He tucked her things beneath the wagon seat and smiled at her, his teeth catching the moon’s light, and the expression in his eyes was at once mischievous and wary.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Do I have a choice?” she retorted, impatient to be gone.
“I guess not,” he replied. And when they were outside of town again, on the road to Portland, he stopped just long enough to light the lamps on the sides of the wagon.
The light danced ahead of them on the crude, rutted road, like a golden specter, and Tess was suddenly very tired. Knowing better, she rested her head against the peddler’s hard, sturdy shoulder all the same. And she slept.
It bothered Emma, the way Roderick kept scanning the salon with those wonderful brown eyes of his. She had a feeling that he was only half listening to her.
“I was married to an elephant for three years,” she said, to test him. “We were very happy together.”
“That’s nice,” Roderick muttered, looking annoyed and rather disappointed, too.
He was searching the salon for Tess, of course. Emma was all too used to that, men cozying up to her just so they could be close to her best friend, and she was sick of it. Maybe she wasn’t as pretty as Tess, maybe she wasn’t as bright, either. But she had better bosoms and rounder hips and she never went around with her hair flying in the breeze, like a hussy. She would make some man a good and fruitful wife.
Like this one, for instance. Emma imagined herself traveling with Roderick, keeping his costumes in order, helping him to learn his lines and the lyrics to new songs.
“Tess is gone,” she said, watching Roderick’s instant reaction with a sort of bitter satisfaction. “She and that peddler are eloping tonight, you know.”
Roderick was as white as the alabaster urn Emma’s mother kept on the parlor piano. “No,” he choked out. “No, I didn’t know.”
Emma smiled. Tess was going to kill her for this, but that would be tomorrow or the next day, wouldn’t it? “In the family way,” she confided, in a stage whisper, warming to the lie because it was so deliciously outrageous. “There was simply no time to spare!”
“She didn’t look—”
“Oh, but she is, you know,” said Emma sagely.
“My God,” said the actor. And then he visibly reassembled himself; it was a fascinating process to watch. He stood straighter. He smiled. And the color flowed back into his handsome face. “What was your name again?” he asked, attentive now.
Emma was pleased to tell him.
Toward dawn, they stopped. Still far from Portland—it would take another two days to reach that city, by Keith’s calculations—they were also a good, safe distance from Simpkinsville.
Tess was sound asleep. She stirred slightly but did not awaken when Keith lifted her down from the wagon seat and carried her around to the back. There, he put her in the bunk, struggled with the tangled blankets, and finally tucked them in around her.
Looking down at her now, he found it almost impossible to believe that this was a woman who practiced free love. She seemed so innocent, so small. So vulnerable.
Keith left the wagon abruptly. Making love to Tess Bishop was inevitable; he knew that he would, and soon. But, for now, he wanted to let her sleep. Wanted to go on pretending she was all that she seemed.
He built a fire, unhitched the mule, and tethered it where there was grass to graze upon, brought it water from the nearby creek and a ration of feed from the wagon.
He was brewing coffee and reflecting on life in general when Tess appeared, looking sleepy and flushed and more like a child than ever. Her calico dress was wrinkled; her hair fell in gleaming tumbles to her waist.
I love you, he thought. And then he caught himself. I don’t. I loved Amelie. I will always love Amelie.
“Good morning,” she yawned, putting one hand over her mouth. “Where are we?”
His mouth quirked, he knew he gave the appearance of idle amusement. Which was odd because inside he felt a sort of happy hysteria. “Oregon,” he retorted.
Apparently she was one of those people who do not feel agreeable upon awakening. “I know that!” she snapped, sitting down on the upended chunk of wood he had set out for her, near the fire. “I meant, how far are we from Portland?”
“Two days.” Some wicked part of his nature made him add, “And two nights.”
She blushed and lowered her eyes, giving no answer.
“Do you really practice free love, Tess?” What made him ask that? Keith could have kicked himself.
