The Bridal Veil (5 page)

Except they weren’t. They were just
strangers. And she wasn’t Alyssa, so they were not very pleased to
see her.

She pulled off her gloves, and with
the left one came her wedding band, too small for her ring finger,
too big for her pinkie. She fished out the ring and put it back on.
It was loose but if she had asked Luke to compromise, she would
have to as well. Compromise was another of Emily’s familiar
companions.

This marriage of
convenience . . . her mother’s marriage to
Robert Cannon had been a loveless marriage of convenience. Emily
hadn’t realized that early on, but it came to her after her mother
was gone. She knew she was a fool to think that her marriage to
Luke Becker would be any different. But she couldn’t help but wish
for more.

Rising from the mattress, she went to
the trunk, unbuckled the cracked leather straps that encircled it,
and opened the hasp with the key pinned to the underside of her
jacket lapel. When she lifted the lid, the faint, lingering scents
of her life in Chicago drifted over her, making her throat tight
with longing for what had been. Amid her belongings, Alyssa’s
fragrance of rosewater mingled with their mother’s lavender sachet,
and a hard knot formed in Emily’s chest. They were all gone now,
her mother first, then her stepfather, and now Alyssa.

Reaching inside, she carefully lifted
out the gown and veil she’d brought with her. Wrapped in layers of
tissue, the small gown was simply one of her few treasured
keepsakes. The bridal veil, though . . . oh,
the beautiful bridal veil. She held the elegant headpiece as if it
were a priceless relic. Between the seed pearls that decorated it,
silk orange blossoms had been attached with the finest of stitches.
Two yards of lace-edged illusion, a fine, transparent tulle made of
silk, fell from the back of the headpiece in an airy cloud.
Although it would not have formed a long, elegant train on Emily,
as it would have on Alyssa or their mother, Letty, it would have
dipped below the hem of her dress. From the trunk’s top tray, she
picked up a daguerreotype and looked at the woman staring back at
her. Tall and statuesque, Emmaline Maryfield, the maternal
grandmother for whom Emily was named, wore the veil in the portrait
and it brushed the back hem of her gown. Grandma Emmaline had been
a seamstress for wealthy society matrons. One of them had ordered a
wedding gown and veil for her daughter. When the girl eloped, the
mother was so devastated, she had paid for the ensemble and then
given it to Emmaline as a gift. The gown she had sold to another
customer. But she had worn the veil at her own wedding. In due
time, she had presented it to Letty when she married. It had always
been understood that Letty’s girls would wear the heirloom when
they became brides.

Emily sighed again. Her stepfather had
often noted that Emily was as plain as gruel but, bless her heart
and God be thanked, at least she was a well-behaved, plain young
lady. She had clung to that, even when she had a wicked or
rebellious thought, even when she’d felt like a prisoner of the
very rules she clutched so closely.

That might be why the veil was so
important. The veil . . . to her, it meant so
much more than a wedding or a husband. It represented delicate,
ethereal beauty, and from childhood, she’d always imagined that if
she put it on, its beauty would be magically conferred upon her.
For the briefest time during her trip west, she had envisioned
wearing it at last. But it was not to be, and Emily had been wrong
to think it would. Regardless of her grandmother’s wishes, the veil
was intended for Alyssa, the beautiful one, and always had
been.

Alyssa would have worn the veil, if
Charles Walker had not called off their engagement and left her so
disillusioned and heartbroken that she’d found the prospect of
becoming a mail-order bride appealing.

How cruel were the twists of their
fates, Emily thought.

So Alyssa had died with her youth and
beauty intact, but her spirit crushed.

And Emily would never have beauty, but
she would always have her gentility.

With great care, she enfolded the
garments in their tissue cocoon and replaced them in the trunk.
Then she brought out a black dress to wear to dinner.

Mrs. Luke
Becker
. She was a wife now, but she’d never
been a bride.

