Page 455 of Conveniently Wed
“My childhood started back in Richmond. I was just a servant’s son, a poor lad living in the home of a wealthy and privileged family with two daughters. Emmaline, the eldest, grew more stunningly beautiful every year. By the time she was in her teens, she had most every man at her beck and call, but her heart was dead and cold.
“The younger sister and I became good friends, but the difference in our stations was ever at the forefront of my mind, even if not in the heart of the younger girl. When she was ten, she confessed her undying love for me and declared she would marry me some day. I, a young teen, laughed it off. I remember kissing her cheek, telling her we came from different worlds. She was destined for much better.”
What did any of this have to do with her? Katie was having a hard time seeing the relevance, but Pa was so intense.
“Many said the younger sister was plain because she grew up in the shadow of Emmaline. Few recognized her inner beauty, me included.”
He paused and drew in a long breath. “This next part is hard to tell.” He stood and turned to the window, staring out. Moments of weighted silence hung thick in the room. He turned back and paced the floor. His lips moved almost like he was praying.
She wanted to prod the story out of him, but something held her quiet.
“The younger sister, true to her word, did love me. She never wavered, never faltered. All through her teen years, her love grew stronger. But I, the fool, got caught in the poison of Emmaline’s web.
“Anything forbidden was a challenge Emmaline couldn’t resist. When she found out her little sister was in love with me, she started a wicked game. She took delight in the chase.Nothing stroked her ego more than to steal a man from another woman, even from her own sister.”
Pa slid back into the chair across from her, but kept his focus on the floor. Whatever calm had cloaked his face before had vanished. “The attention she lavished on me felt real, exciting, intoxicating even. Every man in Richmond wanted the elusive Emmaline, and, somehow, she had picked me. We talked about running away and building a life of our own. I forgot the younger sister in the wake of so much attention. I really thought Emmaline and I would marry, and I did the unpardonable. I tasted all she had to offer, and she offered it all.”
Was her careful, upright pa telling her he had a past? Maybe he was trying to acknowledge his own faults so she wouldn’t feel as badly about what had almost happened with Colby.
“Emmaline’s interest waned quickly. From the time we became intimate until she decided she was bored with me was no more than three months, just enough time for her to become with child.”
Katie gasped. Did she have another sibling somewhere?
“I was banished from the house and kicked out onto the streets of Richmond without a penny to my name or the possibility of further employment. I was a disgrace to my family and a scourge to hers. I’d crossed a line between the common and the aristocratic class,andI was blamed for stealing Emmaline’s purity. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t been Emmaline’s first.” A deep sadness weighed his words. “Even so, my behavior was shameful.”
“Pa, they threw you out on your own?” Her heart ached for her father.
“They did. But the younger sister found me. She had talked to Emmaline, and they’d worked out a deal. Emmaline would go away long enough to have the baby and save face. The family wouldn’t have to bear that embarrassment and social disgrace.When the baby was born, Emmaline, who didn’t want anything to do with motherhood, would give the baby to her sister. The sister suggested we marry so this child would have a family.”
He shook his head. “I still can’t quite fathom the depth of such love. And so, the baby stayed in the family. Emmaline went on with her selfish life. I became the father I so longed to be, and the sister, although I didn’t deserve her, became my wife.”
Katie’s heart raced. How had all that ended? Pa must have learned about her pending divorce and didn’t want her going through the same kind of pain. “Does Ma know about this marriage?”
“Allow me to finish.” Pa ran a hand through his thinning hair and breathed out a heavy sigh.
“Our plan worked except for the one factor we hadn’t counted on. Her parents were furious and wanted nothing to do with us, especially her mother. They said she’d made her own bed and could now lie in it. They allowed her to take her clothes, the few pieces of jewelry that had been given to her, and her hope chest with the things she’d collected for her wedding day.
“We had a meager start, although things were a little better after we sold the jewelry. We awaited the arrival of the baby with Emmaline in a town called Charlottesville while I took work on the railroad. Following the birth of the baby, we traveled to the Shenandoah Valley and started our new life here. I worked for other farmers until we could afford that small scrap of land we called our own.”
Confusion clouded her mind. What had happened to that wife, to that baby? She wanted to ask, but part of her…part of her feared the answer.
“Katie.” Pa leaned forward and lifted his eyes to look directly into hers. He took her hands. His were chilled and felt weak against hers. His soft brown eyes glistened with emotion. “You’re that baby girl.”
Katie blinked. A jumble of colliding thoughts tumbled over one another. It couldn’t be. What was he saying? “Ma is…my aunt?”
He nodded. “And Emmaline is your birth mother.”
Her mouth dropped open, yet she couldn’t shut it. His words fell like a rockslide, crushing all she knew to be true. Covering her. Choking her. Suffocation set in, and she had to work to breathe.
The weight of all the lies, of Ma’s unjust harshness, pressed in. “It…that…explains so much.” Memories swirled back. “That’s why she hated the way I looked.”
“She didn’t hate the way you looked, Katie. She feared that your beauty would take you down the same road it had taken her sister.”
Too many thoughts and emotions churned inside her, and Katie pushed up from the bed, clutching her wrapper tight around her chilled body. “Let me get this straight. I’ve been abandoned by my birth mother, and never loved by Ma the same as the others."
“She does love you. It’s the reason she refused to let this knowledge out. She always argued she had to protect you from Emmaline, knowing how wicked her sister was. She didn’t want Emmaline showing up, or you wanting to find her. You were her daughter.”
As nice as those words sounded, they didn’t match her experience. “Say whatever you want, but we both know how I was treated.”
