The Bridal Veil

by Alexis Harrington

  At last the burning lessened. “Better?” she asked, and put the towel into his hands. She was nothing but a blur of pale hair and black dress.

  He dried his face and eyes and her image focused. Her light brows drawn, she peered at him.

  “I think so. At least I can see you.” And a handsome sight she was, he thought.

  She took a step backward. Shaking her head, she looked at the backs of her reddened hands. “That soap is pretty caustic. I’ve been using it for the laundry and my skin is burning. Does Mrs. Hayward make it herself?”

  “Yeah, she uses some secret recipe she swears by.” He rubbed his eyes with the towel, then dried the back of his neck.

  “Maybe we can buy ready-made soap. It isn’t that expensive.”

  “No, it isn’t, but Cora, well, she couldn’t see the point in buying soap when she can make it right here.”

  Emily lifted her brows delicately. “Mrs. Hayward is rather, um, strong-willed, isn’t she?”

  He flipped the towel over his shoulder and laughed again, although he didn’t feel much humor. Emily’s etiquette had made her an expert at either diplomacy or understatement, he wasn’t sure which. “You mean the way a mule is strong-willed?”

  Emily ducked her head and he saw the hint of a smile.

  Luke reached for a clean, dry shirt hanging on the line and again felt Emily’s eyes follow his movements. “I know she’s not the easiest woman to get along with.”

  “Yes, well . . . ” She let the comment hang, unfinished.

  As Luke pushed his arms into the sleeves of the clean shirt, that feeling came over him again—that he was not the master of his own home. How must it seem to Emily, he wondered, that he let Cora run roughshod over them all? He sighed as he buttoned the shirt. “When we lost Belinda, I let Cora take control, I guess. I made her the boss in the kitchen and I’m the boss in the barn. I didn’t want Rose to be saddled with running a house—she was only eight years old. It’s been easier to let Cora have her way than to fight her over everything.” He glanced up at Emily’s spring-green eyes. “But maybe I made a mistake.”

  Emily reached into the washtub for her underwear, then let it sink to the bottom of the tub, and dried her hands on the apron tied around her slim waist. “I’m sure you did what you thought was best at the time. It isn’t easy to make decisions under such stressful circumstances. I know what that’s like.”

  He leaned a hip against the washtub. “I suppose you do.”

  Their eyes met and Emily looked away. He had no doubt that they shared the same thought about her coming west in her sister’s place. But he sensed that she’d known sorrow in her life. He could see it in her changeable posture—when she talked about Rose or her teaching job, or anything else she felt strongly about, she stood tall with her chin up and her shoulders back. She cut quite an imposing figure when she was stiff-spined. Other times, when the conversation turned the least bit personal, like now, she stooped a little, as if trying to hide inside herself. Or trying to hide her whole self. That he’d even noticed was a surprise to Luke. Then he realized that he’d begun to take note of other little things about Emily. The way she tilted her head a bit while she was thinking, how she ducked her chin when she smiled, as if she were shy. He figured he had to be wrong about that—Emily Cannon was not a shy woman. She had an opinion about nearly everything, he could read it in her eyes. Fortunately, unlike Cora, she didn’t yap about all of them.

  Emily went to the clothesline and inspected her black dress, the one that had suffered through the chickens. “When I went to town today, I saw Rose at the cemetery. She was sitting on her mother’s grave, talking to her.”

  He straightened away from the washtub. “She was?”

  She turned to face him, her chin up. “Maybe I shouldn’t have repeated it—she said it’s a secret between her and her mother. But I think Rose feels like she doesn’t have anyone to talk to and it worries me.”

  He stiffened. “She told you that?”

  “No, but she’s dropped little hints that give me that impression.”

  Stung, Luke retorted, “Well, hell, she’s got me and Cora.”

  She pulled a clothespin from her apron pocket and turned it in her long, slender fingers. “I’m not criticizing you, Mr. Becker. It’s just that I’ve worked with children long enough to know when they’re troubled. The tension in the household is affecting her, but I believe this started long before I got here. And you admitted that you don’t know what she’s thinking.”