~~*~*~*~~

Luke stood in the cool, dark barn,
forking hay into the stalls. He’d taken off his good frock coat and
hung it on a nail hammered into one of the posts. It was peaceful
in here, with the smells of animals and feed and time. The building
was old, having survived untouched by the fire that destroyed the
original farmhouse and made Lars Olstrom, the previous owner,
desperate to pack up his family and return to Sweden. After a run
of bad luck, the Olstroms decided that America wasn’t the grand
place they’d been told, and Luke was able to pick up the land for a
fraction of its worth. He’d built the new house closer to the road
because he’d thought the oak tree would look nice next to
it.

It was quiet in here, too, with only
the sound of strong, equine jaws grinding on feed, the occasional
contented whinny from the draft horses, or a moo from the milk cow.
Barn cats darted in and out, never letting anyone get close. Out
here, he couldn’t hear Cora blaring like a steam whistle. Even Rose
usually lost her snotty attitude in the barn, when she chose to
visit. Over the past three years, he’d often escaped to the peace.
It was the one place he still felt comfortable, aside from the
fields.

He sat down on a hay bale
and leaned against the upright behind him. So, he was married
again. But except for the confounding events that had led to this
result, he didn’t feel any different. He didn’t
feel
married, or any less a widower.
His new status gave him no pleasure—it felt like the business deal
that it was.

His first wedding day twelve years ago
had been a lot different. When he’d stood nervous and awkward
before Reverend Ackerman with Belinda by his side, he could hardly
believe his good luck. Beautiful, petite Belinda Hayward, the girl
he’d loved since the first time he saw her in the Fairdale
schoolyard, the only girl he’d ever wanted, was going to be his
wife. Just as nervous as Luke, she’d slipped her icy hand into his
and suddenly nothing else mattered. Even then, the mother of the
bride had sat in the front pew wearing a sour look. She’d wanted
someone else, Bradley Tilson, a physician’s son from Portland, to
marry Belinda. Luke hadn’t been surprised. Most parents had warned
their daughters away from Luke Becker. White trash, they’d called
him, when they weren’t calling him something worse.

As a youngster, his taste for risky
adventures had pulled him far to the left of respectability. His
friends and younger brothers had been as rowdy as he was, and the
sheriff was well acquainted with all of them. Wherever deviltry
occurred, he could be found at its center. They never did anything
really bad—smoking behind a barn, turning some horses loose, a
little petty thievery—none of it seemed serious to Luke. It had all
been just for fun, and nobody really got hurt.

Luke also hadn’t been above rolling in
a haymow with a willing girl whose father wasn’t looking, or hadn’t
taught her better, but none touched his heart. Except Belinda
Hayward.

Even though he’d been keenly aware of
their differences—after all, he grew up in a shack down by the
river and his old man had died in jail—he’d wanted Belinda for his
own. Back then, what Luke had wanted he’d tried for.

Cora had blamed him for running off
Tilson, but then, given Belinda’s condition, there hadn’t been much
choice but to let her marry Luke. She’d needed a husband, and Cora
reckoned that even he was better than none.

His mother-in-law hadn’t worried him,
though. Hell, nothing could throw a wet blanket on his spirit that
day. He and Belinda, they’d start their new lives together. Then
when he found out about the baby, well hadn’t he immediately
promised Belinda that he’d be a good father? Damn it, what had
happened?

Absently, he pulled a blade of dry
grass from the hay bale and twirled it between his fingers,
remembering how he’d believed that life could only get sweeter with
a wife like Belinda. He lifted his head and gazed at the dark
rafters over him, and a humorless chuckled rolled up from his
chest. It was probably just as well that he’d been unable to
imagine anything else. But if a fortuneteller had told him what the
future held, he wouldn’t have believed it anyway.

The years that followed hadn’t been as
golden as he’d envisioned on his wedding day. They’d struggled, he
and Belinda, to make a go of the farm, to overcome their
differences. If only there had been more private time to work
things out—but in the midst of it all, even though she’d lived at
her own place then, Cora had always been around, like a burr under
a saddle, always meddling—

“
Luke! This ham is blame
near ready to hop back on the hog it came from! We’re setting down
to eat.
Now
.” Her
voice carried easily across the yard.

