finding new ways to avoid housework. Allie grew up in Connecticut, holds a B.S. in Speech from Northwestern University and spent fifteen years in the field of professional fundraising. She lives with her husband, children and a Havanese dog named Bella in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.
Yukon Wedding
Allie Pleiter
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
—Matthew 6:18–21
To everyone—and I mean everyone—at Comer Children’s Hospital at the University of Chicago
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Letter to Reader
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Chapter One
Treasure Creek, Alaska, June 1898
Mack Tanner looked up to see a raging storm coming toward him.
“Good morning,” said the storm, otherwise known as Lana Bristow. Each syllable of her greeting was sharp and steely. She stood in that particular way he called her “speechifying” stance, which heralded an oncoming verbal assault. Mack spread his own feet, not particularly eager to endure whatever was coming in front of the half dozen gold rush stampeders he’d managed to hire off the Chilkoot Trail to build his new General Store.
Lana’s blond hair was a nest of frayed locks, strands sticking wildly out of the careful twist she usually wore. Her apron hung diagonally across that impossibly tiny waist of hers, with a wide smear of something dark that matched the smudge currently gracing her son Georgie’s chin. The brooch she always wore at her neck—that silly, frilly flower thing with all the golden swirls on it—was gone. It was held bent and misshapen, he noticed with a gulp, in her left hand, while she clamped two-yearold Georgie to one hip with her right. One side of her hem was soaked and the boy sported only one shoe.
More was amiss than the argument he’d had with her last night, that was certain. They’d gone at it again regarding Lana’s accounts. Her mounting debts had been a constant sore spot between them since her husband, Jed—Mack’s best friend—had died in the Palm Sunday avalanche. She’d caught him monkeying with her store credit again, giving her more than what she paid for and “misplacing” numerous bills. And yes, Mack had taken it upon himself to slash her debt so that no one in Treasure Creek would guess the sorry state of her finances.
He owed her that much.
She didn’t see it that way.
Instead, his “generosity” made her furious. Why that confounding woman wouldn’t let him settle things up for her—when she needed it and he had the resources to easily do so—never ceased to amaze him.
Lana stood stiff and tall. “I have something to say.”
Mack could have been blind, deaf, half asleep and still have picked up on that. Every inch of her body broadcast “I have something to say.” A low commentary grumble to that effect rippled through the men around him until Mack raised his hand—the one with the large hammer still in it—to silence them.
Not taking his eyes off her, Mack shifted his weight and nodded slowly. For a moment he considered motioning her toward a less public place, seeing as this was no doubt going to be a long “something to say,” but the flash of fire in her blue eyes told him to stay put. He had the odd sensation of facing a firing squad.
“Yes.” That single syllable loudly declared, Lana spun on her heels, hoisted her son farther up on one hip, and started back down the way she came.
Mack’s mouth fell open, letting the nails tumble out to jingle on the ground at his feet. Yes? What kind of riddle thing was that to say? Glory, but the Widow Bristow would be the death of him.
The men found this hilarious, sputtering into laughter and less-than-polite commentary until he threw down the hammer and strode off after her. Once away from the crowd, Mack expected Lana to turn and explain herself. It’s what rational people did, after all. When after twenty paces she failed to either turn or slow, he bellowed, “Yes what?” after her. It echoed across the intersection, raising heads on either side of the roads that made up the center of tiny Treasure Creek.
Lana stopped and whipped around to face him. The sudden move forced Georgie to grab at her just to stay upright, balling the neckline of her blouse in his toddler fists. Lana glared at Mack as if he must be dimwitted not to catch her meaning. “I said, ‘Yes what?’” he shouted again, not caring which of the curious onlookers gathered on the boardwalks heard him.
Lana furrowed her brows so far down she looked catlike. She flicked her eyes around at the small crowd now staring at them, as if his simple request for a reasonable explanation was some sort of cruel punishment. Lana took three steps toward him, and with something more like a hiss than a whisper, said, “For the seventh time, yes.” Having spoken her piece, she turned once again and set off up the boardwalk away from him.
Mack slapped his hat against his thigh, confused and angry. What was that supposed to mean, “the seventh time”? What had he done six times that this now was the seventh…
It struck him like a bolt of lightening, thundering though his chest as if struck by the hammer he’d held moments ago.
She’d said “yes.”
As in “Yes, I will marry you.”
He’d asked her six times over the last two months, the first time only a week after her Jed’s tragic death. Marrying her was the best way to protect her now. After all, he’d lured Jed up here with the promise of fortune and adventure. A promise that ended with Jed buried in snow, alongside dozens of other stampeders who refused to heed their guide’s warnings that Sunday. He could have done more to stop Jed, to make his foolhardy buddy see reason and be cautious. But he hadn’t, and now Lana was left up here on her own—without Jed and without the fortune he’d made and subsequently lost.
He’d asked her over and over after that, even though she blamed him for Jed’s death, knowing she’d rather marry a log than wed the likes of him, well aware of how much she disliked him, but equally aware that it was the only real way to make it up to her and her son. He’d asked her every time she struggled with this thing or that, every time she’d looked weary from keeping up appearances. He asked every time it looked as if the endless struggles of Alaskan living—and the greedy stream of despicable Alaskan men—were about to do her in.
Once, when a drunken “old friend of Jed’s” had actually tried to drag her off to Skaguay and marry her by force, he’d even offered to pay her way back to Seattle. She had no family left back there, but he was plumb out of ways to keep her safe when too many stampeders still thought she held Jed’s riches. After all, he’d known Jed’s lust for gold was growing beyond reason and into desperation. He could have tried harder to protect Jed from the impulsive nature that was always his undoing. The fact that Jed was gone was his fault.
She knew he could have tried harder to save Jed, too. She’d refused every single offer of help. Until now.
So why was his now new fiancée stomping off without an explanation? He’d lived long enough to know that a female could be the most furious of God’s creations when provoked, but he would not allow her to stomp off with the last word.
Especially when that last word was “yes.”
Grumbling that his keen sense of obligation would likely be the death of him, Mack set off after her. She stalked past the white church—one of the first buildings he and Jed had built when they founded the town—and still didn’t look back. Georgie did, though, catching Mack’s gaze with troubled brown eyes under that mop of curly dark hair. His mama kept up her furious pace, past the other shops and houses, attracting the stares of the men gathered along the boardwalk. She and Georgie were sulking off to her cabin, from the looks of it. She had to know he’d follow her, even if she kept her back ramrod straight as she turned the corner past the schoolhouse.
The Tucker sisters, a trio of rough-and-tumble gals who’d spent the past month working on that building, stopped their work to look up at the spectacle. Lucy Tucker waved, but Lana stomped on, paying Lucy no mind. Buildings sprung up overnight like mushrooms here in Treasure Creek. Mack felt on display as the sisters gawked among themselves. With his town nearing a thousand residents and ten times that many rushing through in a steady stream toward the Trail, why did all them have time this morning to watch Mack Tanner make a fool of himself?
Lana didn’t think she had any tears left to cry. She made her way back through the crowded, muddy main street, past the church Mack and Jed had insisted mark the center of the town they’d founded together just three months ago. Three months that felt like thirty years. She picked her way as fast as she could past the schoolhouse under construction, the bank and several rows of cobbled together shacks where farmers and butchers sold food. She didn’t stop until she reached the cabin she and Georgie called home. She hadn’t expected to cry, couldn’t believe that tears threatened now, and would not, absolutely would not cry in public.
Mack was behind her, she knew it. And he ought to be, if he had an ounce of compassion in that stubborn, domineering head of his. She was sure she heard the thud of his angry boots behind her as she rounded the corner beyond Mavis Goodge’s boarding house, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of letting him see her turn.
She’d done it. She’d surrendered to the only viable option available to her in Treasure Creek. Some “treasure.” It was awful here—cold and crude, muddy and noisy—and this was one of the better towns. It seemed ages ago when Mack and Jed had founded Treasure Creek. They’d been full of big ideas, seeking to create a place of faith and values in the lawless, greedy chaos of the gold rush. Only it hadn’t turned out that way. Not for her. Yes, Treasure Creek had become known as a God-fearing town, but what good had faith done in the face of all the rampant swindling of the Chilkoot Trail? Faith hadn’t kept Jed off the trail that Sunday, even though the guides warned “the mountain was angry.” Faith hadn’t squelched Jed’s relentless need to chase gold rumors, skipping Sunday services to meet an Indian guide boasting leads to an undiscovered lode. God hid no huge, undiscovered treasures up on that mountain. In her darker moments, Lana believed God sent the deadly wall of snow, stranding her up here and stealing Georgie’s father. A vengeful God punished her husband’s greed, backing her into so dark a corner that she must accept a marriage of convenience to Mack Tanner.
