The Bridal Veil (21 page)

“
Rose, are you finished
eating?” he asked, and Emily could see he was struggling to control
his anger when he spoke to her. The girl nodded and dragged her
sleeve across her nose. Emily said nothing about it. “Then you go
on outside and see to your sheep. We’ll bring them into the barn
tonight—I want to check on the little one.”

Rose nodded and slid out of her chair.
She went to the back door, and then turned to glance at Cora. But
her grandmother was still watching Luke, wary as a bird watching a
cat. Emily sent the girl a private smile and she slipped
outside.

Luke turned to her. “Miss Emily,
ma’am—”

“
I have a lot of things to
do upstairs, so I’ll excuse myself, if you don’t mind.”

Luke nodded at her, and she swept from
the kitchen. Curiosity, one of her more regrettable traits, made
her want to linger in the hall to hear what he would say to Cora,
but her better nature conquered the temptation. As it turned out,
she didn’t need to be close by anyway. Even as she climbed the
stairs, she heard Luke’s voice, and although she couldn’t make out
the words, his tone reflected his aggravation. Cora’s replies were
loud enough for phrases to penetrate the floor of Emily’s
bedroom.

“
. . . why we couldn’t go
on as we always had . . . ”

“
. . . turn her away from
me . . . ”

Emily puttered nervously at
straightening her bureau drawers until she heard Cora’s heavy tread
on the stairs and her bedroom door slam.

If anything had been settled, she
didn’t know what it was.

~~*~*~*~~

Later that evening, Emily sat on her
bed with her wonderful new fabric spread out next to her. It almost
seemed too nice to cut with a scissors.

She hadn’t seen Luke or Cora
since dinner time. Cora, she believed was still ensconced in her
bedroom. Luke was probably outside, taking advantage of the
lingering daylight. As upsetting as dinner had been, it didn’t dim
her secret joy over this lovely gift he’d given her, or the kiss
that had followed. He was the first man who’d ever kissed her. The
memory of it, warm, soft, unexpected, lingered in her heart and
memory. It had been
exciting
. And for the first time in
her spinster’s life, she had not felt too tall. Under Luke’s touch,
she’d actually felt small and delicate. It was silly, she knew,
because she was neither. It had been almost as if she’d put on her
bridal veil, light and gossamer.

Should she try it now? Maybe it would
work. She stood and went to her trunk, where the veil laid in
repose. She had just unwound it from its tissue-paper cloud and was
lost in thought when she heard a timid voice call her
name.

“
Miss Emily?”

Emily looked and saw Rose standing in
her doorway, dressed in overalls and an old shirt. A shadow of
worry still clouded her small face, and Emily wished she had the
right to embrace the girl, to tell her that everything would be
fine. But despite Luke’s gift and the kiss, she wasn’t sure she
believed it herself. The specter of Belinda still haunted this
house, and Cora was her willing messenger.

Hastily, she started to put the veil
away again. “Come in, Rose. I was just looking at the fabric I’m
going to use to make my new dress.” She indicated the silk on her
bed.

The girl came closer and pointed at
the length of illusion. “What’s that?”

Emily stopped the repacking process
and looked at the white headpiece. “It was my grandmother’s wedding
veil. My mother wore it, too, and I’d hoped—well, I brought it
along with me.”

“
Can I see?”

“
May
I see.”

“
Oh, yeah—may I?”

If talking to God and to her mother
were Rose’s secrets, this veil was Emily’s. She kept it close to
her heart and her dreams. But the girl had shared her own secrets.
So perhaps it was only fair that Emily return the confidence.
Carefully she unfurled the veil and spread it out over the rocking
chair.

Rose approached with a reverence and
respect that touched Emily’s heart. “Oh, it looks like something a
princess would wear!” She extended a hand and Emily’s breath
stopped, but the girl added, “I washed my hands before I came up.
Can I—may I just feel the edge?”

Emily forced herself to relax. Rose
had had such a horrible experience at dinner, she couldn’t bring
herself to deny the request. “Of course. But it’s very old, so
you’ll want to be careful.”

Rose nodded and touched the lace
edging with a single, gentle fingertip.

“
There’s a gown that goes
with it. I’ll show it to you someday.”

“
I’d like that! Is it as
pretty as this?”

“
I
think it is. But it was made for a small woman, probably one
about your mother’s size.”

Rose made no reply to that, but her
gaze drifted to the teal silk on the bed. “That’s pretty
too.”

“
Yes, your father picked
that out himself. Didn’t he make a good choice?”

“
Uh-huh,” the girl answered,
but she was fingering the brown paper it had been wrapped in. “Are
you going to keep this?”

“
That wrapping? Why, would
you like to have it?”

“
It would be good to draw
on.”

There were probably six or seven feet
of paper there, and yes, it would be good for that. “Yes, I believe
you’re right. You may have it if you’d like.” Emily pulled the
paper away from the material and rolled it up to hand to Rose.
“There you are.”

“
Thank you,” she intoned,
plainly delighted. A person might have thought that Rose had been
given a gold necklace or a year’s worth of strawberry drops instead
of a length of plain brown wrapping. She clutched Emily around the
waist and hugged her for the length of a heartbeat.

Then she scampered out of the room,
leaving Emily surprised and damp-eyed.

~~*~*~*~~

Heavy rain pounded down on the roof
late that night as Luke lay in his bed staring at the dark ceiling.
The confrontation with Cora at the table had carried him another
step closer to telling her to move out. Just one thing she’d said
had stopped him, and it was the same device she used whenever she
didn’t get her own way.

She’d invoked Belinda’s
name.

A cascade of blame and remorse had
washed over him, and even now he felt Belinda’s accusing finger
jabbing at his shoulder from beyond time and loss: he’d kissed
another woman today in the barn. He’d even brought her a present
that he really couldn’t afford. No matter how much he’d wanted to
hold Emily in his arms, and regardless of how long Belinda had been
gone, guilt got in the way of his desires.

