The Bad Luck Wedding Dress (35 page)

Silence hung between them, then Tye added, “She’s your daughter in every way that counts, Trace. I want you to know neither she nor anyone else will ever hear any differently from me.”

Trace studied his brother’s face and admitted to himself he knew in his heart that Tye spoke the truth. Relief coursed through him, washing away his fears and turning his knees to water. He’d been prepared to fight. Hell, he’d been ready to wage a damned war. Instead, his brother waved surrender before the first shot was fired, and the six long years of fear dissolved like sugar in lemonade.

Tye waited expectantly, but Trace didn’t know what to say. Besides, he knew if he tried to speak right now his voice was likely to crack like young Casey Tate’s. Under the circumstances, that would embarrass him like hell, so he nodded once and turned to leave.

His hand was on the doorknob when his brother’s voice stopped him. “Trace, about that putting back together I mentioned? I’d like to talk about Constance.”

Trace snapped to attention. “No need for that.”

“There is a need,” Tye insisted. “I need to say I’m sorry, so goddamned sorry. There is no excuse for what I did. I don’t know why—”

“Forget it.” His knuckles blanched white from the force of his grip on the doorknob. Trace swallowed hard before saying, “Let’s just put it behind us. We need to let go of the past.”

Yearning filled Tye’s voice. “And the future? What does the future hold for us? Can you ever forgive me?”

Forgiveness. The all-important question. Trace’s thoughts went to Jenny and the love she’d brought into his life, the lessons her love had taught him. He turned around. “Can I forgive you?” he repeated.

He walked over to the bed and touched his brother’s arm. “I already have, Tye. I already have.”

BY AFTERNOON the sun had chased the worst of the chill from the air and made the back stoop a warm, welcoming place to sit. Jenny had sent Emma there to shell peas, hoping the backyard swing would lure the girl and distract her from her worries.

She must be fretful over the conversation she’d overheard between her new mother and her father pertaining to Katrina, Jenny realized. From the moment the doctor had left, the child had been underfoot, requesting one chore after the other. When Jenny had mentioned the problem to Trace, he’d confessed his own concerns and declared he’d not allow a twelve-year-old to put him off any longer. Jenny observed from the kitchen doorway as he approached Emma and asked, “How about that licorice, princess?”

Jenny was dismayed, but not surprised, when Emma shook her head. “I can’t Papa; I’m sorry. I told Mama I’d help her.”

“Your mama won’t mind,” he replied with assurance, giving his wife a wink. “We’ll bring her back a piece of candy and that’ll square everything. I have an important errand to run and I’d like to have you with me.”

“Errand?” Jenny asked.

“The house,” he said significantly. “I need to cancel something.”

“Oh.” Jenny remembered. He’d started to sell Willow Hill. “You’d best hurry, Trace. I don’t want anything to interfere with that particular errand.” Glancing at Emma, she added, “Except for a detour to the candy store. I’ve a real craving for licorice today.”

“Bring me back some, too, would your’ Tye asked from the backyard.

Both Jenny and Trace glanced up in surprise. “What are you doing out of bed, Uncle?” Emma asked worriedly.

“Just enjoying the sunshine, honey,” he replied. Stepping closer, he sought his brother’s gaze and added with a chastising grin, “A house this fancy should have indoor facilities, Mr. Architect.”

Trace shrugged. “The house is ready. The city is the hold up. The Fort Worth Water Department figures to dig out this far next spring. If you want to come for Christmas, I reckon our hospitality will be more hospitable.” He looked at Jenny and added, “That reminds me, I have a case full of money to return to a man. Don’t let me forget to do it today.”

Pleasure at the invitation shone in Tye’s face as he nodded, and Jenny would have jumped for joy were she not so concerned about Emma.

Sitting beside his daughter on the stoop, Trace asked, “Emmie, what’s the matter? I can tell you have something on your mind. Talk to your old papa, would you?”

She shook her head, almost frantically snapping peas.

“How about if Uncle Tye and your mother give us a little privacy? Would that make it easier? Do you want your mother to leave, Emmie?”

“I don’t want my mama to ever leave!” Emma cried, the bowl sliding from her lap.

Trace caught it before a single pea spilled. As he set it safely to the side, Emma’s hands began to tremble. Then her shoulders began to shake, and soon she was shuddering as tears rolled down her cheeks. She threw herself into her father’s arms. “I thought I’d killed her, Papa. Just like last time. I didn’t mean to do it, I promise I didn’t. Fairy’s promise. I’d never hurt Mama. Never!”