She laughed at the thought as she pushed open the door of her cabin and stepped into the tiny confines. It wasn’t a marriage of convenience. It was a marriage of survival. And survive she would. Here, because here seemed to be the only place there was.
It had struck her last night, after yet another argument over her accounts with Mack, just how bad things had gotten. The point had been pushed home, literally, when she snatched her favorite brooch out of Georgie’s hand and pricked herself on the now-bent pinpoint. The toddler had gotten into her jewelry box when she’d left it open after sorting through which jewels she might be able to sell discreetly in Skaguay. Some jewelry box. The rustic chest Jed had built her on her last birthday could barely be called such a thing. Life here was nowhere near what she dreamed it would be. She ought to be thankful that Georgie hadn’t speared himself with the brooch before she found him. As it was, Georgie had managed to bend and dent the soft gold by banging it against the hearth until its floral shape was lost forever.
Why did she wear a brooch out here in the first place? Purely ornamental, it wasn’t strong enough to hold a shawl or cloak together and it snagged on everything. Still, she wore it daily, a flag of refined defiance. No one would ever know how badly Jed had left their finances. She was and always would be “a lady of means.”
Trouble was, she had precious little means left. Lana had realized, as she stared at the broken brooch, that her former self—the delicate Seattle socialite who’d followed her husband on his grand fortune hunt—no longer existed. She couldn’t limp back to Seattle and be some man’s useless ornament. She craved independence now, but it was a hollow craving without sufficient means.
Women could achieve astounding independence up here. The concept of “female” had been reinvented in Alaska. Transformed into something she wanted very much to be. She couldn’t bring herself to turn from that freedom now. Not only that, but to sulk back to Seattle would be to admit that Jed and his adventures had all been nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Lana refused to count herself among the thousands of duped and squandered fortune hunters. Treasure Creek, for all the pain it held, was still the lesser of all available evils. Seattle might be more comfortable, and there were things Georgie could have there that she could never give him here, but Lana had swallowed so much pride over the past three months that she didn’t think she could stomach the feast of humility it would take to head south.
I’ll do whatever it takes to stay here, she told herself as she pulled the cabin door shut behind her with a declarative slam. Whatever it takes.
She turned and looked at Mack through the cabin’s only window. Even if it takes him. The tears she’d held in finally burst out in sobs so great they shook Georgie as he clung to her side.
He stood perhaps a hundred paces from her home, staring at her closed door. The patient, dark expression on his face mirrored the way he looked that awful night Jed died. She’d cursed him that night two months ago, cursed their plans to carve a wholesome community out of the greedy scramble that Alaska had become. She’d gone so far as to accuse Mack of urging Jed on too far, of leading Jed to his death as if he’d sent the avalanche himself.
Mack had stood there then, dark and silent as he was now, letting her call all sorts of guilt down on his head, without a single word of dispute. Mack hadn’t killed Jed; Jed’s own greed led him to his death, driving him to the point where he ignored the Indian guide’s advice to stay off the trail that Sunday. He seemed to accept her hate as his penance for not keeping Jed from his foolish self.
She hated the thought that his repeated proposals were just more of the same penance—obligation rather than affection. Affection would have followed her into the cabin, swept her off her feet with some dashing kiss and spun her around the room like the world’s finest prize, the way Jed had done.
As it was, obligation stood in her front yard, angry but immovably resolved, like some sort of monument to their mutual resignation.
Mercy, Lana, she lectured herself in her mother’s voice, you can’t hate him like this. It’s no way to start.
Lana wiped her eyes. Alaskan women never admitted defeat. Alaskan women figured out how to carve a life from the harsh realities around them. If she wanted to be an Alaskan woman she needed to steel herself and face facts. And the fact was Mack Tanner was her only option if Georgie was to have a decent home and father.
Stepping into a future she hoped was worth her present pain, Lana pulled open the cabin door. “You’d best come inside and settle things.”
Chapter Two
Mack couldn’t even believe he had to ask. “Why did you finally agree to my proposal?”
Lana looked surprised, as if it was obvious. Why were women always so impossible? Why would something so cryptic as why one proposal gets accepted when the previous six were declined be obvious?
She broke a biscuit in half and handed it to Georgie as he sat on the rug. For the hundredth time Mack looked into the tot’s dark eyes and saw Jed’s face stare back at him.
“Would you like me to say it was your irresistible charm?”
Glory, she was infuriating. “I think I’m entitled to the truth, don’t you?”
“Truth. Oh, that’s an ideal to be sure. We’ve got far too much of it up here, and loads more deception besides, wouldn’t you say?”
Odd as the paradox was, Lana had a point. Alaska overflowed with deceived folks slamming up against the harshness of truth. It was part of the reason he’d come here with Jed, to build a town that gave folks the truth about surviving the Chilkoot Trail. Treasure Creek had no saloons and no swindlers, only good, honest folk bent on equipping stampeders for the very real dangers ahead.
They’d founded Treasure Creek with a single building—the church, as a matter of principle—but God had blessed their efforts and Treasure Creek was growing almost faster than anyone could manage. Every man they convinced to leave off the foolhardy pursuits of the gold digging was a victory to Mack. Every ill-prepared or deceived man who died up there seemed a tragic, preventable loss.
Losses like Jed. “Why?” he repeated, more softly this time. She’d clearly been up all night and crying besides, so it can’t have been an easy decision. She deserved whatever tenderness his baffled surprise could muster.
Lana straightened her spine, resolve settling her expression into a quiet he’d not seen on her before. “There wasn’t another way,” she said matter-of-factly.
He’d known that all along. Spirited as she was, Lana wasn’t made of strong enough stock to go it alone. Nevertheless, it jarred him to hear her put it so bluntly. He didn’t know what he expected from the moment, but it wasn’t this. Her answer was more surrender than agreement. It wasn’t as though he expected enthusiasm, but her tone couldn’t help but confirm marriage to him was a last-chance proposition.
Mack stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I was thinking it might be best if we went off to Skaguay to marry. Day after tomorrow. Skip trying to do the wedding here and just keep it private. I’ve got some business in town anyways,” he added, afraid to admit he was doing it mostly for her sake. “So I thought maybe the Tucker sisters would take Georgie for a day or two. You could do some shopping while you’re there. Things for the house and all.”
Suddenly it felt brazen to refer to the fact that she’d be moving in. Which was nonsense—of course she’d be moving in—but it just opened up a whole, wriggly issue of what kind of marriage he had in mind. He’d been clear about it before: he was offering his protection without expecting anything—anything in return. She just never seemed to believe him. The air in the cabin grew hot and prickly, and he looked around the room in the gap of silence. It was one of Treasure Creek’s nicer cabins—he and Jed had seen to that—but nice by Treasure Creek standards was a far cry from what he knew Lana was used to. What Lana had wanted.
In what Jed had always referred to as “the high times,” the Bristow place was lush and showy. Now, despite how little she had, Lana still managed to add fancy touches. The crude table in her cabin always had a tablecloth, even if it was cut from an old skirt. She always carried a handkerchief everywhere she went. He thought it ridiculous when she’d sewn a ruffle to the oilcloth that covered the cabin window to make it look more like a curtain. Now he couldn’t picture her windows without it.
“There’ll be no…expectations,” he reassured her again, feeling ridiculously awkward. “Our arrangement is purely for your protection. And Georgie’s.”
Lana took forever to answer. And even before she did, she gestured for him to sit down at the table, then arranged herself carefully opposite him. She smoothed the worn little tablecloth out with her hands. “I suppose Skaguay would be a good idea.”
“Still, I want you to know I intend to do this up right.” He’d buy her a fine wedding dress, good meals and they’d stay in a nice hotel far from the seedy side of town. Of course, Skaguay didn’t really have a nice part—the entire city was a wild, lawless den of thieves—but it was also one of the few places nearby where things of any civility could be had. Refinements were important to Lana, and he owed her that much.
Mack also knew, without her saying it, that a town-wide, smiling-faced wedding in Treasure Creek would be more than she could bear. This marriage was raw, difficult territory for both of them. A little privacy was the only decent thing to do under the circumstances. That, and the very practical consideration that there wasn’t anyone capable of legally marrying them in Treasure Creek. Mack knew the town needed a preacher, but now Mack personally needed to ensure that more than his impassioned but unordained preaching filled the pulpit at Treasure Creek Christian Church. “We can have a fine meal and some new clothes. Get some nice things,” he repeated, getting back to the subject at hand. “For you. For Georgie.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’ve made my decision, Mack. There’s no need to lure me in.”
She made it sound like he’d won some kind of standoff. Trapped her like prize game. That’s not how this was, and she knew it. “I’m a gentleman, Lana. One who knows how a wife ought to be treated, and of no mind to skip that on account of…odd circumstances. We don’t need a big shindig, but nothing says we can’t make the best of things. My wife will have nice things.” It came out like a command rather than the statement of value he’d intended it.