  Luke’s shoulders sagged. Emily was right. He couldn’t just turn everything over to her and expect her to perform miracles with Rose. He had to take some kind of action, too. And it wasn’t that he didn’t want to, exactly. But for the life of him, he wasn’t sure which course was best. Cora was a source of trouble in the house and he’d send her packing today if he could, but what would it do to Rose if she were to leave? His girl’s happiness was more important than his own.

  “I just thought you should know,” Emily said. “She also mentioned that the other children at school make fun of how she dresses.”

  Luke winced and threw his towel over the pump handle. Kids could be cruel. He remembered being on both ends of their ridicule, giving and receiving. “Cora makes her clothes.”

  She tilted her head slightly and gazed at the fields. “Hmm, I think I can help with that. I could teach Rose to make her own clothes. She’s old enough and we could pick out a couple of dress patterns that are more suited to a girl her size and age.”

  “Is she interested?”

  “I haven’t mentioned it to her yet. I wanted to ask you first.”

  “That sounds like a fine idea, Emily.”

  She smiled again and with the low sun highlighting her lashes and the soft curve of her cheek, she was almost beautiful. “Good. I’ll get her started tomorrow.”

  Suddenly, the back door opened and he heard Cora bark, “Supper!”

  Emily’s gaze locked with his and he saw understanding in her eyes.

  Gratitude edged its way into Luke’s heart for this woman who had come west to help him with his daughter. And the prospect of easing his mother-in-law out of his house seemed less daunting because he suspected that Emily was on his side. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like he had an ally. She brushed at the tendrils of damp hair on her neck. He tracked the graceful, feminine gesture, and then it hit him. She wasn’t wearing her wedding ring.

  He knew it didn’t fit properly and he was sorry about that, but it seemed to him that a woman like Emily, a stickler for proper form, would wear that ring no matter which finger she had to put it on. Since the afternoon in Judge Clifton’s office, he’d wondered if he’d ever be able to accept her as more than a wife in name only.

  Until now, he hadn’t thought that she might not accept him as her husband.

  ~~*~*~*~~

  That night after dinner, Emily slipped down the back stairs and out to the yard with a lantern. Since the farmhouse lacked indoor plumbing, no one would think it odd that she was outside at this hour. She still hadn’t gotten used to visiting the necessary here. In Chicago, even after the Cannon family had been forced to move from the house on Washington Boulevard to rented rooms, they’d still had bathing and toilet facilities, although they’d been located down the hall, and shared with a half-dozen other tenant families. The privy here was dark and spooky, and while she’d never used one till she’d come to the farm, she’d heard many horror stories about the spiders, snakes, and God-knew-what-else that lurked in the depths beneath the round hole in the plank that comprised the seat.

  She glanced at the western horizon, still faintly light. The evening was soft and balmy, with a sprinkling of early stars scattered across sky. But it wasn’t the call of nature that brought her out here, not the earth’s or her own.

  Sometime this afternoon while she’d been doing laundry out here, she’d lost her wedding band, and she had to find it. The thing fit so poorly that it hadn’t been until
she sat down at the dinner table that she’d noticed it was missing. What would Luke think if he saw her without it? She’d kept her left hand in her lap through the entire meal. This had been especially challenging because the pork Cora served was just as tough and flavorless as her other dinnertime offerings. It had really required two hands to saw the meat into manageable bites, but she’d speared the leathery chunks with her fork and chewed. And chewed. Now her dinner sat in her stomach like a lump of lead.

  She shuffled through the damp grass, holding her lantern low, hoping to catch a glimpse of something gold and shiny peeking from the blades. She held the light over the washtub, just in case the ring remained at the bottom. But it was empty. Setting the lantern down, she dropped to her hands and knees and began feeling through the wet grass. Her fingers moved over the tender spring growth as a blind person’s might, seeking their way, seeking something metal. As the minutes ticked on, panic began to rise into her chest. How could she have been so careless? Why hadn’t she realized the ring might come off in the soapy water?

