“Oh, that,” Emmy waved dismissively. “He didn’t mean all that. He was just mad. But mad is good. Am I right, Ian? It’s like you told me before. Always stoic, never really emotional? Anger he can work out. ”
Ian shrugged still staring down at the woman he had lived as husband and wife with for ten years. Her plea had touched his heart, but his brother had made a valid point. She had made the choice that had brought his brother the greatest misery. How could he forgive her for that? “You lied to me.” His voice was low and pained.
“My father forced me into it, Ian,” Dory reached out a pleading hand to her husband and stifled a sob when he ignored it and turned away. “I never wanted to marry Connor. I loved you the moment I met you. But he beat me, made me do it.”
“But you came back here and perpetuated a lie for ten years. You saw how it had affected Connor! Why had you never told him that Heather had died?” he questioned. “You could have at least done that for him.”
“I don’t know,” she whimpered.
“Damn you for what you have done to us. For what you have made us.”
Emmy had been feeling awkward in the face of their marital argument and considered slipping out when a tingling of a thought caught her. “Let’s not go crazy here. I’m not a lawyer by any means, but I think your mutual souls are going to be just fine.”
“What do you mean?” Dory sniffed.
“I mean that I’m about ninety-nine percent certain that you are not a bigamist,” Emmy expounded.
“What?” the pair chorused in unison.
“Emmy, what are you getting at?” Ian asked.
Emmy’s mind raced. “I mean I don’t know how the law works here but… Let me ask you this, Dory, when you married Connor, what name did you use?”
“Heather’s,” Dory whispered.
“The priest said something like ‘do you Heather…”
“Aye,” Ian offered. “He said Emeline Heather Stuart. Why?”
“And Dory said?”
“I just said ‘Yes.”
“Right!” Emmy clapped her hands together. “And when you signed the marriage certificate, you signed it…how?”
Dory and Ian exchanged a long look that spoke of their decade together. A conversation without words in spite of the present state of affairs. “With Heather’s name just as Father forced me to,” she frowned. “I think he was quite mad, you know.”
“Well, I think he was quite committing fraud,” Emmy responded watching as Ian caught on to her line of thinking. “What is the legal age of consent here?”
“The legal age of consent?” Dory echoed in confusion.
“What age do you have to be to make your own decisions legally?” Emmy clarified.
“Twenty-one,” Ian said quietly. “And she was eighteen when they wed…or not even that, were you? Just short?”
“Yes, but Emmy I don’t see where this makes any difference at all,” Dory argued. “I still said ‘I do’ to two men without benefit of a divorce or an annulment.”
“No, that might not legally be how it happened at all! Don’t you see?” When Dory continued to stare at Ian in bewilderment, her husband scowled at her. “Come on, Dory! I know you are brighter than this! Think!”
Dory leaned her head back against the pillows in fatigue. “I am so tired. Emmy, please do the thinking for me.”
“Duh, you were never legally married to Connor at all!”
“What?!” Dory cried out in pain again as her body contracted in shock.
“What did I tell you? Lie still!” Emmy commanded. “God, I wish I had something to give you for the pain. There is no way I’m letting you take that opium either, so don’t ask.”
“Its laudanum,” Dory whispered in pain, “and my maid snuck some to me last night.”
“Don’t do it again,” the doctor in Emmy urged. “The opium will go straight into your breast milk and then straight into your babies.”
“I have already hired a wet nurse,” Dory flushed then waved her away. “Just tell me what you said about me never marrying Connor.”
“Unless I’m completely wrong and I don’t think I am,” Emmy repeated, “you were never legally married to Connor at all.”
“How is that possible?”
“Its fraud and coercion on your father’s part,” Ian told her and for a moment a flash of relief crossed his faced. “Minors cannot sign contracts, they aren’t legally responsible even if they do, plus you didn’t even use your real name. I’m pretty damn sure the marriage to Connor was null and void.”
“Yes, I think so,” Emmy agreed and squealed as Ian crushed her to him and planted a firm kiss on her mouth.
“Em, my God I am glad you are here!”
“Thanks,” Emmy reeled back into a chair and blinked up at him. Glad you are here? Was this another role she had been meant to play? Bringing the truth to light? Giving them closure to the past? Dare she say it? A second chance? Was it possible that everything Donell had said not just a huge pile of horseshit?
Dory smiled weakly at her husband. “Do you really think so?”
“Perhaps,” he pondered the situation for a moment. “I don’t know if our marriage is legal however. Em?”
Shaking off the realizations that had stunned her to silence, Emmy shrugged trying to remember anything she might have learned from decades of TV law shows, but came up blank. If Donell had wanted to get this one right, why hadn’t he sent in a lawyer? “You got me. All I can think is that even if the marriage to Connor was legal, it would have been with Heather not Dory. Like a proxy wedding, right?”
“Perhaps,” Ian rubbed his chin. “It could be just the opposite though. Or perhaps there was never a marriage at all if it was not consummated. I’ll need to see our solicitor then. I do not want my sons to be considered bastards.”
A cry of despair escaped Dory’s lips, but Ian gave her no pity. “If you had come back and told the truth you could have