“Out here?” She looked at the sad little jelly jar of wildflowers that sat on her frayed tablecloth as if it were evidence of how “nice” Treasure Creek was. “Yes, even out here,” he said sharply, mostly to defy the infuriating look in her eye. It was a sorry retort, but she had a gift for driving him to that. “And Georgie, too. He’ll be provided for. You both will.” He’d promised Jed and Lana a bright future, and he was going to make that future possible, even if it made his present miserable.
It took exactly two hours for word to get out. By the time Lana arrived at the home of the Tucker sisters, a trio of spinsters who held marriage—and men in general—in low esteem, it was obvious they’d already heard the news. Frankie, the oldest and arguably the prickliest of the trio, planted her hands on her hips the moment Lana stepped in their door. “Well, now I know why you was in such a huff earlier. Mack, huh? I suppose if you felt you had to go and marry someone…” She made it sound like even worse of a necessary evil than it was. While Lana admired their spunk—and coming from somewhere in Oklahoma, they had spunk and drawls to spare—they were far too rough for her liking. They’d come to Treasure Creek not long after she and Jed, but more for the adventure of a free life than any greed for gold. More like lumberjacks than any of Seattle’s society ladies, the Tuckers spent their days building the town’s tiny almost-up-and-running schoolhouse. They may have built the school, but Lana found them the furthest thing from “schoolmarms” she could imagine.
Not that they weren’t friendly; they were kind and bighearted as the day was long, but “rough around the edges” was putting it mildly. Of course, Georgie loved the shocking, free-wheeling trio, and they adored him. Even though some part of her brain worried that the sisters’ appetite for mischief out-paced even Georgie’s, Mack had been smart in his idea to ask them to watch the toddler. They’d accept in a heartbeat, and Treasure Creek wasn’t boasting a whole lot of families able to take in a toddler on short notice. Besides, three-on-one was barely fair odds when it came to Georgie.
Once inside, Georgie headed straight for the “cookie jar” the sisters kept on their table. The Tuckers often gave Georgie what they believed passed for “cookies.” Lana thought they were closer to sailor’s hardtack than anything that would pass in Seattle for a cookie. That hardly mattered to Georgie; he gladly accepted every one they doled out.
“Mack is a fine man,” Lana said, defending him to the now glowering Frankie, as the small, wiry woman reached into the cookie jar. Frankie replied by shaking her head and making a derisive snort as she plunked a dense beige circle into Georgie’s chubby palm.
“Well, I suppose he is,” Frankie’s sister Margie conceded as she stood against the mantel and stuffed her hands into the pockets of the odd split skirt she wore tucked into huge black boots. “But that don’t mean you have to marry him. Not up here.”
Most especially up here, Lana thought. She’d been so taken up with making the painful decision, she hadn’t had time to think about the fact that other people would actually have to know. How ridiculous, she chastised herself as she felt her cheeks flush, of course everyone will know. Mack had been kind enough to keep his relentless marital campaign a secret, so she hadn’t had to deal with the public consequences of becoming Mrs. Mack Tanner until this moment. It made her feel foolish to be blind-sided by something so obvious.
Lucy, the youngest of the trio, came in from the other room scratching her short dark hair. Lana had the unkind thought that that was probably the closest that her hair ever came to being brushed. Lucy had a gift for getting under Lana’s skin, far more than the other two. Perhaps it was her age as the youngest, but it might also be the lovely woman Lana expected Lucy might really be under all that bawdy demeanor. “I guess we’ll have us a wedding! That’ll be fun.” She turned to her sisters. “We ever had a wedding in Treasure Creek before?”
Margie twisted her mouth up in thought. “Can’t recall one. Should be a hoot!”
“Well actually, that’s what I came to talk to you about. I was hoping you could watch Georgie while Mack and I go into Skaguay to make it official.”
“Skaguay?” Lucy balked. “You’re not marrying here? Mack built that church. First off even, practically before he built his own home. Why, he and Jed…” Her voice trailed off as she realized why marrying Mack in the church Jed helped build might pose a problem. Lana began to wonder if this could get more awkward. “Still, you’d think…”
Lana didn’t want to get into this with anyone, much less the Tuckers. “We haven’t got a real preacher here to do it, Lucy. And we need to buy things for the house.” It irked her that she’d had to resort to Mack’s reasoning—or was it Mack’s excuses?—but she was stumped for a better answer. “He wants us to have a fancy time of it. You know, as a gift and all.”
The sisters all raised eyebrows, clearly showing what they thought of that idea.
“It’s the only place we can order books and such for the school, too. I walked past the schoolhouse this morning. It’s nearly done, thanks to you.” Lana hoped the compliment would divert their attentions.
Nothing doing. “Oh, we saw you walk past the schoolhouse,” Frankie cackled. “Lovebirds, the pair of you.”
This was going to be harder than Lana thought. “Can you watch him?” she asked, in the sweetest version of her we’re not going to have that conversation voice.
Lucy bent down and ruffled Georgie’s hair, something that always bothered Lana but sent Georgie into fits of giggles. “Of course we can watch the little fellow. Think of it as a wedding present. A little privacy for the happy couple, hmm?”
Her bawdy tone sent the trio into laughter, elbowing each other like a crowd of sailors. Worse yet, Georgie laughed right along with them. Lana began to wonder if the next boat back to Seattle might not be so horrible after all.
Chapter Three
As it was, the next boat Lana boarded was the ferry to Skaguay, beside her soon-to-be husband. While difficult to endure, the short burst of congratulations from everyone in Treasure Creek only proved Mack’s insight correct—this really was best done out of town.
And as Mack had declared, best done right. If one can’t have a nice marriage, one can at least have a nice wedding, Lana thought to herself as she admired her fetching new dress in the big mirror of her hotel room. It was so elegant a thing, for being done on such short notice. A smart lavender shirtwaist with just enough ruffle to make it fussy skimmed over a tiered skirt of the same pale hue. As a widow, she needn’t bother with either train or veil, so she’d get to wear the dress again for formal occasions back in Treasure Creek.
The phrase made her laugh. Formal occasions didn’t really happen back in Treasure Creek. Folks were too busy surviving to think of such things. Still, if Mack was “Mr. Treasure Creek,” as the Tucker sisters jokingly called him, then that meant she was about to become Mrs. Treasure Creek. It was too long since she’d thought of any “social” event. How wonderful it would be to create a town festival or a church social. Surely she could find time in the nearly twenty hours of daylight Alaskan summer days brought.
They’d spent the full day yesterday buying things. Cloth and linens, not just one but three new tablecloths and curtains—real curtains, not just make-do ones like she had back in her cabin. New shoes and pants for Georgie, and a little wooden train set Mack had picked out himself. And books. Nearly a dozen books sat in the corner of her hotel room now. Two novels, two cookery books and a whole set of sample schoolbooks Mack had ordered crates of for the schoolhouse back home. The real surprise had come when she’d stopped to admire a pair of pearl earrings in a store window and Mack had taken her inside and bought them for her. Then he’d deposited her at a dressmaker’s while he went off to do “some business,” telling her to get any dress she wanted to wear today. And any shoes and any hat to match.
Lana Bristow, you are too easily bought, she chided herself, her thoughts snagging on the truth that she would only bear that name for perhaps another hour, if that. Of course, she could never let Mack see how easily her head had been turned by a trinket here and a new dress there, but it had been ages since she’d had a hot, scented bath like she’d had this morning.
Mrs. Smithton, proprietress of the mostly quiet, mostly respectable Smithton’s Shining Harbor Hotel, came into the room again. Skaguay didn’t see many weddings, and Mrs. Smithton had joyously intruded into all the proceedings. So much so that even Lana, who usually loved being fussed over, was reaching the end of her patience.
She could only imagine the state of Mack’s nerves under such enthusiastic scrutiny. After all, she had been through this before. Mack had never been a groom. She flinched at the still-absurd thought that she was going to marry Mack Turner. In a matter of minutes.
Lana blanched and clenched her fists. “Oh, dearie,” said Mrs. Smithton, “every bride gets the fits just before. Never you worry. You’ve kept one glove off, like I told you?” Lana found Mrs. Smithton’s concern over “good luck” wedding traditions ironic. Mack never believed in “luck,” and given all the tragedy they’d been though, the thought of her marriage being endangered by looking into the mirror fully dressed seemed silly.
The round older woman fussed with the netting on the smart, feathered hat that sat on Lana’s piled-high hair. “Besides,” Mrs. Smithton whispered with a wink, “he’s a far sight worse off’n you, if you ask me. Looks as pale as a fish, he does. Fright looks funny on a big feller like him. Been up since dawn and barely eaten a thing.” So he was nervous. Even in his fluster, Mack had seen to it that tea, toast and peach jam—her very favorite—were sent up this morning. He seemed to know so many little things about her, and yet she still felt like, even after several years, she’d barely paid enough attention to know the color of his eyes. They were blue, weren’t they? She knew so little of him.
