Memory's Embrace

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Then you shall. Let me make you some tea, and then we’ll leave.”

  Emma nodded and Derora went off to the kitchen, still limping a bit because of that twisted ankle. Juniper was there, happily taking inventory of the supplies on the pantry shelves.

  Derora wrote a reassuring note to Cornelia Hamilton, expressing her sympathy and stating that Emma would be safe in her care. She dispatched Juniper with this missive and then made tea, thinking all the while what a kind person she was.

  Of course, from Portland she intended to travel to San Francisco, and from there—well, who knew? Emma could become a millstone around her neck if they didn’t happen to find Tess.

  She shrugged. If Tess wasn’t available, she would simply deliver Emma to her good friend, Mrs. Hollinghouse-Stone. Lavinia was a wealthy widow with a grand home and she could surely find a paying position for the dear child, or even offer one herself.

  Tess’s throat was thick with despair, and she could only stare at the costly plate of prime beef on the restaurant table before her.

  “Eat,” ordered Rod, impatiently.

  He’s gone, Tess thought miserably. He’s gone. It was as though Keith had died, so deeply did she feel his loss.

  “I’m not hungry,” she said.

  Rod devoured a biscuit dripping with butter and honey before drawling, “Pining for your peddler, my dear?”

  Was he going to start that again, that cruel gibing? Tess couldn’t bear it if he was. “Yes, if you must know,” she answered, with dignity.

  “I understand now why you were so upset about my seducing your friend, at least,” Rod observed. He was going to do it. He was going to be mean again. “Our friend Joel Shiloh did the same thing to you, didn’t he, Tess?”

  “No!”

  “You’re not only beautiful, you’re a liar. If you’re not going to eat that beef, give it to me.”

  “Why are you treating me this way?” Tess whispered, praying that she wouldn’t cry. She’d had enough of disdain and moral outrage as a child, when the other girls in her convent school had taken such delight in reminding her of her scandalous status in the world. “I can’t help being a—being a—”

  “A bastard,” Rod aided her placidly.

  Tess picked up her wineglass and flung its contents into her half-brother’s smug face. It dripped from his eyebrows like burgundy rain, staining his face and his shirt and the Grand Hotel’s pristine linen tablecloth.

  “Does this mean we aren’t going to the theater tonight?” he asked, with consummate calm, as he took up a napkin and elegantly dabbed at his face and shirtfront.

  Tess couldn’t help herself. She laughed. “You would spend time with me,” she marveled, “after what I just did to you?”

  He smiled, every inch the actor, the dashing gentleman reared in elegance and luxury. “Oh, yes. I haven’t much choice. We can’t very well go back upstairs and interrupt the honeymoon, now, can we?”

  Tess hadn’t thought of that. It was a good thing Rod was being so rational about the whole matter. “You can’t go to a public theater looking like that,” she pointed out. “People will laugh at you.”

  “Misery loves company,” observed Rod, and then he took up his own wineglass, enjoyed an expert sip and drenched Tess with what remained.

  Chapter Ten

  THE WINE MADE AN ENORMOUS BURGUNDY SPLOTCH ON the bodice of Tess’s cherished yellow lawn gown. “You ruined my dress!” she sputtered, wadding a napkin and dabbing furiously, hopelessly at the stain.

  “In this world, my sweet, you get what you give. You know, of course, that now we’ll have to go upstairs and disturb the dewy-eyed lovers?”

  Tess was simmering, but her emotions fell short of a true rage. After all, she had flung the first glass of wine. As much as she might have liked to overlook that small point, she could not. “I’ll never forgive you for spoiling this beautiful dress,” she muttered, as they rose simultaneously from their chairs.

  “Buy another,” said Rod, ignoring the speculative stares of all the other diners and suavely offering his arm. And Tess was amazed to see that even with wine droplets glistening in his hair and his shirt stained purple he managed to seem debonair.

  Outside Suite 17, Tess waited nervously while Rod ventured in to get the lay of the situation. Across the hall was another suite, and, mostly to distract herself, she went closer to peer at the shining brass plate affixed to the door. “Corbin,” it said, and beneath it, in letters just as elegantly etched, if smaller, “Private.”

