Gold Rush Groom

chapter Twenty-One





The words pierced Lily’s heart like shards of broken glass. But Lily did not let her heart break, not yet. Not until she’d seen Jack herself. Instead she did what she always did when her back was to the wall—she fought. She shouted from her place at ground level, her voice now authoritative and shrill as any commanding officer.

“Don’t think! Drag them out. Hurry!”

The miner reached a tentative hand forward and clasped the arm of the nearest man. He gave a groan.

“Alive! This one’s alive.”

Lily turned from the hole. “Get a rope and some men to haul these miners up.”

The first body was yanked from the shaft dirty and still. She could not tell who the miner might be. She paced at ground level like a caged animal, waiting, praying as the man was hauled up.

He crested the rim.

“Dan Slater,” cried one of the miners. He knelt beside the inert form. “Breathing.”

They carried him to the tarp and laid him on a blanket, wetting his face with water on a rag. His eyes fluttered open.

“Am I dead, then?” he whispered.

Lily stroked his cheek. “Alive, Mr. Slater, as I pray are your fellows. How many still down there?”

She knew eight were unaccounted for and she held her breath for his answer.

“Four.”

She tried not to let that crush her hopes.

“Their names?”

“Henderson, McKinsky, and the damned engineer who made that hell machine.”

Lily left him in the care of the tailor, Amos Luritz, who had followed her to the mine and had refused to leave with the rest of them. She hurried back to the hole where another man was lifted, limp as a rag doll. This was Henderson, the operator of the engine, and he did not revive so quickly. In fact, he did not rouse at all, but his breathing was regular so Lily returned to her place. The next man crawled out on his own: McKinsky, his shoulders so broad he could barely fit through the opening. It took four men to haul him to the lip of the crater where he kicked and clawed his way back to the surface. When she looked back down she saw another still figure with the two diggers.

“Cummings,” called one and motioned for the rope.

Where was Jack?

And then she saw him, crawling weakly from his prison.

“Snow,” called the miner.

“Jack!” she cried, lying on her belly in the mud to be closer to him, reaching both hands down into the pit.

He lifted his dirty face and held a hand up as a visor as if the dim light from the cloudy day was too bright for him to see.

“Lily?”

They looped the rope beneath his arms.

“What are you doing here?”

One of the diggers slapped him on the shoulder. “She’ll be real glad to see you.”



Jack’s feet left the ground and he dangled between heaven and hell, ascending like an angel to the pearly gates. Lily was here. He blinked against the bright light that nearly blinded him after so much blackness. The last he remembered was the hammering and then…then he could not breathe and then, nothing.

He looked at Lily’s sweet, stern face, staring at him as a mother would at a wayward child, happy at his return and angry that he’d ever left. He raised a hand in recognition at his fierce little partner.

How brilliant to dig straight down. They never would have reached them in time otherwise.

From below came the call. “That’s all. Beyond this pocket, the tunnel’s collapsed.”

“Haul them up,” Lily said to the men working the pulley system. “Take my hand, Jack,” Lily said.

She grasped hold and would not let go, even as the men dragged him back to the surface. His legs gave way, but they pulled him back from the chasm. The sweet fresh air filled his lungs and snow melted on his cheek. What a miracle!

She fell to her knees beside him and he looked up into the face that he had longed to see.

He grinned at her. “Howdy, partner,” he said.

“Oh, Jack!” Lily cried, and threw herself at him, clasping her two small arms around him and squeezing so tight that she pressed the very air from his lungs. “I thought I’d lost you forever. I thought…”

Was she crying? He drew back, holding her face between his hands.

“Lily, I’m all right now.”

“I was afraid I’d never get a chance to tell you…to say…oh, Jack.” She kissed him hard and then drew back to assure herself that he was really here in her arms.

He stared at her. “I must have died after all then.”

She clung tighter. “Don’t joke about that. Jack, I was wrong about everything. I love you, and all I want in the world is to be by your side. If you still want me to be your mistress, I’ll go with you to New York or anywhere you say.”

Jack stilled, but Lily clung, afraid that she’d lose him again, afraid that he’d changed his mind and no longer wanted her.

