Memory's Embrace

by Linda Lael Miller

  Emma was gaping at her, Tess knew that without looking. “What?!” she hissed. “Tess Bishop, you never told me that before!”

  “There are a lot of things I’ve never told you,” Tess responded evenly. “Now, hush up and watch the show!”

  And what a show it was. It began with a colorful song and dance number, the music supplied by a small orchestra seated on a balcony at the back of the salon, with Roderick Waltam as the central performer. He sang and played a banjo quite creditably, his face painted black, while a bevy of women in similar makeup danced and sang all around him.

  Following that was a Parisian number—surely these were different players, for there had not been time for them to change their costumes and remove their greasepaint—and then a skinny little man in a plaid suit and a bowler hat comically like Joel Shiloh’s came out onto the stage and told stories that made the women titter and the men guffaw.

  And after the jokester came a woman dressed in glowing velvet and wearing pearls in her hair. She was Anne Boleyn, locked in the Tower of London, facing her imminent execution with a bemused sort of valor that brought tears to Emma’s eyes, and to Tess’s.

  The doomed queen received three curtain calls, along with several coarse proposals from the back of the salon, and the audience did not like parting with her. They were of a somewhat grudging mind when a perfectly groomed Roderick reappeared, without his greasepaint and cotton eyebrows, to sing a series of touching Irish ballads.

  His voice was a clear, heart-wrenching tenor, and one look at Emma told Tess that if this showboat didn’t chug away down the Columbia soon, there would be trouble of a serious nature.

  As the lights came up, indicating that the show was over, the applause was thunderous. Tess clapped halfheartedly, watching Emma instead of the players taking their bows. She had decided to enlighten her friend, with regards to Roderick Waltam, and was just opening her mouth to do so, when a heavy hand fell upon her shoulder.

  Tess turned, startled, and looked up into the face of Mr. Wilcox, the millworker who boarded at Derora’s.

  “Miss Bishop,” he began, drawing his hand back at the sudden realization that he’d taken an improper liberty. “Miss Bishop, I brought a message for you, from Juniper. She says come home, right away quick, because Mrs. Beauchamp’s done hurt herself and she’s askin’ for you.”

  Tess swallowed hard, bolted to her feet. “How badly is my aunt hurt, Mr. Wilcox? What happened to her?”

  Sympathy moved in Mr. Wilcox’s face, gentling his coarse features somewhat. “I don’t think it’s real bad, Miss Bishop—there’s a lot of carrying on, though, that’s for sure. Near as I could tell, Mrs. Beauchamp fell down some stairs and twisted one ankle.”

  For all the quiet antipathy that kept Tess and her aunt at an emotional distance from each other, Tess was frightened and worried. “Come on,” she said to Emma, impatiently. “We have to go.”

  Emma chose then, of all times, to be stubborn. “Not me. I’m staying.”

  “Emma Hamilton, I have no time to argue with you! You come with me or I swear I’ll send word to your papa that you’re here!”

  Emma folded her arms. “Do your worst, Tess Bishop. I’m seventeen years old and I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. If you tell my papa, just don’t expect to call yourself my friend ever again.”

  Tess had no time, or patience, to stand there arguing with Emma, and no desire to lose the only real friend she had. “Promise me that you’ll stay away from that actor!” she pleaded, and then she rushed out of the salon, Mr. Wilcox clearing the way through the crowd ahead of her. She hadn’t been able to extract a vow from Emma; she would just have to trust the fates to watch over the little idiot.

  Derora was pale and pinched, her swollen ankle propped up on a stack of pillows. At the sight of Tess, she ordered the fluttering Juniper out of her chambers.

  “Are you all right?” Tess asked, standing beside the bed where her aunt was ensconced like an ailing queen. “What on earth happened?”

  “I tripped on the stairs and fell,” was Derora’s composed, if slightly hushed, reply. “And, my dear, it couldn’t have happened at a worse time!”

  As far as Tess was concerned, there was no such thing as a good time to fall down a flight of stairs, but she sensed from her aunt’s manner that it would be unwise to express that opinion or any other. “How can I help you?” she asked softly.

