The Bridal Veil (23 page)

“
Well, no, not exactly. And
you’ve never mentioned it.” Now her face was the color of the
blood-red sunset.

No he hadn’t. Because he didn’t talk
about it. “It was pneumonia.”

“
Pneumonia?” The tone of her
question asked for more.

But he didn’t want to go into the
details that had led to Belinda’s fever—he couldn’t. He never
discussed them. He was ashamed of himself and had borne the guilt
these three years. Belinda shouldn’t have died. The night that led
her to her grave began a relentless string of
shouldn’t-haves.

“
Yes, ma’am.” He folded his
arms across his chest and stared at her. He wasn’t about to admit
his sin to Emily, who seemed to have never done anything wrong in
her life.

Emily started fiddling with her shawl
again. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s just
that—”

He waited for her to continue but she
didn’t.

“
Just that what?”

“
I—we know so little about
each other.” She sounded almost wistful.

He uncrossed his arms. “Yeah, I guess
you’re right. I’ll bet I know even less about you than you do about
me. After all, you had a chance to read about me.”

She flushed, and he was sorry. He
hadn’t meant that the way it sounded. It was only the truth. “I
mean, I never had any letters from you.”

“
Oh, yes, I see.”

He leaned against the railing again
and considered her. “What would you tell me about yourself if you
were going to write to me?”

“
What?”

“
Well, if you had answered
my advertisement for a bride, what kind of letter would you have
sent to me?”

“
You already know that I’m a
teacher and that I worked in a girl’s school. What else is
there”

“
Shoot, there’s a lot more.
Describe yourself to me. What do you look like?”

She ducked her chin and stared at her
lap. She was silent so long he wondered if she was going to answer.
At last she said, “I see no need to be cruel, Mr. Becker.” She took
a deep breath. “I apologize again if my question was too
personal.”

God, now he really felt like a heel.
“You don’t know, do you?”

“
Know what?”

“
How pretty you
are.”

Her head came up at this and she
looked at him with wet eyes that pleaded for mercy. “I know that
you are lying.” Her low voice shook. Now he really did feel as if
he’d been kicked in the chest, right over his heart.

He scooted closer and took
her cold hands in his. He wasn’t going to say that she was the most
beautiful creature he’d ever seen, because that
would
sound like a lie. “No, I’m
speaking the truth. You’re a fine-looking woman. Hasn’t anyone ever
told you that?”

She tried to pull her hands away but
he held them fast. “Of course not! Alyssa was beautiful
but—”

“
Tell me what you look
like,” he insisted quietly.

“
Why are you doing this?”
Her voice held a tortured edge. “It’s no secret that I am plain!
I’ve never pretended that I’m not. I am too tall and I am plain. My
hair is too light—”

“
What color are your
eyes?”

“
They’re green.”

“
Like the
clover.”

Her brows rose slightly.

“
What color is your
hair?”

“
I told you, it’s too
light.”

He shook his head. “Naw, that’s not a
good description, teacher. It’s blond. Like ripe wheat, like a
palomino in the sun. Like high grass at the end of
summer.”

She stared at him, tears overflowing
the rims of her eyes. But she was intrigued, he could see
that.

“
I’m tall,” she ventured in
a small voice, as if waiting to see what good he could find in that
fact.

“
Yes, you are,” he agreed.
“And graceful like a birch tree in the breeze.”

“
But plain.”

“
Nope, sorry. That just
isn’t so.”

“
Yes, it is. I’ve seen it
reflected in others people’s faces when they look at me. And I’ve
heard it more often than you can imagine.”

“
From who?”

“
From Fran Eakins and Clara
Thurmon, to name two. And from my stepfather, from my
mother—”

Clara and Fran, that didn’t surprise
him. But her own mother? “Your mother told you that?”

“
Yes. ‘I’ve never had to
worry about you, Emily,’ she said, ‘you’re a sensible female.
There’s no shame in being plain. Pretty women are decorative, but
plain ones get the work done.’ ”

Damn but if that didn’t sound like
something Cora would say. “That may be, but you are pretty to me.
And you can’t change my mind.” Her hands squeezed his ever so
lightly, as if involuntarily.

Even though his background was about
as different from Emily’s as it could get, he’d never given much
thought his looks or how it might feel to be thought of as homely.
Women had always been attracted to him, so he’d never pondered the
problem. He remembered homely kids around town, though. They’d
either been bullied and teased, or ignored completely. He suspected
that Emily had probably been the target of the same kind of
treatment and it bothered him. This graceful female could use some
compliments.

“
Where did you grow
up?”

“
In Chicago—”

He smiled. “I know that. Did you live
in a big house or a little one?”

Emily couldn’t believe this. No one
had ever asked so many questions about her. She dabbed at her eyes
with her handkerchief. She wasn’t certain what Luke’s motives were,
but as unaccustomed as she was to personal attention, she basked in
it like a cat in an afternoon sunbeam.

So she told him about her father,
Captain Adam Gray, lost in a storm on the lake, and about being
adopted by Robert Cannon when he married her widowed mother. “He
was a successful businessman and owned several warehouses. We lived
in a nice neighborhood.” This was an understatement. The Cannons
had lived on Washington Boulevard, a street of elegant homes with
servants in every one. “Then Chicago caught fire in 1871.” She
paused a moment. “And that was the beginning of our
end.”

Luke sat back and listened, without
interrupting or showing boredom, while she described the loss of
Robert’s business assets—he’d never believed in insurance—that
eventually forced them to sell the elegant home, and move to
successively poorer neighborhoods.

