The Bridal Veil (27 page)

She stiffened and turned her head to
look at him.

He dropped his arm.

“
Sorry—I didn’t mean
to—”

“
No, it’s fine, I’m just not
used to—“ She glanced away, giving him a nice view of her
profile.

Damn it, he wasn’t sure he even knew
how to court a woman anymore. He’d probably been ham-handed and
clumsy, and scared her. Then he realized the path of his thoughts.
God, was he trying to court Emily, the tall drink of water who had
more rules for living than Reverend Ackerman? Yes, he supposed he
was. And he had been since the day he’d brought her the silk from
Fran’s store. Because there was a whole lot more to Emily than her
manners and rules, and beneath her cool, composed exterior, he
sensed a full-blooded woman trying to break out. Someone—certainly
her stepfather and her mother—had squashed the confidence right out
of her. He’d seen coquettish women in his time, females who could
bring a man to his knees simply by giving him a hot, unspoken
promise with their eyes. Sometimes it was flattering. In other
cases, such as with Clara Thurmon and Franny Eakins, it was just
embarrassing.

Emily had none of their clumsy guile,
and none of an accomplished flirt’s, either. She wasn’t heavily
decorated or given to putting on fine airs, despite her way of
doing things.

She was just Emily.

And that was fine with
Luke.

He put his hand on her waist again,
and this time he felt her lean against it as they walked back to
the kitchen.

~~*~*~*~~

Emily turned Rose toward her
reflection. She’d perched the girl on a stool so that she could see
herself in the dresser’s high mirror. “Well, what do you
think?”

Rose stared at herself in the glass in
her bedroom, her eyes wide. “Is that really how I look?” The
pale-blue broadcloth dress they’d finished together was a pretty
outfit with simple lines and a white apron. Her own girlish beauty
was allowed to shine through without having to compete with garish
colors and oceans of flounces.

Emily smiled. “Yes, dear, that’s you.
Do you like it?”

Rose spun toward her, her
face glowing. “Oh, it’s
wonderful
, Miss Emily. Thank you so
much!” It was so good to see her smiling again.

In the days that followed Cora’s
departure and Cotton’s death, Rose had been barely more than a
shadow moving through the house, as silent as a cat, barely
speaking and picking at her food. Emily had worried about the pale
violet smudges that underscored her dark eyes, and she knew that
Luke had been troubled about her too. He’d brought her a gray tabby
barn kitten to keep in the house. Rose had shown only polite
interest until Luke told her that the mother cat had rejected the
runt. That had brought out Rose’s nurturing instincts, and now the
little cat she’d named Stripe slept with her in her bed. Thank God
for children’s resilience. Of course, there were scars that
remained a lifetime—Emily knew that from personal experience. But
youth made it a little easier to bounce back from some
disappointments and hurts.

“
I’ve never had such a
pretty dress!”

“
You had a lot to do with
it, Rose. You worked hard and learned a lot.” Emily had taken over
those tasks that she knew would give a beginning seamstress
trouble, like setting the sleeves and sewing the tucks in the hem
of the apron. But Rose had done her share of pulling basting
threads and stitching the straight seams on the machine, and she’d
done a good job. “Do you think you like sewing?”

Rose turned back to the mirror. “Yes,
ma’am! Can we make another dress?”

“
Yes, we will eventually.
But at least now you have something to wear to the basket social at
church this Saturday night.”

“
So do you,” Rose said,
craning her neck to look at the back of her apron where Emily had
tied the sash into a big bow. “Your dress is pretty
too.”

It was. The teal grosgrain had turned
out very nicely, and Emily had felt as giddy as a girl all week,
thinking about the upcoming event. There would be music and dancing
and dinner. She’d get a chance to meet some of the neighbors,
hopefully without Cora there working to diminish her status. She
would appear on Luke’s arm in her silk dress with Rose beside them.
The new Becker family. It would be wonderful. It would be
terrifying. And it was coming tomorrow night.