  Derora smiled, reached out to clasp Tess’s hand and squeezed it between both her own. “Dear child. Sometimes I’m too harsh with you, I know. I don’t mean to be.”

  Tess simply waited, making no attempt to withdraw her hand from Derora’s. Had there been word from the hospital, in Portland? Was Derora preparing her for bad news about her mother?

  Derora let go of her hand and took up a folded newspaper from the bedclothes. “I have no choice but to enlist your help, Tess. There is five thousand dollars at stake, and time is of the essence—I’m sure it’s only a matter of days or even hours before someone else sees this.”

  Tess took the newspaper, looked at it in confusion and then thunderstruck amazement. “Joel! That’s Joel Shiloh!” she breathed, her eyes moving over the sketch.

  “Then I’m right,” sighed Derora. “I feared that I might have been mistaken.”

  Scanning the copy printed with the drawing, Tess knew a sinking sensation. She had been right, in her half-formed suspicion—Joel was not Joel at all. He was a Corbin. The name printed on the front of the Bible she’d seen in his wagon leaped into her mind. Keith Corbin.

  She sank into the chair at Derora’s bedside, her heart pounding. Why had he lied about his name? Why was he hiding from his family? Moreover, why were they so anxious to find him that they would offer such a staggering sum of money for word of his whereabouts?

  “We need that money, Tess,” Derora said, in quiet, determined tones. “Frankly, I didn’t intend to share it, but now I must have your help.”

  Tess let the newspaper lie in her lap, her hands folded over it and trembling. “Y-You plan to collect this reward?”

  “Of course I do! Five thousand dollars is a great deal of money, Tess. Think of the care you could provide for your dear mother, with your share of it. You could even settle in Portland, find yourself some sort of employment there, and be near her—”

  “But J-Joel must have some reason for evading these people. It must be a very good reason—”

  “What do I care what his reasons are? I could get away from this rough town, from this roominghouse. I could travel, make a new life for myself!”

  Tess lowered her head. Derora had been paying for her sister’s care in that Portland hospital all this time, in lieu of paying Tess full wages. What would happen to Olivia if Derora no longer sent those monthly bank drafts? “M-My share would be enough to keep Mother, to pay for her care?”

  “I will give you half the money, Tess. Twenty-five hundred dollars should keep her for a good long time and allow you to settle yourself in very nice circumstances in the bargain.”

  Tess’s throat was tight. What a choice this was. She could abandon her mother to God knew what fate, or she could sell out the first man she had ever loved. Oh, yes, she loved Keith Corbin, loved him fully. Hopelessly. She guessed she had from the moment she’d first seen him. “What would you have me do?” she whispered.

  “Just this. Go to the telegraph office and force them to open up—I don’t care what you have to tell them, just so you get them to send a wire to this Adam Corbin person, tonight. There isn’t a moment to spare, Tess. It won’t be long before someone else sees one of these advertisements and recognizes our friend, ‘Joel.’”

  “S-Suppose Keith’s family wants to hurt him—suppose—”

  “That’s his problem,” said Derora, with a sigh of resignation. “Do as I tell you, Tess—for my sake and for your mother’s.”

  Tess rose out of her chair, carrying one of the newspapers under her arm, walking blindly toward the door. The last ti
me she had visited her mother—it had been nearly a year now—Olivia hadn’t even known her. The woman’s mental state was such that she could only stare vacantly; she did not feed herself, she did not speak, she did not react to the speech of others. How could Olivia survive outside that clean hospital with its kindly staff?

  “Hurry,” prompted Derora, and Tess stepped out of the car and onto the little wrought iron porch. It was dark now, and frogs and crickets were singing their spring time songs.

  Tess went to the stable, wheeled her bicycle out, put the newspaper into the wicker basket affixed to the handlebars. Send a message. She was to knock at the door of the telegraph office until someone answered, and then she was to send a message ….

  There were tears pouring down her face by the time she reached the moonlit road. Perhaps that was why Tess went the wrong way, why she headed out of town, not toward the telegraph office, but in the direction of the peddler’s camp.

