Memory's Embrace

by Linda Lael Miller

  Tess did not know whether it was good luck or ill that she encountered Keith Corbin on the landing between the second and third floors.

  “Hello, shoebutton,” he said idly. He wasn’t wearing his plain peddler’s clothes or his bowler hat, but a finely tailored suit of gray broadcloth, complete with a silken vest to match, and shiny black boots.

  Tess felt a pang at seeing him again so unexpectedly, at realizing that he was not a peddler and never really had been.

  She tossed her head, so that her hair swung back over her shoulders in a heavy curtain. She’d meant to put it up, but the decision to ride her bicycle had pushed the idea right out of her head. “I’ve got a shop of my own now,” she said, for suddenly it was impor tant for him to know that she had prospects, too.

  “And a lover?”

  The question gave Tess pause; an alert, wary feeling leaped within her. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Roderick—Waltam, wasn’t it? The actor?”

  “Rod, a lover?” She had gasped the words, but, an instant later, she had recovered herself, squared her shoulders, lifted her chin to an imperious angle. “Hardly. Rod is my half-brother. And it was cruel of you, by the way, to attack him in that manner.”

  A smile curved his lips. “In what manner should I have attacked him, shoebutton?”

  Tess was blushing. Why, oh why, did she have to blush now? “Why, you should not have attacked him at all!”

  “I didn’t know he was your brother,” Keith replied quietly, as though that explained everything, made up for his barbaric behavior. He approached and, without so much as a by-your-leave, took the handles of the bicycle from her, wheeling it through a doorway and into a hall. “Speaking of brothers,” he went on, as he reached the elevator doors and summoned the machine with a twist of a knob, “I understand that you met mine.”

  Tess wanted to wrench her property away from him, but she knew a futile undertaking when she saw one. Usually. Her pulse was beating on her cheekbones, and her heart seemed determined to rise into her throat. “Yes,” she admitted, closing her eyes to remember how she had met them, and where.

  “They’re gone now,” he said. The elevator, with its grillwork doors of black iron, came to a stop before them with an alarming lurch.

  Tess was a little relieved. In their way, Keith’s brothers were as unsettling as that elevator. “Oh,” she said, wondering why he would trouble to tell her something that was really none of her concern, all things considered.

  The doors of the monster creaked and slammed as they opened, but since Keith rolled her bicycle between them, her camera riding in the wicker basket, she had no alternative but to pass through. There was an operator inside the contraption and, because of his presence, neither Tess nor Keith spoke or even looked at each other until they had been delivered safely to the hotel’s busy lobby.

  There, Keith assessed her with those azure eyes, those eyes that could uplift or wound, and said, “I’d like to see this shop of yours, shoebutton. May I?”

  Tess knew that she should have said no, knew that it wasn’t wise to let this man know where she would be working, but she couldn’t have refused him for all the developing fluid in the world. It was no comfort at all that she recognized him for the one man who could overrule all her fine intentions and turn her into anything he wished to make of her. Be it harlot, mistress, or wife.

  “It’s just down the road and around the corner,” she heard herself saying.

  “Close enough to walk. Or ride your bicycle.” He glanced down at that apparatus with mingled fondness and amazement, but did not surrender it to her keeping. On the sidewalk, he walked beside it, being careful not to bump into passers-by.

  “I won’t be staying here at the hotel,” Tess babbled out, not thinking. “There are rooms above the shop and I’ll live there.”

  He stopped. A middle-aged matron in a fusty sateen dress gave him a killing glare and then swept around him and the bicycle with a whish of skirts. “Alone?” he demanded.

  “Yes,” Tess replied loftily. “Alone.”

  Keith considered this for a moment, still stopped, like a log upended in a stream, forcing the foot traffic to flow around him. Tess had, of course, no choice but to stop, too. A slow smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “Alone,” he repeated, and this time he did not sound appalled but intrigued.

  “You needn’t think for one second, Mr. Corbin, that that is going to make any difference to you!”

  He laughed and began rolling the bicycle along again. Tess was annoyed to realize that she had no idea what he was thinking.

