The Bridal Veil (28 page)

Best of all, he saw Emily at the
window every afternoon, eyeing him while he washed up. Today, he
decided to let her know that he’d seen her watching him, and was
amused and touched by her look of flustered surprise.

It seemed that she was interested in
him, too.

“ 
. . . fix for the social? Fried chicken? Potato
salad? Chocolate cake?”

Luke realized that Emily was talking
to him. “Sure, that all sounds good. I’ll dress out a chicken for
you.”

She looked relieved. He doubted that
she’d ever had to swing a flapping fowl over her head to wring its
neck, or lop off its noggin with a hatchet. It was enough that
she’d overcome her fear of the henhouse.

“
Daddy, you’re going to buy
Miss Emily’s basket, aren’t you?” Rose asked. “We want to
eat
her
supper,
not someone else’s.”

“
Yes, ma’am, I’ll make sure
we get it. I don’t want Emily having dinner with some other man.”
Luke said this with a laugh, but he was telling Rose the
truth.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Emily tossed and turned in her bed so
many times that her nightgown had twisted itself around her legs
like mummy wrappings. She didn’t know what time it was, but she had
watched a square of moonlight work its way down the wall to form a
bright patch on the floor.

Every time she tried to drift off, she
saw Luke, with his dark, curly hair and smoke-gray eyes, sending
her looks across the kitchen table. Looks that seemed so obvious,
she’d worried Rose would notice. Fortunately, the girl had
chattered on about the upcoming church social and her new dress. If
she missed Cora, she kept it to herself. In fact, since Cora had
gone, it was as if a black pall had been lifted from the house.
Newcomer that she was, even Emily sensed it. Luke smiled more, Rose
was more light-hearted, and Emily felt a new freedom. She fretted
less about touching things around the house, no longer fearful that
the harridan would jump out suddenly and screech at her about
handling Belinda’s possessions.

So why couldn’t Emily sleep tonight?
Because she knew that Luke lay just on the other side of the wall,
and her restless heart gave her no peace. She didn’t want to care
about him, beyond giving him the respect he was due as her lawful
husband. A life of lonely sadness awaited her as the bearer of
unrequited love.

Surely that was what she could expect
because Luke Becker was still in love with his dead
wife.

And try as she might, Emily had not
succeeded in tamping down the feelings she held for him. It was the
finest type of torture.

She pulled the sheet up to her chin so
that she could blot the tears that leaked from the corners of her
eyes. She’d known she was taking a big chance by coming here in the
first place, and so far, it had worked out much better than she’d
originally hoped. Luke was kind and loved his daughter, he was
thoughtful of Emily’s feelings, and he’d defended her against his
mother-in-law, ultimately ordering the woman from his house. His
gift of the dress fabric had been a wonderful and unexpected
surprise.

But, as he’d told her the day he’d met
her, she’d never have his heart. He’d reminded her of it again, the
night before Cora left. Well, for heaven’s sake, she scolded
herself, wasn’t she being greedy? Until the day she decided to come
to Fairdale, she hadn’t expected to marry at all. So what if this
wasn’t a love match, a marriage made in heaven with
valentine-bearing doves hovering over it? Luke was a good man, and
many women entered marriages doomed from the start, simply because
so few options were available to them. At least Emily had reached
the decision on her own.

Exasperated with her weepy self-pity,
she flung back the covers and decided to go down to the kitchen to
brew a cup of weak tea. Maybe its warmth and a touch of honey to
sweeten it would help her sleep.

She left her bed and padded barefoot
to her bedroom door. Slipping quietly into the hall, she was
surprised to find Luke’s door open. Although the moonlight was
faint in his room, she could see that his bed was rumpled and
empty. He might have simply gone to the necessary.

