Memory's Embrace (12 page)

“Who was she?” Roderick asked grudgingly.

“An actress,” Asa answered. “Her name was—is—Olivia Bishop.” Now, he met his son’s angry eyes. “I love her very much, Rod. She bore me a child.”

Rod was white as parchment; Asa had not expected the news to be quite that much of a shock, all things considered. “Bishop,” he muttered. And then he added, more to himself than to Asa, “No. It couldn’t be.”

Asa gestured toward the town; only the lumbermill, with its screaming saws and log booms, was visible now.
“She came here, my Livie, after your mother and sister drove her out. Here to this very town.”

“Her child,” Rod gasped out. “Your child—” Asa could smile at the thought of his daughter; it felt good to tell someone about her. To speak of her proudly. “Tess,” he began. “Rod, you’ll like her. She’s—”

Rod was grasping the railing in white-knuckled hands and looking as though he might swoon right to the deck with all the drama of an old maid trapped in an opium den. “My God!” he breathed.

It seemed to Asa that his son was overreacting to the news; after all, Rod was a grown man now. Certainly old enough to understand that men sometimes had mistresses and sometimes fathered illegitimate children. “Rod?” he prompted, concerned.

“I met Tess,” Rod managed to say, more composed now. “She’s beautiful and wild and I wanted her. Thank God, I got Emma instead.”

Now it was Asa who was shaken, Asa who was pale and unsteady on his feet. “Can a man get a drink on this boat?” he asked, in plaintive tones.

Emma Hamilton dashed at her tears as she stumbled along the road that led to Derora Beauchamp’s roominghouse. Tess would know what to do, Tess always knew what to do. She had but to find her.

At Mrs. Beauchamp’s front gate, Emma paused, her shame thick in her throat. Suppose everyone could tell what she had done with Roderick, just by looking at her? Did that sort of wickedness, enjoyable as it was, leave a visible mark on a person?

She gave herself a mental shake. Mercy, she was being foolish. If the sweet-evil things Roderick had done to her, had taught her to do to him, left actual marks, Derora Beauchamp, for one, would be a mass of scars.

Her valise, containing only a nightgown, a toothbrush, and an extra dress, was tucked beneath the swing on the front porch, where she had left it the night before. She had planned, of course, to spend the night with Tess—

Staunchly, Emma turned the bellknob beside the door and waited. The black housekeeper, who secretly frightened Emma in some inexplicable way, answered promptly.

“She ain’t here anymore,” was the brisk response to Emma’s request to see Tess.

Emma swayed, put one hand to her cheek. It felt as cold as that of a corpse. “What—wh-where—” she stammered miserably.

Juniper looked impatient. “Miss Tess done run off with that peddler-man,” she said. “Happened last night.”

Emma felt sick. She was alone now, alone. Roderick was gone and so was Tess. How could they do this to her?

“You all right, missy?” demanded the black woman shortly.

“I—” Emma turned, like a sleepwalker, and stumbled away from the door. “Yes—I—”

She bent and picked up her valise, aching with hurt, dazed with anger. It was to be expected, Emma guessed, that a man would use her and then leave her
stranded, but Tess was supposed to be her friend. How could she go away without even saying goodbye?

Emma’s valise thumped against her leg as she went back up the walk to the gate. Tears streaked down her face; she was in dire trouble now, she just knew it. And Tess wasn’t here to help her.

Tess had betrayed her.

Emma tried to think rationally. After all, if Roderick had asked her to run away with him, as the peddler had obviously asked Tess, she would have gone without hesitation. How could she blame her friend for a similar action?

With her free hand, she touched her midsection. There was a baby growing inside her somewhere, she was certain of it. How the devil was she going to explain a baby to her mama and papa? How long would it be before the little one came—a week? A month?

Oh, Tess, Emma mourned. Tess, how could you leave now?

She was in the main part of town now; she found her father’s shop and rounded it to climb the steep stairs at the back and enter the small apartment where she had lived in sheltered comfort all her life.

Her mother, rolling out pie dough at the table, looked up and smiled her sweet, patient smile. “Hello, Emma. Did you and Tess have a nice time last night?”

Chin wobbling, Emma put her valise on a horsehair settee. I can’t speak for Tess, she thought with bitter humor, but I’ve never had so much fun in my life. “Mama!” she wailed.

