The Unlikely Groom. Wendy Douglas

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СКАЧАТЬ lure of the gold?” Lucas’s smile didn’t reach anywhere near his eyes. “You and Ian planned to be rich, like the Carmacks and the Berrys?”

      “You see?” Ashlynne pointed at Lucas, making her argument with fingers that had long ago ceased to tremble, but then she turned to fanning her face with her hand. The room had begun to seem overly warm.

      “George Carmack and Clarence Berry had their wives with them when they struck gold,” she added. “You can’t tell me that Kate Carmack and Ethel Berry were dance hall girls—or anything else. I know better.”

      “I see you’ve learned about your predecessors to the Klondike.”

      “Yes.” Ashlynne nodded, but briefly. “It seemed important to learn all we could. To be prepared.” But her heart fell upon hearing the words. Despite whatever they might have thought, she and Ian had been sadly unprepared before arriving in Skagway.

      “It’s different here,” she confessed in a soft voice, because the truth had always been the one thing on which she could depend. “Nothing like I expected.”

      “You aren’t the first to say that.”

      “I didn’t want to come this way.” She shrugged. “I wanted to go to St. Michael and take a ship from there down the Yukon River to Dawson City.”

      “The all-water route.” Lucas nodded with apparent approval. “It’s a less arduous trip that way, that much is certain. Better for a woman.”

      “It’s also more expensive. Ian said we couldn’t afford it. Besides, the Yukon River is frozen this time of year and Ian wanted to travel now. He said we were better off coming early, through Skagway, and purchasing our outfit here, rather than paying to ship it from San Francisco. We could be ready as soon as the snow melted.”

      “And did he tell you how difficult it would be to cross either of the passes to get from here as far as Bennett? The Chilkoot is brutal enough, and the White Pass is no better. And that’s only the beginning of the trail.”

      Ashlynne started to shake her head, then remembered her earlier dizziness and thought better of it. What if she was catching a cold? Or, worse, some strange Alaskan malady with which she had no experience.

      She answered simply instead. “I don’t know how much Ian knew before we left, but I began to suspect the truth of what we faced on the Aurora Borealis. The other passengers told me what they knew, and it did sound…daunting.”

      In truth, Ashlynne had been appalled to hear of the hardships that stampeders faced when climbing either the Chilkoot or White passes. But, as she’d quickly learned, those who wanted to go to the Klondike had no choice. There was no other route from Skagway to Dawson City, and the Canadian Mounties required those entering the Yukon to possess nearly a thousand pounds of goods and supplies. The only way a man—or woman—could comply was by carrying his outfit up and over the pass, trip after trip after trip.

      “I thought we could do it.” She tried to sound more confident than she actually felt. “Ian did, too. He told me so—but then, he didn’t fear anything.”

      A boisterous shout from a noisy card game drew her attention and Ashlynne glanced to the back of the room. If Ian had been alive, he would have been there with the others, betting his last dime—or anything else with which he’d had to gamble. She didn’t doubt it.

      She frowned and turned back to Lucas. “The atmosphere of Skagway—the excitement and gambling and drinking—all took hold of him. It was like a…sickness. It didn’t take even a day before he fell in with a bad influence and…well, you know the rest of it.”

      “And you consider yourself responsible for that?”

      “It was my idea to come,” she repeated tightly.

      “You aren’t responsible for anyone’s actions but your own.”

      She smiled but with neither amusement nor understanding. “That sounds very nice, but it’s not true. Not in this case. I knew we were taking a chance in coming here, but I thought we took a bigger chance by staying in San Francisco. Ian had too many acquaintances who were a bad influence, and we’d already lost nearly everything we had. This seemed like the right thing to do. I’m not so sure anymore, but at the time, it felt as though we were fulfilling the family prophecy.”

      “The…what?”

      “Grandfather Mackenzie had found his first success in the California gold rush. He was shrewd and frugal and earned a great fortune—which my parents promptly spent. Wasted. When they were killed in a carriage accident months ago, they left nothing of Granddad’s fortune. But I thought that Ian and I could have a new chance in the Klondike. A fresh start. Just when the time came that we had nothing left, George Carmack struck gold at Dawson City. It seemed like destiny—a sign from God.”

      Would He find it sacrilegious that she said such a thing? Ashlynne didn’t know. Her family hadn’t been religious and so she hadn’t grown up in the church. But surely God would forgive her for her lapses in judgment, both tonight and in the recent past. Wouldn’t He? She’d done her best.

      Aware of how pitiful her best truly was, Ashlynne snatched up her coffee cup and drained it. If only she could find her bearings again…

      “What did your parents have to do with your husband’s family fortune?” Lucas’s question came unexpectedly.

      “My husband?” Ashlynne frowned. “Who are you talking about?”

      “Ian.” Lucas returned her frown. “Or…” He paused and the silence began to seem somehow exaggerated. “Were the two of you just…lovers?”

      “Lovers! Who?”

      “You and Ian.”

      “What about Ian?” Ashlynne shot Lucas another glare of confusion. Either he made no sense at all or she had become completely overwrought and hadn’t realized it until this moment.

      “You said that Grandfather Mackenzie found his success in the California gold rush.” Lucas spoke slowly enough, but his tone smacked of more frustration than patience.

      “Yes.”

      “And that was Ian’s grandfather.”

      “Yes.” She nodded briefly, careful of that highly unsettling dizziness. “Ian’s and my grandfather.”

      “You and Ian shared the same grandfather?”

      “Yes. Of course we did. Why wouldn’t we? Most brothers and sisters share the same family.”

      Lucas blinked and for a moment his expression seemed to close down. Then his eyes widened and, remarkably, he laughed. “Son of a bitch,” he said softly as he shook his head. “Ian wasn’t your husband. He was your brother!”

       Chapter Four

       L ucas had been a fool.

      A small part of Lucas exulted at the discovery; the rest of him recognized the difference for all the danger it posed. Ashlynne Mackenzie hadn’t the protection, dubious though it might have been, of being a grieving widow; she’d never been a wife. She was, instead, a single СКАЧАТЬ