Memory's Embrace

by Linda Lael Miller

  Now that he was strong again, Keith could face what he was, what he believed, what he needed. He wanted to preach again.

  He shifted onto one side, watching Tess as she slept. She had made a success of her shop. A smashing success. Would she be willing to leave it, to follow him to Port Hastings? A verse from the book of Ruth rose in his mind, “Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”

  “Tess?”

  She muttered something and pulled a tangle of sheets and blankets up to her nose, her eyelashes fluttering as if to ward off wakefulness.

  He didn’t have the heart to awaken her. Instead, he let himself imagine her as a pastor’s wife. What a sensation she’d cause, with her wild, beautiful hair, her cameras, and her bicycle.

  The thought brought an involuntary chuckle from the depths of his throat.

  Tess yawned and opened one eye and then the other. “Keith? Are you all right? Wh-what’s the matter?”

  He pulled her head down to rest on his shoulder, the love of her a tight and twisting thing in his throat. “I’m fine. I was just thinking, that’s all.”

  She yawned again and cuddled close to him, soft and fragrant. “Thinking? In—the middle of the”—yet again, she yawned—“night?”

  He had begun to want her, and that wanting made his voice gruff. “This is something I’ve had on my mind for a long time. Since I met you, in fact.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not supposed to be a peddler or the indolent, unemployed husband of an up-and-coming photographer, Tess.”

  She shot bolt upright, her hair a moon-kissed curtain falling over one shoulder and tickling against Keith’s chest. “You don’t want to be my husband?” she whispered.

  Keith drew her back, smoothing her tangled hair with one hand. “Of course I want to be your husband.” He paused, searching within himself for the courage to go on. “But I also want to preach again, Tess.”

  There was a silence, during which Keith knew an agony of doubt. Suppose he lost her?

  When she spoke, her voice was soft, almost inaudible. “You don’t want to stay in Portland, do you, Keith? You want to go back to—what was that place? Wenatchee.”

  Her hair was like a spray of silken ribbons in his fingers. “No. Not Wenatchee. Port Hastings.”

  “Your family is there.”

  Another silence, this time, broken by Keith. “Yes. Will you give up this shop, Tess? If I promise to buy you another, that is?”

  She laughed, actually laughed. “Of course. But it can’t be an idle promise, Keith Corbin. I want that shop.”

  He laughed, now, more with relief, with joy, than with humor. “You shall have your shop, Mrs. Corbin. I swear it.”

  Tess cuddled closer still, her fingers making swirls in the hairs on his chest. He was aware of her, and in need of her, in every part of his body. “I don’t suppose your congregation will approve of me,” she ventured softly, shyly, after a very long time.

  “My congregation had better approve,” he answered flatly. “They don’t have a choice.”

  She was crying; he could feel the tears, cool and wet, on the flesh of his bare shoulder. “We’ll see,” she said.

  He turned, so that she was beneath him, was careful not to rest his full weight upon her. “Tess. Don’t cry. Please. If this makes you unhappy—”

  “Unhappy?” She laughed, through her tears, and stroked the side of his face with one tender hand. “I’ve known since the day I saw you throwing dishpans and coffeepots at God that this would happen, you idiot. Even that was a form of faith few people ever have. God was so real to you that you would challenge Him to a fisticuff!”

  “I suppose that is unusual,” he conceded, embarrassed to remember.

  “Unusual is hardly the word, mister. You should have seen yourself, ranting and raving, stomping around. I thought you were mad.”

  “But you stayed.” He circled her lips with one index finger and let that finger stray down the length of her neck, over her collarbone, to her breast.

  “It was raining and my bicycle wheel was bent—” She made an involuntary, crooning sound as he caressed her, her back arching.

  “Excuses, excuses,” he muttered, letting his lips follow the path blazed by his finger. “You were crazy about me.”

  He circled her nipple with the tip of his tongue and she gasped, her body groping for his.

  “If anyone was crazy, Keith C-Corbin”—she quivered, her hands in his hair now, fingers splayed and strong as they pressed him closer—“it was you.”