  Tess was unaccountably jarred. Though she had known that Keith’s family was rich—why else would they offer such a fortune for the return of their lost member—she had not guessed that they were this rich. Given the wagon, the mule, and that disreputable hat, it was difficult to think of Keith as wealthy.

  Something made her try the door, and the knob turned in her hand. She peeked inside, found the room shadowy and dark. Perhaps Keith hadn’t left after all—the very possibility made her feel as though she’d just awakened from the dead. Perhaps he was still in Portland.

  “Keith?” She said his name even though she knew that he wasn’t in the suite. But he couldn’t have gone far, she reasoned, or he would have locked the place.

  Tess reluctantly slipped back into the hallway and closed the door. When Rod came out, she was standing at a good distance from the Corbin suite, looking as though she’d never stoop to peeking inside it. “Well?” she snapped, conscious of the stain on her very best dress and the trickle of wine between her breasts.

  “It’s safe,” her half-brother responded, with an impish grin. “They’re sitting by the parlor fire, playing whist.”

  Tess tried to hurry past the newlyweds without drawing attention to herself, but her mother called to her.

  Blushing, Tess turned.

  “What on earth—?” Olivia whispered, frowning at the hideous blotch on her daughter’s dress.

  “There was a slight accident,” put in Rod, who was being awfully diplomatic and brotherly all of a sudden.

  Asa laid his cards down on the table and assessed his son with dark, wise eyes. “Strange that this strange fate befell you, as well,” he observed, taking in Rod’s purple shirt with remarkable equanimity.

  “Do change out of that dress, dear,” Olivia clucked. “Perhaps it can be saved.”

  When Tess went obediently—indeed gratefully—on to her room, her mother followed. Her fingers were awkward as she helped with the buttons at the back of Tess’s dress.

  “I’ll be going away in a few weeks, Tess,” Olivia said softly, tentatively.

  So that was it. This was their first opportunity to talk in private, and Olivia meant to grab it.

  “Yes,” Tess replied, slipping out of her dress. There was wine on her camisole, too, and she silently cursed Roderick WaltamThatcher, or whatever the devil his name was. It was better than facing the fact that once Olivia went off to St. Louis with Asa, she herself would be well and truly alone in a very big world.

  “You could come with us,” Olivia suggested, as she inspected the stain on the yellow lawn dress. “You could meet a fine young man or go to college or whatever you wanted to do.”

  “I can’t go, Mother,” Tess answered. “I feel—well, I feel that my life is here. I can’t really explain it but—”

  “It’s a feeling of destiny,” Olivia put in, with remarkable confidence, considering all that she’d been through. “You’ve already met a man, haven’t you, Tess?”

  The directness of that question, the suddenness of it, made it impossible for Tess to lie. “Yes,” she said, in despair.

  “Is he married?”

  A spirited denial leaped to Tess’s lips, but she held it back. Keith might not be married to a living woman, but he was bound to the lost Amelie, all the same. “H-He’s a widower, Mother.”

  Olivia gave a sigh of obvious relief. Who would better know the heartache of sharing a man? Who would better know the shame, the waiting, the uncertainty? �
�Is there hope of a life with this man, Tess? Can he—will he—give you a home? Will you have his name and bear his children?”

  Tess lowered her head. “I don’t think so, Mother. But I won’t—I won’t be his mistress, either. I’m going to work and learn and maybe s-someday I’ll meet someone else—”

  Gently, Olivia touched her daughter’s face. “You are wise, little one. I have loved Asa completely, from the depths of my heart, from the very moment I met him. And for all we’ve suffered, you and I, I can’t honestly say that I wouldn’t do it all over again, given the chance. It’s selfish of me, isn’t it? But where Asa is concerned, I have no pride. I was born to be with him.”

  Tess could not speak. The strength of the love this woman bore Asa Thatcher was thick in the room, its force buffeting away her breath.

  “I did a few things right, though, Tess. I did a few things right. Look at you—you’re strong, you’re beautiful, you’re independent. Partly, that’s because Asa came first with me and I never tried to hide the fact.”