Creeping to the end of the dark hall,
she saw a faint light coming up the stairs. She was halfway down
the steps when she heard him clear his throat. He was in the
kitchen. What had happened? An emergency? She tried to decide if
she should just go back to her room, or find out why he was up at
this hour. Ultimately, her accursed curiosity won out and her feet
carried her the rest of the way to the kitchen. There she saw him
sitting at one end of the table. A single lantern burned at the
other end. A whiskey bottle sat in front of him, its cork still in
place, and a clean, empty glass stood next to it. He stared blankly
at the bottle, as if his thoughts were miles—or
years—away.

Just as he noticed Emily, she realized
that she had come down wearing only her long nightgown and nothing
else. Not even a shawl on her shoulders. He was dressed in
dungarees and an undershirt.

He pushed a chair out for her with his
foot, as if not surprised to see her. “Sit down, Emily.” He seemed
very pensive, more so than she’d ever seen him. “I hope I didn’t
wake you.”

She took a tentative step forward. The
floor was cold under her bare feet. “N-no, I couldn’t sleep and I
just came down to get a cup of tea.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I couldn’t sleep
either. But I had something stronger than tea in mind.” Perhaps
that was true, but he made no move to pour a drink from the
dark-brown bottle.

Her advice manuals told her that it
was a wife’s job to devote herself to her husband’s comfort and
well-being. In fact, she had a vivid recollection of one
illustration that depicted a concerned wife sitting at her mate’s
feet, her hands clasped under her chin, while he lounged on what
was probably the nicest chair in the house, his brow knitted with
worry. Emily wasn’t sure why, but she’d always thought that his
expression looked rather guilty, as if he were about to tell her
they were bankrupt, or that he no longer loved her and was leaving
her for another woman. But the caption had commented about a wife’s
duty to ease her husband’s troubled mind and make him forget the
cares of the day.

Emily was a bit too independent to sit
at anyone’s feet, and Luke bore no resemblance to the husband in
the picture. Still, if he wanted to talk—and his offhand invitation
to sit made it appear that he did—it was her job to listen. She
perched on the chair he’d pushed out for her and waited for him to
speak. He stared at the tabletop for so long that she had to fight
the urge to fidget.

Then they both spoke at
once.

“
Is there
something—”

“
I’ve been
thinking—”

She nodded at him. “I’m sorry, please
go ahead.”

He breathed a deep sigh. “I’ve been
doing a lot of thinking lately, especially since Cora left.” He
reached for the glass and idly turned it over in his hands. “You
said you’re supposed to wear mourning clothes for your sister for
six months.”

Emily jumped in, feeling as guilty as
if she’d been caught stealing from the poor box at church. “Oh,
dear—yes I’m sorry—my mourning clothes are in such a
state—”

He shook his head and stretched out
his free hand to cover hers. “It’s all right. I’m not blaming you
for wearing regular dresses. In fact, I’m glad to see
it.”

“
You are?”

“
Sure. I told you that
what’s in your heart is more important than some rule about what
clothes to wear. And it’s good to see you dressed in some
color.”

Mollified, Emily asked, “Well, then,
what are we talking about?”

He released her hand. “Your rules say
you’re supposed to mourn your sister for six months, but here,
we’ve been in mourning for Belinda since the day she died over
three years ago now.”

She couldn’t argue with that. It was
so obvious. She nodded, waiting for him to continue.

“
I’ve begun to wonder if
it’s been long enough. Cora pretty much kept it going as a way to
punish me.” He shrugged. “And maybe herself too, if you’re right
about her feeling guilty for Belinda’s death. It was probably more
than she could accept. She lost Belinda’s brother coming out here
on the Oregon Trail—he fell out of the wagon and got trampled under
the wheels. They had to bury him along the way in an unmarked
grave.”

“
Oh, God.” So Cora had lost
both of her children.

“
I
know
she blamed Belinda’s father for
that. Cora never wanted to come out here in the first
place.”

Emily remembered her first night at
this table, when she’d talked about the miserable trip out here
from Missouri.