He’d been clear on the type of marriage he proposed. Even yesterday he had assured her theirs would be an arrangement of “mutual convenience,” not “emotional entanglements.” Still, tangle was as close to describing whatever it was she felt toward Mack Tanner. It no longer mattered, did it? This had never been about sentiment, only survival. Lana shut her eyes tight. Too late to worry about the consequences of survival now. Whatever it takes, she told herself. He’s not a horrible man.
She said it over and over to herself silently, as Mrs. Smithton led her down the hall to stand at the top of the stairs and view her groom. He’s not a horrible man.
Mack’s eyes were indeed blue. Very, very blue. They stared up at her as she came down the hotel stairs, a fair bit of panic showing in their depths. Decidedly un-horrible, Mack looked elegant in a dark suit and a gray vest. The black tie knotted under his starched white collar made the blue of his eyes stand out all the more. His hair, mostly a tumultuous mass of unruly dark waves, had been neatly slicked back in the style of the day. She had the odd thought that she hadn’t seen him so clean in months, and the equally odd thought that it suited him. He looked exactly like the well-to-do man she remembered from their Seattle days. This Mack Tanner was as much the man Jed admired as Mack Tanner the rugged adventurer.
Mack Tanner her husband-to-be. Lana grabbed the rail for support as she nearly tripped down the last stair.
It seemed as if the entire hotel staff and guests had turned out for the occasion—the parlor was filled with peering eyes. Men elbowed each other, making whispered remarks about the “poor feller” while the room’s few women oohed and ahhed. Lana felt very much on display, even here among strangers. Mack was right—she’d never have survived this charade if this were Mavis Goodge’s boardinghouse in the middle of Treasure Creek.
“You’re a fine sight,” he said as she stepped onto the parlor rug. His voice was tight and unsteady.
“You cut a fine figure yourself,” she managed, then gulped at how foolish the words sounded. He really had surprised her, however. In all the muddy making-do of Treasure Creek, she’d completely forgotten the way he could command a room when formally dressed. Half her bridesmaids had swooned over him at her wedding. Her first wedding.
Stop that. You can’t think about that now. This is a new life. That old Lana is long gone.
Lana made herself smile as Mack tipped his hat to Mrs. Smithton and held out an elbow. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Smithton, we’ve an appointment to keep.”
Lana’s stomach tumbled like a windstorm as they walked down the street. The Good Lord had never seen a wedding day like this, she was sure. It didn’t really matter, she supposed, what the Good Lord thought of this whole business. He’d pretty much left her on her own, as far as she was concerned.
Mack wouldn’t take to such thinking. It was easy to see the strength of that man’s faith. Even in the darkest of times, faith was like a constant compass for him. The man had built the town’s church before his own dwelling had solid walls. He preached on Sundays, doing an admirable job filling in, until someone took the pulpit permanently. Jed had admired that, too.
She’d lost any sense of that “true north” compass needle of faith, her inner compass spinning aimlessly since the day the avalanche took Jed. Her husband’s spirituality had been mostly sputtering sparks of faith fed by Mack’s constant flame. Intense but inconsistent. Jed aspired to, but never quite achieved, a lot of Mack’s traits. Stop comparing them. Stop it.
“You all right?” Mack’s voice was saying. He’d stilled and she hadn’t even noticed. “You look a bit—”
“Well, so do you!” she shot back, not wanting him to finish that sentence, then bit her lip. The man was simply trying to be nice, and here she was, biting his head off.
Mack gave out a nervous laugh. “Well, good to see you’ve still got some fight in you. And here I thought maybe I’d left the old Lana back on the dock at Treasure Creek.” He pushed out a breath, closing his eyes for a second or two. “It’ll be all right,” he said quietly when he opened them again. “It’ll be…just fine.”
“Of course it will,” she lied emphatically. He knew it, too. Without a word of retort, Mack merely crinkled up the corner of his eyes and tucked her hand deeper into the crook of his arm, and they walked on.
“That’s a fine dress. Look at the way folks are staring at us,” he said, keeping a tight grip on her arm. Whether the gesture was meant to be reassuring or constraining, she couldn’t say. “You always did like to be the center of attention. I’d say you’ve got it here, surely.”
“I like being the center of attention? This from the man who makes himself the center of Treasure Creek? We are a pair, you and I.” She could almost chuckle about that, and it made her feel just a bit better.
“’Course, I will be insisting on the ‘obey’ part in our vows, you know,” he said, a laugh now tickling the edges of his deep voice. “Just to be clear on things.”
“If you’re fixing to get obeyed, then I’m fixing to get honored. You know, just to be clear on things.”
He looked at her with that. “Well then, I guess we really are a pair.”
It wasn’t much of a ceremony. The pastor’s wife stood in as witness, and despite the Bible and the prayers, the whole thing had an efficient, stamp of approval feel. Treasure Creek’s makeshift dockmaster, Caleb Johnson, might have been signing off on a daily shipment, for all the ceremony’s sentiment. Still, her heart did a funny jump when Mack looked her square in the eye as he pledged to honor and cherish her. It wasn’t a romantic or smitten look, but the strong sense of honor struck her hard. She knew, as he looked at her, held her hand with a steady grip and slipped a new and different ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, that he would honor her.
Lana wasn’t prepared for what that would do to her. She hadn’t realized, until his vow, how deeply alone she’d felt. The crushing black knot in her chest loosened with his words. Even if she had nothing else, she now had protection. The yawning gap of her own vulnerability—the dark force she’d fought so fiercely every moment since Jed’s death, swallowed her and stole her voice, so that her own vows were barely above a tearful whisper. She hadn’t cried at her first wedding, but now tears slipped down one cheek as the minister smiled and pronounced them man and wife.
It was done. And somehow, it had not been the earth-shattering moment she feared. It was a passage. A quiet, gigantic leap from one life into another.
Chapter Four
All through the fancy dinner following the wedding, Mack stared at Lana. Lana Tanner. His wife. He’d arranged for them to spend tonight in Skaguay for her sake, he thought. Now he began to think it was he who needed the extra time away from Treasure Creek to get used to his new marital status. The thought still stunned him.
She was a stunning woman. She’d always been beautiful—“a looker” was Jed’s favorite term—one best showed off by finery and elegance. The kind of woman a man could dress up and take out on the town with pride. Jed had admitted to him once how astonished he’d been that Lana chose him over Mack. Jed was such a romantic charmer, however, that it hadn’t surprised Mack at all that his best friend “got the girl.” There’d never been any question in Mack’s mind. Lana wasn’t his type.
Now Lana was his wife. They were both skittish through every course of the elegant meal, and it had to do with much more than the shadow of their pasts.
He’d already told her—twice—that this was a marriage of arrangement, that there were no expectations of this being anything other than two people living under the same roof. Still, for appearances sake, there could be no question behind which door he slept tonight. Jed was always so much better with women. Mack grimaced at his bumbling awkwardness. He tried to put Jed from his mind and reassure Lana again as he took his bride by the elbow after dinner and led her up the stairs to their honeymoon suite, but it made the moment no less awkward as he slid the lock shut behind them and turned to face the room.
Mrs. Smithton had been regrettably busy. All of Mack’s things had been moved into the room. The place was thick with flowers and candles, and a ridiculous amount of petals had been strewn about.
“Oh my,” Lana said, her voice nearly a gulp.
“Mrs. Smithton reads too many novels,” Mack said, then wished he’d hadn’t. Just when he thought this couldn’t get more difficult. Lana looked pale. “Lana,” he began, moving toward her to catch her if she fainted.
“You haven’t changed your mind…have you?”
“Lana…I am not the kind of man to…” Land sakes, how to say this? “To take what…what ought only to be…freely given.”
She stilled, her defiance melting into a frailty that took some corner of his heart and ran off with it. “I was afraid once you could…you’d want to…”
Now that was just plain cruel. Of course some part of him wanted. Any man with blood still running in his veins wanted, and she was a beautiful woman.
The irritating, obstinate, distractingly rose-scented widow of his lost friend. He’d better think of something to do, and fast. Out of somewhere in the mists of his jumbled thoughts, he remembered a game his father would play with him when he was sick or in pain. Surely, this was the most absurd use of such a distraction. “How about we talk?”
“Talk?”
“Think of three questions you’ve always wanted to ask me. The hardest ones you can think of. I promise to give you a truthful answer.”
She began pulling off her gloves, eyes scrunched up in thought. Another minute of excruciating silence went by, both of them fidgeting like youngsters. As traces of her usual demeanor returned, she straightened, looked him in the eye and asked, “Are you sorry?”