  Still, Tess said nothing. It hurt to have her mother voice that, even though she had always known it.

  Olivia gripped Tess’s shoulders in hands that were thin, hands that trembled just a little. “It’s a difficult thing for a mother to admit that to her child, Tess. A very difficult thing. But we’ve always kept to what was true, you and I. And though hearing it may hurt just a little now, you’ll understand one day.”

  Sometimes, Tess did understand, but this wasn’t one of those times. “Why, Mother? Was I lacking in some way? Was I bad?”

  “You were and are a blessing from God. I cherished you and I always will. But a woman should love her man more than she loves her children, Tess. It sounds harsh, I know, but when you love a man as I love Asa—and I pray that you will one day—you will understand.”

  “What I don’t understand, Mother, is your loyalty to that man!” Tess blurted out, forgetting, for the moment, Olivia’s fragile condition.

  But Olivia looked anything but fragile. She stood very straight, and her dark gypsy eyes flashed. “I consider myself fortunate to know him, to love him. Furthermore, if I could not have been his wife, I would have been glad to go on being his mistress!”

  “There’s where we differ, Mother. I won’t be any man’s plaything. I won’t be visited whenever he has nothing better to do! I won’t be hidden away like some shameful toy and bought off with presents! I could never love any man that much!”

  For a moment, it looked as though Olivia would slap Tess. When the blow came, it was verbal, not physical. “Then I pity you, my dear. I pity you with all my heart.”

  Tess turned away, ostensibly to select another dress from the armoire. Tears burned behind her eyes, but she did not shed them until she heard the bedroom door open and then softly close again.

  The stage curtains were trimmed in gold braid, and they were just about to open when Tess and Rod took their seats along the gaslit aisle. A sidelong glance at her brother indicated that he was imagining himself on the other side of the footlights.

  Tess, still in a glum mood because of the scene with her mother, scowled and tried to read her program. The play was called Travails of an Innocent and starred a famous brother-and-sister acting team billed as the Golden Twins.

  All the way over, in the hired carriage, Rod had prattled on and on about their talent, their fame, their angelic looks. Tess had never heard of them, and she’d only half listened to Rod in any case, for she’d been looking out the window at the seedy waterfront neighborhood, full of saloons and boxhouses and spookylooking warehouses. She would have traded that elegant carriage for the medicine man’s wagon in a moment.

  Now, sitting in the theater, watching as the heavy curtains were drawn back to reveal a painted set, she remembered how it had felt to have Keith’s hands on her breasts, his mouth. She shivered, and a treacherous warmth spread through her. Maybe she wasn’t so different from her mother, after all ….

  She forced herself to concentrate on the play. It was a tired, overly sentimental piece and Tess hated it, but the performances of the much-admired Golden Twins were quite another matter. Never, in all her life, had Tess ever seen people so beautiful, so perfect. Both of them had abundant hair of silvery-gold and eyes so green that they were visible even from a considerable distance, and the man’s skin was as sumptuous as the woman’s.

  “Do you want to meet them?” Rod asked, when the third act had ended and the theatergoers were applauding with deafening appreciation.

  “Who?” puzzled Tess.

  “The Golden Twins,” came the forebearing response. “Good Lord, I knew Simpkinsville was a hole, but everybody has heard of them!”

  “I haven’t. And I think the ‘Golden Twins’ is a silly name.” Tess replied with weary dignity. Much as it might befit them, she added to herself.

  “Ninny,” huffed Roderick. “Their names are Cynthia and Cedrick Golden. And they’re twins. Ergo—”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh? Is that all you can say? Just, oh?”

  “What else is there to say, Rod? That I want to kiss their feet? That I want to be their slave forever? I’m tired and I want to go home.”

  “We’re not leaving until I’ve spoken to my friends. Now, you can come along or you can sit here and be ogled by lingering lumberjacks. The choice is yours.”

  This having a brother was annoying business. Tess wasn’t at all sure she could get used to it. But she didn’t want to be “ogled,” as Rod had so vulgarly put it, so she left her seat and allowed her companion to usher her back stage.

