The Bridal Veil (29 page)

“
You know I would never say
anything!”

“
Then why should I muddy up
the waters with the truth? What good would it do?”

She couldn’t think of an argument to
his logic. If only three people knew the real facts, maybe it
didn’t make any difference after all. And he was Rose’s legal
father, with the right to make the decisions about how she grew up.
“You’re right, I suppose. I guess I was just thinking of how I’d
feel if someone told me that the man I believed was my father
turned out to be someone else. But that won’t happen to
Rose.”

Luke’s brow relaxed and she
hoped he understood that she had only Rose’s best interests at
heart. “I wish someone had told
me
that. I would have been relieved.”

“
That’s a horrible thing to
say!” The admonishment just popped out. Emily had heard only bits
and pieces of Luke’s background.

He considered her with hooded eyes.
“Did I tell you that my old man used to beat me and my brothers
whenever he was drunk? And he was drunk most of the time. He beat
my mother too, now and then, but didn’t bother my sisters much. I’m
not sure why. I don’t think I even want to know.”

Emily stared at him and Luke was
fairly certain that regardless of how lonely or penny-pinching her
life had been in Chicago, she never saw the kind of tenuous,
hardscrabble existence he’d grown up with. He told her harrowing
stories of his youth and watched her shrink further back into her
chair. He spared only the most gruesome details. But she didn’t
turn away in disgust, as he thought she might. He didn’t know why
he went on, but once he got started, he couldn’t seem to stop. It
was as if he had someone to listen to him at last. Belinda had
never liked hearing about his past. Or maybe he’d wanted to shock
her and see how much she’d be willing to hear and still like
him.

“
Finally, after my brothers
and sisters had scattered to the wind and my parents were both
dead, I lit out. I ended up here, a hired hand working for the
Olstroms. Lars and Sigrid had kids—two boys and a girl, all under
twelve, and all as blond as you. But they took me in too, and
treated me like one of their own.” He smiled. “That probably wasn’t
easy. I had a smart mouth and a chip on my shoulder the size of a
boulder. I watched them, though, the way they treated each other,
the way that Lars and Sigrid respected and teased one another.
They
loved
each
other. They’d flirt and make calf eyes. I’d never seen that kind of
life. Lars taught me about farming and animals—I never learned
anything from my own father except how to swear and how to drink.
They trusted me—they had faith in me.” He shook his head, still
amazed.

“
Why did they leave?” Emily
asked. “Cora said the house burned down, but couldn’t they
rebuild?”

He crossed his ankle over his knee and
leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, they could have, I guess. But I
don’t think their hearts were in it. Six months earlier, Sigrid had
a stillborn baby. When the house caught fire, they lost everything.
We tried to put it out, but it had been a dry summer and it went up
like a box of matches. God, it was an awful sight, especially
afterward. Just a charred, smoking skeleton of what had been there
before. The whole family had to move into the barn. It all added up
to more than they could face. Sigrid became melancholy and started
pining for the old country. Lars had put away enough money so they
could go back to Sweden if the time ever came. And it did. They
wanted to go home.”

“
Oh,” she replied, her voice
small and low. He heard a tinge of heartache in the single
word.

“
Lars offered the land to me
first. I wanted to jump at the chance, but hell, I didn’t have a
pot to pee in—” Emily frowned slightly. “Um, I mean I didn’t know
how I would pay for it. He took me into Portland and introduced me
to his banker. He even vouched for my character.” He shook his head
in wonder. “It was a big responsibility to live up to and I knew I
couldn’t let him down. He’d put all of his trust in me.”

