Memory's Embrace

by Linda Lael Miller

  Tess returned the thin woman’s stare with a baleful one of her own. “Just open the door, Juniper,” she pleaded tartly. “I’ll explain later.”

  “You sure as the devil will,” retorted the ascerbic Juniper, but she did open the door. “Lord ha’ mercy, will you look at this chile—hair flyin’ like a Jezebel’s—wearin’ pants—”

  “Oh, hush!” hissed Tess, embarrassed and curious beyond bearing about what might be taking place in Derora’s overdecorated parlor. What did she care if her aunt seduced that maniac, anyway? It would serve him right.

  But she did care. Oh, she did. Tears brimmed in Tess’s eyes as she remembered the way Joel Shiloh had looked at her aunt. He’d forgotten that Tess was even there, except to reach out and ruffle her hair, as though she were a gawky child.

  “You get to your room and put on somethin’ decent!” ordered Juniper, turning to an enormous bowl of batter and stirring furiously. “I swear I ain’t never seen such a chile—”

  “I’m not a child!” Tess shouted, and then she hurried across the kitchen, through the small dining room, and up the stairs to the second floor. As fast as she moved, she couldn’t help hearing Derora’s sensual, throaty laughter and the masculine timbre of Joel’s.

  In her small room, she put her camera carefully onto the bureau top and began tearing Joel Shiloh’s clothes off her body as though they were on fire. Damn him, damn Derora. Damn the whole world!

  The idea dawned, glowing and ignoble, as she was putting on her best satin camisole. The lecture! Of course! Tess Bishop was no child, and by George, she’d prove it. She would attend that lecture and she would listen as she had never listened before. And then she would adopt the philosophy of free love. Who could call her a child then?

  The water was gloriously hot, and Keith Corbin sank into it with a sigh of contentment, a cigar clenched between his teeth, his burned foot propped comfortably on the edge of the tub. This, indeed, was the life. All he needed now was a drink and a woman, and if he’d read the promises in Derora Beauchamp’s gypsy eyes correctly, he wouldn’t have to wait long for either.

  He shifted in the metal tub so that the water covered his aching shoulders and, with his teeth, tilted his cigar at a jaunty upright angle. “I knew a girl in Tillamachuck,” he sang around it, under his breath. “She couldn’t dance but she could—”

  Just then, the door of Derora Beauchamp’s well-equipped bathroom swung open. The little devil, thought Keith, with a grin.

  His cigar fell into the bathwater when Tess peered around the corner. “Oh, sorry,” she said, and she turned the color of watermelon pulp.

  Keith slid downward until the water covered his head, his strangled curses bubbling to the top. When he surfaced the door was closed, and Tess, of course, was gone. He fished his ruined cigar out and flung it against the wall.

  Maybe he wouldn’t take his pleasure with Derora after all, if Tess was going to be peeping around doors all the time. Hell, he’d find a brothel, a place where a man could buy a drink and be assured of some privacy.

  “Make up the bed in the west wing,” Derora said coldly, her eyes never quite meeting Tess’s. She took a chocolate from the box beside her chair and nibbled at it with her elegant teeth.

  The west wing. Tess would have laughed if she’d dared; since when did a converted passenger car qualify as a wing? “Yes, ma’am,” she said sweetly. “The front part of the car?”

  Derora flung her a scathing look. “Certainly not. The room at the rear.”

  Tess bit her lower lip. Her stomach was still quivering from her scandalous encounter with Joel Shiloh, only minutes before, in the upstairs bathroom. She hoped the crimson blush had faded from her face. “Mr. Wilcox is in that room,” she pointed out.

  “That sweaty millworker,” said Derora dismissively. “Yes. Well, just move his things. I want Mr. Shiloh to have the room at the back.”

  That way, Tess reasoned bitterly, Mr. Wilcox wouldn’t walk through and see his landlady cavorting with the new tenant. “But—”

  “Tess, just obey me. For once, just do as I tell you. And don’t think I’m going to let that little matter of your coming home in a man’s clothes pass unchallenged, either.”

  “I’m—”

  “If you tell me that you’re eighteen, Tess, I swear by all that’s holy that I’ll snatch you baldheaded. A young lady does not comport herself in that manner, no matter what her age.”

