Memory's Embrace (3 page)

Joel Shiloh smiled and shook his head at the prospect. “Bedraggled, is it?”

“You do need a shave,” Tess allowed, defensively. “Perhaps a haircut and a bath—”

He pretended to wield a pencil, making a note in the palm of his hand, the coffee mug wriggling as he “wrote.” “Shave. Haircut. Bath,” he listed aloud.

Tess laughed in spite of all her contradictory feelings.

“You really are strange. You argue with God. You have one name on your wagon and another on your—”

The taut alertness in his face was alarming. Gone was the look of humorous indulgence that had curved his lips, the mirth that had danced in his blue eyes. “Another on my what?” he prompted, in a frightening rasp.

Tess retreated a step, wishing that she hadn’t stopped at this peddler’s camp at all. How much safer it would have been to push her bicycle the rest of the way to town, even in the rain! “I just meant—well—”

“You meant what?”

Tess swallowed the aching lump that had gathered in her throat. “I—I saw the Bible,” she confessed. “I didn’t mean to pry—”

“Oh,” he said, and he turned away quickly, ran one hand through his hair. Now that it was drying, Tess could see that it was a color somewhere between honey and ripe wheat. “That belonged to a friend of mine.”

“Y-You don’t need to explain.”

“I know,” he answered. And then he turned back to face her again and the smile was in his eyes. “Where is this bicycle of yours? I’ll put it in the wagon while you’re finishing your coffee.”

“I really—”

He waved away her protest and started off toward the road. Moments later he returned, wheeling the bicycle along.

“Really, Mr. Shiloh—”

He opened the wagon’s rear door and lifted the bicycle inside. Tess wondered if he ever listened when people tried to dissuade him.

With deft, practiced motions, Mr. Shiloh went on to
harness the beleaguered mule. Coming back to the fire, he kicked dirt over the flames, took up the coffeepot and the mug he had used, and gestured grandly, like a footman about to help a queen into her carriage.

Exasperated, Tess flung what remained of her own coffee out of the cup and proceeded, scrambling up into the high seat of the wagon before he could contrive to help her.

“If you would like,” Joel offered, settling into the seat beside her, putting the coffeepot and mugs beneath it, taking up the reins, and releasing the brake lever with one foot, “I’ll explain to your aunt.”

“That would only make matters worse!” pouted Tess.

“I’m sorry,” he replied, and he seemed to be sincere. “I’ve made a hell of a first impression on you, haven’t I?”

He had. And Tess hoped that it would be the last impression he made, as well. “No matter,” she said coldly. “You’ll be moving on, as peddlers do.”

“Perhaps I’ll stay,” he said.

Tess looked at him in horror and then decided that she didn’t care whether he stayed or not. Her chores at the boardinghouse would keep her so busy that she wouldn’t encounter him again, anyway. “As you wish,” she said.

They drove in silence for a long time, the mule laboring diligently along the muddy logging road that led to the small Oregon town where Tess had spent the last five years of her life. The beast’s breath made a misty fog around its muzzle, and at least one of its burdens pitied it.

When the Columbia River, with its log booms and its
steamboats, came into sight, Tess forgot the mule and its master and dreamed. She would leave Simpkinsville one of these days, just up and leave. She would go to Astoria or to Portland or even to Seattle. She would get herself a real job….

The peddler’s voice broke gently into her thoughts, scattering them like so much silvery flotsam. “What are you thinking about?”

Tess smiled at him: And even though they were very close to Simpkinsville now, close to the boardinghouse, close to Derora, she felt warm and good. “Steamboats,” she answered, raising her voice so she could be heard above the shrieking screech of the saws in the mill they were passing now. “Steamboats and all the places they go.”

Joel Shiloh’s mouth quirked, and he nodded slightly. He understood and Tess liked him for that.

Chapter Two

S
IMPKINSVILLE WAS NO BETTER AND NO WORSE THAN ANY
of the other lumber towns the peddler had seen in more than a year of wandering. It was a small but noisy community, nestled close to the Columbia River and flanked by mountains thick with blue-green timber. He thought of Puget Sound and then of Wenatchee, another town on that sometimes turbulent waterway, and felt a pang of homesickness.

Tess directed him onto a side street within walking distance of the cacophonous sawmill. She was a pretty thing, with her wild cascades of rich brown hair, her impertinent nose, her wide, hazel-green eyes.

