The Bridal Veil

by Alexis Harrington

  1THE BRIDAL VEIL

  by

  Alexis Harrington

  Copyright © by Alexis Harrington, 2002

  www.alexisharrington.com

  Smashwords Edition

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Columbia River Gorge, Oregon

  April 1880

  “Have you come a far piece, ma’am?”

  Emily Cannon turned her eyes from the view beyond the sternwheeler’s window to look at the rotund man sitting on the bench seat across from her. He’d been trying to engage her in conversation ever since she boarded in The Dalles. She had done her best to discourage him but her short replies and near-rudeness had not quelled his interest. Faint apprehension began to grow in her chest.

  Even though it was a cool, gray morning, he mopped perspiration from his florid, beefy face with a large, dirty handkerchief, bumping his bowler back to the crown of his head in the process.

  “Yes, from Chicago.”

  He looked impressed. “Chicago! Say, I spent some time there, oh, about ten-eleven years ago.” He chuckled, and wiggled his eyebrows at Emily in a way that she found extremely vulgar. “I had me a hot time there, I can tell you. Or maybe I shouldn’t tell a lady.” He slapped his hammy thigh and laughed harder.

  Emily clenched her back teeth and glanced around, looking for an empty seat. But the boat was filled to capacity and her only chance to get away from this dreadful man would be to go outside, where rain poured down on the decks.

  “I’m sure the city looks quite different, then, sir, since you last saw it. We had a fire nine years ago. A four-by-one-mile area burned.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “A great many homes and businesses were lost. Lives were lost as well.” She sighed slightly and turned her head to look out the window again. “Or ruined.”

  The man extended a pudgy hand with sausagelike fingers. “Allow me to introduce myself, ma’am. I’m Earl Pettit. I travel these parts selling nails and fence wire. If you need it, Pettit can get it. Har-har-har!”

  With secret reluctance, she extended her gloved hand. “How nice to meet you, Mr. Pettit,” she lied. “I am Miss—Mrs.—I am Emily Cannon.”

  “And you’re on your way to Fairdale. What takes you that way?” His knee brushed hers and she pulled away, pointedly rearranging her skirts.

  Disturbed by the man’s increasing, and unwanted, familiarity, Emily groped around for an answer that would put Earl Pettit in his place. She was traveling alone, something respectable women did only when absolutely necessary. She knew very well how she must be perceived by him, a man, clearly not a gentleman, and one who had not taken her subtle hints that she did not wish to continue this conversation. A gentleman would have read her cues of civil but short replies and disturbed her no further. “I’m meeting my husband there.”

  “So there’s a Mr. Cannon.”

  “My husband,” she repeated.

  “Well, that’s a disappointment. Of course—a fine lady like yourself wouldn’t be unattached. But I was hoping to get to know you better.”

  Emily gave him a wan smile but said nothing more, for fear that she’d give away how frightened and nervous she truly was. Turning back to the window, she watched the slate-gray river churning alongside the steamboat’s hull.

  It hadn’t been a lie that she’d told Mr. Pettit. But not exactly the truth, either. She’d come two thousand miles to marry a man she’d never once laid eyes upon, a man who was expecting another woman, and she had no guarantee that he would be any different than this crude traveling salesman, with his garish brown-and-red checked suit that was shiny at the knees and stained with who knew what.

  Hope, fear, and misgiving over her decision had been at war in her heart for the entire week it had taken to reach Oregon. Just as she could not escape Mr. Pettit’s attentions, she would not be able to escape her future husband if he turned out to be less than what she hoped.

  Please, God, she prayed as the river bore her closer to her destination . . . please let Luke Becker be a better man than this one.

  ~~*~*~*~~

  “I’ve always loved you, Belinda. Since we were kids. That will never change.”

