Читать книгу Ruthless Heart - Emma Lang - Страница 5

August 1872

Eliza squinted at the numbers she’d noted in her journal and cursed her poor eyesight. She’d left the data alone for two solid days and could not for the life of her remember what she’d written. There was no help for it, she’d have to ask for help, a dangerous proposition to be sure.

She pushed the glasses up on her nose and sighed. Her sister Angeline was the only one she trusted to assist her. If their papa caught her performing experiments again, the rage would be unimaginable. One of the reasons she was up at three o’clock in the morning checking on the data.

A knock at the door startled her, and she nearly fell off the bed. Eliza shoved the notebook under the blanket along with the pencil and hoped it was Angeline out there, because there was no way she’d be able to hide the potato peeler she’d built last week.

Eliza made it to the door without tripping over anything in her path, not the first time but certainly a rare occasion. Just as she reached it, someone knocked again, this time in a staccato rhythm as if telling her to hurry up.

She pressed her ear against the door.

“Who is it?” she asked in a harsh whisper.

“It’s me. Open the door.”

Her sister Angeline had been blessed with everything that had not been bestowed upon Eliza. Where Eliza was plain, dark hair, dark blue eyes, average height, terrible eyesight, Angeline was tall, blond, willowy, simply stunning in her beauty at seventeen.

Eliza opened the door, and Angeline darted in wearing her nightdress, her hair in a big braid. Her eyes were swollen and red as if she’d been crying. The girls had been very close when they were young, and then as they grew older and Eliza was shunned by the other children in their ward, they grew apart. Eliza had been reading scientific books and journals, no less, which warranted painfully severe punishment. She learned to hide her passion, but the damage had been done to her status in the community. She was an outsider even in her own home.

Angeline coming to her room in the night could be dangerous for both of them, yet Eliza did love her sister. From the look of her, she needed help.

“What’s the matter?”

Angeline opened her mouth and closed it, then folded her arms across her chest and shook her head. It was a parody of something. “Josiah has made an offer for me.”

Eliza couldn’t stop her mouth from dropping open. “Josiah? The Josiah who already has two wives, who’s older than Papa? That Josiah?”

Angeline nodded jerkily. “I don’t know what to do. I must be obedient. I must do as Papa says, but I was so hoping Jonathan would make it back from his mission and offer for me.”

Angeline and her beloved Jonathan had been inseparable as children. A few years older than her, he’d gone off to fulfill his mission before coming back to the ward and marrying, which was the way of the followers of Latter-day Saints, what she referred to as LDS. Some people called them Mormons, after Brigham Young and his ideals. Regardless of what they were called, Eliza did not follow the LDS beliefs. Angeline sat down on the bed and for the first time noticed the contraption on the floor.

“Oh, Eliza, if Papa catches you…”

Eliza knelt on the floor in front of her sister. “Forget that. We can’t help who we are, we can’t help who we love.” She took her clammy hands, her heart breaking right along with Angeline’s. “What did Papa tell Josiah?”

Angeline’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “What do you think he told him? He accepted. We’re to be married. Eliza, I…I have to be obedient and listen to what Papa says, but my heart belongs to Jonathan.” Tears coursed down her cheeks in the path left by the dozens before them.

Although it had been years since they’d sat side by side and shared secrets, Eliza finally realized it had been her choice to stay away from Angeline. Maybe to shield her younger sister from the ridicule heaped upon Eliza. Now Angeline needed her.

Eliza sat on the bed beside her sister and put her arm around her. “What can I do?”

Angeline looked at her with great sadness in her blue eyes. “You’re already doing it.”

“What am I doing?”

“You’re being my sister again. I’ve missed you, Eliza.”

This time it was Eliza who began to cry, knowing that Angeline was fated to be third wife to a man high in the LDS community, a man who wielded power, a man not to cross. None of it mattered. She’d do her best to stop Angeline’s impending wedding.