  It was both a relief and a problem to reach the door of the little shop. Tess’s hand trembled a bit as she grappled in her pocket for the outsized key and then worked the lock. While she was doing that, she was disturbingly conscious of Keith’s every movement. He was resting the bicycle against the storefront, removing the camera from the basket. Waiting for admission to a place he could so easily become master of, even though he had no right. No right!

  The inside of the small establishment smelled pleasantly of pine soap and new paint. The walls were white, the shelves were sturdy, the heavy wooden counter had been polished to a proud shine. Even the little heatstove, so dusty that first day, gleamed like the armor of some great knight. When winter came, it would be ready to warm all who ventured in.

  Keith set Tess’s camera down on the counter and looked about him with a careful, pensive sort of interest. “It’s nice, shoebutton,” he said, after a very long time. “Really nice.”

  Those words, as simple as they were, set Tess’s pride in the place alight. She glowed with excitement, and never mind if that excitement ached just a bit in the vicinity of her heart. “Come and see the cameras I’ve got!” she crowed, bursting through a curtained doorway and trusting Keith to follow.

  Of course, he did.

  “Can you operate all this stuff?” he frowned, taking in a virtual army of shadowy equipment.

  The doubt in his voice hurt. “Of course I can. I’ve got books and more books to tell me how! Look—look at this camera! It takes stereoscopic pictures. You know, the kind that look so real—”

  Keith smiled. “Yes. I’m familiar with the technique. My sister has a stereoscope and takes delight in boring us all with the three-dimensional ruins of Rome.”

  Tess felt an unaccountable heat in her cheeks; maybe it was the closeness of Keith, the smallness of the developing room, the shadowy ambiance. She didn’t know.

  Keith came closer, took her easily in his arms. “I’ve missed you more than I ever thought I could miss anyone,” he said, in a low, gruff voice.

  Tess struggled to keep her wits about her and promptly lost. His mouth was descending toward hers, to conquer, and she could make no move to resist. She couldn’t even think of a move to resist.

  He kissed her and the floor seemed to roll beneath her feet like the deck of a ship on stormy seas. Her heart was beating in every part of her body, instead of just her chest, and the hard pressure of his body against her own soft one made her yearn to be possessed by him again.

  Their tongues did tender battle as the kiss deepened and became something that mastered them both. Tess felt his fingers at the bottom of her prim cotton shirtwaist and welcomed their brazen heat. Her breasts grew heavy as he bared them, their nipples reaching for him, craving his greed.

  Keith bent, nipped at one sweet peak, groaned hoarsely in his hunger.

  Oh, Lord, thought Tess, in sweeping, glorious despondency, he’s going to take me, right here, right now …

  Except that the little bell over the shop’s front door tinkled suddenly and a familiar feminine voice cried out, “Tess! Are you here? Oh, Tess, tell me you’re here!”

  “Emma!” whispered Tess, flushing hotly, stepping back to right her camisole and button her shirtwaist.

  “Damn,” muttered Keith, turning away to brace himself against a worktable with his hands. His breathing was deep and very ragged.

  “I’m
here, Emma! I’ll be right out!”

  “I’m here, Emma!” mocked Keith in a sharp undertone. “I’ll be right out!”

  “Shut up,” hissed Tess. And then she smoothed her hair, her shirts, and her manner and swished out into the main part of her new shop.

  Sure enough, Emma was standing there, looking forlorn and lost, her clothes rumpled from heaven knew how many wearings, her hair dank, her eyes hollow.

  “Oh, Tess,” she cried, dropping the single valise she carried to the rough wooden floor. “I’ve killed my own papa! Mama wants nothing to do with me—can you blame her—and Mrs. Hollinghouse-Stone wouldn’t take me in so Derora just left me—just left me! It was only by the grace of God that I wandered past this shop and saw your name on the window—”

  Tess was quick to enfold her friend in a comforting embrace. “Hush, now. Hush. Everything will be all right, I promise. We’ll go back to my hotel and you can have something to eat and a bath and a rest, and then you can tell me the whole story.”