That was Lana. Always needing to know where she stood, always making sure you knew where you stood with her. Absolutely no mystery with this woman. He gave the question a respectful moment of thought, wanting to word his answer carefully. “No,” he said, sure he meant it. Still, he couldn’t resist adding, “not yet.”
She managed a small laugh at that, and he was glad to see it. Much of the tension had left the room, and he was glad of that, too. It was late—past ten—and the sun was finally starting its descent behind the mountains. He watched her walk to the window, the fading orb attracting her attention the way it had caught his.
“Mack,” she said, her voice soft, “why here? Why in this…”
He knew the term she’d bitten back. She’d used it too many times since Jed’s death. “You were going to say ‘God-forsaken place,’ weren’t you?”
She leaned against the window frame, looking like an oil painting in that fancy dress up against the sunset and curtains. “As a matter of fact, I was.” She sighed. She tilted her face back to him and added, “Mrs. Mack Turner had better not say such things, hmm?”
Mack leaned against the bedpost, suddenly exhausted. “I’ve heard worse. But it isn’t the talk that bothers me so much as the idea. This place is anything but God-forsaken.”
“All those lives. All those people and things lost and broken up on the trail. Jed. Your own brothers, both of them. ‘God-forsaken’ fits, harsh as it is. I just don’t see what you see.”
Mack walked to the window, still keeping a safe distance from her. In the deepening sunset, the mountains fit the “majestic” description so often employed in the pamphlets enticing men up here. He’d used the word himself when convincing Jed, hadn’t he? “They look grand now, from here.”
She made a small grunt. “From here you can’t see all the trash and abandoned equipment and dead horses. Those mountains are still only hungry beasts to me, eager to swallow men up whole.”
Mack took a step closer to her, pointed to the peak he knew was closest to Treasure Creek. Its permanent veil of snow gleamed rose-gold in the sunset. “Not all of it. Parts are still clean. Untouched. A fresh start. That’s what Treasure Creek was—is—for me. A chance to get a fresh start, to build something solid from the ground up. In a place where there isn’t much of that. Remind folks that God didn’t forsake one inch of a place like this.”
She turned away from the window, looking at him with her head cocked analytically to one side. “Why does a man like you need a fresh start? Seems you’ve done…fine so far.”
“Comes a point in a man’s life where he’s made money, he’s made a name for himself, but he wants to know he’s made a difference. Left something better than how he found it.”
Lana’s laugh had a dark edge. “And you couldn’t leave someplace farther south better than how you found it?”
“Sometimes you don’t choose your challenges. Sometimes your challenges choose you.” He suspected he was talking about more than Treasure Creek at the moment.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she said quietly.
“It’s rather easy,” he lied, thinking it would be anything but. “You get the bed, I get the floor and we both smile a lot in the morning.”
Chapter Five
Mack winced as the ornate clock on his mantel struck eleven the next evening. Georgie, as he had done every hour since arriving at his new home, offered eleven loud “bong!”s in reply.
Lana watched Mack clamp his hand over the little gold chimes and roll his eyes. He was doing his level best to be civil when he inquired, “Does he ever sleep?”
Mack’s exasperation made her laugh. She’d had that very thought so many times over the past two months, she’d almost come to believe Georgie was incapable of it. Teena Crow, the Tlingit healing woman, had offered her teas to help, but Lana didn’t trust those strange native concoctions. As if aware the conversation had turned to him, Georgie walked over and poked Mack in the knee. This brought Mack to squat down to the boy’s height and consider Georgie with the narrow-eyed impatience of someone who had their last nerve stomped upon half an hour ago. “It’s bedtime, George,” Mack commanded, pointing up at the clock for emphasis.
“No.”
Mack caught Lana’s eyes over Georgie’s head. Do something about this, his expression silently shouted. “Ah, but it is. Your mama knows it is, too.”
The great Mack Tanner, flummoxed by a toddler. Were she not so bone-tired herself, she’d have found it amusing. Wound up by all the excitement and the new surroundings of Mack’s large cabin, Georgie was about as compliant as a mule. A very cranky, very curious, very irritating little mule. “I do indeed,” Lana said, dropping the socks she’d just managed to wrestle off Georgie’s feet and dragging herself to the chair by the small fire. Sinking into it, she patted her lap several times. “Come up here and…” She’d meant to ask Mack to bring her one of the children’s readers from the stack of books they’d purchased, but the question suddenly raised the issue of what to call Mack now.
“Ugle Ack,” Georgie barked pointing in Mack’s direction.
“Uncle Mack,” Mack replied, sensing not only her unspoken question, but Georgie’s unsolicited pronouncement. Mack was Georgie’s godfather, and Jed had referred to Mack always as “Uncle Mack” to the boy. For months Georgie could only manage “Ack,” which was amusing enough in itself, but over the Christmas holidays he’d graduated to “Ugle Ack.” Perhaps their new marital status was no reason to change that.
“Uncle Mack can bring us one of those pretty books with the pictures in them. Mama will read to you.”
Mack instantly delivered the book in question. “And Uncle Mack will take a walk,” he declared, “to let things settle down.”
From the moment Caleb Johnson had loudly heralded their arrival on Treasure Creek’s dock, Mack, Lana and eventually Georgie been surrounded by an endless stream of well-wishers. Little wonder Georgie was too wound up to sleep, while she could barely hold her eyes open. Lana nodded her approval as she took the book from Mack’s outstretched hand. “Bye-bye, Uncle Mack.” She used the reader to wave at Mack, fighting a twinge of jealousy at his escape into the quiet night. Georgie babbled a chattering farewell, too, wiggling his fingers while he grabbed at the new diversion.
Mack grumbled something Lana suspected she’d be glad not to have heard, and plucked his hat from its peg by the door. She felt her whole body collapse as the door clicked shut. Alone. She’d been on pins and needles all day, plastering a happy look on her face despite the terrible night’s sleep she’d gotten. Mack Tanner snored. Loudly. Still, by the endless sets of shifting she’d heard from his corner of the floor, Lana gathered he’d slept no better, if indeed more loudly. Add one exuberant toddler and everyone was on edge.
“Let’s see.” She sighed, returning her attention to the fidgety boy in her lap, “what have we got here? McGuffey’s Eclectic Primer. Uncle Mack knows you need to learn your letters first of all, and look at the pretty pictures!” Georgie, finding this suitable entertainment, settled in against Lana’s chest and began sucking on his thumb. Turning to the first page, Lana read, “A is for…ax? Good gracious, who starts off the alphabet with axes? I daresay Mr. McGuffey wasn’t a papa, if you ask me.” She yawned. “A is also for apple, too. You like apples.” She’d have a thing or two to say to the esteemed Mr. McGuffey about his opening page if she ever met him. Still, the alphabet continued on with kinder images. Box, cat, dog, elk and so on.
How many nights had Mack walked the town, praying his way though the streets of Treasure Creek, asking God’s protection over the people who lived there? It had become his evensong, his nightly ritual, his way of laying to bed the troubles of the day and asking God to send enough wisdom to make it through tomorrow.
It felt different tonight. He could walk through town all he wished, but it would not change the fact that he would go home to a wife and child. Mack had never in his life felt more sure he’d done the right thing, but less certain how to handle the consequences. It might help if his patience weren’t strained to the limit by Georgie’s boundless energy. The rascal had found six things to break in the first half an hour in his new home.
“Says who?” an angry voice sounded from the side of town where stampeders camped. The constantly shifting tent village housed those waiting their turn up the Chilkoot Trail. Or those limping down off it, thin and hungry. Mack broke up a fight nearly every night. He’d pressed nearly a dozen barely skilled people into stitching up the wounded lately. Even Teena Crow, the healing woman from the local Tlingit tribe, had been forced to double her efforts. Mack wondered how many punches had been thrown—and bones broken—in his time away. These days the medical needs of Treasure Creek threatened to surpass its spiritual needs.
“I’da been rich by now if it ain’t for you!” another voice called back. He’d heard every version of this argument under the sun, it seemed. Everyone had someone handy to blame for their failure. Even with Treasure Creek’s God-fearing reputation, there were two dozen fools to every successful man. How do I show them, Lord? Mack prayed.
God had given Moses a few good tricks up his sleeve, divine wonders to back up his authority when folks wouldn’t listen. All Mack had was a good brain, a fine church, a well-stocked provision post that would soon be the region’s best general store and the sheer determination to keep another man from climbing to his death. A loud crash assailed Mack’s ears, and he wondered how much longer he could hold out without help soon.
Ignoring the shouts, Mack turned his steps toward home. Please, Lord, he prayed, ashamed to be driven to such a plea, let him be asleep. I’m worn out and nothing good’ll happen if I snap at the little feller. For all the nights Mack had walked the village praying protection over its residents, for all the dangers he’d faced in countless adventures, it struck him odd that he’d been reduced to praying for protection against the ravages of a two-year-old.