  Luke Becker sat on the edge of his bed, staring down at a small, oval-framed photograph cradled in his hands. The faces of the young wedding couple in the portrait, captured forever by the photographer’s flash powder, were stiff and maybe even a little frightened-looking. “I made promises the day I married you,” he whispered. “But everything has gone wrong. Rose needs help and so do I. I have to break those promises now.” He gazed across the expanse of the quilt that Belinda had stitched herself, at the snow-white pillowcases, at the emptiness.

  From the hallway, he heard his mother-in-law. “Luke, if you’re set on doing this blame-fool thing, you’d better get on with it!” With that voice, Cora Hayward could freeze the water pouring from a pump spout in July. Then more impatiently, “Luke, the day isn’t getting any younger!”

  No one was getting any younger, he thought. Sighing, he stood and carefully replaced the photograph on the dresser. He checked his appearance in the mirror over the washstand, tugged at his strangling tie, and decided he looked as good as he was going to. Then, with a last glance over his shoulder, he left the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

  ~~*~*~*~~

  “Fairdale! Next stop, Fairdale!”

  The crewman’s booming announcement sat Emily Cannon bolt upright, making her bump her hat against the sternwheeler’s window, and sent waves of terror and hope through her limbs. This was it. This was when she would learn if taking the biggest risk of her life—actually, the only risk of her life—would also turn out to be her very worst mistake.

  “Well, this is our stop,” Earl Pettit said, but Emily didn’t reply. Deliberately, she hung back, waiting until he’d moved along before she left her seat.

  At last, when his bowler bobbed among the other men’s hats among the passengers crowding their way toward the deck, she straightened her own hat and gripped the handle of her canvas Gladstone bag. The boat made its way down the Columbia River, its steam engines rumbling beneath her. She got her feet under her and tried to brush the wrinkles from her black crepe traveling suit, but it was a futile effort. After a week on the train journeying from Chicago to The Dalles, Oregon, and then hours on this boat, she knew she looked rumpled and unkempt. And it was so important that she make a good impression. Without the advantage of beauty, sometimes a good impression was all that a lady had to offer.

  Almost without thinking, she once again reached into her skirt pocket to touch the letter she’d carried all these weeks and miles. It had become her talisman, and she had hung her entire future on the pale-blue words written on its paper.

  Miss Cannon, I do not care what you look like, or what you must do to speed your departure—please come. We need you.

  The last passage, written by a hand plainly unaccustomed to holding a pen, had made up her wavering mind in Chicago. It had given her the ideal opportunity to escape, and perhaps the only offer she’d ever have to become part of a family again. So she had embarked upon this chancy venture, hoping for security, dreaming of fulfillment, and knowing that Miss Cannon was expected here today. But now that her moment of reckoning was at hand, one important fact nagged at her and sent shivers of dread
through her limbs.

  She was not the right Miss Cannon.

  Emily made her way to the deck railing and glanced down at the water slapping the sides of the hull. Ahead, under low, mist-gray skies, a small dock came into view. As the boat drew closer, she saw a collection of buildings perched on the steep hillside, and above them a verdant forest. In fact, it seemed to her that everything on this west side of The Dalles was either gray or green. The swift-moving river and the sheer, rugged cliffs rising above it were gray, the dense trees and vegetation all shades of green. The air was clean and sharp. Nothing back home was like this.

  As the sternwheeler slowed and chugged alongside the dock, crewmen threw out lines and dropped a rickety gangway. A small gathering of people waited onshore, and Emily sought out each face, seeking a man who had, in his letters, given himself a description that would fit many men.

  After edging her way down the gangplank, she stood on the dock, uncertain, waiting for her trunk to be unloaded and searching the thinning crowd. Above on the main street, a rustic little town—and it was small and rustic to Emily’s city-bred eyes—conducted its business. Standing on tiptoe, she glimpsed a butcher shop, a striped barber pole alongside the next storefront, a druggist’s, and what she thought could be a general store. Chicago might have been built on a swamp as flat as a pancake griddle, but with its multi-storied buildings and grand edifices, it made Fairdale seem like little more than a quaint smudge on the landscape.