Sighing, he pushed himself up from the
bale and grabbed his coat from the nail, feeling as if he were many
years older than his thirty-one.

Just as he emerged into the cool April
drizzle, it occurred to him that Cora had baked a ham for his last
wedding dinner, too.

~~*~*~*~~

“
It was only a little prank,
Luke. Leave the girl be.” Cora turned to her granddaughter as she
bustled between the table and the stove. “You’re sorry, aren’t you,
Rose?”

“
Yes.” Rose’s mumbled reply
was unconvincing.

“
There, you see?

Emily had heard the back door slam,
announcing Luke’s return from the barn, and hurried downstairs. Now
she hovered in the hall just outside the kitchen, unnoticed and
unsure if she should interrupt the heated discussion taking place
in there. After all, she wasn’t really a member of the family. She
could see Rose already seated at the table, while Cora, red-faced
from the heat of the stove, served the food. Luke paced the length
of the big room, around the table and back again. Once, as if from
a farmer’s instinct, he glanced at the heavy sky looming beyond the
window in the back door.

He raked a hand through his
dark hair, his very posture revealing his frustration. “Stealing
isn’t what I think of as a ‘little prank.’ ” He realized that he’d
done the same thing in his own youth, but this was his
daughter
. His own child.
He didn’t want her to grow up the way he had. “I can’t figure out
why you did it—I gave you money to buy the candy.”

“
Land sakes, Luke, you make
her sound like a bank robber or a horse thief.” With short,
impatient strokes of a knife, Cora sliced a loaf of bread and piled
it on a plate. “Leave it be and let’s have supper!”

Luke frowned at his mother-in-law,
then returned his gaze to his daughter and asked again, “Why did
you take that candy, Rose?”

But the girl only shrugged and kept
her eyes on the boiled potato that Cora spooned onto her plate with
a neat flip.

In the hall, Emily shook her
head.

“
Go ahead and start, honey,”
Cora urged Rose, who already had her fork in her hand. She added
with a hint of derision, “I don’t know when Mrs. Becker will find
her way down here. Etiquette—hah!”

“
We should wait for Miss
Can—I mean, Emily,” Luke said.

“
I’m hungry,” Rose
complained.

“
I’ve waited long enough.”
Cora settled in her chair like a hen on a nest box and put a slice
of ham on her plate.

“
Aw, hell, Cora—” Luke said,
and sat heavily in his place at the head of the table, his elbows
bracketing his dish. “It’s her wedding dinner.”

Emily felt her face grow warm and she
wondered again if she would be able to overcome her blunder in
deciding to come here. She’d had such hope. And after Alyssa’s
death and the closing of Miss Wheaton’s, it had seemed as if she’d
had no choice but to leave Chicago. But she sensed that she’d be
doing battle with Cora Hayward every single day. Battling to be a
wife, such as she was, and to be Rose’s mother and teacher. Well,
she’d faced worse events in her life and seen them through. Today
she’d made a commitment in town and she must stand by it. Lifting
her chin, she stepped into the big kitchen.

“
I hope I didn’t keep you
waiting,” she said, clutching to her heart the most basic rules of
entering a room. At times of her greatest stress, she clung to the
tenets of civilized living the way others sought solace in their
faith. In her opinion, good manners were what set humans above the
animals, and were all that kept the world from social and moral
collapse. If one followed the rules of polite behavior, one could
survive.
Show no fear
was not one of them, but she kept it uppermost in her mind as
her skirts brushed the doorframe. “I’m sorry if I was too
long.”

Luke bounced up from his chair. His
white shirt sleeves were rolled up and the tie he’d complained of
was gone. Once again, his rugged handsomeness dried her throat.
Under different circumstances, she knew that he wouldn’t even have
acknowledged her. Despite her height, or more likely because of it,
she had always been nearly invisible to men as attractive as Luke.
“No, ma’am.” He indicated her place at the opposite end of the
table. “We’re just now sitting down ourselves.”