  It was very late and he was sitting by the campfire, just staring into the flames, his bowler hat at his side.

  “Mr. Corbin?”

  Broad shoulders stiffened, he turned his head swiftly. Was it Tess’s unexpected appearance that jolted him that way, or was it the sound of his real name? She didn’t know, didn’t care.

  Instantly, Joel—no, she must remember that he was Keith, not Joel—was on his feet, towering over Tess, his whole body tense. Wary. “What are you doing here?” he bit out, and she couldn’t tell whether he was angry or just surprised.

  The tears she had managed to control during the ride out mto the country—of which she had almost no memory—were sliding down her face again as she extended the newspaper. “Read for yourself.”

  Keith took the tabloid and bent closer to the firelight, in order to scan the large advertisement. A hoarse swear word was his comment.

  “My aunt sent me to w-wire your family. She wants the m-money ….”

  He stood very still. “And you double-crossed her. For me. Why did you do that, Tess?”

  Tess dashed at one of her cheeks, but the gesture did little good, for the tears kept coming. “I don’t know,” she said, finally. “God help me, I don’t know. My mother—my poor mother—”

  Keith drew her close, held her as though she were a child. “What about your mother, shoebutton?” he asked. “What about her?”

  Tess could not give an answer.

  Chapter Five

  IT TOOK ONLY MINUTES TO GATHER UP THE POT AND KETTLE he’d used to prepare his supper, to hitch the mule to his wagon, to put out the campfire. During those minutes, Keith Corbin damned the two brothers he would have died for. Good God, why didn’t they just leave him alone? They were both intelligent men; surely they knew that when he was ready, he would come back.

  He paused, aware of Tess, more aware of her, in fact, than he had ever been of any other woman. She was standing beside the wagon, watching him, the bright moonlight giving her a luminous, angelic appearance.

  “I want to go with you,” she said.

  Keith had been checking the mule’s harness; the warm, dusty hide of the beast rippled beneath the palms of his hands. “No.”

  “I can’t go back,” she insisted. “Aunt Derora wants that reward money. Once she knows that I’ve betrayed her, she’ll throw me out. I won’t have a job. My mother—my mother will—”

  Keith turned to face the urchin-child squarely, again silently cursing his brothers. For two cents, he’d let them find him. And when they did, he’d break their necks.

  A half-smile curved his lips. It would serve Adam and Jeff right if they paid five thousand dollars to have their asses kicked. “Tell me about your mother,” he said aloud.

  Tess had managed to regain her composure; her shoulders were straight, her chin high. She hadn’t worn any kind of wrap over her calico dress, and she was rubbing her upper arms with both hands in an attempt to keep warm. “She was an actress, in St. Louis. She was also the mistress of a man named Asa Thatcher, a lawyer. Very successful.” She stopped and her face hardened; Keith saw, even in the relative darkness, a flash of rancor in her wonderful green-brown eyes. “One day, Mr. Thatcher—yes, if you’re wondering, he was my father—decided that he didn’t want to keep Mother and me anymore. He sent people to evict us from our house, and we came out here because we didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  “Mama was young and pretty, and she could have gone on being an actress, found a husband or at least another lover, but she didn’t. She just faded and faded until one day Aunt Derora and I had to take her to P-Portland and put her in a hospital.”

  Keith ached, thinking of his own bright, beautiful mother, with her wicked wit and her outrageous political and moral opinions. He tried to imagine Katherine Corbin in an asylum and failed completely. “She’s there still?” he asked, in a raspy whisper.

  Tess swallowed visibly and nodded. She was shivering now, and Keith went to the rear of the wagon, got out a suit coat for her to wear. The way she looked with that oversized and obviously masculine garment draped over her shoulders made him ache inside.