Mack looked awful when he walked out of his bedroom door the next morning. He rubbed his neck and winced, hair sticking up in all directions and a thick stubble covering his chin. He resembled not so much as man as a foul-mooded bear.
“You made coffee.” He said it with a foggy awe that made Lana hide a smile behind the plate she was holding.
“Much needed, don’t you think?”
Mack nodded, settling himself at the table and giving the very perky Georgie an analytical eye. Lana set the steaming mug down in front of him and he very nearly clutched it. “If I say I’ve just discovered the best part about being married, will you hit me with that?”
She eyed the dented tin plate she was holding, thankful she’d talked Mack into letting her order a new set of china in Skaguay. “Not likely.”
He made a dark sound, and she turned to find his gaze aimed out the window to where sheets were hanging. “Why are they out to…?” Lana gulped as Mack turned to level a foul-mooded bear’s glare at Georgie. “You didn’t.”
“It’s hardly his fault,” Lana angled her body in between them, quieting Georgie’s frightened whimper with a bit of the bacon she’d been frying. “He’s just barely been trained, and under the circumstances…more coffee?”
Mack laid his forehead into one hand while he held out the already half-drained cup in the other.
They were going to have to soldier through this morning no matter what, so Lana had decided hours ago to put the best face possible on the situation. “There’s bacon, eggs, toast and some applesauce Mavis Goodge brought over.” She set the full plate in front of him.
“You cook.” He seemed troubled by the observation.
“I find eating a rather necessary practice.”
Mack took several mouthfuls of egg. “You cook well.”
She found the surprise in his voice annoying. Had Jed complained to him about her cooking? “You could be less astonished, you know. And even say thank you if you wanted to really startle me.”
This seemed to make him think. “Have you eaten yet?”
“Not really.” She’d grown accustomed to snatching her meals in bits and pieces in between feeding and occupying Georgie. The long, luxurious meals they’d had in Skaguay had felt like her first in years.
Mack motioned to the place opposite him at the table. “Sit down. Please.” It wasn’t a command, it was an invitation. A grumpy, bleary eyed, but genuine attempt at civility. Lana hid her distinct pleasure as she filled a plate and sat down.
And there they were. The three of them, at table, a family. It was familiar and foreign at the same time, given the man at the head of the table. Mack cleared his throat and held out his hands—one to Georgie and one to Lana. She hesitated to give him her hand, ashamed how long it took her to realize what he was about. He was saying grace.
“We give You thanks, Holy Father, for the food You’ve given us this day. For the blessings we enjoy and the protection we need. May it strengthen us to honor You and Your will today. Amen.”
“Amen,” Lana said quietly.
“Ugle Ack,” Georgie added, batting Mack’s hand with the teaspoon he was holding.
Lana waited as long as she could before asking, “Why are you so surprised I can cook? What did Jed say?”
Mack had made short work of the breakfast and was scraping up the last bits of egg with a corner of his toast. “He said nothing on the matter. It’s just that I know you’ve had house staff most of your life. No reason to learn such things.”
“So I’m useless because I grew up with advantages, is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s not what I’m saying at all. You’ve just not had much time to learn to fend for yourself. There’s cooking to live and then there’s good cooking.”
Lana sat back and crossed her arms. “And you were thinking you’d just married the kind of woman who can cook enough to keep you alive?”
“I obviously don’t know you well enough.” He used the diplomatic tone of a man who’d broken up too many arguments.
Lana got up from the table, clearing both their plates. “There’s a lot you don’t know, Mack Tanner.” She reached for the pile of McGuffey Readers she’d poured through in the hours before he woke this morning. She’d started the “Second Year” reader on the boat as they came back from Skaguay, and her opinion had begun to form then. As she sifted through the rest of them this morning—including the pictorial one she started with Georgie last night—the idea had planted itself in her head like a flag thrust in a mountaintop.
As she read through the volumes, Lana discovered she had very definite ideas about education. Ideas about how education was to be accomplished, and by whom, using what techniques. Really, what sort of person launches a child’s education with “A is for ax?” Everyone in Treasure Creek was fine with building a school, but it seemed to her no one gave much thought to what would go on inside it, once built. Somewhere in the second half of the “Fifth Year” reader, Lana had the shocking thought that people might assume the Tucker Sisters would simply hammer their last nail and move inside to take up the chalk. Surely not. Nor should they.
“I’ve read through these,” she began.
“Early riser,” Mack said, finishing his third cup of coffee.
Lana nodded toward Georgie. “Not by choice.” She lay the pile of readers on the table and sat down opposite Mack again. “Who will teach these?”
Mack ran a hand across his chin. “School’s not even finished yet. When it is, we’ll send word and the government will send out a teacher.”
So he didn’t have someone in mind for the position. She’d mentally catalogued Treasure Creek’s population earlier this morning, and came up with no clear candidate, either.
“I expect one of the Tuckers might even take it on.”
Lana swallowed a disparaging laugh. “The Tuckers? Teach school? I doubt that, and I doubt most folks would take to the kind of teaching they’d do anyway. If you want families, we’ll need a good school. And these books are a start, I suppose, but…” An hour ago she’d been so sure of what she wanted. Faced with proposing it to Mack, she felt her conviction waver. Alaskan women face life head-on, she reminded herself. Head-on it would be. “I’ve been thinking about it since I read through these, and, well, I’d like to be our schoolteacher. Very much.” Seeing as the world didn’t cave in on itself with the voicing of the thought, Lana went on. “And I don’t think we should wait until the building’s done. There are plenty of places to gather the children we’ve got. Even the church would work. Or outside on nice days. It’s not as if there are crops to get in, and most of these children are sorely lacking in education as it is. We’d only need to meet for an hour or two each day over the summer and it would do them so much good.”
Mack said nothing for a long moment, his face an exasperating neutral that offered no clue as to what he thought of the idea.
Georgie chose that moment to knock his bowl onto the floor, sending bits of apple and a chunk of cheese scattering across the cabin floor. On the one hand she was grateful for something to divert her attention from Mack’s uncomfortable silence. On the other hand, she didn’t care for Georgie’s commentary on the proposal.
“You want to teach,” he replied when she finished picking up Georgie’s spill. His tone was perfectly even. No wonder Jed often said it was a pity Mack shunned cards—the man’s face was unreadable.
She returned to her seat at the table. “Yes.” Lana gave her voice what she hoped was command. “I do.” Mack pinched the bridge of his nose. Not an encouraging response. Lana counted to ten, willing her hands not to fidget. “Well?”
“I can’t say I’m overly fond of the idea.”
“Why not?”
Georgie threw his spoon to the ground, babbling. Mack raised an eyebrow at her as if to say he thought she had her hands full already.
She did, but in some twisted way that was part of the attraction of teaching for her. Tending to Georgie was like tidying up after a tornado all day long, only to do it again tomorrow. She desperately needed to feel a sense of accomplishment, of achieving something beyond mere survival. The truth of it was she was as surprised as Mack at the idea, but it had grabbed hold of her somewhere between the fourth and fifth reader and refused to let go. She knew she needed this. She also knew she’d find a way—no matter how hard or complicated—to make it work.
“A man provides for his family. It takes a lot to keep a household running up here. You’ll be too busy. I want Georgie to come first.”
She’d been worried he would think she couldn’t do it. The idea that he thought she shouldn’t do it pulled something dark and angry out from the hard knot under her stomach. It leapt from her mouth before she could think better of it. “Georgie? Or you?”
“Lana…”
“I’m to fill my days being Mrs. Mack Turner, is that it?”
“You’re to be a mother to your son.” His voice rose to match hers. “Let someone else, without that kind of responsibility, see to the teaching. The government will send one if we ask. I see no reason for you to take this on. I just don’t think it’s wise.”
“Oh, and you’re Mack Tanner—you always know what’s best.”
Mack pushed away from the table. “We’ve been married—what?—not even three days? Do you even know what’s ahead of you? Of us?”
“I know the timing’s not perfect.”
“Perfect? It’s lunacy. The school’s not even built. It’s June. Georgie’s a handful on a good day. I don’t see how this makes any sense.” He looked at her, a sharp shadow of hurt behind his eyes. “Isn’t this enough?”
Hadn’t she asked that very question of herself? A dozen times over? Why, after resisting for months and finally relenting to the one thing she’d thought she’d never do, did she need something else? And she did. She needed this. In a fierce, defiant way she could never begin to describe. It was, she supposed, a way of hanging on to Lana Bristow before she became completely swallowed up by Mrs. Mack Turner. “Not yet” was the only reply she could manage, weak as it was.
Chapter Six
Mack pushed the floorboard into place with his boot. “So I told her I’d think on it.”
Ed Parker, down off the trail, in between prospecting trips, hauled more board over from the stack at the far end of the new general store’s main room. “You did, did you? Why’d you say that?”