  “I was caught in the rain, that’s all. And my bicycle wheel was bent. Mr. Shiloh merely—”

  Derora’s gaze was on the ceiling now, and her lush lips curved into an anticipatory smile. She took another chocolate and ate it in a fashion that Tess found oddly indelicate. “Mr. Shiloh presented no danger to you, I’m sure. It would be my guess that he takes little note of bounding schoolgirls with their hair tumbling down their backs.”

  “Schoolgirls!” Tess protested. “I’m not—”

  “Tess, really.” Derora, who prized her figure, put the lid back on the candy box, not even looking at her niece. “Just go and do as I told you, please. And after that, I’d like you to help Jumper with tonight’s refreshments. We’re expecting a number of women to attend the lecture.”

  Tess sighed. She wondered what her aunt would say if she knew that her dear niece planned to attend, also. “Has Mrs. Hollinghouse-Stone arrived yet?” she asked, poised in the fringed parlor doorway.

  “She has,” replied Derora crisply, smoothing her sateen skirts. “That tiresome sheriff is forcing her to apply for a permit to address us. Can you believe it? And in a country where free speech is so prized.”

  Simpkinsville, for all its brothels and saloons, had a conservative quarter. A certain segment of its population didn’t take kindly to some of the lectures that took place in Mrs. Derora Beauchamp’s front parlor. They hadn’t minded the spiritualist, though, or the round, earnest little man who had demonstrated the dying art of phrenology. Tess grinned, patting her hair, which she had carefully pinned atop her head in order to look more grown up.

  She supposed free love was quite a different kettle of fish from summoning the dear departed—to her great disappointment, none of that elusive group had shown up—or determining someone’s most intimate nature by feeling the bumps on their head.

  Yes, indeed, she thought, as she made her way into the “west wing,” there was an interesting night ahead.

  Mr. Wilcox had few belongings, fortunately, just a Bible and a shaving kit and a “bindle,” the bedroll carried by all itinerant timber workers. Tess moved all these things into the front part of the car, which had been partitioned off from the rear, hoping that he wouldn’t mind too much. Though Derora had been quite correct in referring to Arthur Wilcox as a “sweaty millworker,” he was still a very nice man, quiet and polite. He’d paid Tess two dollars to take his likeness with her camera and then mailed the sepia-tinted result back East, to a girl he hoped to marry.

  Tess smiled, stripping the sheets from his bed, remembering the shy, delighted way he’d posed. It was a shame to put him out like this, and all for a drummer who didn’t have any more sense than to stand in campfires and leap into creeks when he didn’t know how deep they were. Her smile faded and she worked with hasty, angry motions, putting fresh linen onto the bed that would be Joel Shiloh’s.

  That done, she dusted swiftly. She’d been very late getting back, thanks to that broken bicycle wheel and the rainstorm, and Juniper would be working herself into a state in the kitchen, trying to get dinner and prepare refreshments for the lecture guests as well.

  In the hallway, still lined with windows although the train seats had, of course, been removed, she encountered Joel. He smelled of soap and cigar smoke, and his clothes were clean, his hair neatly brushed. He had even shaved.

  Tess meant to scurry past him but instead she stopped cold, her stomach and heart waltzing with each other, forcing the breath from her lungs as they twirled, entwined.

  “Are you planning to attend tonight’s le
cture?” she heard herself ask, with a dignity she wouldn’t have thought she could manage.

  His wonderful, arrogant mouth lifted at one side, in a half-grin. “To hear of the wonders of free love? Not hardly.”

  “Mrs. Hollinghouse-Stone is a fine speaker,” Tess said, in lofty reply. “She was here last month. She spoke about suffrage—”

  That wry, partial grin lingered, spreading to his eyes. “A subject dear to my mother’s heart,” he said quietly. “Not to mention those of my renegade sistersin-law.”

  Tess wanted to ask about his mother and his sistersin-law, about his entire family, but she didn’t dare. She’d already learned that the topic was off limits. Besides, her throat was so tight that she couldn’t have gotten a word past it anyway.