  Here, there were crowds of people—the other members of the play’s cast, stagehands and roustabouts, and the Goldens. Up close, the twins looked even more beautiful; they were breathtaking, like exquisite French porcelain figures, perfect in every way. Indeed, a radiance seemed to emanate from them.

  They couldn’t be mortal. Not with faces like that, teeth like that, hair like that. They had to be angels, gone astray. Wandering wide of celestial paths.

  “Roderick!” chimed the sweet creature called Cynthia, flinging alabaster arms around Rod’s neck and wriggling her lush little body just briefly against his.

  “No angel after all,” muttered Tess. Not that she cared what Miss Golden did to Rod, or where. They could fall down on the floor and copulate, for all it mattered to her. She only wanted to go home.

  “And who, pray tell, is this?” drawled the male part of the matched set. His eyes, like Cynthia’s, were a devastating shade of emerald and fringed by sooty lashes. And they were fixed on Tess’s bosom.

  She squirmed a little. Odd that after all the liberties she’d allowed Keith Corbin to take with her body, she should feel so uncomfortable under the gaze of this man who seemed a shade too pretty.

  “This is my sister,” Rod said, unwinding Cynthia Golden and stepping back. “Tess Bishop.”

  “Her name is Bishop. Yours is sometimes Thatcher, sometimes Waltam. How can she be your sister?” This came from Cedrick; Cynthia was busy staring up into Rod’s flushed face, her plump pink lips forming a beguiling pout.

  “Born on the wrong side of the proverbial blanket,” answered Rod matter-of-factly.

  Tess was abysmally embarrassed. Couldn’t he have said she was born of another marriage or something? Why was he so kind some times and so cruel at others?

  “Your brother is a very rude man,” soothed Cedrick smoothly. “Tell me, dear. Have you ever thought of treading the boards?”

  “Doing what?” frowned Tess.

  Cedrick laughed in a studied, unsettling way. “Acting. Have you any interest in theater work?”

  “No,” replied Tess flatly.

  “Tess tends to be blunt,” Rod said, giving his sister a wry and somewhat patronizing look. “Her mother was an actress, in fact.”

  “Then you must be very familiar with our art!” crowed Cedrick.

  “Not at all,” said Tess, aware that, for some inexplicable and probably petty reason, she
did not like Cedrick Golden or his sister. “I was never allowed near the theater. Besides, by the time I was old enough to notice, Mother was only dabbling at acting. She was and is totally devoted to my—my father.”

  “I must persuade you at least to read for a role in our new production!” wailed Cedrick. It almost sounded like a life or death matter.

  Tess shook her head. “Never.”

  “Never say never, my precious,” said Cedrick, waggling one finger at her as though she were a simple minded child.

  “Don’t call me precious,” said Tess, and Rod, standing beside her now, gave her a subtle kick in the ankle.

  “Delightful,” muttered Cedrick, choosing, apparently, to ignore what she’d said entirely. “Delightful. Rod, you must bring this sister of yours to our house. Tomorrow.”

  “I’m busy tomorrow,” said Tess.

  “We’ll be there,” said Rod.

  They argued all the way back to the brick-lined road, where they were, fortunately, able to hire another carriage.

  “You’d better not ever do that again, Rod!” sputtered Tess, settling herself into the carriage seat and furiously smoothing her skirts. “I have no intention of going to the Goldens’ house tomorrow or ever!”

  “Cedrick was taken with you!” Rod reminded her, giving the statement all the import of a summons from God Himself.

  “So? I wasn’t taken with him. He’s a fop and, unless I miss my guess, a lecher in the bargain!”

  “He could also give me a steady job, in a real theater! I could do Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III!”

  “Hooray,” sighed Tess. The night was dark, but there were millions of stars in the sky, gleaming silver, some being born and some dying, some looking almost close enough to touch.

  “Cedrick Golden has the power to give me everything I want!” insisted Rod.

  “You poor wretch,” said Tess. But then her gaze was drawn back to her brother’s face, barely visible in the shadowy coach. “Oh, Rod—you’re not—you’re not one of that kind—one of those—”

  “Of course I’m not!” snapped Rod furiously. “Didn’t you see Cynthia crawling up my ribcage?”