  The minutes ticked by, and a brisk east wind still carrying a breath of winter flattened her skirts against her legs and made her wish for her cloak. But it was packed away in the trunk with the rest of the few precious things she still owned in this world.

  In his letter, Luke Becker had said he would be here to meet her. She felt people’s stares—she should be used to it by now but all she’d been able to learn was pretending she didn’t notice. She forced herself to stand erect with her chin up.

  She spotted a tall, gangly farmer and almost stepped forward. But a smiling young woman, his wife, Emily thought, caught up with him and planted a kiss on his mouth, then linked her arm in his. Kissing in public, why it was scandalous behavior but no one seemed to notice. He bent his head to hear something she said and they ambled back up the muddy path that led to the main street.

  Another man, squat and round, with short, carrot-red hair and a cheek full of chewing tobacco, began to approach her and she held her breath, her heart thumping in her chest. Oh, God, no . . . But he passed her to spit in the river and went up to saloon.

  A crewman delivered her trunk, and still she waited. One by one the gathering dispersed.

  At last the only people left on the dock were Emily, and a man with an impatient-looking young girl who gripped a small bouquet. They all stared at each other. The man appeared to be dressed in his Sunday best, a white shirt, a black frock coat, and silk string tie. He looked uncomfortable in the clothes, as if he’d rarely put them on. The child with him wore a blue dress edged in yards of ruffles that seemed to engulf her. On her head was a matching straw hat. After what seemed like an eternity, he approached, taking the girl’s elbow to propel her along with him.

  Emily drew a breath and lifted her chin. “Mr. Becker?”

  The man nodded. He was so handsome—tall, with dark, curly hair—that Emily was taken aback. She hadn’t counted on such an attractive man, one who smelled of bay rum and leather. Nothing in his letters had hinted at the strong jaw, the straight nose, the mouth with its upper lip that was a shade too narrow. He’d not written of dark gray eyes that seemed to hold a hint of weariness that touched her own unhealed grief. Looking at him, her own plainness and height bore down upon her. And she saw them mirrored in his dumbfounded expression.

  “Miss Alyssa Cannon?” Obvious bafflement colored his question.

  Emily wove her gloved fingers together to try to hide their shaking. She wished that she had not had to meet him wearing black, but etiquette was strict about mourning clothes—six months for a sister—and proprieties must be observed. “N-not Alyssa. I-I am Emily Cannon.” She glanced down at the young girl bearing the scowl and the nosegay of pinks. Her clothes looked new, but the girl was untidy and her hair barely combed. One stocking puddled at the top of her shoe and her hat was askew on her head. “And you must be Rose. What lovely flowers. Dianthus aren’t they?” she babbled. “Are they for me?”

  The girl remained mute and sullen, and maintained her grip on the gray-green stems.

  Now Luke Becker was frowning too. “Excuse me, ma’am, but I’m a little confused. In your letters, you told me your name is Alyssa.” His gaze skittered over her from head to foot like a cold hand. He cleared his throat. “You described yourself quite a bit differently, too.”

  Oh, this was even harder than Emily had envisioned. In her mind and over the long miles, she had rehearsed this moment many times. The explanation she’d imagined had sounded reasonable. But now, the frowning man with the weary eyes stole her confidence and made her plan seem as flimsy as tissue. It also went against every mode of proper behavior that she’d ever learned or taught.

  “Alyssa is—was my sister.” Emily swallowed again, her grief forming a knot in her throat. Could she even bring herself to say the words aloud? “She—she was killed two months ago in Chicago.”

  Luke Becker stared at her. “Killed . . . how?

  “A runaway wagon—” She paused again, the memory flashing through her mind of Alyssa’s crushed form lying in the mud and dirty snow. Standing on a dock that smelled of creosote and river, explaining that horrible event, had not been part of Emily’s mental rehearsal. Of course, he would want to know what happened. Why hadn’t she realized that? “She was crossing the street.”