  Docile as a child, Emma nodded. “I’m so glad I found you. So glad.”

  “I’ll take care of you, Emma,” Tess promised. And it was no idle vow; she knew that she would follow through willingly if things came to that pass. “Everything is going to be all right.”

  It was then that Keith came through the curtain separating that part of the shop from the workroom. He looked grim and not a little annoyed, and Tess was in her turn annoyed with him. Couldn’t he see how Emma needed her help? Like all men, he was just concerned with his own interests.

  Emma took one look at him and her brown, thickly lashed eyes widened. She gave a little scream and swooned to the floor.

  “What the—” rasped Keith.

  Tess was already kneeling on the rough boards, chafing her friend’s plump wrist. “You’d better go. Obviously you’ve upset her.”

  “What did I do?”

  Emma was moaning, tossing her head back and forth.

  “Just go!” hissed Tess.

  Keith shrugged angrily and walked out, the little bell ringing extra hard as he slammed the shop’s door behind him.

  Getting Emma onto her feet and then to the Grand Hotel was no mean enterprise, but Tess managed it. Because she needed all her strength to usher her vaporous friend, she had to lock the bicycle inside the shop.

  By the time they had reached and entered Suite 17—now, for the sake of Emma’s comfort, Tess willingly braved the elevator—Emma had told her an incredible and somewhat incoherent story involving Rod, a lie told to her parents, her father’s sudden death, her mother’s anger and blame, a trip, in Derora’s company, to Portland. It had taken forever, Emma babbled on, for Mrs. Beauchamp had wanted to stop in every town along the way, it seemed, and tell her scattered friends that she was rich.

  Not even trying to make sense of the epic at this point, Tess simply took her friend to her own room, persuaded her to undress and put on a wrapper.

  “You rest, Emma,” she said, with gentle firmness. “I’ll go and make you some tea. Are you hungry?”

  “I want a bath!” wailed Emma, for all the world like a little girl.

  “You won’t swoon again, will you?” Tess fretted. “You could drown—”

  Emma’s eyes widened at the prospect, but some of her aplomb returned, too. “Of course I won’t drown. I’m a grown woman, Tess Bishop!”

  Tess didn’t bother to argue to the contrary; she simply led Emma across the hallway to the bathroom and started water running into the huge, claw-footed tub.

  Just sinking into that water seemed to restore Emma immeasurably. She asked for soap, and when that was produced she sighed with contentment and crooned, “My tea, please.”

  Shaking her head and biting back a smile, Tess closed the door on her friend and hurried down the hallway, through the sitting room, through the dining room, and into the kitchen.

  Asa and Olivia were out, seeing to their railroad passage east, but Rod was very much in evidence. He was, in fact, opening the doors of cupboards, peering inside, and then slamming them closed again.

  Tess felt a certain sweet triumph. For once, she was to have the upper hand where this troublesome new brother was concerned.

  “Emma is here,” she announced briskly, as she took the teapot from the gas-powered stove.

  It was as though she had flung a spear into Rod’s back. He stiffened and slowly turned to watch Tess as she filled the teapot at the sink and then set it on to boil.

  “What?” Rod echoed, in a choked whisper. He had no color at all, and certainly that smug look was gone from his eyes.

  “Your dear Emma. The girl you besmirched in Simpkinsville. She’s in our bathroom—”

  “In our—”

  “Bathroom.”

  “What’s she doing here?!”

  “I imagine she’s looking for you,” Tess couldn’t resist telling him. “Isn’t that sweet, Rod? That she’s so devoted, I mean?”

  Rod’s Adam’s apple seemed to take on a life of its own, bobbing up and down along the usually flawless column of his manly throat. “You’ve—you’ve got to get rid of her!”

  “I can’t do that. She’s my oldest and dearest friend and I’m afraid she’s destitute. Thanks to you, to hear her tell it, her father has perished from the shame and her mother turned her out.” Tess spoke these words flippantly, but as their full import struck her, she paused and turned as pale as Rod. “The least you can do is marry her,” she finished hollowly.

