Wendy Douglas - The Unlikely Groom

“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!”

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 woman. A woman stranded in Skagway without family or money.

A woman completely alone, not only in Alaska but in the world.

And wasn’t he a man who had once fancied himself as saving the world?

No! His sense of self-preservation reared up to demand that he listen. You don’t save the world or people or anything else. Not anymore. You might have done that sort of thing once, but that was a long time ago. And you weren’t very good at it, now were you? So don’t think about making any noble gestures now.

“Wherever did you get the idea that Ian and I were…married?” Ashlynne asked, sounding more confused than amused. But then Lucas’s own amusement had disappeared the moment he’d understood the complications of this new truth.

He avoided looking at her as he reached for his coffee. Draining the last of it, he signaled Willie for another. For only himself, of course. Miss Ashlynne Mackenzie didn’t drink spirits, after all.

He shrugged as though Ashlynne’s question had been insignificant. “You must have said something.”

“I’m sure I didn’t say anything of the sort.”

“Well, I didn’t just pluck the idea out of thin air.”

“I think you did.” She straightened and frowned in a most argumentative way, aiming a dark, disgruntled look at him. “I think you made an assumption based on nothing more than your own antiquated ideas.”

“Antiquated ideas?” Lucas’s sense of humor returned and he laughed. “A man who owns a place like the Star of the North doesn’t have antiquated ideas.”

“You do,” she insisted, her brow drawn in obvious disapproval. “You’re the one who said, ‘Women never choose adventure or places like Alaska.’ That’s an antiquated idea if I ever heard one. You think that only married women would want to travel, and then it would be because their husbands made them.”

“Ashlynne, I do not—”

“You do so. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have assumed Ian and I were husband and wife.”

Lucas stared, wondering at this sudden quarrelsome side to Ashlynne’s nature, when she’d been polite, even distant before. Had her grief finally overcome her other emotions? Or could she be this angry because he’d misunderstood her relationship with Ian?

Worse, could the whiskey have begun to affect her mood?

“Here you go, sugar.”

Candy’s words and the scent of roses preceded her arrival by mere seconds. She swept up from behind him, carrying two steaming mugs that she placed on the table with a feminine flourish. She set one in front of Ashlynne and the other within Lucas’s reach.

“I didn’t want two,” he said, his voice sharper than it should have been. But…dammit! He wanted to end these moments with Ashlynne; he didn’t want her in the Star and he didn’t want to help her. He wanted her out of his life and gone from his memory, and plying her with whiskey or coffee would hardly accomplish that.

“I might have wanted something else,” put in Ashlynne, her voice decidedly grumpy. “But you wouldn’t know that—would you?—since you hadn’t the courtesy to ask.”

Who was she to chastise him? “You said you didn’t drink spirits.”

Ashlynne opened her mouth as though to argue the matter further, but Candy spoke first.

“You two can argue your differences on your own. One-Eyed Pete’s waiting for me.” She started to leave but then stopped and glanced back over her shoulder. She shot a pointed smile in Lucas’s direction. “Don’t forget, sugar. Just call me if you want…anything.”

Candy flounced away with a laugh, swinging her hips and tossing her head like a filly in heat. Lucas wanted to appreciate the sight, but he couldn’t seem to find his usual sense of admiration for her tonight.

“That woman is shameless.”

He glanced at Ashlynne and found her staring after Candy. Her brow was wrinkled with disapproval. He swallowed a weary sigh. “She’s a dance hall girl, Ashlynne.”