  “Do you believe women should vote, Miss Bishop?” he teased, his voice deep and quiet, his powerful body awakening, by its very nearness, something that had slept secretly within Tess.

  She stepped back. “Yes,” she managed to reply.

  “And free love? Do you practice that?”

  Tess’s heart spun out of its dance with her stomach and careened off her windpipe. “Of course,” she lied, in a very shaky voice. How was she going to get past Joel Shiloh, in this dratted, narrow hallway, without touching him?

  He looked surprised and more than a little angry; in fact, some of the color drained away from beneath his tan. “You’re not serious?” he breathed.

  Tess drew a deep breath. In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought. She tried to remember what her aunt had said, at dinner the night before, about the philosophy in question. “Oh, yes,” she said, feeling worldly. “How can there be wars if everyone—if everyone—”

  He folded his arms, arched one dark-gold eyebrow, and waited.

  “If everyone loves each other,” she finished, with breathless triumph.

  “Love takes many different forms,” Joel pointed out, and he looked very displeased. “Are we talking about the same expression of that worthy emotion, Miss Bishop?”

  Tess wanted to die, but she couldn’t back out now or she would look the fool. She would again be a child in this man’s eyes, and she couldn’t bear that. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “I believe we are, Mr. Shiloh.”

  “In that case, I ought to take you across my knee,” came the infuriating response. And he made no move to step out of the way, so that she could pass.

  “I invite you to try, Mr. Shiloh,” she replied, with cold politeness. “If you do, I promise to bite off part of your thigh while you’re at it.”

  He threw back his head and shouted with laughter, and Tess jumped, startled.

  “P-Please,” she said, when her racing heartbeat had settled to a pace that allowed her to speak. “Let me by. I must help Juniper with supper and the refreshments—”

  He stepped aside then, his broad chest still shaking with amusement, but when she tried to squeeze by him, he suddenly shifted his weight, trapping her against the windows of the converted railroad car. Her breasts were crushed against him, and suddenly it seemed that her insides were melting down to form a throbbing pool in the depths of her femininity.

  “Mr. Shiloh—” she whispered, half in protest and half in pleasure. So this was what it was like, the weight of a man’s body! What a frightening, delightful pressure it was.

  His hands rose to cup her face and tilt it upward and her hair, hastily pinned, fell about her shoulders in gleaming brown cascades. His mouth came tentatively to her own, tasting and nibbling and then, with breathtaking swiftness, devouring.

  Tess responded as instinct commanded, letting his lips mold hers, parting them for the tender and then fierce conquering of his tongue. She had been kissed once before, behind the bandstand at the Independence Day picnic, but it certainly hadn’t been anything like this ….

  As suddenly as he had taken her, Joel Shiloh thrust her away. His jawline was tight with annoyance, and the brisk swat of his left hand stung Tess’s pride more than her derriere.

  She glared up at him for a moment, insulted and hurt, and then stooped to gather up her hairpins, which lay on the floor of the passageway.

  Tess was so angry that tears burned in her eyes, making it next to impossible to find her hair pins. And he was just standing there, so tall and imperious, too self-important to help her.

  Her bottom still stung where he had swatted her. The nerve … the gall of him ….

  Before she realized what she was doing, Tess lunged forward and sank her teeth into his left thigh. He howled in surprise and pain, and Tess let him go, scrambled to her feet, and ran down the passageway as fast as she could go.

  He caught her easily, and she thought her heart would stop beating when his hand closed over her shoulder, tight as a vice, and swung her around. It did not occur to her to scream.

  “You little—” he began, his azure eyes flashing with some dangerous emotion.

  “I told you I would bite you and I did!” Tess blurted out, in a hissing rush. “I am not a child and I will not be treated as one!”

  Though he was struggling against it, a grin was tugging at one corner of his mouth. “No,” he said hoarsely. “You are not a child.”

  Tess smoothed her skirts and her dignity. “Then you’re sorry for striking me,” she assumed.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Tess was maddened. “Why, you—”

  “I can’t believe you seriously expect an apology,” he broke in, in an evil undertone, “when you bit me like that.”

  “I bit you after you struck me!”

  “A minor point, Miss Bishop. Now get out of here before I lose my temper!”