Cornelia Hamilton ceased her work, dusted her floury hands on her ruffled apron. Worry leaped in her
dark eyes. “Darling—what is it?” she asked, in an alarmed whisper.

She had to tell somebody. She had to. And Tess was gone. Damn Tess, why did everything good have to happen to her? Why did her man have to want her enough to take her with him, when Emma’s had sailed blithely away on a riverboat?

“Emma,” prompted her mother.

Emma couldn’t bring herself to name Roderick as the culprit in the story she was about to tell; mildmannered as her papa was, an incident such as this one would make him dangerously angry. For all his fickle ways, Emma didn’t want that anger directed at her Rod. “Mama,” she sobbed, “oh, Mama, I’m so ashamed—I didn’t spend the night with Tess—I was with—I was with a man.”

The color flowed out of Cornelia’s face, disappearing under the prim collar of her green cambric gown. “With a man?” she echoed. “Dear Lord in heaven, Emma, who? What man?”

Emma swallowed hard, sent a silent prayer for forgiveness shooting heavenward, and said outright, “Joel Shiloh. The peddler, Mama. I thought he loved me—I thought he would marry me.”

Cornelia sank onto the horsehair settee, waving one hand in front of her face, swaying back and forth in a way that alarmed her daughter. “Did he force you, Emma? Did that awful drummer force you?”

Emma wasn’t willing to carry the lie quite that far. “No, Mama,” she said, her voice shaking. “H-He courted me. I thought—I believed—”

“Where is he now, Emma? This Shiloh person?”

Emma’s tears were real. “That’s the terrible part of all this, Mama—he compromised me and then he—and then he eloped with Tess!”

Cornelia was a kindly, rational woman, but she had always had mixed feelings where Tess Bishop was concerned, and Emma knew that. She disapproved of Tess’s hair, falling free and wild so much of the time, of her picture taking and her bicycling. And secretly, Emma suspected, her mother resented the fact that everything was always so much easier for Tess than for her daughter.

She saw these feelings moving in her mother’s face now. Cornelia stood up, somewhat unsteadily, her lips drawn in a tight line across the bottom of her face, and untied her apron. “We’ll just see who comes out of this situation with a husband and who comes out with a tarnished reputation. We’ll just see.”

Emma watched with wide eyes as Cornelia left the tiny quarters by the outside stairway. She felt sick at what she’d done. Suppose her father went after Tess and Joel Shiloh? Suppose—

It was all too much. Emma toddled into her bedroom, collapsed into her bed, and gave herself up to the worst sick-headache she’d ever had.

Tess made up the bunk inside the wagon as neatly as she possibly could. Then, conscious of the rain that pelted the top and sides of the wagon that sheltered her, even more conscious of the man who was outside in that storm, she stripped off her clothes and began her bath, such as it was.

Keith had provided her with a scratchy towel, stolen,
judging by the monogram, from a hotel in San Francisco, a bar of buttermilk soap, and a washcloth. There was no tub, but the water in the kettle was steaming hot, and Tess was content with that. She dipped the soap and washcloth into the water, lathered them together, and began to wash herself all over. It was a slow, awkward process, washing that way, but it was worth it to feel clean again.

When she had finished, she dried herself with the rough towel and then put on the one nightgown she had brought along, a prim affair with lace ruching on the yoke. She went to the door of the enclosed wagon, opened it, and flung the water out into the gathering darkness. What would happen now? Where was she supposed to sleep?

She cast an anxious glance at the bunk and reddened at the memory of what had happened there. Was it going to happen again?

A part of Tess hoped devoutly that it would, for never had she experienced feelings so gloriously, ferociously pleasurable. It was out of deference to another part of herself, however—a prim and selfrightous part—that she slammed the wagon’s door closed.

She went to the bunk, sat down on its edge. She wished she’d aired the sheets before the rain had started, and the quilt, too. Then maybe they wouldn’t have the crisp, distinctive scent of Keith Corbin clinging to them.

Tess was tired and sore and very confused. She sighed and crawled into bed, huddling close to the wall, watching as the light of one lantern danced and flickered against the rough wood there.

Presently the door opened, cool, rain-scented air rushed in.

“Tess.”

She stiffened. “Go away,” she said.

“This is my wagon, remember?” Keith’s voice reminded her, not unkindly. “And that’s my bed. Therefore, shoebutton, I’m not going anywhere.”

