Memory's Embrace (17 page)

“You could come with us,” Olivia suggested, as she inspected the stain on the yellow lawn dress. “You could meet a fine young man or go to college or whatever you wanted to do.”

“I can’t go, Mother,” Tess answered. “I feel—well, I feel that my life is here. I can’t really explain it but—”

“It’s a feeling of destiny,” Olivia put in, with remarkable confidence, considering all that she’d been through. “You’ve already met a man, haven’t you, Tess?”

The directness of that question, the suddenness of it, made it impossible for Tess to lie. “Yes,” she said, in despair.

“Is he married?”

A spirited denial leaped to Tess’s lips, but she held it back. Keith might not be married to a living woman, but he was bound to the lost Amelie, all the same. “H-He’s a widower, Mother.”

Olivia gave a sigh of obvious relief. Who would better know the heartache of sharing a man? Who would better know the shame, the waiting, the uncertainty? “Is there hope of a life with this man, Tess? Can he—will he—give you a home? Will you have his name and bear his children?”

Tess lowered her head. “I don’t think so, Mother. But I won’t—I won’t be his mistress, either. I’m going to work and learn and maybe s-someday I’ll meet someone else—”

Gently, Olivia touched her daughter’s face. “You are wise, little one. I have loved Asa completely, from the depths of my heart, from the very moment I met him. And for all we’ve suffered, you and I, I can’t honestly
say that I wouldn’t do it all over again, given the chance. It’s selfish of me, isn’t it? But where Asa is concerned, I have no pride. I was born to be with him.”

Tess could not speak. The strength of the love this woman bore Asa Thatcher was thick in the room, its force buffeting away her breath.

“I did a few things right, though, Tess. I did a few things right. Look at you—you’re strong, you’re beautiful, you’re independent. Partly, that’s because Asa came first with me and I never tried to hide the fact.”

Still, Tess said nothing. It hurt to have her mother voice that, even though she had always known it.

Olivia gripped Tess’s shoulders in hands that were thin, hands that trembled just a little. “It’s a difficult thing for a mother to admit that to her child, Tess. A very difficult thing. But we’ve always kept to what was true, you and I. And though hearing it may hurt just a little now, you’ll understand one day.”

Sometimes, Tess did understand, but this wasn’t one of those times. “Why, Mother? Was I lacking in some way? Was I bad?”

“You were and are a blessing from God. I cherished you and I always will. But a woman should love her man more than she loves her children, Tess. It sounds harsh, I know, but when you love a man as I love Asa—and I pray that you will one day—you will understand.”

“What I don’t understand, Mother, is your loyalty to that man!” Tess blurted out, forgetting, for the moment, Olivia’s fragile condition.

But Olivia looked anything but fragile. She stood very straight, and her dark gypsy eyes flashed. “I
consider myself fortunate to know him, to love him. Furthermore, if I could not have been his wife, I would have been glad to go on being his mistress!”

“There’s where we differ, Mother. I won’t be any man’s plaything. I won’t be visited whenever he has nothing better to do! I won’t be hidden away like some shameful toy and bought off with presents! I could never love any man that much!”

For a moment, it looked as though Olivia would slap Tess. When the blow came, it was verbal, not physical. “Then I pity you, my dear. I pity you with all my heart.”

Tess turned away, ostensibly to select another dress from the armoire. Tears burned behind her eyes, but she did not shed them until she heard the bedroom door open and then softly close again.

The stage curtains were trimmed in gold braid, and they were just about to open when Tess and Rod took their seats along the gaslit aisle. A sidelong glance at her brother indicated that he was imagining himself on the other side of the footlights.

Tess, still in a glum mood because of the scene with her mother, scowled and tried to read her program. The play was called
Travails of an Innocent
and starred a famous brother-and-sister acting team billed as the Golden Twins.

All the way over, in the hired carriage, Rod had prattled on and on about their talent, their fame, their angelic looks. Tess had never heard of them, and she’d only half listened to Rod in any case, for she’d been looking out the window at the seedy waterfront neighborhood,
full of saloons and boxhouses and spookylooking warehouses. She would have traded that elegant carriage for the medicine man’s wagon in a moment.