  He could offer no argument. They made love, slowly, sweetly at first, and then with a fierce savagery that hurled their strong young bodies one against the other in a frenzied attempt to become bonded together forever.

  The morning sunshine was bright. Smiling, Tess Corbin turned the golden wedding band on her finger, so that the small emeralds embedded in it caught the light and flung it, in shimmering patches, all over the tiny kitchen. Ever since Keith had given her that ring, while he was still in the hospital, she had felt that, to him, it was merely a formality, lacking the meaning that Amelie’s had had. Now, after their talking and loving in the night, she knew better.

  Tess drew a deep breath, to sober herself. She found an apron and put it on. Breakfast. The wifely thing to do was to cook breakfast.

  She inspected the woodbox. Since Emma and Rod’s departure for St. Louis, with Emma’s subdued but recovering mother in tow, Keith had kept it full. Today, however, it was empty.

  She could hear him stirring in the bedroom, grumbling and clunking his boots around. Those were such ordinary sounds, but they brought a bursting lump of joy to Tess’s throat; if she loved that man another smidgeon, she marveled to herself, she just wouldn’t be able to bear it, that’s all.

  Eager to please him, she dashed down the stairs. It wasn’t as though she would cook breakfast every morning, Tess reflected, as she unlocked the shop door, for any early customers who might venture in, and put up the window shades. There was no law that said the Reverend Keith Corbin couldn’t prepare a meal once in a while.

  She made her way through the workroom, having her usual difficulty with the latch on the back door. She left it open, so that she would not have to walk all the way around to the front of the building to get in again, as had happened on several occasions.

  The woodshed was filled with the pungent smell of aging wood, the dusty, half-imagined scent of cobwebs and mice. Unaccountably, as she bent to gather an armload of kindling, Tess shivered.

  Woodsheds were shadowy, eerie places, she decided, but she brightened as she planned the meal she would cook for Keith before starting her own day in the shop. She would fix his favorites—bacon, flapjacks, and eggs hard enough to shape a horseshoe.

  Tess was grinning as she straightened up, her arms full of scratchy wood. She was going to be the best wife any man, preacher or otherwise, had ever had.

  Cynthia Golden was framed by the woodshed doorway, standing perfectly still. Barring her way.

  Tess hadn’t heard Cynthia’s approach, and she was startled. Even frightened, though that didn’t make sense. It was broad daylight, for one thing, and for another, when it came to protecting herself, she was a match for this woman any day.

  She had not seen Cynthia since before her tragic encounter with Cedrick. Tess was damned if she was going to grovel, for Cedrick had attacked her and she had only used the first means at hand to protect herself. Still, she was sorry that it had come to that, that Cedrick had been scarred so badly. “I hope your brother is recovering,” she said.

  “As if you cared,” replied Cynthia, and she did not move out of the woodshed doorway but, instead, clasped the framework on both sides of her with gloved hands. Tess could not see her face, and that, along with the sensation of being cornered, bothered her.

  “I do care, Cynthia. And I’m ve
ry sorry that things turned out the way they did. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  Cynthia didn’t move out of the doorway, but a dusty shaft of sunlight, coming in through one of the wide cracks in the woodshed roof, found her face. As beautiful as ever, she was also calmly, coldly rancorous. “You’ve ruined Cedrick, you know. Ruined us all, really. I had to save him.”

  Something in the tone of Cynthia’s voice and the stance of her flawless body caused a chill to spin up Tess’s backbone. “What do you mean, you had to save him?” she whispered.

  Perfect shoulders moved in a shrug. “I couldn’t let him live. He would have been an object of ridicule. Scorn. Cedrick could never have borne that.”

  Tess’s stomach roiled, and a trembling seized her, though she brought it under swift control. “Dear God,” she breathed. “You don’t mean that you—that you killed him?”

  “I saved him,” corrected Cynthia, in the sing-song, hide-and-seek voice of a little girl.

  Tess was stunned, but her instincts kept her alert, wary. This was no time to let her wits go wandering hither and yon. “And what do you want with me?” she asked, slowly. Quietly.

  “Oh, I mean to kill you, of course,” replied the woman-child.

