The Enduring Flame

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Inside his log cabin, in the Great White Wilderness, young Joanna Grey’s father dies, and she is forced to flee from the lecherous Conrad Owen into the icy wilderness. Lost and exhausted, she’s found by Richard Strange and they shelter in a cabin where they become trapped by raging snowstorms. And despite discovering their love for one another, they agree that John should return to his wife. But then, terrifyingly for Joanna alone in the arctic night, Conrad Owen appears…

Release date: October 17, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 128

Sample

SNOW was beginning to fall again.

Great white flakes, greyish in the dimming light of early afternoon, whirled and spat against the window pane of John Grey’s log-cabin in the Great White Wilderness. The wind howled furiously down the chimney and moaned like a lost spirit round the cabin. But John Grey heard nothing, saw nothing. Still and pallid he lay on his camp bed in the living room, drawn up close to the fire. It shed a red glow upon him, but even in that glow he was marble-white. Rigid features, a calm, bearded face, long rough hair, hands of skeleton thinness lying outside the coverlet.

John Grey was dead.

Beside him crouched a girl. She might have been boy … slender, lithe little figure in breeches, leggings, fur coat. Small cropped head covered with dark, crisp curls. Boyish hands, brown, used to rough work. Only the face was purely girl, oval, chiselled, with great dark long-lashed eyes and a small mouth. Fire and passion and endurance in every line of Joanna Grey’s face. She had learned endurance out here on the Yukon for the last twelve years. She had been through the bitter struggles which men face in the Gold Rush. She had shared hunger, pain, privation, failure, with her father. From the age of five she had lived out here in the snows with him and their Indian servant. She had known no other home, no women friends. Only men … some who were kind, some from whom she had learned to protect herself. She had cared for nobody but her father.

And now he was dead.

Jo—he had always called her that—had watched him die at dawn. She had sat like this ever since, watching her dead, dumbly suffering, brooding.

She was appalled to find herself alone, without Daddy. She was bewildered because she did not know where to go or what to do. But she tried not to be afraid. She had no fear of Death. She had seen so many men die, of cold, of fever, of starvation. Daddy’s still, silent form did not horrify her. It only filled her with speechless grief. It was Life she feared … Life in the form of many rough strange men who trail through the White Wilderness. She wished, passionately, that she had been a boy. But she was a girl of eighteen. She wondered where to go and what would happen to her.

Outside, Kiche, which means Wolf, the Indian servant who had loved her father and who was her slave, had gone with his team of Eskimo dogs to fetch a coffin and a priest to give John Grey Christian burial. She felt very hungry and lonely. Her firm little mouth turned down at the corners. She hid her face in her hands. But she could not cry.

Then in a swift startled way she sprang to her feet, every nerve jumping, eyes large and bright. She sprang to the door and reached out for her rifle. There came the sound of a man’s voice.

“Hi, you, Joe. Are you there? Let me in.”

Her arms dropped to her sides. The colour receded from her face. It was Conrad Owen, a fur-trader who had known her father. Several times she had seen him and talked to him over a mug of coffee. She did not like him. There was a certain secret look in his eyes that she only half understood but disliked. But now that her father was dead and the terrible sense of loneliness was crushing her she felt she would be glad to talk to even the fur-trader.

She unbarred the door and let him in.

Conrad Owen entered, stamping the snow from his boots and blowing on his hands.

“Good-evening to you, Jo,” he said.

She did not answer, but pointed mutely to the still body of John Grey under his fur rug. Conrad Owen uttered a low whistle and walked up to the bed. Then he turned to the girl.

“Yes. He died at dawn,” she said. “You knew he was ill when you last passed our way.”

“Sure, I knew that. But I’m sorry he’s gone.”