What in the world?
Jenny was astonished. So too was Trace, judging by the look he threw in her direction.

Trace set Emma away from him and gazed into her face. “I don’t understand, Emmie. What do you mean just like last time?”

“Last time,” she wailed. “My mother. My other mother.” She gasped for breath between her sobs.

Trace pulled her into his lap, staring helplessly at Jenny, and then at Tye. Holding her tightly, he asked, “Sweetie? What are you talking about?”

Her voice was a thin wail. “It was just like before. I was in the passageway, and I heard you and Mama talking about Katrina’s lie.”

“Katrina’s lie?”

“The one about her being Uncle Tye’s daughter and not yours. It was just like the other time when that funny-talking man and Mother talked about the lie. I told her I’d been listening. Then she went away forever. MissFortune, I mean Mama, went away yesterday! Right after I told her I’d been listening.” Sobbing, she buried her face against Trace’s shoulder.

“Emma, calm down. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

“I wanted to tell Mama it was a lie, but she didn’t understand. She said to wait for you. Then when she didn’t come home, I remembered. That’s why I hated the passageway. I told my mother what I’d done and she got mad. She hit me, Papa, and I wished she wasn’t my mother. I wished she’d go away. I killed her! It’s all my fault. I thought I’d killed Mama, too.”

Jenny’s heart was breaking. Her mother hit her? Constance hit her own child?

“Oh, baby.” Anguish shimmered in Trace’s eyes as he gestured for Jenny to come sit beside him. He rocked his daughter, slowly stroking her auburn plaits as he spoke firmly, but with a hint of tears in his voice. “No, Emmaline Suzanne, it doesn’t work that way. You cannot wish a person dead. You are not responsible. Your mother died in an accident, and you had nothing to do with it.”

“I was there when it happened, Emma,” Tye said softly, his own tormented expression a duplicate of his brother’s. “It was a horrible accident, but it had nothing to do with you. Don’t think that.”

The little girl looked up at her father. “Is that true? Really?”

“Have I ever lied to your’

She nodded. “You told us you don’t indulge in strong drink, but I’ve smelled it on your breath.”

Trace winced. “I guess that teaches me, doesn’t it? But listen to me, princess. I’m not lying this time, fairy’s promise. You are absolutely, positively not responsible in anyway for anything that happened to your mother—good or bad.”

She studied his face with a seriousness beyond her years, and slowly, belief transformed her expression. Trace sighed. “You’ve thought this all these years?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you talk to me about it? It tears me up to think of your worrying about this.” Trace hugged her hard.

“I’m sorry, Papa.”

“No,” he said fiercely. “You stop being sorry, do you hear? You may be my little thinker, but you needn’t think you’re responsible for the entire world. Right now, all you’re responsible for is—” he paused, gesturing toward the bowl, “those peas.”

“The peas!” Emma exclaimed, scrambling from his lap. “We’d best get them on to boil, Mama, or Katrina will be downstairs trying to talk you out of having them. I worked hard to shell them. I want to eat them tonight”

Smiling, Jenny stood and held out her hand. “Come along then, Emmie. I happen to know there’s a pot on my stove just clamoring for peas.”

They started up the steps when Tye said, “Wait a minute. Emma, can I ask you a question? You said you wanted to tell your Mama about Katrina’s lie?”

She nodded.

“And the lie is that I’m Katrina’s father?”

Again, she nodded.

“How do you know it’s a lie, Emma?”

“ ‘Cause I heard Mother say it.”

Trace’s gaze sought Jenny’s as Tye prodded their daughter again. “Whom did she say it to?” he asked.

“That funny-talking man.”

“Can you remember exactly what she said, honey?”

Emma shrugged. “That was a long time ago, Uncle. I was very little. All I really remember is how mean her voice sounded. It scared me.”

“Your mother sounded mean?”

“I’d forgotten until I went in Willow Hill’s secret passageway. That’s what made me remember. It was her laugh that was so awful, you see. She laughed when she said she couldn’t wait to see the look on my papa’s face when she told him Uncle Tye had made the baby. She said it would destroy him to believe his daughter wasn’t really his, and that he deserved to believe a lie.”