“
My stepfather never seemed
to come to grips with his losses. After my mother died, he sank
into melancholy, and became more and more apathetic. I think his
one remaining hope was that Alyssa would make a good marriage match
and rescue the family from its despair. He had no expectations of
me except that I support us with my teaching job while he waited.
He died before that happened. Alyssa and I were the only ones
left.” She threaded her empty fingers together and looked out
toward the stands of dark firs that bordered the property. “And of
course, now there’s just . . . me.”

Emily leveled her gaze on
Luke, smoke-eyed and handsome. She’d lived her entire life under
the admonition of
what will people
think
? True feelings were never discussed,
manners and deportment were paramount to all else. Hurts and
disappointments were hidden behind masks of outward serenity. No
one, it was believed, wanted to hear about another’s problems or
misfortunes, and it was considered bad form to discuss your own.
Even when the Cannons had tumbled down to rented rooms on one of
Chicago’s back streets, gentility had been more important than
anything else. She sometimes thought that Robert and Letty Cannon
had died of shame, rather than the weak hearts the doctors had
ascribed to them. They had tried to pretend that nothing was
different. But ultimately she believed that they couldn’t cope with
the loss of the world they’d become so accustomed to, or with the
possibility of what their former friends must have thought of them
after that loss.

Certainly Emily found nothing wrong
with being kind, self-reliant, and forbearing. But a lifetime of
pretending that everything was just fine—well, it was lonely. In
all of her years she’d had only Alyssa to confide in, and even
then, her sister had never understood what it was like to be seen
as gawky and not well-favored.

How extraordinary, then, that she felt
comfortable telling all of this to Luke, who sat at her feet and
gave her his full attention. And how wonderful. She saw his gaze
drop to her lips and down the front of her bodice. It returned to
her mouth and hovered there. A spark of excited anticipation
kindled within her.

“
Daddy!” Rose’s voice broke
the spell between them and Luke turned to watch his daughter run
toward them from the barn. Her face was flushed with excitement and
she pulled on Luke’s arm, trying to get him to his feet. “Daddy,
come and look at Cotton, please? I think he’s better.”

“
Cotton?” Emily
asked.

“
That’s what I named the
lamb. He looks like a puff of cotton.” Rose beamed like a
buttercup, and Emily felt her heart swell with joy.

Luke stood and stretched his back.
“Well, let’s go see how he’s doing.” He turned to look at Emily and
smiled. “I’m glad we had a chance to talk. I’d like to make a habit
of it.”

Emily smiled too, and watched Rose
drag her father across the yard, making him laugh as he went. As
she watched them disappear into the barn, her smile faded. If
Belinda had died of pneumonia, why did Cora claim that Luke was
responsible for her death?

CHAPTER TEN

The next afternoon, Emily was sitting
by the window in her room hemming the sleeves of her new dress when
she heard a ruckus among the birds in the oak outside. She glanced
up, expecting to see that a cat or some other predator had
encroached upon a nest, threatening a bird family living in the
branches. Instead, through the new leaves she saw a pair of
goldfinches, their wings fluttering wildly as the brightly-plumed
male covered the plainer female in a mating that took only the
blink of an eye.

Everywhere around the farm she’d seen
the same life-affirming ritual repeated with other animals. Well,
it was spring, after all. She bent her head to her task to take a
small bite of fabric with her needle, then looked up again. Her
hands stilled in her lap as a rush of realization and regret flowed
over her. Perhaps that why Luke had suddenly become so attentive to
her. He had been widowed for three years, and even though he’d told
her that there would be no traditional romance between them, she
was a handy female living right under his own roof. And that’s all
there was to it. Man was supposed to be superior to animals and
have dominion over them, but the truth was, all of human and animal
kind were part of the same earth, with its ancient rhythms and
cycles and primal urges. It wasn’t a very flattering thought, but
regardless of Luke’s compliments yesterday, she knew that she was
not attractive. She swallowed. Maybe spring fever had made him see
her with a rosy glow that she didn’t really possess. Wait until
summer or fall came along.

But she had barely slept
last night for remembering the way he’d looked at her, the kindness
she’d seen in his smoke-colored eyes, and how her icy hands had
felt warmed when he took them into his own. Everything feminine in
her wanted to ignore her common-sense explanation of why Luke had
sat on the porch with her, why she’d caught him watching her with a
raw yearning that even she could recognize. In the deepest core of
her, she felt herself responding to the same stirrings that the
rest of the earth seemed to take in stride. She could easily
imagine Luke covering
her
with his lean, hard body. The very notion
scandalized, and yet tantalized. In fact, her own yearning begged
her to believe that there was more to his attentions than a basic
animal drive. But doubt plagued and confused her. When she looked
in the square mirror in her room this morning, she saw the same
face staring back at her that she’d known for twenty-eight years.
The past weeks on the farm had not transformed her so that Luke
would see someone besides the tall, plain woman who’d arrived here
from Chicago. Only her bridal veil could perform that kind of
magic. Even that notion was a work of fancy, one that she was
trying to let go of. How odd that even as a rational, mature woman,
she clung to the idea, the hope.

And then there was still the matter of
Belinda’s death—

Emily was alternately puzzling over
these thoughts and whip-stitching her sleeves when she heard Rose
thunder up the stairs and slam her bedroom door. She was home from
school already? Emily looked at the watch pinned to her bodice and
realized how late it had gotten. Muffled sobs floated to her and
she debated whether to intrude or not. She’d made good strides with
Rose, but her role was still vague and undefined. No, she decided,
the girl was suffering. Emily’s protective instinct took over and
she put aside her stitching with the intention of comforting her.
Before could leave her chair, though, Rose darted out of her
bedroom again and charged back downstairs.