“Yes,” said Joanna. Her voice quivered with pain. The man looked at her while he unbuttoned his bearskin coat and took off his round fur cap. He looked at her curiously. A strange, wild little thing, Joanna Grey. He admired her spirit. More than that. He wanted her beauty, the redness of her lips and the soft pale curve of her throat. There was no girl like this for miles around … none so soft, so pretty, so virginal and at the same time so untamed and fierce.

And old Grey was dead and the girl was alone. That was news. He walked up to her, thumbs in the lapels of his leather jacket.

“What you going to do, kid?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said wearily.

“You got no relations?”

“None that I know.”

“Where’d he come from?”

“London.”

“Why’d he come out to the Yukon? For gold?”

She resented the cross-examination. She answered reluctantly:

“I don’t know much about it.”

That was true. She knew so little. John Grey had never told her very much about his past. She only knew that when she had been a baby of five her mother had died and he, at that period of his life, drinking heavily, had because of some shameful deed, something connected with forging a cheque, left England forever.

He had brought her out to the Yukon. For all these years they had been everything to each other. He had made gold and lost it again. Now illness had overtaken him and death put an end to the striving. He had died as he had lived, a failure. Poor, lovable, weak John Grey. And he had left her, his Jo, with nothing in the world, he who would have given her everything.

She moved away from Conrad Owen.

“I shall go to Fort Yukon later when my father is buried,” she said brusquely.

Conrad Owen passed a forefinger over his lips. He stood watching her, thinking. He was a handsome man in his fashion, huge, muscular. But coarse and florid. Yellow hair and china-blue eyes gave him a Germanic appearance. He had a loose mouth and that way of looking at her which caused her uneasiness.

She walked into the adjoining room which was a kind of kitchenette and where she slept, herself.

“You would like food and coffee,” she said.

He followed her.

“Jo,” he said. “Look here. No need for you to be all alone, kid. No need to trail to Fort Yukon by yourself. You come along o’ me.”

“No thanks, Conrad,” she said.

“Sure, why not?”

“I’d rather be by myself. I shall get work.”

“Work—you—a baby!” he jeered.

She swung round.

“I am no baby. I can take care of myself.”

“A woman, then … the chaps will rush for you.”

“Let them rush. I can take care of myself,” she repeated with fierce pride.

Conrad Owen rubbed his hands together. He gave a little, low chuckle. John Grey lay dead in the next room. Little Jo was most desirable. Many times when he had dropped in here for rest and food on his way down the trail, he had desired her. He might even marry her, the little kid. His eyes gloated over her, moved from her curly head to her small neat ankles in their long, laced boots.

“Jo,” he said softly. “Suppose I say I want you to come along o’ me—for good!”

She turned from the stove on which she had set a pot of coffee. Eyed him steadily.

“No thanks, Conrad Owen.”

“Don’t you like me?”

“Not much.”

“Damn it,” he said with a look of annoyance. “The cheek of it.”

“Go out of this room and leave me to my cooking, please,” she said.

She was not prepared for his next move. He sprang at her suddenly, had her in his arms before she could prevent it. A feeling of acute terror gripped her then, she who was as a rule fearless. She felt his hot breath on her cold cheek and gasped.

“Let me go, Conrad Owen.”

“I want you,” he said. “Look here, kid, I tell you straight, I’m mad for you. You’re going to come along o’ me—for good.”

“Never,” she said. “Let me go. Beast … beast—let me go!”

He laughed and kissed her on the throat. She saw red then. Terror grew on her … terror of sex, of men … of her loneliness—the helplessness of a girl.

“Don’t you dare to touch me,” she said. “With my father lying dead in the next room. God should strike you dead … you beast!”

Her low furious voice sobered the man for an instant. He let her loose.

“Aw, cut it out, kid,” he said. “I only want to be nice to you. A kiss or two. Come on now, my Beauty, be loving …”

Joanna gave him a look of scorn, pushed him from her and rushed out of the room. She heard him call her.