Trace had grown very still. He stared intently at a beetle, crawling in the dirt near the bottom of the stoop. Jenny laid her hand on his shoulder. His muscles were as hard as steel. “What else, Emma?” she asked gently. “Do you remember anything else they said?”

She shrugged. “Something about a brilliant plan and lots of money. She said Papa should have stayed out of politics.” After a moment’s pause, she added, “I was so scared. When the funny-talking man left, I tried to ask her not to destroy Papa. Then she hit me. That’s when I wished she wasn’t my mother. That’s all I remember.” She opened the kitchen door. “We’d best hurry, Mama. Katrina’s bound to wake up from her nap any minute.”

“Certainly.” Jenny’s eyes were misty as she leaned over and pressed a kiss to her husband’s head before going inside.

“I’ll be right there,” Trace said hoarsely.

He watched the beetle disappear into a tuft of green weeds, then looked at his brother. Tye’s expression was similar to one he’d worn during the war in the aftermath of battle. Trace figured his own countenance must appear the same.

“It was all a setup,” Tye said bitterly. “She set me up, and I fell for it.”

“Why did she do it?” Trace asked, knowing but not believing.

“The money, of course. The inheritance went to the eldest child of the eldest child. It was a lot of money, a whole lot. Good old Cousin Lord Howard’s finder’s fee was probably enough to set him up for life. I’m eight minutes older than you. If Constance wanted that money, she had to go through me to get it. And I toppled like a rotten tree to her wicked intrigues.”

Trace’s voice trembled as he said, “Katrina is really mine.”

Tye stooped and scooped a rock off the ground with his uninjured arm. He threw it hard, grimacing in pain. “I didn’t get her pregnant the night of the ball, because
you’d
already done it. Howard told me the baby had been born a few weeks early, that she was little and sickly.”

Trace shook his head. “Kat was the biggest of our babies.”

“
Your
babies.” Tye’s voice cracked on the words. He cleared his throat before continuing. “There it is. I gotta tell you, brother, the notion tears at my heart. I love her, too, you know. Even though I never laid eyes on her until I knocked on your front door a couple of weeks ago, I’ve loved her since the moment I learned she existed. But she’s not mine, after all. She’s yours.

“Katrina is your daughter.”

JENNY FOUND Trace in the extra bedroom she had adapted as a workroom. In one corner stood a dressmaker’s form, and upon it hung The Bad Luck Wedding Dress. Seeing the gown, she said a quick, silent prayer for the health and happiness of Big Jack Bailey’s new grandson. It was the least she could do, she thought. In a crazy way, Big Jack had brought immeasurable joy to the McBride family.

Trace stood before the dress. He was fingering the pearls. She wondered if his thoughts were similar to hers.

“Trace?”

He looked over at her, and the expression in his eyes twisted her heart. Grief. All-consuming, soul-wrenching grief. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Me. I’m wrong. I’ve been wrong. I’ve been a goddamn fool. It doesn’t matter. All these years, it’s been my guiding force. I ran because of it. I ached because of it. I wouldn’t trust because of it. If not for you being who you are, I’d have denied my daughters a mother because of it.”

She went to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “What is it, darling?”

“It is the seed that gave my daughter life. It took all of this for me to learn that it simply doesn’t matter. I’ve always been Katrina’s father. Hell, the king of England could have sired the child, but I’d still be her father. Always. It truly doesn’t matter.”

He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I have you to thank for my leap of understanding, you realize.”

Jenny smiled up at him. “Me and the Bad Luck Wedding Dress.”

The pain disappeared from his eyes, replaced by a glow of love so fierce it took her breath away. “No, not the Bad Luck Wedding Dress. Wilhemina Peters was right about that.”

“Right about what?”

“This dress is special, but we were too blind to see it- It never has been the Bad Luck Wedding Dress, Jenny. It’s been good luck right from the start. It’s the Good Luck Wedding Dress.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb and asked in a gravelly voice, “Wear it for me, treasure, would you? Now. Right now? Tonight?”

Jenny turned and locked the door. “You want me to model my design, Mr. McBride?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“I’m not a model, you understand.” She undid the buttons down the bodice of her dress. “I’m a dressmaker.”

“A very fine dressmaker,” he said. “And an even finer figure of a woman.”

She pulled her gown off her shoulders. “That’s right. I’m a fine dressmaker. An excellent dressmaker. A master, in fact.”