Keith could no longer keep his eyes averted; they darted to her face, caressing, memorizing, searching. “You don’t like him?”
She laughed again, but there were tears shining in her bright, hazel eyes. “Would I call him such names if I liked him, you goose?”
“You call me names,” he pointed out, somewhat petulantly, looking at the ceiling again. The same eleven rusty blotches looked back at him.
“That’s different,” she said softly. “There is no reason for you to be jealous, Keith—not of any man in the whole world.”
Man? He felt more like a child. His throat drew closed, tight as the top of a tobacco sack, and he fought back the tears throbbing behind his eyes.
She bent, kissed him softly. “I love you,” she said. “And I mean to marry you. Right now.”
“Right now?” he croaked, staring up at her.
Tess nodded, crystal tears blooming in her eyes. “I brought a justice of the peace. The same man who married Asa and Mother and Rod and Emma. That’s all right, isn’t it? Our being married by a justice of the peace, I mean?”
It was more than all right; it was his salvation. “Yes,” he managed to say. “Wh-where is he?”
“Waiting in the hallway.” She was frowning pensively at his bandages. “Now that I really look at you, I’m not sure you’re up to a wedding at all. How serious are your wounds, Keith? Did they operate on you?”
It was a long time before he could answer, for his throat was drawn taut again, this time with joy. “I’ve got a few stitches, but I’ll be fine.”
“Do the police know who shot you?”
“They have a woman in custody, I’m told.”
Tess swallowed visibly, and Keith wished that he could reach up, touch her slender, alabaster throat, but both his shoulders were too sore to permit that. “A woman?” she echoed, her eyes wide.
He laughed. “It isn’t what you think, Tess. I don’t know why she wanted to kill me, but I guarantee you that she wasn’t a jealous lover. In fact, she was the wife of that storekeeper in Simpkinsville—”
Tess’s face drained of all color. “Cornelia Hamilton?” she whispered. “Emma’s mother?”
“I guess. I only remembered her because I used to do business with Jessup sometimes, when I went through Simpkinsville. Tess, what’s the matter? You look—”
“Oh, my God,” breathed Tess. “My God!”
“Tess?” He was frightened by the look on her face, the expression in her eyes. “Tess, what—”
“Would the police let me see Mrs. Hamilton, talk to her? Keith, do you think they would let me see her?”
He didn’t want her going off to a jailhouse, trying to see a woman who was probably dangerous. “Why would you want to?” he stalled.
Tess seemed to have difficulty meeting his eyes; it was a long moment before she did. “S-She was my friend. I want to know why—why she would do something like this.”
“What does that matter?”
Tess stood very straight. Her color returned, in shades of pink and gold, and her eyes snapped. “It matters very much to me. I love you. I mean to marry you. Suppose she had k-killed you?”
“She didn’t, Tess. That’s the important thing. Leave it alone.”
Tess bent, kissed his forehead in a businesslike way that said she had other things on her quicksilver mind. “I’ll be back later, Mr. Corbin. Right now, I’m going to pay a call on your would-be murderer.”
He was desperate to stop her. Pain be damned, he reached out, caught her arm in one hand. “No, Tess. She might hurt you—”
“I’m sure she won’t.”
Keith wished that he could be so certain. He held onto Tess in a grip he knew must be painful to her but could not relax. “You promised to marry me, remember?” he persisted. “You said you brought a justice of the peace.”
A light seemed to go on in her face, glowing behind the weariness. “So I did.”
They were married minutes later, by a harried little man wearing a mail-order suit and a nervous smile, with Sister Attila and a consort for witnesses. Keith couldn’t help recalling another wedding, beneath the wind-rustled leaves of a churchyard tree, and his mood was somber. He knew that he had not really dissuaded Tess from her intention of visiting Cornelia Hamilton; he had only forestalled the inevitable. After all, he was tied to that bed as surely as if he’d been manacled; there would be nothing he could do to stop his wife from plunging headlong into a potentially dangerous situation.
And God help him, he couldn’t bear to lose a second wife. Inwardly, he raged at his helplessness, repeating the wedding vows through clenched teeth.
