“Her father is a hardworking, decent man, Rod, but he has a terrible temper. If she told him what you did, he’ll hunt you until he draws his last breath.”
“So she said. Actually, she shouted it from the shoreline.”
Had it not been for the trouble Emma was in, Tess would have laughed. She could see her friend in her mind’s eye, imagine her umbrage. Unfortunately, she could also envision the pain and confusion Emma had to be suffering—the poor little dreamer, having been raised in such a conventional way, had no doubt been certain that marriage would go hand in hand with surrender. How disillusioned and afraid she must be now. “You might have confined your romantic adventures to Derora,” Tess pointed out icily. “To her, making love is a game. To Emma, it was no doubt a proposal, meant to be followed by a cottage, children, and tea roses growing along the fence.”
Rod’s shoulders stiffened a little, beneath the worn tweed suit coat he wore. “From an actor? She expected that from—”
“Emma would expect that from any man who compromised her, Rod. It was cruel and thoughtless of you to use her like that and then leave her to face the consequences on her own. What if she’s expecting?”
Rod whirled to face Tess, his expression grim, defensive. And just a bit remorseful. So he did have a conscience, after all. “You make it sound as though this is all my fault. She could have said no, you know! I wouldn’t have forced her—God knows, she all but forced me!”
“Emma was smitten. Bedazzled, if you will. But she isn’t the sort of girl you just use and leave behind, Rod.” Like me, added Tess, to herself. Had Keith left Portland already?
“While we’re on the subject of morality, sister dear,” Rod parried imperiously, “where is this itinerant husband of yours?”
“Husband?”
“Emma said you had eloped with that peddler—Joel Something-or-other. She also said that you were carrying his baby. Given those facts, I find it most interesting that you have the gall to sit there and lecture me.”
“She said that?!” cried Tess, in a startled undertone.
“Is it true?” The flush of triumph glowed in Rod’s delicate cheekbones.
“Of course not!” Tess caught herself; memories of all she and Keith had done, in the privacy of his wagon, lay jagged in her soul. She had no right to moral outrage; she had run away with Keith in the dead of night and she might well be pregnant. Unwittingly, except for the part about the elopement, Emma had told the bitter truth. “She had no right,” she finished, sounding feeble now.
“You’ll follow in your mother’s footsteps, then, and be the peddler’s mistress. Of course, your circumstances will be considerably different from hers. My father, after all, was and is a rich man. I would think the charity of a medicine man would be lacking—”
Tess stood up and slapped her half-brother soundly across the face. To his credit, he gave no indication whatsoever that it had occurred to him to slap her in return.
“Did I strike a little too close to the truth, Tess?” he asked, and those words had the effect of a blow. “You don’t want to be kept by a man, the way your mother was, unless I miss my guess.”
Tess was shaken and more than a bit sick. She subsided to her chair again and breathed deeply in an effort to force back the tears smarting behind her eyes. “Did you know that your father invited me to live in the family home in St. Louis?” she asked, a few moments later. “I refused and now I’m glad. I wouldn’t ever hear the end of how my mother was a bird in a gilded cage, would I, Rod?”
The despondency in her voice must have softened Rod; he went back to his chair and folded his hands and his manner was almost gentle. But then, he was an actor. “You would not be happy in St. Louis,” he said at length. “Women like my mother and sister would make your life a constant misery. They would never accept you in a million years. You’re a threat to them.”
“My mother won’t be happy there, either,” Tess mourned distractedly.
“If my father loves her as much as he says he does, he’ll present her properly and then take her elsewhere. I met Olivia only briefly, but any fool would know that she’s too fragile to deal with that special brand of feminine hatred.”
Tess felt an abject need to change the subject. The past few days had been so upsetting, so full of shocks and sweet surprises, pain and joy. She was hungry, and she needed a hot bath and a long nap and time to absorb everything.
When Asa returned from the bedroom—he explained that Olivia had had a bad dream but was now sleeping comfortably—he pointed out that the suite had been chosen because it would accommodate all of them. Tess was shown to her small room, and her heart lightened at the sight of it.
Down the hall was a bath, complete with hot and cold running water, wrapped cakes of buttermilk soap, and enormous damask towels, and Tess indulged at least two of her needs by taking a long, luxurious soak and shampooing her hair. She felt sleepy and renewed as she draped herself in a man’s plaid flannel robe, discreetly loaned to her by Asa, and hurried back to her room.
There, on a service cart, was a tray bearing a steaming teapot, utensils, and a plate covered by a silver dome. Tess lifted the dome, and a delicious aroma filled the air—biscuits drenched in gravy. Fried chicken. Fresh green beans. Her stomach grumbled, and, as she sat down on the edge of her bed to eat, she reflected that, given this wonderful meal before her and the luscious bath she’d just taken, she might have been sublimely happy.
If she’d never heard of, let alone met, Keith Corbin, that is.
