Memory's Embrace (16 page)

“Come on, you ninny,” Rod insisted, grasping her arm and fairly thrusting her toward the suite’s small entryway. As he did so, he was tucking the generous wad of currency Asa had given him into the pocket of his new black broadcloth suit coat. Apparently, he, too, had enhanced the financial situation of Mrs. McQuade.

Tess was warming to the idea of dinner in a restaurant and a play to watch, but when they reached the
entryway, her bright mood fled. Leaning against the wall was her bicycle, her valise in the basket. Her camera sat on a small table.

She knew then that Keith Corbin was not coming back, not even to say goodbye. And though she gave no outward sign of it, her heart cracked from top to bottom and then tinkled down into her midsection in tiny, irreparable pieces.

Keith paced the sumptuous, seldom-used hotel suite impatiently. He’d bathed, he’d eaten, he’d shaved. His clothes were clean.

All ready to face my brothers, he thought, with wry, rueful amusement.

Tess. He knew that she was safe, that she would be taken care of from then on. Asa Thatcher had made his devotion to his daughter clear enough and, from the windows of his own plush sitting room, Keith had seen the proprietress of McQuade’s Mercantile carrying stacks of brightly colored fluff across the street. He knew the things were for Tess, and he was buoyed by the delight he knew she would feel, but he was also a little sad. It would have been nice to buy pretty things for her himself.

He thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers. The bank in Port Hastings had wired him the funds he’d requested; he could stock his wagon with supplies and leave again.

A slow smile spread across his face. Tess was going to be all right. She was going to be loved and provided for. Why shouldn’t he go back to selling his medicines in the towns and the lumbercamps, camping
in meadows and fields at night, thinking his own thoughts?

The fact that Jeff and Adam would be furious if they arrived and found him gone made his smile widen accordingly. It would serve them right.

Still grinning, Keith gathered the few things he’d brought to the suite, took the key from his pocket and flipped it high, caught it with a flourish. And even though something within him screamed for Tess Bishop, he went downstairs, checked out of the hotel, crossed the street, and haggled with Mrs. McQuade for half an hour.

When he left her store, Keith had crates of laudanum, castor oil, and liver tonic. He had food for himself and the mule. And he was miles outside of Portland before he could bring himself to look back.

Of all the scenarios Emma Hamilton could have imagined, there wasn’t a one to equal her father’s reaction to the news that she had been compromised by Joel Shiloh, the peddler. So wildly did her parent rant—his nose became red and small blue veins sprouted all over it—that she trembled with fear. He would see that miserable drummer hanged, he raged. He would see him shot. He would see him bludgeoned to death with a fence post.

Emma shivered. She had no doubt that her father would do all those things to Joel Shiloh and more, should he ever catch up with him, though not necessarily in that order, of course. What, for instance, was the
good of hanging someone who had already been shot and then beaten to death? “Papa, I—”

Jessup Hamilton turned from red to purple. A spasmodic hand rose, shaking, to grasp his chest. And then he fell.

And it was too late to tell him the truth; Emma knew it before she knelt beside him. She’d killed him. She’d killed her own father, because she was wanton and she was a liar to boot.

Emma’s mother was trying to shake her husband back to life, sobbing wildly. Her knuckles were white where she gripped his lifeless shoulders. “Get the doctor—oh, Emma—get the doctor—”

To please her mother, Emma stood up and took her shawl from the peg beside the door. There was no use in finding Doc Smithers, no use at all, but if it would help Cornelia, she would do it. She went blindly into the chilly April night, finding the physician’s nearby home by rote.

“My papa is dead,” she said to his wife, when that lady opened the surgery door to her. “Mama wants the doctor to come.”

Doc Smithers was a young man, earnest about his profession, handsome in an innocuous, boyish sort of way. He grabbed his bag in one hand and Emma’s elbow in the other and they were on their way back to the small, comfortably furnished apartment above the store.

Jessup Hamilton was indeed dead, and by the time Emma and the doctor reached the scene, Cornelia had accepted the fact. She looked at the daughter she had always cherished with cold hatred in her eyes, all the
while that Doc Smithers fussed over the body, all the while that the Presbyterian minister was there, saying prayers. Even after Mr. Meidlebaum, the mortician, had come and taken away the remains, she stared at Emma like that.

“You,” she said, when they were alone.

It was enough for Emma, just that one word. Her father wouldn’t have died if she hadn’t been a hussy, if she hadn’t lied about Joel Shiloh. If she hadn’t thrown herself at Roderick Waltam.

And Tess wasn’t even here to talk to, to cry with, to explain, to lie and say, “Oh, Emma, you goose, it wasn’t your fault.”

While Emma was packing her carpetbag, she felt a cramping in her abdomen, a sticky warmth between her legs. She knew little enough about the workings of a woman’s body—she’d been half expecting a baby to sprout somewhere in her solar plexis at any moment—but she did know that if her monthly curse came, there was no child growing inside her. She’d learned that several months before, when a certain Mrs. Drews, a beleaguered mother of nine children, had come into the store and confided to Cornelia that her prayers had been answered: there would be no new baby because there was bleeding.

Unsophisticated as she was, the cruel irony of the situation was not lost on Emma Hamilton. She was bleeding and therefore barren. She needn’t have lied, she needn’t have confessed at all. If she had waited, just for a few hours, everything would be different.

There were no steamers leaving at that hour, and no
trains, either. It was dark and cold, and, down the street at the Blue Hammer Saloon, somebody was playing a spritely tune on a piano. People were laughing.

Stop that, Emma thought, as she carried her carpetbag down the outside stairs and started walking toward the roominghouse. She had arrived there, and turned the bellknob in the bargain, before she remembered that Tess was gone.

Derora felt charitable. Why shouldn’t she, when she was free of Tess, free of that boardinghouse, free of Simpkinsville. She drew the wan and distraught Emma into her parlor, questioned her, found out soon enough that Jessup was dead and Cornelia blamed her child for the loss.

No amount of gently phrased queries would induce Emma to say why Mrs. Hamilton had made such an accusation.

“I’m leaving Simpkinsville tonight, Emma,” Derora said. “I’ve hired a carriage so that I could leave right away. I’m off to Portland, although I’ll be doing some visiting along the way. Why don’t you come with me? Tess is there, I’m sure—in Portland, I mean. Perhaps we could find Tess and the two of you could room together.”

Emma brightened, poor creature, at the prospect. “I must see Tess,” she said.

“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

T
HE 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 Waltam-Thatcher, 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.