Tess met his gaze; the color in her cheeks was metered by her heartbeat. “Yes,” she said stubbornly.
“I think you’re lying.” He was grasping at straws. He knew that. Why had he brought this subject up in the first place?
Her lower lip trembled almost imperceptibly. She knew what was going to happen between them as well as he did, and it seemed to him that she was frightened by the prospect. Or was it merely that she found him wanting in some way, found him less appealing than previous lovers?
The idea was annoying.
“Well?” Keith prompted.
She looked away. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m hungry.”
He got up, glad for something to do, and brought back hard bread and a couple of withered apples from the wagon.
Tess’s delightful, annoying nose crinkled.
“You expected bacon and eggs?” he drawled, mad at her. “Welcome to the open road.”
She made a face at him, but she ate her share of the bread and most of the apple with amazing appetite. That done, she went off into the bushes beside the creek and was gone so long that Keith had to pace to keep from going in search of her.
When Tess returned, her face was pink with cold and still moist from a dashing of creekwater and her hair was done up, too.
Keith glared at her, his fingers aching. And then, surprising himself as much as Tess, he strode over to her and unpinned her hair, so that it fell about her shoulders in shimmering waves and curls, catching the early morning sunlight, smelling of fresh air and woodsmoke and castile soap.
It seemed natural to kiss her, and he did, cautiously at first and then with a hunger that was so intense that it could not be denied. Tess swayed—or was it he that was unsteady? He couldn’t tell.
The onslaught of emotion washing over Tess in the wake of that kiss was devastating, buckling her knees, causing her to waver dangerously. When Keith took his mouth from hers, it was as though he had taken some deep and integral part of her away, too. To keep for always.
“Good Lord,” she breathed.
“My sentiments exactly,” he replied. And then, without waiting for another moment to pass, he lifted Tess into his arms and carried her toward the wagon.
They both got inside somehow; Tess didn’t remember the mechanics of it. She could barely breathe, after all, let alone think.
The interior of the wagon was shadowy. Keith closed the door, lit a lamp—the movements seemed almost simultaneous.
Tess was frightened, and yet she felt she’d been born for what was about to happen—whatever it was. Despite the unconventional home in which she’d been raised, despite the daring theater people who had been such frequent guests in Olivia Bishop’s St. Louis townhouse, despite the racy French novels she’d been allowed to read from a scandalously early age, Tess didn’t know what to expect. Not beyond the most rudimentary basics, that is.
Keith approached her gently, tangled his fingers in her hair, kissed her again. This time his tongue made no fierce invasion; his lips were tentative upon hers. Cautious and warm.
“Tess,” he said presently, in a distracted whisper. “Tess.”
She shivered in his arms, wanting to give herself, not knowing how. But when his fingers came to the buttons of her prim pink calico dress, she closed her eyes and tilted her head back, tacitly willing.
“Tess?” he said again, and this time he was asking her permission.
“Yes,” she whispered. �
�Oh, yes.”
Keith opened her dress—or was he Joel? She couldn’t remember. He was displacing her plain muslin camisole now, baring breasts that no man had ever dared to touch before.
“Open your eyes,” he ordered gruffly.
Tess complied, but she was dazed, barely able to see.
“You are so beautiful, Tess. Do you know how beautiful you are?”
The words, spoken so softly that they were hardly audible, seemed to deepen the trance. Tess swayed on her feet, was both grateful and surprised when she felt herself being lowered to that narrow, rumpled bunk.
“Do you?” he persisted, and his mouth was near her nipple now—she could feel his breath there, seeking, warming, making the nubbin tighten to a buttonlike hardness.
Tess could not answer; everything within her was attuned to the fate of that one yearning nipple. The best she could manage was a soft, despairing groan.
Keith chuckled and took the pulsing morsel between gentle teeth.
A massive shiver of need shook Tess; she clasped both hands behind the peddler’s wheat-gold head to hold him close. She could not see clearly, though she was sure her eyes were open—the wagon seemed to be spinning in some unseen storm.