Tess, for her part, looked distracted, almost as if she couldn’t wait for the wedding to be over and done with.
When it was, she paid the justice of the peace, dismissed him, and announced, “I’ll be back this afternoon, during visiting hours. I do hope that nun will be elsewhere.”
Keith was annoyed. Scared. “Thank you, dear,” he muttered furiously, “I’m overjoyed that we’re married, too.”
Tess kissed him again, briefly, as though anxious to be on with more pressing matters, now that the troublesome task of marrying him had been taken care of. “I’ll be perfectly safe with Cornelia, so stop your fretting.”
“Damn it, I’m ordering you not to go!”
She laughed, damn her. She actually laughed. “You’re in no position to stop me, are you? Goodbye, darling. And I love you.”
“Tess!”
She was already at the doorway of that great, dreary room, her back straight, her steps sure. She didn’t pause, she didn’t even answer.
So much for Tess’s promise to love, honor, and obey, thought Keith furiously, reaching out at great expense to his injured shoulder and sending the metal urinal flying across the room to bounce off the wall with a bell-like clang.
It was only as she swept imperiously past the German nun, who sat, glaring, at her polished wooden desk, that Tess remembered the incredible story Emma had told her, about her father dying and her mother turning her out. And a lie. Emma had mentioned a lie.
Suddenly, it was no longer important to see Cornelia; it was important to see Emma.
The breeze, scented of seawater and sawdust and horse dung from the road, met Tess Corbin as she came out of the hospital and grasped the handlebars of her bicycle, which rested against the trunk of a sturdy elm tree. Knowing Emma as she did, she could almost have told the tale without confronting her friend at all.
Tess got onto her bicycle, arranged her skirts as best she could. Mixed with her rising anger and her sense of purpose was something precious, something joyous, something to be cherished no matter what might happen in the future. She was Keith Corbin’s wife, and he was her husband. Nothing and no one would ever separate them again, she vowed, as she pedaled toward town, not Emma’s lies, not Cedrick Golden, not even her shop.
As she rode, she reviewed the events that had probably preceded Keith’s shooting. Emma had thrown herself at Rod, that night of the show aboard the Columbia Queen, determined to win him in any way she could. And, of course, Rod had availed himself of a night’s diversion, never planning to stay and fulfill Emma’s childish fantasies. When he had gone away, Emma had panicked, felt a need to confess to her parents, lest there be a baby. For reasons of her own—probably to protect Rod from her father’s inevitable moral outrage—Emma had laid the seduction at the feet of the man she knew as Joel Shiloh.
Keith.
Tess pedaled toward the Grand Hotel with furious motions of her strong, slender legs, her mind moving much more rapidly, much more furiously. Emma had been stunned and guilt-stricken, of course, over her father’s death, and it had probably never occurred to her that Cornelia might suffer mental collapse, having lost him, that she might avenge the loss. Against the wrong man.
Reaching the hotel, Tess abandoned her bicycle out front without a backward glance, leaving it to lean against a streetlamp. She stormed through the lobby, turned the
elevator knob, barked a command at the operator when the mechanical horror arrived, lurching and creaking on its cables.
Within seconds, she was pounding at the door of the suite that had, until so recently, belonged to Asa and Olivia. When Emma answered, she looked so wan and distraught that some of Tess’s anger seeped away.
“Tess. How nice of you to—”
Tess was instantly furious again. Jessup Hamilton was dead, after all, and Cornelia was probably hopelessly insane. Her own husband was confined to a hospital bed, perhaps permanently disabled. And all because Emma had been so thoughtless, so self-serving, so ignorant!
“I want to know,” she began, in a harsh rush, as she strode past Rod’s wife and into the suite, “about that lie you said you told.”
Emma grew paler still. “Lie? What lie?”
“The night your father died and your mother turned you out,” Tess insisted ruthlessly. Her hands were clenched at her sides, her heart was beating against her ribcage as though to break through. She knew she was flushed by the almost intolerable heat in her face. “You told them that you’d been with Joel Shiloh, didn’t you, Emma? That’s why you fainted that day, when you first came to the shop and saw him there.”