Now, sitting in the theater, watching as the heavy curtains were drawn back to reveal a painted set, she remembered how it had felt to have Keith’s hands on her breasts, his mouth. She shivered, and a treacherous warmth spread through her. Maybe she wasn’t so different from her mother, after all ….

She forced herself to concentrate on the play. It was a tired, overly sentimental piece and Tess hated it, but the performances of the much-admired Golden Twins were quite another matter. Never, in all her life, had Tess ever seen people so beautiful, so perfect. Both of them had abundant hair of silvery-gold and eyes so green that they were visible even from a considerable distance, and the man’s skin was as sumptuous as the woman’s.

“Do you want to meet them?” Rod asked, when the third act had ended and the theatergoers were applauding with deafening appreciation.

“Who?” puzzled Tess.

“The Golden Twins,” came the forebearing response. “Good Lord, I knew Simpkinsville was a hole, but everybody has heard of them!”

“I haven’t. And I think the ‘Golden Twins’ is a silly name.” Tess replied with weary dignity. Much as it might befit them, she added to herself.

“Ninny,” huffed Roderick. “Their names are Cynthia and Cedrick Golden. And they’re twins. Ergo—”

“Oh.”

“Oh? Is that all you can say? Just, oh?”

“What else is there to say, Rod? That I want to kiss their feet? That I want to be their slave forever? I’m tired and I want to go home.”

“We’re not leaving until I’ve spoken to my friends. Now, you can come along or you can sit here and be ogled by lingering lumberjacks. The choice is yours.”

This having a brother was annoying business. Tess wasn’t at all sure she could get used to it. But she didn’t want to be “ogled,” as Rod had so vulgarly put it, so she left her seat and allowed her companion to usher her back stage.

Here, there were crowds of people—the other members of the play’s cast, stagehands and roustabouts, and the Goldens. Up close, the twins looked even more beautiful; they were breathtaking, like exquisite French porcelain figures, perfect in every way. Indeed, a radiance seemed to emanate from them.

They couldn’t be mortal. Not with faces like that, teeth like that, hair like that. They had to be angels, gone astray. Wandering wide of celestial paths.

“Roderick!” chimed the sweet creature called Cynthia, flinging alabaster arms around Rod’s neck and wriggling her lush little body just briefly against his.

“No angel after all,” muttered Tess. Not that she cared what Miss Golden did to Rod, or where. They could fall down on the floor and copulate, for all it mattered to her. She only wanted to go home.

“And who, pray tell, is this?” drawled the male part of the matched set. His eyes, like Cynthia’s, were a devastating shade of emerald and fringed by sooty lashes. And they were fixed on Tess’s bosom.

She squirmed a little. Odd that after all the liberties she’d allowed Keith Corbin to take with her body, she should feel so uncomfortable under the gaze of this man who seemed a shade too pretty.

“This is my sister,” Rod said, unwinding Cynthia Golden and stepping back. “Tess Bishop.”

“Her name is Bishop. Yours is sometimes Thatcher, sometimes Waltam. How can she be your sister?” This came from Cedrick; Cynthia was busy staring up into Rod’s flushed face, her plump pink lips forming a beguiling pout.

“Born on the wrong side of the proverbial blanket,” answered Rod matter-of-factly.

Tess was abysmally embarrassed. Couldn’t he have said she was born of another marriage or something? Why was he so kind some times and so cruel at others?

“Your brother is a very rude man,” soothed Cedrick smoothly. “Tell me, dear. Have you ever thought of treading the boards?”

“Doing what?” frowned Tess.

Cedrick laughed in a studied, unsettling way. “Acting. Have you any interest in theater work?”

“No,” replied Tess flatly.

“Tess tends to be blunt,” Rod said, giving his sister a wry and somewhat patronizing look. “Her mother was an actress, in fact.”

“Then you must be very familiar with our art!” crowed Cedrick.

“Not at all,” said Tess, aware that, for some inexplicable and probably petty reason, she did not like Cedrick Golden or his sister. “I was never allowed near the theater. Besides, by the time I was old enough to
notice, Mother was only dabbling at acting. She was and is totally devoted to my—my father.”

“I must persuade you at least to read for a role in our new production!” wailed Cedrick. It almost sounded like a life or death matter.

Tess shook her head. “Never.”

“Never say never, my precious,” said Cedrick, waggling one finger at her as though she were a simple minded child.