“Joel—Joel—”
He was suckling at her breast now, drawing gently, nibbling. “Keith,” he corrected her. “Do you want me to stop, Tess?”
“N-No—”
Keith progressed to her other breast, kissing it. Circling the nipple with his tongue.
Silver flecks seemed to fill that shoddy little wagon, dazzling Tess—were they a part of that strange storm? Did they come from within her, or from without?
“Ooooh,” she moaned.
He took away her dress, her camisole, her drawers. She was conscious of that, and yet it seemed to be happening to another person, not to herself. And then he was naked, too; his clothes had dissolved away, become part of the silvery mist.
“T-Take me,” she said.
“Not yet,” was the rasped answer.
And then she was losing her grasp on him, he was moving down her body, kissing his way over planes of satin, searching for silk. Finding it.
He sought the hidden rosebud and found that, too, making it blossom.
Tess gave a great cry of tenderness and fear, he soothed her with his hands, stroking her smooth thighs, her hips, her waist, and ribcage. And while his hands tamed her, his mouth turned her to a wild thing, writhing, making a low, whining sound in her throat.
He was her lover, he was her tormenter. He held her earthbound, he made her hips fly in a savage bid for heaven. He kissed her, he feasted upon her until a terrible, wonderful quivering began within her, culminating in a tender explosion that left Tess Bishop forever changed.
Her fingers were limp in his hair, her breathing was ragged, her flesh was moist. He nipped the inside of her thigh gently, then moved up her body again and kissed her.
He entered her with a motion that was at once swift and tender, and Tess cried out because there was a stinging sort of pain.
Keith stiffened upon her, his eyes hot with passion and anger and shock. Lest he withdraw, she clutched at him, lifted and lowered her hips as she had when he’d been pleasuring her moments before. Every instinct demanded that she keep him near.
There was a certain satisfaction in the moan the motion wrung from him; he tilted his head back, closed his eyes. His throat worked. “You—little—witch—”
Tess smiled sleepily. She had him now, she could control Keith Corbin as surely as he had controlled her seconds before. The pain was gone, replaced by a feeling of lush need, and she continued to feed the sweet torment she saw in his face.
“Oh—God—” he muttered, his features taut now with the effort to deny what his body was demanding. “Tess—”
Slowly, smoothly, taught by instinct and guided by her own piercing pleasure, Tess moved beneath him. To her bedazzled delight, his powerful body was now in submission to hers, following her lead. He groaned again and began to move as she moved. And he caused her to need as he needed, something she had not anticipated.
Their bodies were entwined, straining now in some desperate quest. Tess’s triumph was a brutal thing, shaking her very soul, flinging her high with the raw power of an angry sea, leaving her to weep in wonder as she fell from heights she had never before imagined.
“Joel!” she cried, as she soared and as she tumbled.
A moment, no, a fraction of a moment, later, his steely frame tensed with a violent magnificence; he groaned as if in a fever and shuddered upon Tess, spilling sacred warmth inside her. But the name he called was not her own. No, it had sounded like “Emily.”
It was a sudden wounding, all the more brutal because of the tender, sweeping glory that had gone before. Tess’s eyes filled with tears, blinding her as the silvery storm had blinded her before.
He lay upon her, gasping, unable to rise, for some moments. But she could feel his anger.
She wanted to scream that she hated him, but she could not manage so much as a whisper, for her throat had closed tight, keeping in the hurt.
Presently, Keith gathered the strength to raise himself, to withdraw. His breathing was ragged, his flesh, like Tess’s, was damp from the exertion. As though begrudging her so much as one kind word, he glared at her and then turned away to dress.
He wrenched on his trousers, his socks, his boots. Tess thought his shirt would tear in two, so great was the force with which he pulled it on. And still she could not move, could not speak.
He turned, buttoning his shirt, his azure eyes flashing with quiet disdain, his jawline set. It was as though by glaring at Tess he could make her disappear.