  The wood Tess had held went clattering to the shed’s dirt floor. She lunged forward, meaning to push past Cynthia, into the sunlight and sanity—and safety—of the world outside. That world was so close, yet so far away.

  Small as she was, Cynthia stood like a bastion in Tess’s way. Metal glinted silver in the patchy light, and something slashed at Tess’s upper arm, stinging. She gasped and retreated a few steps, amazed. So amazed that the screams her instincts urged on her would not pass her throat.

  She looked down, saw a long but not particularly deep cut on her arm. She was bleeding, and the slash stung fiercely. That was fortunate, for it brought Tess out of her shock and made her think with the cool clarity of those that are hunted. She edged into the deepest shadows, to hide herself.

  Cobwebs draped themselves over her face and her hair, and something scurried down her arm.

  Cynthia, still in the doorway, bent forward slightly, peering. Tess could see her clearly now, see the ordinary kitchen knife she carried in one hand. “Come out,” she said, in that same schoolyard voice. “I can’t see you.”

  Tess reached down, groped in the darkness for a chunk of cut wood, found one. Then, forcing herself to breathe normally, she clasped it in both hands and rose slowly to her feet. With it, she could get past Cynthia. She could get away.

  Cynthia came further inside the shed, annoyed now, like a child who has been left to search too long for the hiders in some game. “Come out,” she wailed.

  Tess might have made her escape then, gotten clear of Cynthia and the shed without incident. But for the fact that Keith suddenly filled the doorway. She knew by his stance that he was momentarily blinded, his eyes adjusting from the bright light outside to the dimness of the shed.

  “Tess? Are you—”

  Cynthia, startled, whirled around. The knife was clasped high above her head, in both hands, ready to plunge into Keith’s chest. Before he could react in any way, the weapon was descending.

  Tess screamed. Wood splinters bit into her hands. She sprang from her hiding place, making an animal sound low in her throat, and struck the woman who would hurt Keith with all the strength she possessed.

  And when Cynthia crumpled to the floor in a little heap of vengeance and cambric, Tess couldn’t stop screaming.

  Keith grasped her by the shoulders and shook her. “Tess!”

  Still she screamed, and he slapped her. The force of the blow silenced her, made her draw in her breath in a sobbing gasp.

  “What in the name of God happened here?” Keith demanded, looking back at Cynthia and then going to crouch beside her on the woodshed floor. She was stirring now, making a whimpering sound.

  Tess, hugging herself with both arms, swayed on her feet. “She—she was going to kill me—because of Cedrick—”

  Outside, she could hear excited voices. Running feet. Her screams, apparently, had been heard from the street. Tess remembered how Cynthia had held that knife, how near she had come to killing Keith instead of herself, and folded to the floor in a deep faint.

  When she awakened, she was inside the shop, lying on their bed. Her right forearm was neatly bandaged, and Keith was putting some kind of salve on the palms of her hands.

  “It’s over,” he said, when he saw that she was awake and afraid. “You’re going to be all right.”

  Tess didn’t care about a few silly scratches and a cut. “What about you? Keith, did she hurt you?”

  His wonderful mouth quirked into a teasing grin. “Do I look like I’ve been hurt, shoebutton?”

  There were a lot of people in the kitchen. Suddenly, Tess was aware of them, hearing their muffled voices, their shuffling feet.

  “The police are here,” Keith explained calmly. “They want to talk to talk to you .”

  Tess sank deeper into the pillows, gnawing at her own lip. “I must have killed Cynthia. I must have killed her.”

  Keith finished salving her hands, wiped his own on a damask towel, and shook his head. “No, shoebutton, you didn’t kill anybody. At most, Miss Golden will have a few bruises and a headache.”

  Tess’s eyes went to the closed door. “She isn’t here, is she? She isn’t out there—”

  “She confessed to murdering her brother, Tess, though she didn’t seem to see it as that. She’s been taken away.”

  Tess was nauseated, and she had a headache of her own. “Why—why do the police want to talk to me?”

  He bent forward, kissed her cheek. It made a reassuring, smacking sound. “They just want to hear your version. If you don’t want to talk to them now, you don’t have to. I’ll send them away.”