  She just had to find it, she had to. A married woman couldn’t go around without her wedding band. It wasn’t proper. The ring hadn’t been bought with her in mind, it didn’t fit, and it certainly had not been put on her finger with love. But Luke had given it to her—her husband, Luke. The man with the weary eyes and the great love for his daughter and the kind heart that she longed to have just a corner of. She hated admitting it to herself, but it was true. Tears blurred her eyes and she brushed at them impatiently. If he would give her just a crumb of the regard he held for Belinda—a dead woman—Emily would be content and her own longing for him might not seem so hopeless.

  Good heavens! Her head came up at the thought. Was she falling in love with him? No, no, she wasn’t supposed to—that hadn’t been any part of their arrangement. They’d agreed that this was to be a marriage of convenience for the primary purpose of giving Rose a decent upbringing.

  But now she’d lost the ring he’d given her, one that he’d paid good money for. What would he say?

  She continued to grope through the darkness, moving the lantern ahead as she worked her way around the washtub in ever-widening circles, trying to retrace her steps in her memory. But all she could remember was Luke, there in the yard, looking at her underwear, and then taking off his shirt. Luke, splashing his face with water when Cora’s crude soap had burned his eyes. She remembered the feel of his nape under her hand, warm and firm with tendons.

  Her hands were muddy and her dress was soaked at the knees from the wet grass. There was no point in going on—she’d have to face Luke and tell him the ring was lost. She put her hand flat to the ground to push herself to her feet, and felt something sharp dig into her palm. Yanking the lantern closer, she saw a yellow gleam poking up from the mud. Thank God! With a muffled cry of relief, she plucked the band from its hiding place and wiped it off on her skirt.

  Then she pressed the ring to her lips and put it back on her little finger.

  ~~*~*~*~~

  Emily bided in a borderline country, a restless, edgy place where there waited a tall, slim man with dark, curly hair. His torso was bared to the sun, his dungarees hung low on his hips. He considered her with the eyes of a lover, eyes that beckoned, drawing her closer. She stood before him wrapped only in a bridal veil made of silk illusion, lighter than a spinner’s web, softer than eiderdown. She walked into his embrace and his hands on her back pressed her to his warm, naked skin, while his lips traveled down her throat, from her ear to her collarbone.

  You’re beautiful, Emily, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen . . .

  His lips moved against her nape as he spoke, his hands explored her silk-clad body, gentle, demanding, intimate—

  Emily woke with a start, disoriented and sleepily aroused. Morning had barely broken—she could make out only the vaguest silhouettes of the furniture. Even in her drowsy state, the memory of her dream both embarrassed and made her long to return to it. But something had awakened her, a jarring—

  Tata-tata-tata!

  From the wall behind her came a sharp, rattling noise.

  Dear God, what was that? She’d never heard anything like its staccato sound and it was right next to her head. She clutched the bedclothes to her chin, her heart hammering, and scrambled to the center of the mattress to stare at the offending wall.

  Her sleep-fogged mind grappled with a fearsome notion. Snakes—they had snakes out west didn’t they? Rattlesnakes. One day in class Emily had confiscated a dime novel from one of her students. She could scarcely credit that a young woman would have an interest in such lurid, undignified fiction, and had delivered a proper lecture about proper reading material. The Brontë sisters, Jane Austin, Louisa May Alcott, these authors wrote suitable stories for young ladies. But after school, that rebellious, wicked part of Emily had made her look at the cheap volume. It had talked about rattlesnakes in the West.

  Tata-tata-tata!

  She didn’t know what one sounded like, exactly, but there was something in the wall and she wasn’t going to wait for it to break through and introduce itself.

  She leaped from her bed and looked around the nearly-dark room, trying to decide how to proceed. Fumbling with a match, she lighted her bedroom lamp on the dresser and flung open her trunk to pull out her black twill umbrella. It wasn’t much of a weapon—the handle was nothing but Dresden china. But it had a sharp point and it was all she had at the moment. With no little trepidation, she peered into the corners looking for a hole in the plaster from which the viper might escape, holding the closed umbrella before her as if it were Excalibur. Nothing. The sharp rattle came from the wall again. That was enough for Emily. She could not fight a snake with her puny weapon.