She could not bear the expression on his face and lowered her eyes. She saw the ring then, the gold wedding band hanging from a chain around his muscular, sun-browned neck. Married. Dear God in heaven, he was married!
Suddenly, Tess’s voice was back. “You bastard!” she screamed, bolting upright in the bunk, reaching for her own camisole, her drawers, her dress, all of which had been tossed onto the floor. Her gestures were feverish, frantic, and awkward.
Keith didn’t even attempt to button his gaping shirt, cover his gold-matted chest or that damnable ring. He put his hands on his hips and watched Tess coldly as she wriggled and fretted her way into her clothes.
“How could you?” she hissed, watching him through a mist of angry, wounded tears. “How could you?”
His contempt was tangible in that tiny wagon, almost an entity in its own right. “How could I what?” he allowed at last, in a fierce rasp.
Tess’s teeth were chattering now, even though she wasn’t cold. No, if anything, she was burning up. With shame, with revulsion, with pain. “How could you betray your wife?!” she sobbed, horrified at what he had done, what she had done, what they had done together.
“My wife is dead,” he answered, quietly ferocious. And then he was opening the wagon door, jumping to the ground. The door slammed into the framework and then creaked accusingly on its rusty hinges.
Tess no longer tried to dress, to think, to understand. She covered her face with both hands and allowed herself the luxury of a noisy cry. She sobbed. She cursed. She wailed.
Even so, she could hear Keith outside, carrying on a rage of his own. The mule brayed repeatedly. The man bellowed a series of senseless epithets, and something made of metal clanged against the side wall of the wagon.
Tess was sure it was the dishpan. The same dishpan this maniac had flung at God only two days before. At God! She was alone with a madman, on a little traveled road, and there was no going back, no escaping.
And, remembering that she had given herself to that madman, writhing and tossing like a wanton all the while, Tess threw back her head and gave a shriek of fury that silenced both Keith Corbin and the mule.
Chapter Six
HE WAS STOMPING AROUND THE CAMP IN A LTTTLE-BOY fury, finding the harnesses and hurling them in the direction of the mule,
grasping the coffeepot and burning his fingers on the handle. Despite her wounded pride, Tess felt a mischievous sort of tenderness as she watched him.
“Don’t jump in the creek,” she advised, as Keith cursed and shook his seared hand in the air.
He seemed to forget his injury then. How still he stood, watching Tess, his eyes a pale and molten blue. “Why?” he rasped.
“What do you mean, ‘why?’ It’s foolish to leap into icy streams—I would have thought you’d learned that from the last time.”
Keith’s jaw was rigid and his eyes flashed. Apparently her reference to the day they’d met had not lightened the moment. “I don’t make a practice of deflowering virgins, Miss Bishop,” he said coldly. “Why the hell did you let me think you—”
“I wanted you to see me as a woman, not a girl,” she answered reasonably, approaching him now, taking his hurt hand in her own, bending her head to examine the damage. It was miniscule.
“Did it ever occur to you that you were playing with fire, as the saying goes?”
She looked up at him then, impishly. “I’m not the one who got burned,” she pointed out.
“That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?” he countered immediately, and though he made no move to withdraw his hand, his mood was still unfriendly. Distant. “Suppose you’re pregnant?”
Tess was terrified by the prospect, but she was damned if she was going to let this rounder know that. “My mother was never married,” she reminded him. “I’ve lived in unconventional circumstances from infancy.” She paused, orchestrated a shrug. “If I had to raise a child alone, I guess I could do it.”
“Your logic has one glaring flaw,” he said, bending close, his imperious nose not even an inch from Tess’s. “The child in question would be mine as well as yours. Do you think I want my son or daughter raised by a free lover?”
Maybe she was an actress, like her mother. In any event, Tess managed to hide the pain his words caused her and even smile. “Maybe Mrs. Hollinghouse-Stone didn’t convert me, but you did,” she said, knowing that she was galling him and glad of it. “I liked what happened in that wagon a few minutes ago. I liked it very much.”
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