“Don’t call me precious,” said Tess, and Rod, standing beside her now, gave her a subtle kick in the ankle.

“Delightful,” muttered Cedrick, choosing, apparently, to ignore what she’d said entirely. “Delightful. Rod, you must bring this sister of yours to our house. Tomorrow.”

“I’m busy tomorrow,” said Tess.

“We’ll be there,” said Rod.

They argued all the way back to the brick-lined road, where they were, fortunately, able to hire another carriage.

“You’d better not ever do that again, Rod!” sputtered Tess, settling herself into the carriage seat and furiously smoothing her skirts. “I have no intention of going to the Goldens’ house tomorrow or ever!”

“Cedrick was taken with you!” Rod reminded her, giving the statement all the import of a summons from God Himself.

“So? I wasn’t taken with him. He’s a fop and, unless I miss my guess, a lecher in the bargain!”

“He could also give me a steady job, in a real theater! I could do
Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III!
”

“Hooray,” sighed Tess. The night was dark, but there were millions of stars in the sky, gleaming silver,
some being born and some dying, some looking almost close enough to touch.

“Cedrick Golden has the power to give me everything I want!” insisted Rod.

“You poor wretch,” said Tess. But then her gaze was drawn back to her brother’s face, barely visible in the shadowy coach. “Oh, Rod—you’re not—you’re not one of that kind—one of those—”

“Of course I’m not!” snapped Rod furiously. “Didn’t you see Cynthia crawling up my ribcage?”

“I thought she was going to drag you behind a trunk and have her way with you,” was the blithe response. “If you want parts in Mr. Golden’s plays, it seems to me that you could get them through Cynthia and leave me out of the whole nasty thing.”

Rod was sulking. “He’s interested in you,” he said sullenly, when they were nearing the hotel.

“You’re not going to trade me for a tunic and a pasteboard dagger, Rod, so forget it.”

Rod was so furious at this that, when the carriage stopped in front of the brightly lighted Grand Hotel, he got out and stormed inside, leaving Tess to fend for herself.

She was used to that. With dignity, she got out of the carriage unaided, paid the gawking driver, and swept into the lobby.

There was an elevator, but Tess chose not to use it. The one time she had, she’d been with Keith and had felt safe, but she hadn’t liked the way the thing lurched and squeaked on its cables.

The hallway on the top floor was empty. Tess started to open the door of Suite 17 and then, still a little breathless from climbing all those stairs, she turned,
without planning to at all, and knocked on the door of the Corbin suite instead.

When there was no answer, she brashly turned the knob and again it gave and the door opened. She stepped inside, felt for the dial that would ignite the gas lights.

The suite was not, as she had expected, an exact duplicate of Asa’s. Oh, no, it was very different.

And Tess felt like a burglar. “K-Keith?” she called out, pleasantly.

No answer.

“Keith!”

Still no answer. Damn that man, where was he? In a saloon somewhere, drinking himself into a stupor? With a woman?

Tess preferred to believe that he was anywhere but with a woman, even in jail. She would wait here, that’s what she would do, because after what had transpired in that wagon of Keith’s, she had the right to a civilized goodbye, at least.

She explored the suite to occupy herself, feeling like a skulking snoop but enjoying every second of the adventure anyway. There were five large bedrooms in that elegant quarter, along with an enormous, fully equipped kitchen, two bathrooms, and a library that boasted its own billiard table.

Tess ran one hand over the green felt surface of that table, feeling rashly sinful just for touching it. Probably, no woman had ever dared play the game here; it was strictly reserved for men.

She yawned, covering her mouth with one hand. When Keith came back, she’d make him teach her how to play billiards. In the meantime, however, she’d just
sit down on that Moroccan leather couch beneath the windows ….

Tess opened one eye, closed it again. Good Lord, there were two men in the billiard room, two enormous, formidable men, and neither of them was Keith. She lay perfectly still on the leather couch, hoping that they wouldn’t notice her.

“Will you look at this?” one of them fairly shouted, and Tess knew that he was standing over her, for every sense she possessed swore to it.

“Good Lord,” said the other one, from a distance—though not quite the distance Tess might have wished.

Her nose began to twitch, and she was sure that a deaf man could have heard the thundering, terror-stricken beat of her heart.