The last night he’d talked to his late
wife had been like this one, cold and wet, with a hard east wind
that lashed the rain against the house in sheets. Well, they hadn’t
really talked. They’d argued. Again. Cora had come for dinner,
during which time she’d reviewed what she saw as Luke’s many
failings.

The jabs had been subtle—the new stove
he’d bought wasn’t the best one, was it?

What a pity he hadn’t been able to get
enough money together to get a neat little surrey for Belinda to
drive to town.

Ray Ellison had taken
his
wife to San Francisco
for a second honeymoon. Wasn’t it too bad that Luke hadn’t been
able to give Belinda a honeymoon at all?

She’d tried to rearrange the parlor
furniture to suit herself and had criticized Belinda for doting
upon Rose.

Afterward, Luke’s simmering resentment
had boiled over onto his wife. Why could she never take his side
during one of Cora’s tirades? Or give him her permission to defend
himself against the fault-finding nag? Out of respect for his wife,
he’d held his tongue, but a man had his limits. . . If she didn’t
feel up to that task, couldn’t she at least ask her meddling mother
to keep her opinions to herself, goddamn it?

It had been nothing more than a rehash
of other arguments, older hurts, and discontentments. He’d loved
her so much, but no matter how hard he’d tried to please her, Cora
always gave her reasons to be unhappy with him.

Finally, one night, that night, he’d
decided he couldn’t take it anymore. If he’d known what lay ahead,
if he’d kept his temper under control, life might be different now.
He and Belinda, the only woman he thought he could ever love, might
be lying in the bed and in the room where Emily now slept. They’d
be listening to the rain hit the house and he might still think of
himself as the luckiest man on earth.

He rolled over and swallowed hard,
hoping for sleep and trying to forget the image of Belinda in her
coffin before the undertaker nailed down the lid.

CHAPTER NINE

Several days later Emily carried her
basted dress to the sewing machine in the parlor to stitch the
bodice to the skirt. After dinner tonight, she would help Rose with
her own new dress. Now, though, she took advantage of the quiet and
solitude to work on the teal.

She’d used a pattern that she’d
brought with her from Chicago but had never tried. The outfit was
making up beautifully, even nicer than she’d expected. She’d willed
her hands to remain steady while she cut out the pattern pieces—one
slip of the scissor blades, one sleeve cut from the wrong side of
the silk, and an expensive length of fabric might have been ruined.
But so far, everything had gone well. She had only to attach the
skirt and the sleeves, and the garment would be ready for hemming.
With no full-length mirror to look into during fittings, Emily had
used her best judgement as to fit and drape.

That she was permitted to
use Belinda’s treadle Singer seemed like nothing short of a
miracle. She had expected to get an argument from Cora. Strangely
enough, it had been Luke who seemed a bit reluctant. After the kiss
in the barn and his gift of the teal silk, he had become distant
with her. He wouldn’t meet her gaze and at times, seemed to be
avoiding her outright. Of course, she shouldn’t be surprised by
that. She had probably been a clumsy kisser—after all, what
experience did she have? Or perhaps he’d thought her forward for
kissing him back. She wasn’t even sure he still intended to take
her to the basket social, but she forged ahead anyway, trying to
pretend as if nothing had changed, that she hadn’t noticed the
rejection. She ought to be accustomed to rejection by now. How odd
that it still hurt after all these years, that she
still
felt
inadequate.

She smoothed a basted seam with her
hand. Ashamed though she was to admit it to herself, Emily looked
forward to getting out of mourning. She was utterly tired of
wearing the same dark clothes day after day. The dye had helped the
one ruined dress, but in some lights it still looked streaked.
There were so many shades of black—some had blue undertones in
them, some had red, and others brown. The dye didn’t match the
original color of the dress, and she’d had limited success in
covering the orange streaks. She sighed. Queen Victoria, that
champion of morality, still wore mourning for her beloved Prince
Albert, and he’d been dead for twenty-three years. That might be
easier if one was a queen with royal wealth, could wear a different
gown every day, and never the same one twice. But that was a petty
thought—she was certain that Victoria would trade her fortune to
have her prince consort alive and well again.

But maybe Luke had been right—maybe it
wasn’t necessary to wear mourning clothes like a flag to advertise
one’s grief. In fact, if she thought about it, she might even
consider it to be showy and ostentatious, instead of a private
matter of the heart and soul.

With her dress draped over her arm,
she borrowed the chair from the escritoire next to the sewing
machine cabinet and sat down at the Singer. The desk’s drop leaf
was open, as if someone had been sitting there earlier, and she
noticed a half-finished letter on the desk. Next to it laid a red
stub of dull pencil, its eraser rubbed down to the nickel tip. She
knew she shouldn’t even try to identify the handwriting. It was
personal correspondence that was none of her business. But as she
guided the waist seam under the presser foot, her gaze kept
straying to the lined writing tablet and the fuzzy gray words.
Keeping her face pointed toward the machine, she lifted her chin
and cast her eyes to the side, as if spying on the letter in such a
manner would somehow be all right.

Dear Cousin
Eunice . . . 

Emily turned her head just a little
more—it made the muscles in her eyes ache to pull them so far to
the right.

How ar things going for yu
in Casper?

She leaned sideways just a
bit.

We ar all fine here
mostly. Ecept Luke has gon and married a mail orderd
bride . . . 

So, this was Cora’s letter. Her bad
spelling made the lines difficult to decipher.

I dont no why he did it,
we were getting along well enouff. You would think he would be true
to poor Belinda’s memory, after what he did to her. She would be
a-live today if not for him. She would still be here if he had
not. . .