  A fine, cold drizzle had begun to fall, and it seemed to Emily that Luke Becker’s coloring now matched the sky’s. He plunged his hands into his pants pockets.

  “Well, um, ma’am, I’m very sorry to hear about it.” He dropped his gaze to the planks under his boots, as if the news was another weight on his already-burdened shoulders. “Really sorry.” Finally, he straightened and looked up again. “But you didn’t have to come all this way to tell me. A telegram or a letter would have been enough.”

  “I didn’t just come to tell you about Alyssa, Mr. Becker.” Emily drew a breath and tugged on the hem of her black jacket. It had taken every bit of courage she could muster and weeks of fretting to arrive at this moment and utter her next words. She looked into his dark gray eyes. “I came in her stead.”

  He squinted at her and leaned forward a bit, as if his hearing had suddenly failed. “You what?”

  “You advertised for a wife and a mother for your daughter. Since my sister could not come, I did. I realize that marrying while in mourning is not proper, but the circumstances are unusual.”

  After a stunned moment he shook his head, then reached into his pocket and handed the little girl three cents. “Rose, go up to Franny’s store and get yourself some candy. We’ll be at the sandwich shop.”

  Rose shifted calculating eyes to Emily. “You mean you’re gonna have lunch with her? She’s not even the right one. And she’s almost as tall as you!”

  An old reflex, one that she thought she’d overcome, made Emily round her shoulders and stoop slightly. The child’s blunt remark and bad manners astounded her. Not one of her pupils would have dared to speak so rudely, especially to an adult. More than that, she felt as vulnerable as a child herself. She waited for Luke to correct the girl.

  But he only nodded toward the storefronts on the main street above the dock. His voice was measured and quiet. “Go on, Rose.”

  Rose shuffled off with dragging steps, having never surrendered the pinks she carried. She glared back at Emily over her shoulder, then stuck out her tongue and continued on her way. Luke sighed slightly as he watched her go.

  The drizzle increased to rain.

  “Ma’am, we can’t talk about this here,” he said, turning back to Emily. He said ma�
��am in a way that conveyed exasperation rather than respect, and she quailed inside.

  “No, of course not. But my trunk—” Emily protested, even as rain darkened her jacket and skirt. She couldn’t leave her trunk. Everything was in there—her only family photograph, Luke’s letters, her mother’s wedding gown. The veil.

  Luke lifted his head and scanned the plank sidewalks along the stores. Spotting a group of boys playing mumblety-peg, he called to one of them. “You, Jimmy! Jimmy Edwards! I’ll give you a quarter to come down here and watch this trunk until I come back.”

  “You can’t mean to leave it out here in the pouring rain.”

  Luke heaved another sigh. “They can drag it over there.” He pointed to a lean-to next to the dock that sheltered firewood.

  The boy scrambled down the muddy path to the dock with his friends following close behind, and the fine points of the arrangement were worked out.

  “All right,” Luke said to her. “Let’s go.”

  When Emily last glimpsed her belongings, they were surrounded by boys with knives, the blades falling perilously close as they took up their game again.

  ~~*~*~*~~

  Luke Becker eyed the woman sitting across the table from him in Fairdale Sandwich Shoppe. Her spine was as straight as a rake handle, and her back never touched the slats of her chair. She stirred her tea with slow, precise turns of a spoon that didn’t even clink against the rim of the cup. For his own part, he wished he could have taken her into the saloon and ordered a glass and a bottle of whiskey instead of the coffee that sat before him now, untouched.

  Every eye in the place was on him and Miss Cannon. How could they miss a woman as tall as she was? There wasn’t much that happened in Fairdale that went unnoticed, but she seemed oblivious. Coming from a big city like Chicago, she probably had no idea of how small-town minds and curiosities worked. He was so put out by the turn of events, it was difficult for him to be civil to her.

  What was he going to do about this mess? It had been hard enough, deciding to advertise for a wife, even though he had no intention of giving away his heart again. It wasn’t really his to give, anyway.