After devouring the food, Tess had a cup of tea. Then she wheeled the service cart out into the hallway closed her door again, took off the borrowed, tobacco-and cologne-scented robe, and crawled into bed.
A sweet, dreamless sleep rose up around her, like a fog, and when she awakened, twilight was gathering at the windows and a plump woman dressed in rustling sateen was standing at the foot of the bed.
Tess was startled and she gasped and put one hand to her chest. “What—who—”
“I’m Mrs. McQuade,” said the woman, her voice at once boisterous and pleasant to hear. “I own the mercantile across the street—run it myself,”—here a long-suffering sigh—“now that my poor Alexander has passed on to his reward.”
“Oh,” said Tess, the bedding pulled up under her chin, not much more enlightened than she had been before.
“I’m here to show you some dresses and things. Got them right out there in the sitting room.” Mrs. McQuade sniffled, wiped away a moist memory of her departed Alexander, and beamed. “That papa of yours is a generous man. I’m supposed to outfit you and the lady as fast as I can, and no expense spared, neither!”
Asa wanted to buy new clothes for her. Tess bit her lower lip and wondered how to phrase a polite refusal. It was perfectly fine for him to provide for Olivia, but she was not his responsibility, not to such an extent as this.
“I’m not supposed to let you say no,” put in Mrs. McQuade, lowering her voice to a confidential level. “And if the truth be known, missy, the dry goods business isn’t what it might be these days.”
In other words, thought Tess wryly, to turn down the clothing would impose financial hardship upon a woman alone in the world, a woman who must make her living in the dry goods business. Mrs. McQuade, for example.
Tess sighed. Soon enough she would be in business herself, probably struggling to make ends meet. She had no wish to cost Mrs. McQuade her profits out of pride. She also had no clothes except those she had worn that morning. Keith still had her valise—heaven knew where he was by now—and the contents of that were pitiful enough.
“If you could bring in some underthings,” she finally said.
Mrs. McQuade chortled once and then swept out of the room, returning, moments later, with an armload of drawers and camisoles and chemises, all of them soft and fancy. Some were trimmed with lace, others were emboidered. And, unlike the muslin she’d worn for so long, they were made of silk and satin. Not since St. Louis had she had su
ch lovely things.
When Mrs. McQuade had obligingly turned her broad back, Tess bounded out of bed and slipped on a pair of blue satin drawers edged in snow-white lace. Through the lace, a narrow cerulean ribbon had been woven. Barely able to resist crowing with delight she put on a matching camisole and whirled, reveling in the sensuous smoothness of the fabric against her skin. Oh, how she had missed having pretty clothes.
The trying-on began then. Tess chose cambric and gingham dresses, practical skirts and shirtwaists to wear in her shop, shoes, and sturdy, ribbed stockings. For parties, should she be invited to any, she selected a gown of pretty, sunshine-yellow lawn. This would serve, too, for the wedding of her mother and Asa Thatcher.
All the while, Mrs. McQuade chattered on and on about how she loved a wedding, yes, indeed, and how beautiful were the clothes the future Mrs. Thatcher had chosen. At the end of all this, she handed Tess an ivory-backed comb, brush, and mirror set, along with a packet of hairpins.
“Your mama wants you to put up your hair for the ceremony,” she said importantly, looking at Tess’s free-falling, still-damp mane with good-natured disapproval. “Shall I help you?”
Tess bit back a smile. “I think I can manage, Mrs. McQuade, but thank you all the same. And thank you, too, for bringing all these lovely clothes.”
Mrs. McQuade gathered up the items that had not been chosen and, after a few polite words of corresponding gratitude and farewell, left the room.
Alone, Tess put on the beautiful yellow lawn gown and set about wrestling her sleep-snarled hair into a coiffure fit for a wedding that was at least twenty years overdue.
The ceremony, small and dignified, took place an hour later, with a justice of the peace reciting the special words and Tess and Rod looking on as witnesses.
Olivia was particularly lovely in her dress of ivory silk. She wore shiny slippers on her feet, golden and fit for a fairy tale, and her hair was swept up in a soft cloud of gray-streaked mahogany and held in place by a half-dozen tiny diamond-studded combs.
For her mother’s sake, Tess tried to forget all the difficulties and indignities of the past five years and take joy in the fact that Olivia’s association with Asa Thatcher would, at last, be one of honor and not shame. Still, looking at those diamond combs, she couldn’t help recalling all the things they had done without.
When the wedding was over and kisses and tearful congratulations had been dispensed with, Asa suggested boyishly that it was a fine city, Portland was, full of good restaurants and entertainments that would surely appeal to Rod and Tess.
“He wants to get rid of us,” Rod whispered, when Tess would have demurred, preferring to go back to her room and rest.
Tess blushed. Surely Asa and her mother didn’t mean to—didn’t mean to consummate their marriage? Why, they were past that, weren’t they? And Olivia had been so ill ….
“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.”
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.
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