He unhooked his ankle and stretched
out his legs. “When the Olstroms went back to Sweden, I stayed here
and lived in the barn. I wanted to be a better man than my father
was—it wouldn’t have taken much effort. I saw what kind of marriage
Lars and Sigrid had, and I knew I wanted that for myself. So I took
a risk and went calling on Belinda. Tilson was gone, I had the land
and some stability—you know, good prospects. I figured I stood a
decent chance at winning her. Her parents still looked me up and
down like I was the devil himself, but everything went forward and
one afternoon, there we were, standing in front of Reverend
Ackerman, getting married. The day we moved into this house, I
could still smell the fresh paint.” It seemed like a lifetime ago
now to Luke. He’d brought home whom he thought was his virgin
angel-bride, only to find out on his wedding night that she was
carrying another man’s baby.

“
Early one morning six
months later, Doc Gaither put Rose in my arms, a little pink bundle
of a thing who stared up at me like I was the grandest man on
earth. And at that moment, I was. I’d come a long way from the
shack that I grew up in on the river. I had my own farm, I had the
wife of my dreams, and I had some respectability. But Rose made a
man of me that day. I loved her from the first moment I saw her.”
He looked across the table at Emily. “How can I tell her that I’m
not her father?”

Emily’s green eyes sparkled with
unshed tears. “Of course, you can’t. I understand.”

And he really believed she did. He
glanced at the window and the darkness beyond. “We’ve only got a
couple of hours till sunup. Shall we try and get some
sleep?”

She smiled and nodded, and pushed
herself away from the table. Her modest nightgown didn’t do much to
enhance her willowy shape, but Luke found it to be oddly arousing,
like brown-paper wrapping that hid a wonderful secret.

He put the whiskey bottle back in the
sideboard, grabbed the lantern from the end of the table, and held
out the crook of his arm to her. Their shadows danced tall and
flickering on the walls. She took his arm and they went into the
hall and up the stairs. He delivered her to her door, wanting more
than anything to follow her inside and make love to her, his shy
schoolteacher wife. But the time wasn’t right. He would try to
court her, woo her, and win her heart. This time, things would be
different.

Instead of following his body’s
nagging desire to touch her smooth, bare skin, he took her soft
hand and pressed it to his cheek. In the low light from the lamp,
he saw the surprise in her face. She smiled and ducked her
head.

“
See you in a couple of
hours, Emily.”

“
Yes, g-goodnight,
Luke.”

“
Emily?”

She lifted her chin again and he took
it between his thumb and index finger. Then he pressed a light kiss
on her tender mouth, but as soon as their lips touched he deepened
the embrace. She clung to him suddenly as if he were the only thing
keeping her from being swept away by a strong current. Tongues,
soft lips, arms, and Emily’s small, anguished murmur all blended
together to fan the fires in Luke’s body.

When he released her, she searched his
face in the low light, then sped into her room. Her long, blond
braid dangled down her back, and she closed the door.

Luke went to his own room and flopped
on his bed, a heavy throbbing down low in his belly as his
imagination showed him Emily’s long, silky limbs and sweet curves.
He wondered if he’d just guaranteed that he wouldn’t sleep the rest
of the night.

~~*~*~*~~

Saturday was unusually warm and humid,
and was spent in a flurry of activity in the Becker household.
While Luke did farm chores, Emily gave both her dress and Rose’s a
final inspection and pressing, and made sure that Luke’s suit was
clean and ironed.

Then she fried the two chickens that
Luke had dressed out for her, while she gave Rose the task of
chopping up boiled potatoes, pickles, onion, and hard-boiled eggs
for salad. The meal would be accompanied by fresh bread, spread
thick with Jennie Manning’s sweet cream butter. Dessert would be
the chocolate cake Emily had promised and two quarts of apple
cider.

All this work should have kept Emily
so busy that she wouldn’t have time to dwell on her late-night
conversation with Luke. But she could barely think of anything
else. Of all the things he’d told her, two stood out in her mind
with knife-sharp clarity.

Rose was not his daughter, he had been
duped into marrying her mother, and yet he loved the girl as much
as any father could. This revealed more to Emily about his
character than anything else she’d heard yet.

