The Bridal Veil (2 page)

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.

That hadn’t stopped the
women in Fairdale from trying to pair him off. It seemed that no
more than a month after Belinda’s death, two or three of the
unmarried females in town had begun inviting him to Sunday dinner.
He’d known them when he was still a single man, known them
very
well, but that had
been years earlier, and he’d been a carefree young buck back then.
The first year after he lost Belinda, he’d been drunk a lot of the
time, anyway, and he’d had no interest in their obvious
maneuvering. Eventually, he’d realized that Rose needed a mother,
someone besides her grandmother. But he hadn’t thought that any of
those women would be good to his girl. And that was his chief
concern.

At first, he’d kept the
decision a secret from both Rose and Cora. God, especially Cora.
Then, after placing the advertisement in the
Chicago Tribune
, he’d come to town
every Saturday, looking for a reply. He wasn’t sure why he’d chosen
Chicago. It just seemed that he’d stand a better chance of finding
a woman who knew nothing about his past, one who would help him get
a fresh start on life.

Franny Eakins, who ran the general
store and was Fairdale’s first postmistress, had been none too
subtle with her probes into Luke’s interest in the mail. She was
also one of the women who’d pursued him these past three years.
She’d been so obvious and persistent in her flirting that he began
to hate going into her store.

Ordinarily, he didn’t get much mail—a
farm journal or two, maybe a seed catalog or an order from Burpee.
Then he had a few different replies to his ad. He pored over them,
and only one woman’s caught his eye, Alyssa Cannon’s. And when her
creamy envelopes had begun arriving for him, all bearing a fine
hand and the faint scent of roses, Franny’s eyes widened and her
dark, caterpillar brows inched up her forehead. Pretty soon she’d
started asking him some pointed questions, which Luke had done his
best to evade.

When he’d finally announced his plan
and Alyssa’s pending arrival to his daughter and mother-in-law, the
storm that broke over the Becker farm rivaled any that blew through
the gorge in winter.

Neither of them wanted this new
person, Alyssa Cannon, in their house. A stranger, Cora had raged,
handling her dead daughter’s possessions, taking her dead
daughter’s place? Cora had turned the house into a kind of shrine
to Belinda, leaving her belongings exactly where she’d kept them,
as if she’d only gone into town for the afternoon instead of to her
final rest. Had his wedding vows meant nothing to him? she
demanded. Given his history with Belinda, he’d wondered how she had
the nerve to ask.

Rose had sulked over the news and
vowed not to like anyone he brought home.

Their reaction had been so bad, Luke
had decided it would be better not to mention in his letters that
Cora lived under his roof. He knew he’d taken the coward’s way out.
He just hoped it would all sort itself out. Somehow.

All the nights he’d lain awake,
worrying and planning, simmering over Cora’s tight-lipped
disapproval and Rose’s withdrawal and unladylike
antics . . . all those nights of planning and
hoping that a new bride would lighten his lonely widower’s life and
help him reach his remote, unhappy, tomboy daughter. A new wife
who’d described herself so vividly—petite and dark-haired—that he’d
actually been looking for Belinda to get off that damned steamboat.
He’d arranged a quiet ceremony with old Judge Clifton, to be
conducted this afternoon in his office, followed by a little
wedding dinner back at the farm. He’d told Cora to wait at home
until the whole thing was signed and sealed. Oh, he’d had lots of
plans.

At the very least, he’d expected
someone named Alyssa, with whom he’d corresponded for several
months. Instead this stiff-backed female had arrived, resembling
one of the scarecrows in his cornfield, tall, skinny, and pale,
with the horrifying news that his intended mail-order bride was
dead and she was here to take her sister’s place. Generally, it
wasn’t in him to be rude to a woman, but he wanted to ask her just
what the hell she was thinking of.

As if reading his thoughts, Emily
Cannon spoke. “I’m sure you must be wondering why I came to Oregon,
Mr. Becker. It must seem very odd to you. And I admit that it was a
very forward thing for me to do.”

“
Yeah, well,
ma’am—”

She looked away, but not before Luke
noticed that her eyes were the color of spring clover. “After
Alyssa’s funeral, I had intended to write and tell you about her
accident. Then it occurred to me, you need help with your daughter
Rose, and I’m a teacher of etiquette and fine needlework at Miss
Abigail Wheaton’s Finishing School for Young Ladies.” She gave him
a sidelong glance. “Or at least I-I was until Miss Wheaton was
forced to close her doors for lack of funds.” She gave the tea
another nervous stir with the spoon and continued in a low voice,
the words tumbling out. “In any event, your letters explained your
difficulties and what you’re looking for in a wife.” She pulled a
piece of paper of out her pocket and extended it in her slender
hand. “‘Please come,’ it said. ‘We need you.’ So I
came.”

Luke stared at his own letter, one of
the several he’d written to Alyssa Cannon, now in Emily’s grip.
Damn it to hell, this was too much. “You read the letters I wrote
to your sister?”

The lunchtime diners at the
surrounding tables leaned in a little closer.

A look of mild horror crossed her even
features and she dropped her spoon. “Only with her permission, I
assure you! To do otherwise would be—would be—unmannerly,
dishonorable. She shared them with me, yes. After all, my only
sister was planning to travel to the west edge of the country to
marry a man she had never met. She wanted me to know something
about you and where she was going.”

He felt color and heat
rising to his face. Her explanation didn’t do much to relieve his
embarrassment. He groped around in his memory, trying to remember
if he’d said anything very personal in those letters. He didn’t
think so. He certainly hadn’t bared his soul to Alyssa Cannon, but
the mail had been private, or so he’d believed. His reply was
blunt. “They were meant for her. So was the train ticket I sent to
her. I planned to marry your sister, Miss Cannon, not you. I
asked
her
to come,
not you.”

Emily dropped her gaze to the
tabletop, sat back, and folded her hands in her lap. She looked
like a dog that had been kicked from here to the river and back
again, and Luke’s conscience gave him a swift kick as well. God, he
even thought her chin quivered once.