A House of Her Own 3

It was not long, only two weeks that seemed to be outside the ordinary frames of time and existence, holding only the two of them. sale Air Dancer Sneaking visits in High Park in the evenings when her aunt was with friends and Earnest’s training was over for the day.
The divine evening when Earnest wore his dress uniform and escorted her to the new Ballroom on the lakeshore. Emily sat on her front porch, looking west at the setting sun, remembering the lights and music, floating and reflecting off the surface of Lake Ontario. A magical time in a magical place; a heartbeat from the Real Life of job hunting for her and training for Earnest. So far removed in its own dreamlike orbit as to seem a dream itself.
It was while slow dancing to the music of an orchestra she never knew the name of, in a place that seemed more smoke than substance, that Earnest said, “Gee, Honey, why don’t we just get married? You don’t need to find any job that could keep you here in the big city, too far away from me!”
He stopped dancing, drew her by the hand back to their outdoor table. A breeze blew off Lake Ontario, ruffling the short curly bits of stray hair around Emily’s face, making a sweat damp tendril stick to her neck. Earnest plucked it off and blew on the side of her neck gently to cool her, making gooseflesh race all over Emily. She looked at their feet, unsure of herself and of him. The time they spent together flew like nothing she’d known, and their time apart crawled like a slow-moving beetle.
Earnest tilted her chin up, and then changed his mind and got down on one knee, taking her left hand in his. An officer and a gentleman before all else, Earnest raised his intended’s hand to his lips and placed a simple kiss. Didn’t matter that he wasn’t a very high up member of the Mounted Police; he had ambitions.
“Miss Emily,” he began, looking up at Emily. “I am sorry to have blurted out my intentions. I should have done this properly and all, talked to your parents and my parents and the preacher and all, but I just want to marry you, Emily. I want to take you home as my wife, because I love you, and I know I’ll always love you. I think I always have loved you, as crazy as that sounds...” He paused for a breath.
Emily’s heart was pounding. She was a deeply romantic girl, believed fully in love and destiny. She was literally swept off her feet by the surge of emotions swelling inside her chest - and other body parts Emily hadn’t paid much attention to before.
Before she could hear any misgivings her brain might conjure up, Emily listened to the pleadings of her heart and the demands of her body. She clapped her hands together in excitement as she answered, “Yes! Oh, Earnest, yes! Let’s find out what we have to do!”
Emily hadn’t thought far enough ahead to realize this life transition would include a new mother, a new woman in her life who had absolutely no desire to have a grown daughter, even if it was a daughter-in-law. Certainly not a rival female who made the other officers and men envious and lonelier than before, one who made them stand in line to get their names down for the next training session back East. One who took the attention of the men away from where it should be firmly riveted, in the older Mrs. Harding’s mind, on her!
Inside the larger house, just vacated by Earnest and Emily – thank God that whining little wretch was out from under her roof! – Nora Harding sat and contemplated the new undercurrents in her home. Or perhaps the lack of undercurrents would be a better way of looking at it.
She couldn’t believe her eyes last year when her young Ernie came home with a wife! Nora knew she shouldn’t let him go on that stupid training thing! But her husband insisted that if she wanted her son to rise up through the ranks - and in a growing frontier town at that, where there could be some real power to be had - she’d better bloody well let him do what he had to do! The ‘bloody’ shouted at the top of His Lordship’s lungs, just in case she’d suddenly come down with a case of deafness, Nora presumed.
Mr. Harding was not really a Lordship, but had the pretensions of one. He would have been, if not for the meaninglessness of being born a fifth son of a petty nobleman. Emigration to Canada had seemed preferable to Nigel Harding over penniless obscurity in dear old England. He often decried his circumstances, a mere hireling with a uniform. And a horse, if the beasts could only stay alive in this cursed climate! A far cry from the Lord of the Manor in a much more genteel existence than the one he and Nora endured in Canada.
Fort Calgary, this Godforsaken outpost they’d been assigned to when the Harding men answered a recruiting poster in the shipping office five years before, in London, left a lot to be desired. The Hardings seemed unable to completely acclimatize themselves to the altitude, about twenty five hundred feet above sea level. Or to the harsh extremes of temperature. Not fit for man nor beast; no wonder the bloody horses couldn’t stay alive!
The area was deceptive and treacherous weather-wise. A detail of men could set out early on a beautiful summer day for a rendezvous with outlying settlers, only to limp home, demoralized, in a driving blizzard a few hours later. No one knew how to deal with the weather this area dealt out. Extremes ranged from far below freezing in the winter - temperatures that make it impossible to draw a breath and take any benefit from it - to summer temperatures so hot it’s impossible to move an inch from the weight of the heat on the body.
But beautiful! Every moment, it was beautiful! And there was no crowding, no class definitions, no beggars on the streets or drunkards in the pubs. Just about everybody here seemed to be a hard working, deep thinking, progressive spirited individual. Nigel well knew how hard it was to find an individual under a uniform in peacetime. But he also knew how many young men, even older ones like himself, used the Northwest Mounted Police as a means to an end.
Sure, they did their job, but they also seemed to have underlying plans, most of these men. They were eager to make an impression, to keep order in the community and the countryside. But at the same time they were taking a look around, thinking about what part of that same countryside they’d like to own, what they would like to raise on the farmsteads and ranches they envisioned.
Behind the young couple’s back, Nigel and Nora had secretly cheered the young girl’s resolve to have her own house. They were relieved to have their own space back. They’d gotten used to the quiet of their home, just the two of them, when Earnest was back East for his training.
Nora’s open disapproval of the wife came from feelings she didn’t know how to control. She was not prepared to have her place in Earnest’s heart usurped so abruptly. She’d anticipated Earnest eventually finding a young woman, perhaps one of her friend’s daughters from England. Somehow the years passed too quickly; Earnest grew up far too soon, before she expected it or had a chance to accept the transition. She had no other children to stand in his place in her heart at the loss of this one.
Nora prayed to God daily that she would find an increase in patience for her daughter-in-law. But when she could see the need for acceptance and reassurance in the girl, she pushed her farther away instead of gathering her in. Nora knew this was not the right thing to do, but somehow she could not help herself. Not only had Emily come into her home and stolen her son, but her husband and any and all other men who were about could not keep their eyes away from Emily either. Nora’s well-kept and efficiently maintained good looks were no longer enough to awaken the men’s interest - not with Emily’s smoking, newly awakened sexuality among them.
It was not the girl’s fault men found her so remarkable, so desirable. There was a scarcity of women in and around Fort Calgary, unless one wanted to choose a native bride, and few had looked in that direction as yet. The Fort had only been in operation since 1888 – it was the same age as that girl out there! - carving a foothold for commerce and peaceful existence out of the former wilderness.