Page 43 of Irish Rose
He took her fingers to his lips, and her heart simply spoke louder than her head. “Then I guess I’ll have to take you the way you are as well.”
Chapter Eight
“This is all happening so fast.” Dee sat in Erin’s bedroom, where even now a dressmaker was pinning and tucking a white satin gown on her cousin. “Are you sure you don’t want a little more time?”
“For what?” Erin stared out the window, wondering whether if one of the dressmaker’s pins slipped and pierced her skin she would discover it was all a dream.
“To catch your breath, think things through.”
“I could have another six months and still not catch my breath.” She lifted a hand to her bodice and felt the symphony of tiny freshwater pearls. Who would have thought she’d ever have such a dress? In another two days she would put it on to become Burke’s wife. Wife. A chill ran up her spine, and at her quick shudder the dressmaker murmured an apology.
“Have a look, Miss McKinnon. I think you’ll be pleased with the length. If I do say so myself, the dress is perfect for you. Not every woman can wear this line.”
Holding her breath, Erin turned to the cheval mirror. The dress was the real dream, she thought. Thousands of pearls glimmered against the satin, making it shimmer in the late-afternoon light. She thought it was something a medieval princess would wear, with its snug sleeves coming to points over her hands and its miles of snowy skirts.
“It’s beautiful, Mrs. Viceroy,” Adelia put in when her cousin only continued to stare. “And it’s a miracle indeed that you could have it ready for us in such a short time. We’re beholden to you.”
“You know you’ve only to ask, Mrs. Grant.” She eyed Erin as she continued to stare into the glass. “Is there something you’d like altered, Miss McKinnon?”
“No. No, not a stitch.” She touched the skirt gingerly, just a fingertip, as if she was afraid it would, dissolve under her hand. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Viceroy, it’s only that it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
More than placated, Mrs. Viceroy began to fuss with the hem. “I think your new husband will be pleased. Now let me help you out of it.”
Erin surrendered the dress and stood in the plain cotton slip Burke had once unhooked from the clothesline. As the wedding gown was packed away, she slipped into her shirtwaist and thought she understood what Cinderella must have felt like at midnight.
“If I might suggest,” the dressmaker continued, “the dress and veil would be most effective with the hair swept up, something very simple and old-fashioned.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Dee murmured as she continued to watch her cousin. Erin was staring out the window as if she was looking at a blank wall.
“And, naturally, jewelry should be kept to the bare minimum.”
“She’ll have my pearl earrings for something borrowed.”
“What a sweet thought.”
“Thank you again, Mrs. Viceroy,” Dee said, rising. “I’ll show you out.”
“No need for you to go up and down those stairs in your condition. I know the way. The dress will be delivered by ten, day after tomorrow.”
Day after tomorrow, Erin thought, and felt the chill come back to her skin. Would it always be now or never when it came to Burke?
“A lovely lady,” Dee said after she closed the bedroom door.
“It was kind of her to come here.”
“Kind is one thing, business another.” Since the weight of the twins seemed to grow heavier every day, she sat again. “She would hardly pass up the opportunity to please the future Mrs. Burke Logan. Erin… I’m happy for you, of course. Oh, I feel like a mother hen. Are you sure this is what you want?”
“I’m not sure of anything,” Erin blurted out, then sank onto the bed. “I’m scared witless, and I keep thinking I’ll wake up and find myself back on the farm and this all something I dreamed up.”
“It’s real.” Dee squeezed her hand. “You have to understand that everything happening now is as real as anything can be.”
“I do, and that only scares me more. But I love him. I wish I knew him better. I wish he’d talk to me about his family, about himself. I wish Ma was here and my father and the rest of them. But... ”
“But,” Dee coaxed as she moved over to sit beside her.
“But I love him. It’s enough, isn’t it?”
“Enough to start.” She remembered that in the beginning all she’d had was a blind, desperate love for Travis. Time had given her the rest. “He’s not an easy man to know.”