She heard the soft rustling of garments being shed and moved closer to the wall. “You could sleep underneath the wagon,” she suggested tentatively.

“If you think that’s such a grand idea,” he sighed, and the mattress gave a little as he sat down on the edge of the bunk, “be my guest. I’m not about to sleep on the ground.”

Rain pounded ominously at the roof of the wagon, as if to add weight to his argument. She heard the thunk of his boots on the wooden floor and felt the heat of his flesh through the flannel of her nightgown, even though they weren’t touching. Her bottom flexed and then tingled, and she tried to tuck it in a little further. “If you were a gentleman—” she began, desperate now.

There was a clink of glass and a whoosh of breath and the lantern went out, leaving them in complete darkness. Keith laughed. “A gentleman? Me? Who ever suggested such a thing?”

“Certainly not I,” observed Tess, trying to melt into the wall.

He laughed again, and then he crawled into the bunk beside her, stretching out with a sigh. He was naked, and every muscled line of him was hard and warm; he was touching her now because the bed was so narrow that even if he’d tried to avoid contact the task would have been impossible.

Tess didn’t think he was trying, anyway. Her senses leaped, her heart beat a little faster, and the tingling spread from her bottom into every part of her, even her toes, a certain treacherous warmth following in its wake.

“Let’s talk,” Keith said, after some moments, and from the shifting of his body, Tess knew that he had cupped his hands behind his head.

“About what?” she snapped, angry at herself, at him, at the world.

“Free love,” he answered, with a smile in his voice.

Tess was tired of being goaded about that. She sat bolt upright, in her fury, and looked down at him. It was so dark that she couldn’t make out any of his features. “All right!” she burst out furiously. “So I didn’t have the courage to try it!”

Keith gave a raucous shout of laughter and enclosed her in his arms, pulling her down so that she rested stiffly on his broad chest, her head on his shoulder. The ring he wore around his neck made a painful circle on her cheek and she shifted to get away from it.

“You loved her,” she said, staring up at a ceiling she couldn’t see.

There was a long, dangerous silence; she felt his arm, curved beneath her, stiffen slightly. “Yes. I loved Amelie,” he finally admitted, in a gruff voice that said he still did.

Tears pooled in Tess’s eyes; she was glad it was dark and Keith couldn’t see them. Soon—perhaps even the next day—they would reach Portland. He would be lost to her then. But Amelie, even though she was dead, would be with him forever, kept alive by the beat of his
neart and the ring that hung from that chain around his neck.

I hate her, thought Tess.

“Did you ever make love to Amelie?” she asked, rash because it was dark and because she hurt so badly.

Another silence. She had made another mistake; he was angry. But he finally answered. “No. God knows, I wanted to. Waiting was hard. But she was pure and sweet—”

Pure and sweet. Tess was wounded to the core. Amelie had been “pure and sweet,” too virtuous to touch before the wedding night, an angel to be cherished and set upon a pedestal. While Tess, on the other hand …

He seemed to sense her feelings. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said gently.

“What way?” she hedged testily. Even now, his hand squeezed her right buttock, through the soft flannel, and she wanted him. She hated herself for wanting him.

“Amelie was a different sort of woman,” he tried to explain, albeit lamely.

“Virtuous,” said Tess venomously. “Certainly above free love.”

He laughed, still kneading her bottom with his hand. “Free love. The very mention of it would have sent Amelie into hysteria.”

Tess’s throat tightened; she didn’t speak because it would have hurt and she was in enough pain as it was. Besides, she couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t hateful.

“Tess.”

She wouldn’t speak to him, she wouldn’t.

“Touch me, Tess.” His voice was not imperious; if it had been, she would have sat up again and slapped him silly. “Please, touch me. Make me forget.”

He was being unfair. He was asking one woman to soothe him while he loved another, dreamed of another. And yet Tess could not deny him. She shifted, so that she was kneeling in the rumpled bunk beside him. She drew back the blankets, stroking the body beneath with her hands.

She felt his muscles flex and ripple as she ran featherlight fingers over his chest, his powerful midsection, his thighs.

“Oh, Tess,” he groaned distractedly, “why do I need you so much? Why?”

Her hands moved—she hadn’t planned to do it, oh, she truly hadn’t—and closed around the magnificent pillar of his manhood.