“
I loved Belinda.” He stared
at the tabletop as if he were seeing the years rolling past. “But I
know she never really loved me.”

“
What?”

“
It’s taken me a while to
admit it to myself. She was probably grateful at the beginning, but
gratitude isn’t the same as love, and it can’t make a person happy.
In fact, sometimes, it just makes a person resentful. That’s part
of what happened between Belinda and me.”

The conversation had become intensely
personal, and Emily was unprepared for the switch in their
relationship. Until this moment, Luke had revealed almost nothing
of himself beyond what she’d read in his letters and could see for
herself. Now he was telling her that his wife—the sterling paragon
to whom Emily had been compared time and again—had not loved him.
“Grateful?” she repeated. Why on earth would a woman who seemingly
had everything feel only gratitude for Luke Becker? Had Belinda
been unhinged? Luke was, well, he’d been a hell-raiser, from what
she understood, but it seemed like he’d done everything he could to
prove himself worthy of Belinda Hayward.

His voice dropped to a near hush, as
if he were going over a bad memory that he didn’t want remember too
clearly. “I told you that she wanted to marry Bradley Tilson, but
he went back to Portland.”

Emily nodded.

“
He left her with more than
a broken heart. She was pregnant.”

Emily gaped at him.

“
Cora never would have let
me marry Belinda if she hadn’t needed a husband for her. After
Tilson left, I came courting Belinda, but I was too, well,
dazzled
, I guess, to
wonder why the Haywards were suddenly willing to marry her off to
me when all of them, including Belinda, seemed so lukewarm about
the idea.”

Emily was still trying to grasp what
he was telling her. “You mean that Rose—she
isn’t . . . ” She couldn’t finish the
question.

“
Tilson is Rose’s father. On
our wedding night, Belinda broke down and told me that she was
pregnant. I felt like I’d been used and lied to. Betrayed,” he
added, as if trying on the word for size. He shrugged. “Hell, I
guess I had been, no two ways about it. But after I had time to
think it over, I decided I didn’t care. I loved Belinda so much, I
figured I was lucky to get her any way I could. I told her that I’d
raise the baby as my own and no one would be the wiser. So that’s
just what I did.”

She couldn’t believe what she was
hearing. “Rose looks so much like her mother. At least from the
photograph I saw.”

Luke slouched in his chair and rolled
the empty glass between his hands. “Yeah, that was lucky. She got
Belinda’s features and dark hair, so it made things a lot easier. I
don’t know what people might have said if she’d turned out
red-haired and blue-eyed like Tilson.”

“
I suppose that might
explain why you started having trouble with Rose after her mother
died.”

“
Why?”

“
Well, since she knows you
aren’t related to her and her mother was gone—” she began, and his
expression clouded over.

He put down the glass and stared at
her as if she’d suggested that Rose must think he’d never wanted
her. “She doesn’t know I’m not her father.”

She lifted her brows. “But shouldn’t
you tell her?”

He sat up straight. “Hell, no! Why
would I want to do that? She already lost her mother—what would it
do to her to find out that she’s being raised by a man who’s only
pretending to be her father?”

Emily countered, “You aren’t
pretending to be her father. Robert Cannon
pretended
to be my father, even
though I knew he wasn’t. And he made a very poor job of it.” She
hadn’t meant to say that. Luke had a way of getting information out
of her without even trying. “You’re a wonderful father. It hasn’t
mattered that you aren’t a blood relative.” She realized that how
he treated Rose had a lot to do with how she felt about him. Every
good thing he did for his daughter gave him a stronger foothold in
her own heart.

He leaned forward. “All right. Give me
a reason why we shouldn’t go on as we always have.”

“
Well, what would it do to
her to find it out from someone else? It’s a risky secret to keep.
Suppose one of her friends tells her or, or—”

“
No one knows except Cora
and me.” The darkness in his eyes made her scoot back in her chair.
“And now you.”