  “Marry her? You must be mad! Cynthia Golden—”

  “Cynthia Golden has nothing whatsoever to do with this matter, Rod, and you know it. Your chickens have just come home to roost!”

  “One night—it was one night-”

  “Sometimes one night is enough, Rod.”

  In this case, as it happened, one night turned out to be more than enough. When Asa heard the whole of the story—and neither Tess nor Rod had to tell it because Emma assaulted the man with every detail the moment he entered what had been a relatively stable, if temporary home—he insisted that his son do the honorable thing.

  Which was, to Asa’s repentant and thus morally inclined mind, to marry Emma Hamilton.

  The two men retired together to the sitting room to discuss the matter—their shouts could be heard if not understood even from the parlor—and then reappeared, Asa gazing fondly upon Emma, Rod looking as though he would like to murder her where she stood.

  A justice of the peace was sent for and, in good time, Emma and Rod became husband and wife.

  Rod’s compliance was not hard to understand, once Tess had really thought about the situation. Born and raised in a wealthy family, he had grown used to comfort, to having plenty of money. And though he had forsworn those benefits for some years, probably coming near to starvation as an actor, he had had a renewed taste of them of late and become dependent again.

  No doubt Asa, in his outrage, had given his son a choice between permanent penury and holy wedlock. Being nobody’s fool, Rod had chosen the latter.

  Emma was overjoyed and immediately dispatched a wire to her mother, informing her of the happy event. And the fact that Rod slammed out of the apartment instead of romancing her in their marriage bed did not seem to bother her in the least.

  The next morning, Tess moved into the quarters over her shop. There was a room for her with a spacious bed, a bureau, and a small wardrobe, a tiny kitchen with a wood-burning cookstove, and a “spare room,” hardly more than a closet, actually, that held one narrow cot.

  To her, the place might as well have been a palace. It was her own, after all, every nook and cranny and corner of it.

  An account had been opened for Tess, across the street at the bank, so that she would have money to cover her living expenses until her business began to show a profit. It was with enormous pride that she withdrew a small sum to buy provisions at Mrs. McQuade’s dry goods store——a teapot, a set of dishes, towels, and sheets, grocery items. She felt rich, and that made it easier to p
art with her mother.

  Asa and Olivia were leaving, that very day, for St. Louis. They would travel by train, stopping off occasionally to “see the sights,” as Asa put it. The real purpose, of course, would be to make the long journey as easy as possible for Olivia.

  Asa’s devotion to Tess’s mother, belated as it was, was a tremendous comfort to Tess herself. She found, as she bid them both goodbye, at the railroad station, that she could put aside her own resentments and take joy in the fact that they had at last found each other.

  All the same, as she rode back into the main part of the city with a sullen, pensive Rod and a chattering, incandescent Emma, Tess allowed herself a few tears and a modicum of self-pity. She was well and truly on her own now.

  Well and truly on her own.

  This came home to her with the force of a sledgehammer’s blow when she was dropped off in front of her shop, Emma singing a cheery goodbye from the carriage window, Rod sulking in the corner.

  The newlyweds were to remain at the hotel, in luxurious Suite 17, until more permanent quarters could be found.

  Watching as the carriage rolled away, Tess dealt with her own fears and misgivings by pondering what would become of Emma. Surely a loveless marriage, indeed a forced marriage, would be fraught with dangers and pitfalls of every sort.

  Tess was frowning as she unlocked the shop door and went inside. She would have to keep an eye on Emma, who now referred to herself as Mrs. Roderick WaltamThatcher and seemed to have forgotten all about her father’s death and the further tragedy of her estrangement from her mother. But, then, that was Emma, the sunshine child, born to look on the bright side.

  Humming, Tess climbed the stairs to her small quarters above and looked around with pride. She began uncrating the pretty dishes in the middle of her tiny kitchen table, checking each one for chips and cracks. When that was done, she stoked up her wood stove—Asa had even seen that there were chunks of pitchy pine for the purpose—and heated water in her new dishpan.