The other and most important thing
he’d said was that he’d begun to question his mourning of Belinda.
This fact, combined with the touch of his hand on hers and the hot,
moist kiss he’d given her, put a different face on their
marriage.

Now she was almost as nervous as she’d
been the day she landed at the Fairdale dock.

Now she had hope.

A person with hope ran the
risk of losing everything, or gaining the world. Even writer
Alexander Pope had made a pithy observation about it:
Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he
shall never be disappointed.

But such a man would never know joy,
either, Emily thought. Hope, joy, and disappointment were a tightly
interwoven triumvirate. To live, one had to take
chances.

So, late that afternoon, as she’d
stood in her bedroom and dropped her new teal dress over her head,
she knew that she must open her heart to him and take the chance
that Luke would come to love her, too. Take the chance that they’d
have a real marriage together. Certainly her attraction to him had
never been a problem. She had heard him at the pump earlier,
washing up just as he did every day and had gone to the side window
to gaze upon him. He glanced over his shoulder at her, and this
time, she hadn’t jumped back. She’d just smiled.

Now she heard him calling from the
front of the house. “You women better get a move on if we’re not
going to be the last ones walking into that social! The food is
loaded in the back of the wagon but I can’t eat it all
myself!”

With a last glance in her mirror,
Emily grabbed her gloves and fan and scurried out into the hall.
“Rose, come along. Your father is waiting.”

Rose emerged from her room, and Emily
looked her over, checking for missing items. But the girl seemed to
have everything—matching stockings, matching shoes, her hair was
still neatly braided. She still owned no gloves, though. Emily
hadn’t had a chance to do anything about that, but her heart
swelled. She could not have been more proud of her if she were
truly her own daughter. “You look beautiful, Rose.”

Rose beamed. “So do you, Miss
Emily.”

She smoothed her skirt. “Thank you,
dear. Let’s go show your father.” Emily had taken special pains to
keep Luke from seeing the dresses. She wanted to surprise him, and
he’d played along, pretending to sneak peeks while they worked on
them in the parlor, making Rose shriek with mock dismay.

That Luke had pulled the wagon around
to the front of the house indicated that this was a special night.
Most of the time, they came and went from the back door. When she
and Rose stepped out onto the front porch, Emily thought the very
air between she and Luke felt electrified. He looked as handsome as
ever in his frock coat, standing there next to the front wheel. He
gave a low whistle as he considered first Emily and then his
daughter. His dumbfounded gaze returned to Emily, where it lingered
like a caress. Even with no experience, she felt the heat of his
regard.

“
Did I make good use of the
silk, Mr. Becker?” she inquired playfully, the closest Emily had
ever come to coy flirting.

His eyes traveled over her, from
curled, upswept hair to hem. “Yes, ma’am, you sure did.” He turned
to his daughter. “And you, missy, you look so fetching—well, I’d
better not catch any young farm boys giving you the eye tonight or
they’ll have to answer to me.”

“
Oh, Daddy!” Rose blushed
furiously but her grin was as bright as daybreak.

Luke helped Emily up to the seat next
to him, and then put Rose in the back, next to the wicker basket of
food. “Everyone ready?” Nodding at his own question, he clucked to
the horses and they set off for town.

As they made their way down the hill
toward the church, Emily noticed dark clouds boiling up from the
south. “A storm?”

“
Looks like we might have
some weather headed this way,” Luke confirmed over the jingle of
harness and rattle of the wheels. He studied the sky with a
farmer’s eye. “We can use the rain, but I hope it holds off till we
get home tonight.”

They passed the cemetery, and no one
looked at the gate or the graves. Not tonight. Emily was too
nervous, wondering how she would be received by the community, and
whether Cora would be at the social. Rose, she suspected, was eager
to show off her new dress, and Luke—well, she never knew what Luke
was thinking. But the furrows that often marked his brow were
absent, and she hoped that he was looking forward to the evening of
fun he’d promised her when he first invited her to
attend.