Emma fluttered one hand in front of her face and wavered her way into the sitting room, where she sank into a chair. “Yes.”
“Your mother shot him.”
Emma’s mouth dropped open for a second, and she swayed in her chair. “Mama?! Mama did that?”
“Yes. She thought she was avenging your honor, Emma. God in heaven, how could you? How could you tell such a lie?”
“Tess, I was desperate! I didn’t know what would happen—it seemed safe to name Mr. Shiloh, because he was gone—”
“Safe?! He was nearly killed because of you, Emma! My husband was nearly killed because of you!”
“Wh-where is Mama? Is she in jail? Oh, Tess, what will they do to her?”
The rush of frantic questions weakened Tess, made her feel sick with despair for Cornelia, for Emma. For Jessup. She fell into a chair herself and covered her face with both hands just briefly, until she could look at her friend again. “Where is Rod?” she asked, in a soft, defeated voice.
“He went out this morning, with Cedrick Golden and that hussy Cynthia. Something about the play.” Emma shot out of her chair and then sagged back into it again, wringing her hands. “I can’t think about him now—I don’t care about him—I’ve got to go to Mama!”
Tess drew a deep breath, steadied herself. “Emma, wait, please,” she said gently. “Wait for Rod. It would be better if he went with you.”
“I can’t wait! I won’t! I did this, it’s all my fault!” Her voice wavered, tears welled in her wide brown eyes and trickled down her cheeks. “Mama must be so frightened, all alone in that dreadful place—”
“Emma, listen to me. You can’t—”
“No!” screamed Emma, suddenly, shrilly. “No, don’t try to talk me out of going, Tess! You’re always talking me out of things—and into things. I want to see Mama!”
Just then, the suite’s door opened in the near distance and Rod called out his wife’s name. There was no trace of the anger he’d borne Emma the night before in his tone; he might have been a bookkeeper coming home to have midday tea.
With him, looking cherubic and dapper, was Cedrick Golden. When Cedrick’s eyes touched Tess, a guarded sort of fury sparked in their depths and was instantly quelled.
Rod was staring at Emma, and it almost seemed that he had come to love her, so obvious was his concern for her. “Emma, what is it?”
“My mama—oh, Rod, it was my mama that shot Mr. Shiloh—”
“Keith,” Tess corrected her quietly. “His name isn’t Joel Shiloh, it’s Keith Corbin.”
No one, with the exception of Cedrick, seemed to hear her. Rod was embracing his trembling, tearful Emma, crooning words of comfort into her hair. Tess wondered, with an odd idleness, where Cynthia had gotten off to. Hadn’t Emma said that she was with Rod and Cedrick?
“She’s in jail, Rod!” Emma prattled, in hysterical horror. The full import of what she had done was penetrating then, and Tess was sorry for her. “My poor mama, in jail, with all those dreadful criminals!”
“We’ll go there, right now,” Rod promised rashly, eager to comfort. Very eager, for a man who had resisted the constraints of marriage even after the fact. “Everything will be all right, Emma. I promise you that.”
Tess felt Cedrick’s gaze upon her and shifted her eyes to his face. What she saw, in that unguarded moment, startled her. The actor looked as though he could cheerfully murder her where she sat.
Of course, being the consummate performer that he was, Cedrick suppressed the emotion so swiftly, so skillfully, that Tess could almost believe she had imagined it.
“Cedrick,” she said, in polite, belated greeting.
He inclined his too-handsome head. “My dear,” he replied.
Tess felt queasy and very uncomfortable. Given the circumstances, that wasn’t surprising, she supposed, but she did wish that Cedrick hadn’t come in with Rod. He never failed to disturb her, to make her feel off balance, like a person groping in the dark.
“Do you want to come along, Tess?”
Rod’s question, gently put as it was, startled Tess, made her jump reflexively in her chair.
“I don’t think that would be appropriate, under the circumstances. You see, I just married the man Cornelia shot.”