Mack held the board in place with one foot while he nailed the edge down. “Because she loved the idea. She was all fired up and ready to fight for it. I hadn’t even seen the sun go down twice on our house and already things are—” he searched for a word “—complicated.”
“Nothing complicated about it. Say ‘no’ and that’ll be end of it.”
Because that wouldn’t be the end of it. He’d seen it in her eyes. This notion had a hold of her and she wasn’t about to let it go. Logic didn’t come into it. The most he could hope for was to hold off until her head cleared. “You married, Ed?”
Ed dropped the stack of boards with a smirk. “Nope.”
“Well, when you’ve got to spend every morning sitting across from a woman you’ve said no to, then you come and give me advice, okay?” Mack drove the final nail home.
Ed pulled another board off the stack and slid it up against the one Mack had just secured. “You ain’t been married but a few days. What do you know about all that stuff anyways?”
Mack pound in the next nail. “That’s the secret to my success. I learn fast.”
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, seeing as you’ve got a teacher for a wife and all. Me, I think you have a lot to learn.”
“Mack!” Any further commentary was cut short by the appearance of Caleb Johnson. “Got another one for you.”
Mack set down his hammer and straightened up with a groan. “Sixth this month. I thought we’d see more of these in winter than now.” He walked out of the general store’s framed-out shell to see a scrawny young man in tattered shoes and nowhere near enough clothing for the trail’s demanding weather. “What’s your name, son?”
“David Mindown, sir. Out of Seattle. Came up two weeks ago.”
It was the Seattle ones that always showed up like this. Young men who’d hopped the next boat, so sure of their fortune, only to discover how cruel the Chilkoot Trail could be. Mack was surprised he’d lasted this long. “How old are you, Mindown?”
“Twenty-one.”
Mack doubted he’d seen twenty, from the looks of him. “Got family back in Seattle, do you?”
The boy just nodded. The ones that came back down off the trail—especially the ones Caleb brought to him—would almost choke up at the mention of home and family. Most of them were so broken down and hungry they’d been known to call any woman who offered them a good meal and a bit of care “Mother.”
“Got anything left at all?”
Caleb and the boy shook their heads simultaneously. This boy should have never been allowed up the trail. Harder men than he had barely made it halfway. Mack put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, finding it sharp and bony under the thin shirt he wore. “Time to go home, son. Some adventures are better left to other days. You come on by the house tomorrow morning and I’ll get you squared away. There’s a ship leaving on Tuesday, I’ll book you passage. You got a place to sleep and eat until then?”
“Mavis said the shack is open,” Caleb answered. Mavis Goodge, the boardinghouse owner in town, had a little bunkhouse out on the back of her property that she’d fixed up for just such circum stances. Treasure Creek had crafted an odd little rescue system. Caleb usually found the wayward miners in need of rescue. Teena Crow often tended to whatever wounds she could with the Tlingit healing ways that were her gift, as the town still had no doctor to speak of. Mavis gave them shelter. Lucy Tucker took it upon herself to feed whomever was housed out in the little shack, so that it wasn’t a burden on Mavis. And Mack funded their passage home. Every home and business in Treasure Creek was either sending prospectors up the Chilkoot or catching them when they fell back down, so needs somehow always got met.
Still, no one really saw to the spiritual needs of all those broken men—except the missionary on the trail, Thomas Stone. And still, he was only one man. Treasure Creek needed a real church, which meant the town needed a real pastor with teaching and preaching gifts, not just a fill-in general store owner with good intentions. Mack seemed to see it more clearly with every lost soul who limped down off the mountain.
“Mavis’ll set you up for tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow then, David Mindown. And don’t you bother with anyone who says they’ll wire your mama from Skaguay. There’s no telegraph from there, only wires that don’t lead to anything except your money going into someone else’s pocket.” The sham was a common one—and one of the hundreds of predatory schemes that led to Mack’s vision of a honest town in Treasure Creek.
Ed came up behind him on the General Store’s future front steps. “You’re too good to kids like that. A fella’s got to learn to pull himself up by his own bootstraps. You can’t go around scooping ’em up and sending them back home just ’cause they’ve hit hard times.”
Mack looked at the skinny fellow sulking his way down the street beside Caleb. “Hard times is one thing. Freezing to death on the trail is another. You and I both know what they do to pups like that in Skaguay.”
“Yep,” replied Ed as they both turned back to their work, “but I wish I didn’t.”
Lana spent the morning organizing the house and cooking Mack a nice picnic lunch. He was working hard keeping his provisions outpost running while building the new general store, and he’d lost time while he took her to Skaguay. Lana thought she owed him the courtesy of a decent meal. Besides, things had been rather cool when he left this morning, and she hoped the gesture might smooth things over.
She’d been so taken with the concept of teaching, it hadn’t even occurred to her how broadsided Mack would be by the idea. Even she found it rather sudden. Snapping at him for his honest reaction wasn’t the smartest response. Jed hadn’t been a champion of honesty in marriage, and she was just coming to understand that honesty sometimes meant you didn’t like what you heard.
She made the mistake of stopping by one of the dockside fruit stalls on her way to the General Store. Treasure Creek’s waterfront could be beautiful or chaotic, depending on which ship was docked. “Serves me right,” Lana chided herself as she hoisted Georgie up on one hip, for fear of losing him in today’s teeming, boisterous crowd. Caleb would have his hands full today; men, animals and crates of every description were piled in disorganized clumps all over the beach and adjoining road. Lana heard four different languages and winced at several bouts of indecent banter as she picked her way through the throng. She had just decided fresh fruit wasn’t worth the trouble when a young man sidled up next to her.
“Lemme me carry that for you, ma’am. Looks like quite a load to get through this mob.” The double load of toddler and picnic basket had made maneuvering treacherous, if not close to impossible. She vaguely recognized him; he was in his early twenties, clean-cut by Skaguay standards and boasting a charming smile. He tipped his hat at both her and Georgie. “You’s Mack’s new wife, ain’t you?”
“Thank you. I am.”
“And you used to be Jed’s gal, right?” He took the basket from her arm with one hand, putting the other over his heart. “Shame about Jed. I’m sorry for your loss, but I expect you’ll be right happy as Mrs. Tanner. Fine man, Mack Tanner.”
“He is indeed.” She nodded toward the basket. “That’s his lunch you’re hauling. And Georgie’s.”
“And a cute little bug he is, too. You make a pretty family. I expect he treats you right, buys you all kinds of pretty things. A man of such position ought to display his success, I always say.”
Something in his turn of phrase, or maybe just slippery edge of his words, made her sorry she’d let him take the basket. “Mack treats me well.”
“He should. He can. Generous man, Mack Tanner. ’Course, that’s easy to do when you’ve got a heap of gold to back up your fine sentiments. What I wouldn’t give to be his banker, hmm?”
Lana didn’t care for the direction of this conversation. “My husband makes no secret of his distrust in banks, Mr….”
“No sir,” he replied, ignoring her cue for his name, “I believe I’ve heard as much.” He leaned too close to her, arching one eyebrow in a way that sent a shiver down Lana’s back. “Makes a man wonder, though. Where does a smart man like your husband keep that heap of gold?” She felt his hand take hold of her elbow. “Jed left you a heap of gold all your own, come to think of it. My, what a fortune the two of you must make. Tell me, does Mack share his hiding places with his pretty little wife? His pretty little rich widow, who wanders the streets alone?”
Lana yanked her hand free and turned on the weasely little man. She snatched the basket from him with all the force she could muster, even though it nearly sent Georgie rocking. “What he shares is none of your business! And the wife of Mack Tanner had best be able to walk anywhere she pleases without foolish threats from the likes of you. I expect if you show your face in Treasure Creek again…” Before she could finish her angry thought, the man had tipped his hat in a sinister fashion and melted back into the bustling crowd around her.
She stood for a shocked, angry moment, gasping and clutching Georgie tight to her side. In all her time up north, even in Jed’s days of showing off their wealth, she’d never been threatened like that. Curiosity over the whereabouts of Mack’s wealth always fueled gossip in Treasure Creek—even Jed had never known where Mack kept his funds. And Jed hadn’t ever hid his wealth, which drew all kinds of hangers-on, but those parasites had showed the good graces to stay away from her. Mostly. It had never fueled something like this. In the middle of town. To her own person.
Marriage was supposed to have kept her from being this kind of target. Instead of afraid, the whole affair made her angry. Marrying Mack was supposed to offer protection, but did it paint a bull’s-eye on her back instead? Or—worse yet—Georgie’s?
Fuming, Lana pushed her way through the noisy waterfront crowd to the General Store building site. She stomped up the steps to thrust herself and Georgie through the half-framed doorway, casting the basket to the floor with a huff.
“Still sore at me?” Mack’s tone was teasing until he saw her face.