And she knew that he was not Joel Shiloh. Keith was
sure she had seen through his hasty, awkward lie about the Bible and the name printed on its battered leather cover. Damn.

He was about to turn to her and tell her who he was when she pointed out her aunt’s boardinghouse. Keith had never seen anything quite like it; it was part house and part passenger train, and the sight of it pushed every thought of confession out of his mind.

The center of the structure was an ordinary wooden building, square and unremarkable, weathered by the fierce Oregon winters and the hot sun of at least two dozen summers, but branching out from it in four directions were railroad cars, apparently serving as wings.

Tess glanced quickly at his face, and her lower lip jutted just a little, telling him that she was sensitive about the oddness of her home. “I live here,” she said, quite unnecessarily.

Keith squinted at the place, still unable to believe what he was seeing. “How—”

Tess tensed, and her stirrings had an unsettling effect on Keith Corbin. It had been too long, he guessed, since he’d had a woman.

But he had no intention of having this one. She was innocent, sweet, and entirely too young, and even though he’d left the straight and narrow path long ago, he still had a conscience. Sometimes to his regret.

“My uncle bought the cars from the railroad, when the spur into Simpkinsville was built,” Tess explained stiffly. “He was going to have a freight line of his own.”

Keith drew back on the reins, and the mule, sometimes recalcitrant, came to an obedient stop. “Your uncle? You didn’t mention—”

“He left my aunt two years ago, Mr. Shiloh. He ran away with another woman.” She sat still in the seat, a challenge flashing in her eyes. Probably, given the nature of small towns, she had taken considerable guff about what her uncle had done. “My aunt and I needed a way to make a living, so we had the cars brought here and we attached them to the house, so that we could take in boarders.”

“I see,” said Keith, softly. Watching her, his throat suddenly felt thick, and his stomach began doing strange things. He wondered if he was coming down with something.

Tess was scrambling out of the wagon seat, an awkward undertaking, since she was wearing trousers that were about to fall off. “Thank you very much for all your help,” she said, standing ramrod straight and holding her borrowed trousers up with one hand.

Keith swallowed a laugh. God, but she was beautiful, even if she was a child, even if she was wearing his clothes instead of her own. “Don’t you want your things?” he asked, and before she could answer, he set the brake lever and jumped to the ground. The burn on his right foot stung so fiercely that he winced. That’s what you get for standing in fires when you have holes in your boots, he thought, as he rounded the wagon and opened the door at the rear.

Tess was waiting on the rickety wooden sidewalk—weeds were growing through the cracks—and casting nervous looks toward her aunt’s boardinghouse as he wrestled the bicycle out of the wagon and then reached for the camera.

She wheeled the bicycle a few feet away and let it rest against a picket fence in no better repair than the
sidewalk and came back for the camera. Her eyes were alight with mingled caution and fondness as she reached for the cumbersome box, and Keith wished incomprehensibly that she would look at him that way.

“Will you take my picture someday, Tess Bishop?” he found himself asking.

She colored richly, averted her eyes for a moment, and then looked at him with a sort of tender defiance. “Yes, but only if you shave,” she said importantly.

It was then that he saw the sign swinging from the roof of the boardinghouse’s narrow porch. “Lecture Tonight,” it read.

Keith rubbed his beard-stubbled chin thoughtfully. This place was getting more and more intriguing by the moment. Besides, he did need a bath and a shave, and the prospect of sleeping in a real bed had distinct appeal, after all the nights he’d spent in his wagon. “Does your aunt have any rooms to rent?” he asked.

Tess stiffened and her cheeks flared, yet again, with an appealing rose color. “No—I—”

Before she could finish, the front door opened and a woman almost as tall as Keith himself came sweeping down the walkway, looking at once interested and annoyed.

“Tess Bishop, where have you—” Dark eyes swept Keith’s frame, stopped at his face.

This would have to be Derora, Tess’s aunt. Keith was taken aback, once again, for he’d expected a scarecrow or a fat curmudgeon. This woman, a few years older than himself and flawlessly beautiful, was certainly neither.

She smiled. “Derora Beauchamp,” she said, extending one elegant hand. Her morning gown was made of
some fluttery pink fabric, and Keith’s desire for a proper bath and a bed was redoubled by her touch.