There was a charge in the room, almost a tangible thing, thick and threatening, and it wasn’t coming from Rod, who was, despite his invitation, completely absorbed in an equally oblivious Emma. No, it was coming from Cedrick Golden, that oppressive feeling of hatred, and Tess was stunned by the strength and scope of it.
Cedrick addressed Rod, though his eyes, unreadable and veiled, were fixed on Tess. “I’ll see you there in my carriage, of course,” he offered, ever the polite, accommodating friend.
And if he was a friend, why did he dangle the part in his play before Rod like a carrot before a dray horse?
“Won’t you let me drop you off at your shop on the way, Miss——Mrs. Corbin?”
Tess rose out of her chair, shook her head. Never, at any time in her life, had she felt so threatened, so unsafe. “No,” she blurted, too quickly. After a moment, she regained her composure and spoke more moderately. “No, thank you. I have my bicycle.”
“Did you tell her about the money you borrowed, Rod?” Emma chattered feverishly, into the heavy silence that followed. “Did you tell her about the money?”
The floor shifted and rolled beneath Tess’s feet.
“What money, Rod?” she demanded, glaring at her half-brother, trying to withstand the new and sudden horror that was thundering against her like an incoming tide. “What money?!”
“I’ll explain later,” said Rod, avoiding her eyes, his tone brusque, clipped, his face flushed. “Can’t you see what a state Emma’s in?”
“You got into my bank account somehow, didn’t you?” insisted Tess frantically. “You—you loaned my money to this—this confidence man!”
“Confidence man?!” snarled Cedrick.
Tess wanted to pursue the matter, but Rod was having none of that. He gathered Emma and bustled her out, Cedrick storming along behind them, red to his elfin ears, fury moving in every lithe line of his body.
“Rod Thatcher-Waltam!” Tess yelled. “You come back here, you thief! You——”
The suite’s door slammed and she was alone. Without even going to the bank, Tess knew that she was, thanks to Rod, stone broke. She trembled with the worst kind of rage, the helpless kind. She would never have been able to withdraw money had that account been Rod’s, but, because he was a man and her brother, the laws of the land apparently allowed him such a travesty!
Tess stood up shakily and left the suite in a stumbling state of blind, impotent rage. It hardly seemed possible that this was her wedding day; her husband was lying in a hospital b
ed, her best friend’s mother had attempted to murder him, and now her money was gone.
Tess’s bicycle still rested against the streetlamp. Glumly, she pedaled her way homeward.
Reaching her shop, she wheeled her bicycle inside, pulled down the shades on the windows facing the busy street outside, and locked the door. After a cup of tea and a long interval of staring off into space, she went across the road to speak with the banker Asa had placed in charge of her account.
He was amazingly offhand, considering that she had been robbed. Clerks made mistakes, after all, he maintained, and if Tess wanted to recover her money, it seemed to him that she would be better off to approach her brother.
“My father didn’t arrange the account so that Rod had access to it, then?” Tess wanted to know, and mingled with her anger and her shock was a certain relief that Asa had trusted her.
“Oh, no. Though I did advise him to do so, of course,” replied the banker blithely. The implication was that a mere, mindless little fluff of a creature such as herself could not be entrusted with such a sum. Might squander it on hat pins and French cologne and other gee-gaws.
“This bank was responsible for my money!” Tess insisted hotly. “I’ve been robbed and it’s your fault! What do you intend to do about it, sir?”
“Do?” The banker shrugged. “I suppose you could press charges against your brother. Have him jailed.”
Tess might well have done exactly that, had it not been for the hardship such an action would cause Emma. “I may press charges against your bank instead,” she answered. There was a long silence, during which the banker didn’t even have the decency to look apologetic. Tess had to puncture his pomposity, she simply had to, and the only needle at hand was her new name.
“Won’t you please change the name on my account, if it’s not too much trouble?” she asked, with acid sweetness and deliberately widened eyes. “I’m no longer Tess Bishop, you see. As of this afternoon, I am Tess Corbin.”
She waited for the statement to sink in and was buoyed when it did. The banker jumped as though she had prodded his well-cushioned backside with a sharp stick.
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