  She didn’t say that she had risked her mother’s welfare to help him, but, then, she didn’t have to. Again he considered driving Tess to the telegraph office himself and then just sitting back and waiting for one or both of his older brothers to show up. And when they did—

  But he didn’t take to the idea; it was like a chess game, this situation. And if he let Adam and Jeff find him, he would be moving his king into check, so to speak. Letting them win. The fact that it had cost them five thousand dollars to do it would be of no comfort at all; that was pocket money to them. And even if he smashed their arrogant, aristocratic Corbin noses—a prospect he relished—they would still have found their little lost brother. It was that which rankled, when all was said and done.

  And there was this moon-nymph. She had sacrificed practically all there was to sacrifice, in an effort to help him. How could he send her back to face her aunt’s wrath and still live with his conscience?

  Besides, if he were to be honest with himself—and he tried to be—Keith had to admit that he found the prospect of traveling with Tess more than appealing. Since leaving the boardinghouse, in fact, he’d done little but brood about her. And want her.

  Did she know what would happen if they were alone together, on the road? Did she sense how badly he wanted her?

  “Will you take me with you or not?” she demanded, her chin still up, her voice shaky.

  Keith reminded himself that Tess believed in free love, that she even purported to practice it. She had given herself to men before him, and she would give herself to men after him, no doubt. So why shouldn’t he avail himself to the pleasures her lush body promised?

  Mingled with the desire that raged within him like an inferno was a cold, bitter anger stemming from the knowledge that he would be neither the first nor the last man to possess her.

  “I’ll take you to Portland,” he found himself saying. “I’ve got to go there for supplies anyway.”

  Color pooled in her cheeks and then drained away, and her eyes widened. “My camera!” she breathed. “I left my camera in my room—”

  “We’ll go back for it, then,” Keith offered, to his own amazement, and then he was putting that ridiculous bicycle of hers into the back of the wagon, lifting her into the seat.

  “But my aunt—”

  “It’s late. She’s probably asleep. You can get your camera and whatever else you want and then we’ll leave.”

  Portland. Was he crazy? Why had he offered to take her to Portland, of all places? Showing himself there was almost as foolhardy as turning up in Seattle or Port Hastings!

  But Keith knew why he was taking Tess to Portland, despite the fact that it was one of Jeff’s favorite harbors, a place where the Corbins were widely known. He had to risk losing the game, risk being recognized, because Tess had risked so much for him. Because her mother was there.

  They reached the roominghouse within the hour, and
it was, to all appearances, completely dark. Still, Tess seemed nervous, hesitant.

  “She must suspect something by now,” she breathed, her small hands knotted in her lap, her shoulders slumped beneath the suit coat Keith had loaned her. “She would expect me to wait for a reply from your family and then report to her.”

  “Do you want me to go inside with you, Tess?” He had not planned to make that particular offer, it just sprang to his lips.

  She shook her head, drew a deep breath, and jumped nimbly down from the wagon seat. “You’ll wait for me?”

  For some reason, it hurt Keith that she would ask him that. His jawline tightened and he whispered, “Yes, damn it!”

  Tess hesitated another moment and then turned and sprang over the gate, like some gangling boy. She was a shadow, scurrying up the walk, opening the door so quietly that Keith didn’t hear it from the wagon.

  In her bedroom, Tess looked out the window and saw what she had feared—a lamp flickering in the southern car, where her aunt’s room was. Derora was waiting up, probably watching for any sign of her niece, no doubt suspecting betrayal already.

  There was no time to pack all her clothes—Tess dared only to fill a small valise with a nightgown, some underthings, two practical dresses, and the photographs she had taken. She abandoned all but the one of Keith, taken beside his wagon, one of her mother, and one of Emma.

  Emma! Where was Emma? She was supposed to spend the night here, Tess remembered suddenly, and the show on the riverboat had been over for hours. Where was that silly little monkey? Not, please God, with Roderick Waltam?

  Tess sighed, clutching her camera and the valise, making her way quietly out of her room and down the dark stairs. Surely Emma had had the good sense to go home, where she belonged. She wouldn’t have come here, to the roominghouse, because she’d been miffed with Tess. That was it. That had to be it.

  Joel—no, Keith—was waiting just where Tess had left him. She felt a thrill of anticipation as she hurried toward him, a sensation of impending adventure. Which was odd considering the rashness of the whole situation.