“Jo, come back, little fool. You can’t escape me …”

Couldn’t escape him? Couldn’t she? Did he think she would stay here, now that she knew what he was like, what he wanted? He wanted her. She knew that he would not long have respect for the name of God or for a dead man. For the first time in her life she knew limitless terror. To be touched by that brute … she shuddered at the thought of his hot lips against her throat, knew she would die before she felt them on her lips. She must run … run for life itself.

It meant leaving Daddy … but Daddy would understand … she must get away from Conrad Owen. She dared not stay in this cabin with him to-night.

She fled through the living room and out of the cabin. She slammed the door behind her. She faced a stormy night. Icy flakes blinded her, beat against her face. But she did not notice the snow. She only heard the rough voice of the fur-trader calling her.

“Come back you little …”

He called her a vile name which she barely understood.

She ran on … stumbling, panting … into the night.

FOR half-an-hour Joanna Grey made her way through the storm. Half mad with fear, but less afraid in the wilderness, in the storm, than she had been in the cabin with Conrad Owen and his clutching hands.

Dark spruce forest frowned on her. A frozen waterway. A starless sky, like a leaden pall and snow falling heavily. Desolation and darkness. And the girl, running, gasping, with a sharp pain in her side and nameless fear in her mind, seeking a safe hiding place from the man who was beast.

At last she slowed down, stopped, fell on to the snow in a little heap. Long shuddering sobs shook her.

“Oh! oh! oh! …” she sobbed again and again.

She was exhausted, but she was still defiant. Even here, if she were lost and doomed to death in the wilderness, she had escaped from Conrad Owen and she did not think he would find her now.

Her shudders ceased. The small thin body in the fur coat twitched slightly and was still. The dark veil of insensibility had fallen over Joanna Grey. She was spent, done.

Along the frozen waterway toiled a team of dogs pulling a sled. A man wrapped in furs was driving them. Eyelashes, cheeks, lips, coated with crystals from his frozen breath.

He strained through the falling snow and saw the huddled body on the ground. He pulled up the team and sprang out.

“Hullo, what’s this?” he muttered.

He pulled an electric torch from his pocket and flashed it on. Saw the thin body in the fur coat and leggings, the cropped curly head.

“A boy,” he said. “A boy … half dead, I should think!”

Joanna stirred. She flung up her arm and moaned, opened her eyes. Saw dimly the face of a man framed in a fur hood. For a moment thought it was Conrad Owen. She gave a cry.

“Don’t touch me …”

Then she knew it was not Conrad Owen. He had a well-bred, unmistakably English voice. Like her father’s had been. It said:

“All right, my lad. Don’t be afraid. What’s hurt you?”

She sat up, her heart pounding, and stared up through the whirling grey flakes at the stranger. ‘My lad,’ he said. Did he then think she was a boy? All the better if he did. She swallowed hard and stumbled on to her feet.

“I—want to get to—Fort Yukon,” she said.

“You’re miles from there,” said the stranger. “I’m going in the other direction. But you can come along with me if you like.”

She hesitated, stood wiping her smarting eyes with the back of her hand. She felt sick and dizzy. She said:

“Maybe you don’t know this country. I do. We can’t ride anywhere very far. A blizzard’s coming up.”

A long wailing cry broke the stillness of the evening. A sad, hungry cry. It sent a shiver through Joanna.

“Wolf,” she said briefly.

“That being so,” said the man, “we’d better move on. But what about you? How did you get out here like this?”

“Never mind,” she said. “Let’s find shelter.”

The man returned to his sled.

“Right,” he said.

She wanted to go back to the hut where she had left her father’s body and dared not because of Conrad Owen. Kiche would return. Kiche must keep vigil for her. She must find shelter now with this stranger or die in the storm.

The dogs strained forward, leaping, snarling. They did not go far. They came to a small shanty built of spruce on the edge of the waterway. Joanna urged the man to stop.

“We can’t go on in this blizzard,” she said.

“Very well, but I have little food,” he said.

She said nothing. He opened the. . .