“There was a man down on the waterfront. He offered to help me with the basket, and I recognized him. Sort of.” She fought the urge to brush off her elbow where he’d grabbed her. “He was nice at first, but then he had the nerve to threaten me.”
Mack crossed the large room to her in a handful of steps. “Who threatened you? Why?” His raised voice sent Georgie’s lip quivering.
“He assumed you’d told me where you keep your gold. And Jed’s. And he made it quite clear that ‘a lady of my substantial resources’ shouldn’t walk the streets by myself.”
Mack’s face darkened instantly. “Who said this?”
“He looked familiar, but I don’t know his name. I’ve seen him before, I know that much.”
“He threatened you because you’re married to me?” Mack nearly roared, sending Georgie into tears.
Ed Parker came up behind Mack, “You’re frightening the boy, Mack. Hold your horses.”
Mack tried to compose himself by turning away and pacing the room. “Of all the underhanded, low-life…” He looked up at Lana. “You said you knew him?”
“I recognized him. I suspect he was an…associate…of Jed’s. He didn’t offer his name when I asked.”
“He knows what’s coming to him if I did know his name. You’d know him if you saw him again?”
“I doubt I’ll get his sneer out of my head for quite a while.”
“Don’t you leave,” Mack commanded, pointing at both Lana and Ed as he made for the door.
“He slipped back into the crowd, Mack,” Lana called. “A block or two back. You won’t find him now.”
“Watch me,” Mack growled, sending Georgie into full-scale howling.
“Must you—”
“Mack!” Ed cut in as he beat Mack to the door frame. “Don’t go off all fired up. You won’t solve anything like this. He’s just some fool out to rattle your cage.”
“Consider me rattled.” Mack looked back at Lana. “Are you hurt? Georgie? Did he touch you?”
Lana smoothed Georgie’s hair, bouncing him up and down gently until his cries muffled down to short bursts of whimpering. “No, he caught hold of my arm for a second, that’s all.”
“He touched you? I’ll wring his neck, I will.”
“I’m not hurt, Mack. I refused to be bullied by some low-life miner off the docks.”
“That low-life miner could have done any number of things to you. Or Georgie. Thank God above neither of you were hurt.”
“He never touched Georgie.” She looked straight at Mack. “It’s getting worse instead of better, Mack. The boats just keep dumping people out, no matter who they are and what they want.”
“Oh, we know what they want, all right. No questions there.” Mack drew a deep breath and shrugged his shoulders, grappling to get his temper under control. “I’ll find him.”
“You will,” Ed said. “But not today.” Ed turned to Lana. “I’m right glad you’re okay after a scare like that. Do you think you could describe him? Anything that might pick him out of a crowd?”
Lana felt her anger return as she brought the slippery character to mind. “He had an accent. Georgia. Or Texas, maybe.” She gave all the physical description she could, trying to keep her voice even and calm, to help Georgie settle himself. She opened the picnic basket and pulled out a bit of bread to distract the boy. “His hat had a colored feather in it. Like a peacock’s.”
“The fool. Thinking he can do that to you.” Mack continued pacing, his voice low but still menacing. “You go nowhere alone. You understand that? Nowhere.”
That wasn’t the answer. “Mack, I’m not some orchid who has to be guarded,” Lana countered. “He scared me, but I’ve lived here as long as you, and nothing’s ever happened before.”
“You haven’t been Mrs. Tanner before,” he shot back.
She had been Mrs. Jedadiah Bristow. That had been education enough. “And I’ve no mind to be imprisoned for that!”
“I’ll not have you putting yourself in danger.”
His overprotective response made her almost sorry she’d told him of the incident. “One fool thinking he can scare me is not danger.”
“You don’t know that, Lana.”
“It’s only worse when the waterfront is mobbed like that.”
“So you stay off the waterfront. Until further notice.” His annoying, paternal tone had her thinking he’d wag a finger at her in another second.
“I already planned to do just that. When the big ships are in.”
“At all times.”
“Mack—”
“A man just threatened you, Lana, and I will not have you taking a chance like that again.” Georgie’s whimper returned and Mack visibly reined in his temper. “Not even to bring me lunch.” After a moment, he added, “Thank you for bringing me lunch, all the same. It smells wonderful.”
He was making an effort, reluctant as it was. Perhaps she ought to as well. “There’s enough for you, Mr. Parker.” In her exuberance—and the joy of having more than enough supplies to cook anything she wanted after so many weeks of scraping by—she’d probably made enough for four.
“I may not be a scholar, but I know enough to leave two newlyweds alone. Even arguin’ ones. How about I take Georgie over to the carpenters and see if I can find some scraps we can make into blocks?” He looked at Georgie. “You got any blocks yet, fella? Every boy needs blocks.” Despite Lana’s certainty that Georgie wouldn’t go two feet from her after all the fuss, Georgie toddled over to the big man’s outstretched hand.
“Mind him, Ed,” Mack called after the unlikely pair. “He misses his own nephews, I think,” Mack remarked to Lana. “He’s a big old teddy bear on the inside.”
She managed a laugh. “You’d never know it to look at him.”
“He’s had a rough life. Seen a lot—both good and bad. He’s been a good friend, though, since…” He gave a forced sigh and settled himself on the store floor, sunlight streaming in around them through the still open framework on one side of the building. Some days she could be so swallowed up by the loss of her husband of three years that she would clean forget Mack had lost his best friend of nearly thirty years. How two such different men could grow up together and still stay friends always amazed her.
She looked up at the grief shadowing Mack’s eyes and sighed. They still didn’t quite know how to be alone in a room together. Lana occupied herself by unfolding a napkin. “We’ve all had a rough night. Tempers are short.”
He made a low grunt in reply and rubbed his neck. “Smells mighty good,” he admitted, as the scent of the chicken wafted through the room.
She filled a tin plate and handed it to him. “I’m a very capable person, you know.”
He looked up, a what’s that supposed to mean? expression in his eyes.
“I’m smart enough to know what’s possible and what isn’t.” She filled a plate for herself. “For example, I am smart enough to know that I can’t make it up here alone, but I am also smart enough to know that I can teach those books.”
His eyes flicked up from the food, but he said nothing.
Lana settled her plate on her lap and deliberately softened her tone. She waited for the tension to ebb from the room, watching instead how the crisp ribbons of sunlight illuminated the bits of sawdust dancing on the waterfront breeze. Keeping her tone as soft as she knew how, Lana caught his eyes. “Tell me why you don’t like the idea of my teaching.”
He gave the question considerable thought before replying. “I think,” he chose his words carefully, “that your plate is full enough already. If you’ll pardon the lunch reference,” he added with the barest hint of a smile. “And then there’s Georgie. I don’t see how you could do it.”
“Well, I don’t know much of that myself yet.” He obviously hadn’t expected such an answer, for he stared hard at her, as if she were some difficult puzzle he couldn’t solve. It was true. She felt like a puzzle to herself today.
“You don’t need the job. You’re provided for now.”
“I don’t need the money, true. But I think I need the challenge. There’s a right way to do this.” The ambitious urge those books pulled out of her caught her by surprise, much as that hideous miner had this morning. “I want Treasure Creek to have a good school for Georgie. I want everyone here to have a good school.”
“And you’ve a definite opinion on how that ought to happen.” He declared it like an unfortunate fact of nature, like floods or avalanches.
“I do. And you’re right, I know the why but not the how. At least not yet. So…” She put a luxurious slather of butter on her biscuit, “I’d like to try and work it out. I don’t think asking you to keep an open mind about this is too much.” She looked up and caught his eye again, pleased to see the dark storm of anger had retreated considerably, replaced with a rather amusing curiosity. If there was anything Lana Bristow Tanner knew how to do best, it was to coax a deal into existence. “In return, I’ll keep an open mind about your ideas of what’s needed for my safety.”
He managed an actual smile. “Those marriage vows had ‘honor’ in them, and some other words, but I don’t recall much about ‘keep an open mind.’”
He’d left out the bit about “obey,” and they both knew it. Lana sat up straight. “An open mind is the highest honor a man can give his wife.”
Her statement amounted to a well-played verbal parry, and Mack raised a dubious eyebrow before dissolving into a smirk. They both laughed. It was the first time they’d laughed together, and the first time Lana could remember laughing in ages. There was a precious warmth to it. It was—dare she think it?—fun to coax a deal out of him. He matched her efforts by displaying his “consideration” with an oversize thinking expression while devouring a piece of chicken. His dark blue eyes had hints of gold and green in them when the light hit them right. She’d thought of them as a flat, stormy blue, but there was a shimmer in the storm she hadn’t noticed before. Yes, he did have a playful side. One she’d all but forgotten in the onslaught of drama and conflict that had been both their lives. Georgie would be good for him. Shake some of that stiffness out of him in the way that only small children can.
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