  More than happy to comply, Tess turned and swept away in high dudgeon, chin up, shoulders back.

  In the kitchen, Juniper was prattling as usual, but Tess barely heard her. All she could think about was that drummer and the way he’d pressed his body to hers, the way he’d kissed her. And the way he’d thrust her away, as if in disgust, and then swatted her! What reason had he had for doing that?

  Peeling carrots with swift strokes of a paring knife, Tess blushed to remember the way she had bitten him. The way he’d howled.

  “Stop that right now afore you cut yourself!” snapped Juniper, grasping Tess’s hand and staying the motion of the paring knife. “What’s the matter with you, girl?”

  Unaccountable tears sprang up in Tess’s eyes and flowed down her face, dropping off into the fragrant curls of carrot peelings. She had bitten that man, bitten him. Like an animal. “I don’t know, Juniper,” she wailed. “I don’t know!”

  For all of the older woman’s complaining, Juniper loved Tess, and she lifted a practiced hand to the young woman’s forehead to check for fever.

  “You’s a little warm,” she fretted.

  Tess was warm, all right, but not because of any fever. Thanks to that scandalous scene with Joel Shiloh, in the passageway, she felt like a candle left too close to a stove.

  “I’m all right, Juniper,” she insisted, sniffling a little and trying to brush away her tears with an anxious motion of one hand. “Honestly, I am.”

  Juniper was not easily convinced. “It ain’t that time, is it? If it’s your misery, girl, you just get yourself off to bed and—”

  It was a misery, all right, but not the kind that Juniper was suggesting. “It isn’t that,” Tess declared, taking up the carrot she had been slashing at and peeling it in a way meant to suggest that she was competent to handle a knife.

  Reluctantly, Juniper let the subject drop and went back to her own work, which was considerable.

  At dinner, Mr. Wilcox was in attendance, along with Miss Shaeffer, the schoolteacher, and Mr. Johnston, the bookkeeper at the mill. Mrs. Hollinghouse-Stone, a reed-thin woman with a wart jutting out of her one long eyebrow and a wig that had seen better days, sat in the place of honor, beside Derora. Mr. Joel Shiloh was nowhere in sight, which was just as well, as far as Tess was concerned.

  Maybe he’d thought better
of taking a room in Simpkinsville, maybe he’d gotten back in his wagon and driven away, never to be seen—or bitten—again.

  Tess pushed her boiled carrots around her plate with the prongs of her fork, miserable in a way that was completely new to her. Lord knew, she’d known misery when her mother had drifted into quiet madness, misery when her letters to her father had gone unanswered, misery when she had realized that Derora Beauchamp, her mother’s only sister, would tolerate her but never love her. But this was something different, this feeling she had now, had had since meeting Joel Shiloh that morning. It was a sweet, piercing sort of anguish and she knew instinctively that the malady was going to get considerably worse before it got better.

  If it ever got better.

  Chapter Three

  ALONE IN HIS RENTED ROOM, KEITH TOOK THE CHAIN FROM around his neck and caught the gold band suspended from it between his thumb and index finger. Inscribed inside were the ironic words, “Forever and ever. Amelie.”

  He let the ring and chain sink into his palm, closed his fingers, and sat down on the edge of his bed. How short forever could be. How very, very short.

  Sounds from the main part of the house indicated that the lecture was about to begin; buggies and wagons had been pulling up out front for over half an hour. Keith smiled and shook his head and rubbed the sore place on his thigh, where Tess had bitten him.

  His smile faded. The bite was something he could live with; in a way, he’d deserved it. But the idea of Tess Bishop practicing free love was another matter. Good Lord, she couldn’t be serious, could she? She couldn’t actually believe that the problems of the world would be solved by so fatuous and simple-minded a concept?

  She could. She was only eighteen years old, younger than his starry-eyed sister, Melissa. She was naive, gullible, a succulent fruit ripe for the plucking.

  A tremendous rage surged through Keith, sent him rocketing to his feet. His head felt bloodless and light and his stomach churned—to think, just to think, of Tess giving herself to every Tom, Dick, and Harry, and all for the sake of some crack-brained philosophy!