The Bridal Veil

by Alexis Harrington

  “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 conver
sation 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.”

  “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 stabil
ity—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.