  The protagonist in the dime novel had blown off the rattlesnake’s head with a shotgun after it had sunk its terrible fangs into the leg of his companion. The friend then died an agonizing death.

  She should get Luke. He’d have a shotgun, wouldn’t he? All farmers had shotguns, to kill things like game and, and— At least he would know what to do. Snatching her shawl at the end of the mattress, she threw it over her nightgown and scurried into the hall, barefoot and still gripping her umbrella. Pausing in front of his closed door, she glanced fearfully at her room again as if a demon from the Pit lurked there. She tapped on the oak.

  “Mr. Becker?” she murmured.

  No response. She knocked again, harder this time.

  From within, she heard shuffling across the floor and unintelligible mumbling. The door swung open and she found herself face to face with a man who almost made her forget the main reason she’d come to him. Sleep-rumpled and wearing only the quilt from his bed around his middle, Luke looked at her. His hair stuck up in places and his pillowcase had left creases on one side of his stubbled face.

  “Emily, what in the hell—”

  Emily felt her jaw drop at his near nakedness. What had she expected, that he’d come to the door fully dressed? She’d gotten the man out of bed, for heaven’s sake. But she didn’t know where to let her gaze fall—to the broad expanse of his chest, on his long muscled legs and bare feet, or on those eyes that even now felt as if they bore through her heart and down to her soul. That was silly, of course, a remnant of a feeling left over from her shameful dream. “I-I’m so sorry to disturb you.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the window behind him and waved off the apology. “I overslept anyway. What’s the matter? Are you all right?” he asked, his voice froggy and utterly disarming.

  She tightened her shawl and spoke in hushed tones to avoid disturbing Rose and Cora. “There’s something in my room.”

  He glanced down at the umbrella. “What—rain?”

  “N-no, I think it’s a snake.”

  He peered at her as if she’d taken leave of her senses. “A snake.”

  “Yes, a rattlesnake.” She felt fairly confident about that. She simply wasn’t equipped to vanquish the thing. “I don’t know ho
w it got in there, but I heard it in the wall. Please come. We’ll need a weapon to kill it.”

  He rubbed his jaw as he considered her. It made a sandpapery sound against his work-roughened hand. It seemed as if he could see right through her nightgown, and suddenly she realized that she wore little more than he did. Now she found herself torn between two fears—that of the serpent in her bedroom wall, and of the feelings Luke aroused in her by just standing there, looking at her.

  “Emily, ma’am, we don’t have rattlesnakes in this part of the state. Are you sure you weren’t just dreaming?”

  Yes, she’d been dreaming but not about reptiles. “Please, I know something dangerous is there,” she whispered urgently.

  He gestured at the quilt and she felt her face flame. “All right, give me a minute to put on my pants.”

  He closed the door and Emily lingered in the hall, feeling awkward. She fiddled with her shawl again, wishing that she, too, were dressed. In a moment he emerged empty-handed, wearing only his dungarees and suspenders, and still barefoot. Somehow, this costume was every bit as unsettling as his quilt had been.

  He nodded at her and she led the way to her bedroom.

  Emily proceeded and began poking at the wall with the china handle of her umbrella, trying to stir up the snake again so Luke could find it. Maybe he thought she was being silly, but she noticed that he hesitated in the doorway and it surprised her. A big, strong man like him, for heaven’s sake.

  “It’s in here someplace.” She gave the wall another tap.

  Luke did hesitate but not for any reason that Emily could have imagined. Seeing her at his door, dressed in a thin, white gown, her long, blond braid draped over one shoulder, had stoked fires in him that caught him flatfooted. Now the rising sun bathed her in pale gold-pink and glowed through her gown, outlining long, shapely legs. How long had it been? he wondered. How long since he’d held a woman in his arms, skin to skin, felt her welcoming softness and warmth, and covered her with his body? Years ago, long before Belinda had died. And now, here was Emily Cannon, his legal wife, a woman he’d told he could offer nothing other than his home and his name . . . jabbing at the wall with her umbrella. What a picture. He had to chuckle, despite the images rolling through his mind and the feelings she stirred low in his belly.