  Tess considered, sighed. There was nothing to be gained by putting the ordeal off, she supposed. “I’ll talk to them now.”

  Keith admitted one constable to the room and ordered the others out. Her husband’s presence—he stood very near, leaning back against the bureau, his arms folded across his chest—made it easier for Tess to answer the grueling, endless questions that were put to her.

  When the policeman was gone, she turned her head into the pillow. “I want to leave here, Keith. I want to forget this place, forget everything.”

  He sat down on the bed beside her, drew her into his arms. “Not everything, I hope,” he teased gruffly, holding her tight. “For instance, I wouldn’t want you to forget that day we made love in the suite, on the pool table—”

  It was his genius, his magic, that he could make Tess laugh under almost any sort of circumstance. And she laughed then, though there were tears mixed with the sound, and her face was hot with a blush. “That was scandalous.”

  “I liked it,” Keith insisted, his lips in her hair.

  “So did I,” Tess admitted, after a very long time.

  February 1891

  Port Hastings, Washington

  ANOTHER CORBIN WIFE.

  Mrs. Jeremy T. Terwillagher sighed as she settled into the second pew from the front, where she could get a good view of the wife in question, once services were over.

  If her friends could be believed, this one had a bicycle and meant to open some sort of shop in the spring. It was rumored that she had a past, too. There was madness in her family, for one thing, and, for another, she had been directly involved in that scandal concerning the Golden Twins a few months ago, down in Portland.

  Mrs. Terwillagher harrumphed. Anyone who associated with theater people might expect to be involved in scandal, to her mind.

  A longtime resident of Port Hastings, Mrs. Terwillagher was an avid follower of the doings of that outrageous Corbin family. Had been for years. Daniel and Katherine Corbin, the parents of this brood, had kept the waters stirred up, mind you, all by themselves. Still, once those three boys had grown up and started taking wives, well, things had just been fa
scinating.

  First, Adam, the eldest son, had married that lady doctor, the red-headed one with the saucy tongue. Why, just last week, Mrs. Terwillagher had spoken to her in the general store, asked her if the infant she was carrying was her new baby.

  “No,” that outrageous hoyden had replied instantly, “this is my grandfather.”

  She’d apologized, of course—that was only right—but Mrs. Terwillagher was still very much miffed. For a woman who had reportedly once had two husbands, that Banner Corbin had her nerve.

  As if Banner hadn’t been enough of an insult to the good people of Port Hastings, the second son, Jeff, had gone right out and found himself a saloon singer or some such. She was a blonde, not so tart-tongued as her sister-in-law, but Mrs. Terwillagher didn’t approve all the same. After all, how could a good, Christian woman be expected to approve of someone with a name like Fancy, for mercy sakes?

  And now there was this new one. Even from the back, she looked wild to Myrtle Terwillagher. She had too much hair, for one thing—rich, brown stuff that threatened to tumble from its pins. She had been right there, it was said, while the new church and the parsonage were being built—taking pictures!

  Inwardly, Mrs. Terwillagher winced. There was every chance that this Tess was even worse than the other two. After all, she’d been in the family way when this church was being built. Imagine prancing around a building site in that condition.

  Mrs. Terwillagher reached for her hymnal, deliberately thumping it against the back of the next pew, in hopes that Tess Corbin would turn around and greet her, so that she could get a good look. Alas, she was disappointed. The pastor’s wife was intent on the infant in her arms. A boy, according to the newspaper, named Ethan.

  Mrs. Terwillagher sat back in her pew as Pastor Corbin came in to preach his first sermon in this brand-new church. Every eye in the place was fixed on him, and a commanding figure he was, too, speaking with his gentle authority instead of pounding on his pulpit and raging about hellfire and brimstone.

  A little disappointed, Mrs. Terwillagher sniffed, her eyes wandering again. There was to be a potluck dinner, after church, at the new parsonage, and she planned to attend. She wanted to see if the Reverend and Mrs. Corbin really had a pool table in their parlor, like Ethel Claridge said. Ethel was a fine woman, but she did tend to embellish a story now and then.