“You love me?” He stared, his expression so serious it frightened her.

She nodded.

Her eyes rounded and the lump in her throat seemed to grow. She could barely breathe past it.

“Please, Jack, say something.”

“I was wrong about us, wrong to ask you to come with me.”

Her heart, already battered as an old tin pail, now twisted in dread. After all this, had she lost him anyway?

She interrupted him before he forced her to go. “Please, Jack, give me a chance to prove how much I love you.”

He stroked her cheek. “You already have, time and time again. But I don’t want you to be my mistress, Lily. I’m ashamed I ever asked you.”

Ashamed. Yes, it had been the trouble from the start.

“I understand, Jack. I know the way of it.”

He placed his hands on hers, holding each one as if she were precious to him instead of an obligation he must discharge. Well, she’d not stand in his way. She loved him too much to be a shameful little secret or worse an open scandal. His thumb swept in circles over the back of her hands.

“I don’t think you do.”

How she would miss the deep rich timbre of his voice.

“When I was trapped, it was your face I saw and your voice I longed to hear again. I can’t get on without you. I’ve fallen in love with you, Lily Delacy Shanahan, and I want us to be together—always.”

“What?”

“I love you, too, Lily. Madly and with my whole heart.”

Her head snapped up and she looked into his whiskey eyes as the shock of his words washed through her.

“Love me?” She gaped.

He nodded, one corner of his mouth quirking as he continued to hold her gaze. “Desperately.”

The cresting wave of joy broke over her and then reality returned, stealing her elation. “But, oh, Jack, what should we do?” His family wouldn’t accept her, his friends, his associates.

“Marry, I hope.”

The astonishment of his proposal brought her scrambling in an effort to stand, but he held her.

“Lily, I love you and I don’t want a mistress. I want a wife—I want you as my wife.”

She was shaking her head madly from side to side. “But I’ll ruin everything. You can’t marry me.”

“I can, if I can convince you to forgive me for my colossal arrogance and agree to accept me.”

Lily’s legs went rubbery and her head began to spin. The ringing in her ears made her own voice sound tinny and strange. “But what about New York, your mother and…everything?”

“Funny about that, I don’t really think I belong there anymore. Not when everything I have come to love is here.”

“What do you mean? You’re not going back?”

He drew her into the shelter of his arms.

“I realized something down in that hole. I’m not the man I was when I came here. I feel sorry for those fools back there, jostling for social position and spending all they have to impress people they don’t like to begin with. That’s not for me anymore.”

He stroked her cheek and she felt her heart stop. What was he talking about?

“You want to stay in the Yukon.”

He nodded. “There’s nothing I want or need that I can’t find right here.”

It was her fondest desire to remain in the northern territory, and to have Jack at her side would make the adventure so much sweeter.

“We could make a life here, Lil. You and me. What do you say?”

“I say yes!” She hugged him.

He cradled Lily against his strong body, leaning her back, taking her lips with his in a kiss filled with love and promise.

Nala barked, startling them both. Lily drew back as her black Newfoundland licked Jack across the muddy dark stubble of his cheek.

Lily laughed. “I think she approves.”

Jack grabbed Nala and hugged her, too. The three of them sat in the mud together and Lily thought she had never been so happy.

Jack made an attempt to stand, but swayed. Lily was there helping him as she had been from the start. He looped a hand about her shoulders and stretched, drawing a breath of air and then grinned down at her.

“We’ll have a grand life, Lily, one full of adventure just like your mother wanted for you. And one that will make us both proud, because it will be ours.”

“But Jack, what about your mother and sister?”

“We’ll see they get what they need, help them all we can, just the same as we will your family. Soon as we get on our feet again.”

“I’ll help you, Jack.”

He nodded, then swallowed, as if something blocked his throat. “Yes, I know you will, just as you always have. I should have seen that a long time ago. That day I met you on the beach was the luckiest of my life.”

She patted his chest with her open hand. “You didn’t think so at the time.”

“Because I didn’t understand then that you were the only partner for me.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, Lily. Partners forever and always.”