“This is Mr. Joel Shiloh,” Tess announced, from somewhere in the shimmering fog. Then, disparagingly, she added, “He’s a peddler.”

Derora Beauchamp smiled, revealing a set of perfect, pearl-like teeth. “A road-weary traveler,” she said. “Ours is the finest roominghouse in town, Mr. Shiloh. Won’t you avail yourself of the comforts we offer?”

“Ours is the
only
roominghouse in town,” put in the hoyden at Keith’s side, grudgingly.

The warmth of Mrs. Beauchamp’s hand, resting in Keith’s, made sweet shivers run up and down his weary spine and dissipate in the aching muscles of his back. Too long. It had been too long.

He managed to nod and sensed rather than saw the scathing look Tess flung in his direction. Little Tess. He smiled and rumpled her wind-and rain-tangled hair and allowed Derora Beauchamp to lead him down the primrose path.

Tess Bishop simmered as she watched her aunt usher that crazy peddler into the house. She’d make tea, Derora would. She’d offer him the best chair in the parlor and perhaps even a cigar.

Stopping before the sign proclaiming tonight’s lecture, she glared up at it. Free love. How fitting that the topic was free love!

But it won’t be free, Mr. Joel Shiloh, she thought, with bitter satisfaction. It won’t be free.

Not wanting to face either Derora or her aunt’s prospective conquest, Tess walked around the house,
with its railroad-car wings, and slunk up the kitchen steps, holding the trousers in place with one hand and cradling her camera against her middle with the other.

Juniper, the black woman who, with Tess’s help, cooked for the boarders, came to the screened door, with its tears and rusty places, and looked out, rolling her great round eyes so that only the whites showed. “Tess Bishop, you little scamp, what you doin’ wearin’ them clothes? Where you been?”

Tess returned the thin woman’s stare with a baleful one of her own. “Just open the door, Juniper,” she pleaded tartly. “I’ll explain later.”

“You sure as the devil will,” retorted the ascerbic Juniper, but she did open the door. “Lord ha’ mercy, will you look at this chile—hair flyin’ like a Jezebel’s—wearin’ pants—”

“Oh, hush!” hissed Tess, embarrassed and curious beyond bearing about what might be taking place in Derora’s overdecorated parlor. What did she care if her aunt seduced that maniac, anyway? It would serve him right.

But she did care. Oh, she did. Tears brimmed in Tess’s eyes as she remembered the way Joel Shiloh had looked at her aunt. He’d forgotten that Tess was even there, except to reach out and ruffle her hair, as though she were a gawky child.

“You get to your room and put on somethin’ decent!” ordered Juniper, turning to an enormous bowl of batter and stirring furiously. “I swear I ain’t never seen such a chile—”

“I’m not a child!” Tess shouted, and then she hurried across the kitchen, through the small dining room, and
up the stairs to the second floor. As fast as she moved, she couldn’t help hearing Derora’s sensual, throaty laughter and the masculine timbre of Joel’s.

In her small room, she put her camera carefully onto the bureau top and began tearing Joel Shiloh’s clothes off her body as though they were on fire. Damn him, damn Derora. Damn the whole world!

The idea dawned, glowing and ignoble, as she was putting on her best satin camisole. The lecture! Of course! Tess Bishop was no child, and by George, she’d prove it. She would attend that lecture and she would listen as she had never listened before. And then she would adopt the philosophy of free love. Who could call her a child then?

The water was gloriously hot, and Keith Corbin sank into it with a sigh of contentment, a cigar clenched between his teeth, his burned foot propped comfortably on the edge of the tub. This, indeed, was the life. All he needed now was a drink and a woman, and if he’d read the promises in Derora Beauchamp’s gypsy eyes correctly, he wouldn’t have to wait long for either.

He shifted in the metal tub so that the water covered his aching shoulders and, with his teeth, tilted his cigar at a jaunty upright angle. “I knew a girl in Tillamachuck,” he sang around it, under his breath. “She couldn’t dance but she could—”

Just then, the door of Derora Beauchamp’s well-equipped bathroom swung open. The little devil, thought Keith, with a grin.

His cigar fell into the bathwater when Tess peered around the corner. “Oh, sorry,” she said, and she turned the color of watermelon pulp.

Keith slid downward until the water covered his head, his strangled curses bubbling to the top. When he surfaced the door was closed, and Tess, of course, was gone. He fished his ruined cigar out and flung it against the wall.