Emily shook off the thoughts and
looked at her watch. They still had work to do. “For now, though,
we’ve got dinner to finish. Your father will be coming in from the
fields, hungry as a bear. Change your clothes and come down and
help. And don’t forget to hang your dress.”

“
All right,” the girl agreed
and hopped down from the stool.

Emily hurried down the steps to the
kitchen to baste the roast she’d put into the oven earlier. Opening
one oven door, she spooned meat juices over the beef and the
potatoes and tiny onions that ringed it. Its fragrant aroma filled
the room and mingled with the warm, yeasty scent of bread and an
apple crisp baking in the other oven.

Cooking hadn’t been the daunting task
she’d thought it might be. She had cooked for Alyssa and her
father, but now she felt that she had to prove herself to Luke and
Rose. What she hadn’t expected was that they were so grateful for
palatable food, she could have served them just about anything,
decently cooked, and they’d have been pleased.

She had yet to learn to make butter,
and Rose knew only what she’d seen Cora do, which was no better
than Emily’s own ignorance. So for the time being she’d worked out
an arrangement with Jennie Manning, Chester’s wife. Rose stopped by
the Mannings’s place once a week to pick up Jennie’s butter, and in
exchange, Emily gave the Manning girls some basic etiquette
lessons. It buoyed Emily’s spirit to know that not every farm wife
thought that manners and refinement were a “blame-fool waste of
time.” Jennie was a pretty, practical woman who worked hard, but
also recognized the value of developing her daughters’ brains and
beauty.

In her own home, Emily made a special
point to set an attractive table for the family meals and to give
the house her own little touches. She put wild lupines in a canning
jar on the hall table, since she couldn’t find a vase. She opened
the windows in the parlor and aired it out, something she believed
hadn’t been done in three years. She washed and ironed the few of
Belinda’s table linens that Cora had left behind and had used them
for the one Sunday dinner they’d shared together thus far. And she
put all of Cora’s caustic homemade soap in a box and put it in the
back of a closet. Now they were using white, store-bought bars from
the druggist’s. The soap was a new product that not only was mild,
but floated on the surface of the water.

With just the three of them
in the house, Emily had been more acutely aware of Luke than ever.
She knew what time he came in from the fields in the afternoons,
and often caught herself wandering over to the side window to watch
him wash at the pump. Guilty pleasure warred with a lifetime of
moral lessons. She knew that none of the experts who had penned the
tomes she used in her own classrooms would approve of her watching
her husband strip off his shirt and lather his face and upper body
with a slick bar of white soap. Mrs. L. H. Sigourney, who had
written
Letters To Young
Ladies
, a book devoted to deportment and
character, would soundly denounce as vulgar her peeking at Luke
through the lace curtains as he sluiced water over himself. Emily’s
fascination at the play of muscle across his back and chest,
glistening wet in the low sun, would not be a reasonable excuse for
her behavior. Miss Anna Ferguson, author of
The Young Lady’s Guide to Knowledge and
Virtue
, would probably wither in shame at
Emily’s furtive spying. But knowing all of this, she persisted. In
fact, wasn’t that the pump handle she heard right now out in the
yard?

She ambled to the side window in the
kitchen, telling herself that she was only looking for a gravy boat
that she’d seen on a nearby shelf. Outside, as she’d expected,
there was her husband briskly rubbing soap over himself, raising
the suds into a high lather as he ran the bar up and down his arms
and across his chest. She had made it a practice to leave a clean
shirt outside for him, and it laid neatly folded on a crate beside
the pump. Now Luke worked the pump handle again and stooped to let
the water pour over his head and bare torso. Emily swallowed and
glanced back over her shoulder. Goodness, but that stove put out a
lot of heat, she thought. She returned her attention to Luke. The
water streamed down his back in crystal rivulets and snaked their
way into the waistband of his dungarees. Even from here, she could
the goose bumps erupt on his flesh when a breeze kicked up. What
would they feel like under her fingertips if she were
to—

Suddenly he turned and looked right at
her, as if he’d felt her eyes on him. His knowing grin left no
doubt that she’d been caught. Emily jumped back out of view and
pressed her hands to her hot face.

