man bothering you, Fiona?” he asked. “I had a word with him on Saturday. He says he’s not here to work for Soapy and I can’t run him out of town unless he does something.”
“He simply doesn’t know the meaning of the word no. It’s becoming quite tedious. He has some wonderful plan to make a fortune, which he’s sure I’ll be interested in. I do believe he thinks I’m teasing when I insist I don’t want to hear it.”
“Let us know if he does anything more than insisting.”
“He’s harmless.” We reached the corner and I snuck a peek behind me. Sheridan was still standing on the sidewalk, like a rock rising out of the sea, while the crowd ebbed and flowed all around him. He waved at me, and I almost jerked Richard off his feet as I changed direction and charged down Queen Street.
Once we were out of Sheridan’s line of sight, I did not, however, release Richard’s arm. It was a very warm day and the blue sky held no threat of rain. Hopefully, things could dry out a bit before the clouds next opened up.
We arrived in front of my lodgings in due course. Angus and I had taken rooms at Mr. and Mrs. Mann’s boarding house. It was a rough wooden building, thrown up almost overnight — as most of the houses in town were. Every scrap of furniture was mismatched at best and broken at worst; the floor creaked and wind blew through cracks in the walls and sought out gaps around doors and windows. The garden was a patch of weeds and dirt, overseen by the neighbours’ privy. Steam and heat bellowed from the shed in the back, where Mrs. Mann operated a laundry.
I felt more at home here than I had in my townhouse in Belgravia, where all the furniture was fashionable and expensive and the garden in riotous bloom, with a butler to open the front door and a maid to lay out my gowns and arrange my hair.
Wasn’t I becoming a sentimental old fool?
“Do you have time to come in for tea?” I asked Richard. Mrs. Mann was in the laundry shed and Mr. Mann would be at the store with Angus. It was hardly proper for me to entertain a gentleman without other company present, but propriety was never something I cared much about, no matter in what circumstances I was living. “Mrs. Mann always keeps the kettle hot and ready.”
“Another time, perhaps,” he said with a smile. “I have a meeting with the inspector later and have to get my reports finished.”
We bid each other a good day and I went inside.
I removed my jewellery, struggled with the row of tiny buttons on my dress, discarded my petticoat, over-corset, corset, stockings and undergarments, pulled on my night-gown, and crawled into my narrow bed with the lumpy mattress and broken springs for my midday nap.
* * *
I was to have the role of matron-of-honour at the marriage of Martha Witherspoon and Reginald O’Brien. Another first for me: I’ve never been in a wedding party. Mainly, I suspect, because I’ve never had female friends, not since I was a child.
The best dressmaker in the Yukon had gone out of business abruptly. Irene Davidson, who’d been friends with the woman, had swooped in and scooped up the best bolts of cloth before anyone else could get their hands on them. Where the rest had gone, I did not know. I kicked myself at being too slow off the mark: by the time I got to the abandoned shop, all that remained were some lengths of black homespun and a cotton in a colour that would make a horse look anaemic.
It was, therefore, to Irene that Martha and I had to go.
Where we would beg for material to make a wedding dress.
Irene and I did not like each other much. Which was of absolutely no consequence, as long as she was the most popular dancer in town and I was the boss. We performed our duties and kept a formal distance. She knew she could leave the Savoy at any time for a position at any other dance hall, but I paid her an excellent wage, and the working conditions were no worse than anywhere else. Things had begun to change recently: I knew Irene’s secret, and she knew I knew. I knew why she had taken up with Ray Walker, and I did not approve in the least.
That, Irene also knew.
It made for an awkward situation, and I do not care to be put in a position in which I am unsure as to what is going on.
Ray was visiting Irene when we arrived. Fortunately, all they appeared to have been doing was drinking tea.
The Lady Irénée occupied a single room in a boarding house. An unmade bed with an iron headboard and frame took up a goodly portion of the space. A small table with two chairs around it was in the centre of the room, a large wooden chest pushed against one wall. But there were lace curtains on the windows and a thick colourful rug on the floor, and on the wall, a painting of a pretty blond girl holding a big yellow hat in an alpine meadow.
Ray stood when we entered. “You ladies have a pleasant afternoon,” he said. He kissed Irene most possessively, full on the mouth, picked up his hat, and left.
Irene’s eyes slid away from mine. Not bothering with pleasantries, she crossed the room in two strides and threw open the lid on the chest.
I pretended indifference, but my heart positively leapt at the sight of crimson satin, pale blue muslin, startlingly white cotton, and navy blue velvet.
“Oh,” Martha breathed. “How lovely it all is.”
Irene pulled out a bolt of white cotton and then a length of good lace and handed them to Martha. I said the blue muslin would be much more practical (it was considerably less expensive), but Martha was determined to wear a white dress to her wedding, just as Queen Victoria had done.
Martha cradled the cloth as though it were a baby. Her short, stubby, nail-chewed fingers stroked it, not as one would stroke a baby, but a lover.
There would be no quibbling over the price here.
Irene measured and cut the cloth, and then wrapped it in brown paper and string. She then looked at me and, with a smile curling at the edges of her mouth, named her price. I hid a grimace and dug into my reticule. We were not offered tea.
Business completed, we headed back to the Savoy to meet Helen Saunderson, who was going to make Martha’s wedding dress. Martha clutched the bundle of cloth to her chest as we walked toward Front Street. I thought it too bad that Martha hadn’t been here over the winter; the radiance pouring from her face would have raised the temperature a considerable amount.
Martha and Mouse O’Brien had known each other no more than a few weeks. But things moved quickly in the Klondike. Spring and summer were so short, winter so long and harsh, it seemed as though people needed to pack a whole year into a couple of months. We operated on a different time scale here. I wouldn’t be too terribly surprised to travel back Outside and find that ten or twenty years had passed since we’d left Vancouver.
When Ray, Angus, and I arrived last autumn, the town of Dawson wasn’t much larger or better built than Skagway, except for government offices and the sturdy Fort Herchmer, operated by the North-West Mounted Police. The town consisted of a few wooden buildings, some planks laid down over the mud, and hundreds of tents. Now, less than a year later, it was a thriving community of close to 30,000 souls, and anything available in the Outside could be found in Dawson.
Although sometimes for an exorbitant price. Such as pure white cotton with which to make a wedding gown.
I gave Helen the afternoon off in order to take Martha home with her, measure her for the dress, and get started on it. The wedding was on Saturday afternoon, five days hence. The dress, and Helen’s time working on it, would be Angus’s and my wedding gift to the happy couple.
Helen and Martha had just left, Helen chattering away about her own wedding and how her dress had been the best one ever seen in Poughkeepsie, wherever on this earth that might be, when the door flew open and who should be standing there, a big smile on his face and a bouquet of purple fireweed in his hand, but Paul Sheridan.
“Fiona.” He crossed the floor in two giant strides. “I’m so glad to see you.” He shoved the flowers at me, and I took them without thinking.