Rose thundered down the stairs,
through the hall, and into the kitchen like a runaway colt. “Okay,
I’m ready,” she announced, wearing her faded overalls and
fortunately unaware of Emily’s impure thoughts about Luke. She
whirled and went back to the table, glad for once that Rose hadn’t
yet mastered the art of entering a room with grace.

She straightened and tried to pretend
that she’d only been basting the roast and not her imagination.
“Let’s set the table the way I showed you. Remember, knife edges
point toward the plates.”

Rose went to the sideboard and took
out dishes and silver while Emily transferred the roast and
potatoes to a flowered platter. Just as she put them on the table,
Luke walked in the back door. Flustered, she couldn’t meet his
eyes, and he only grinned like a fool.

Leaning over the platter on the table,
he inhaled the aroma of their dinner. “Hey, something smells pretty
good around here,” he said, gave them both a good-humored
smile.

And it might be him, Emily thought,
before she could harness her musings. He brought with him the
scents of fresh air, a clean shirt, and Ivory Soap. Mixed with
those was his own male scent, one that she could not seem to
ignore. His wet hair curled on the ends and at the base of his neck
where it had begun to dry, and his smoke-colored eyes seemed to
darken when he looked at her.

What had come over her
lately? More than ever she fought to conquer her indelicate,
unladylike instincts, and it seemed to be a losing battle. Last
night as she lay in bed, she’d even found herself trying to picture
what Luke would look like with
no
clothes, not just without his shirt. God in
heaven! Marriage was not supposed to be about carnality. The ideal
marriage was romantic, tender, and sentimental. Hearts and flowers.
Love letters and devotion. Soft words and kind comments. Quiet
evenings of reading and music.

All of her manuals stressed these
virtues. They said nothing about wantonness of thought or the need
for moral restraint. It was generally accepted that it shouldn’t
even be necessary to warn against such things. But Luke had been a
wild troublemaker in his youth, not the suit-and-tie-wearing man
that the books’s illustrations depicted.

“
Both of you take your
seats,” she said, trying to bring her attention back to the matter
at hand. She cleared her throat. “Luke, will you carve the meat,
please?” He caught her eye and gave her a secret little smile that
only made her face flame again. He actually seemed to be enjoying
her embarrassment. Emily turned back to the stove to pull out the
bread and the dessert.

“
Daddy, you should see my
new dress!” Rose piped in mercifully. She put her napkin on her
lap, just as Emily had shown her. “It’s so beautiful, the
beautifullest one I’ve ever seen.”

“
I guess we owe Miss Emily a
big thanks for that, don’t we?”

Emily put the sliced bread on the
table and slipped into her own chair. “I was happy to help. And
Rose is a good student. She learns quickly.”

Luke took a bite of roast and closed
his eyes as he chewed. Alarmed, Emily feared that he’d found
something about the taste he didn’t like. “Is it all
right?”

He looked at her with a transcendent
expression. “It’s more than all right, Emily. It’s wonderful. I
can’t remember the last time I ate so well. It’s been
years.”

“
Oh—I’m glad you like it.”
She ducked her chin.

Luke took another bite of roast and
then buttered a piece of tender, piping-hot bread. As doubtful and
apprehensive as he’d been the day he saw Emily Cannon on the dock
in town, everything was working out. He’d hoped for was a woman who
looked like Belinda and he’d gotten the exact opposite. But it had
begun to dawn on him that trying to replace his late wife wasn’t a
good idea. It just kept him living in the past, a past that hadn’t
been especially happy. It was a hard thing for him to admit, but he
realized it was true.

Having a wife with fancy manners, who
knew how to cook and set a nice table, wasn’t such a bad thing,
after all. Rose’s snotty attitude had improved and she was learning
from Emily. Even more amazing, he found his tall, blond wife’s
flowing grace as arousing as he’d once found Belinda’s brunette
petiteness.