Memory's Embrace

by Linda Lael Miller

  And she was there. Amelie. Walking toward him, smiling. Whole and alive.

  It was impossible.

  She spoke to him in a voice heard with the heart, rather than the ear. “Keith.”

  He did not try to touch her. He had an unsettling feeling that he was not seeing her as she was, but as he remembered her. Thunderation, what was the matter with him? He wasn’t seeing her at all, she was dead. He’d been there when she died, he’d seen it happen ….

  “Go back,” she said.

  The light was a healing, holding thing. Keith was not eager to leave it. But there was Tess—Tess wasn’t here—

  “She’s waiting,” said Amelie. And then she smiled. “In December, she will bear you a child.”

  Tess, he thought, fiercely. Desperately. Tess, Tess—

  And then he was spinning backward, through the tunnel, away from the healing light, away from Amelie. He opened his eyes and found that the ugliest nun he’d ever seen was peering down into his face. She smelled of cloves and old age and maybe just a touch of medicinal brandy.

  “Ah,” she observed. “You are awake.”

  Her tones were heavily accented—German, he thought. “I just had the damnedest dream—”

  “What is your name?”

  Keith had a feeling that she knew his name already and was testing to see if he shared this knowledge. “Keith. Keith Corbin. I’ve got to go now. I’m supposed to get married.”

  “You go novhere!” barked the nun.

  Keith subsided into the pillows. “But—”

  “You vill not get married this night, my flend,” she said, more moderately.

  His head ached. His shoulder throbbed. And he felt sick to his stomach. It was true that he was in no condition to get married, he guessed, but Tess would be waiting. Worrying. Thinking she’d been left at the altar, so to speak. “What happened to me?”

  “You ver shot,” said the nun, frowning at the bandages on his head. “Dere vas much bleeding. You sleep now and get married another time, no?”

  Keith sighed. He didn’t remember getting shot. But he did remember a woman calling out to him, calling him “Joel Shiloh.” She’d seemed familiar—who was she? Oh, yes. That Simpkinsville storekeeper’s wife—

  Wife. He ached to think what Tess must be going through now, what she must be imagining.

  “I want you to send a message to a Miss Bishop, on Herald Street. Twelve Herald Street.”

  “Tomorrow, message. Tonight, sleep.”

  “Please—”

  “Sleep,” said the nun fiercely.

  Keith swore and closed his eyes, hoping he wouldn’t have that dream again.

  Dinner conversation was a torment for Tess, and trying to eat was worse. She smiled whenever Rod nudged her.

  The Goldens’ dining room was as elegant as the rest of their seaside house. The table was set with real silver, not plated tin, and the dishes were of the finest bone china. The glasses were crystal, the food was served by a pretty maid in a prim uniform, the conversation sparkled with wit and theatrical urbanity.

  Tess was miserable.

  It was Emma who distracted her from her own despair. She was glaring at Cynthia Golden as though she’d like to crown her with a casserole dish. Cynthia, who was beautiful but somewhat lacking, upon closer observation, in intelligence, ignored Emma and bestowed her glowing countenance upon Rod like a smothering light.

  Cedrick, in the meantime, was vying for Tess’s attention.

  “… simply awful, wasn’t it? A shooting, in broad daylight …”

  The remark, only half heard, brought Tess’s gaze instantly to Cedrick’s face. “What did you say?”

  Cedrick smiled and patted her hand, for she had been seated at his immediate right. A choice she would not have made for herself. “There was a shooting late this afternoon. Didn’t you hear about it?”

  “Wh-who was shot?”

  Cedrick fluttered one perfectly manicured hand, while the fingers of the other lingered over Tess’s. “Some peddler,” he said.

  What little dinner Tess had managed to eat rose to her throat and burned there. She fought it down even as she wavered to her feet. “Did he die?”

  Cedrick only looked at her, stupidly. Tess wanted to slap him.

  “Did he die?!” she screamed.

  Cedrick paled, just a little, and then shrugged. “Sit down, dear. What does it matter?”

  Tess did slap him then. With all the strength she could muster. And then she dashed out of the Goldens’ opulent dining room in a blind, frantic daze. Shot, shot, the peddler shot—the images flashed through her mind, bright with blood.

  The door. Where the devil was the damned door?

  Rod caught up to her, restrained her. Or tried to. She struggled and kicked and hissed until he was forced to release her.

  “Where would they take him, Rod?” she demanded, as Cynthia and Cedrick and Emma all gathered around to glare at her. “Take me there! Now!”

  “Tess—” her brother was trying to soothe her, dissuade her from leaving.

  “I swear to God I’ll walk there if you don’t help me—”

  It was Cedrick who stepped forward, out of the pounding haze, and despite the blow Tess had struck him, he spoke gently. “I’ll take you wherever you want to go, Tess.”

  “The hospital—how many hospitals are there in Portland—”

  Rod looked at Cedrick, and, in her frantic, distracted state, it almost seemed to Tess that she saw an unspoken warning pass from her brother to the other man. “I’ll go along,” he said.

  “And leave me here with her?!” shrieked Emma, indicating the still smiling Cynthia with a wave of her hand.

  Rod became, in that confused instant, a firm husband. “You will do as I tell you, Emma. Is that understood?”

  Emma flushed prettily. “Yes, Roderick,” she said sweetly.

  Tess was wild to leave. Furthermore, she didn’t care if Emma had to wait with Sitting Bull. “Please—let’s go!”

  They rode in Cedrick’s fine carriage, the three of them, Rod thoughtful and distracted, Cedrick repeatedly patting Tess’s hand. Only by great effort did she keep from screaming at him to leave her alone.

  The police station was the first stop they made and there, while Cedrick waited in the carriage, Rod and Tess went in. A sergeant told them that a man named Keith Corbin had been shot that afternoon, by a woman now in custody. He’d been taken to City Hospital.

  “But his name—” Rod began.

  Tess was already racing back to the carriage, her hair falling from its elegant wedding do in glistening tendrils, her eyes stinging with tears. “Oh, Rod, shut up!” she cried as she ran.

  They reached the hospital a mere five minutes later, though it seemed like five hours to Tess. Before Rod and Cedrick could so much as rise from their seats, she was out of the carriage and halfway up the walk.

  “No visitors,” said a nun roughly the size of Mt. Baker, when Tess came to a stop before the admissions desk.

  “I’ll find him if I have to look in every single room!” insisted Tess.

  “You are the bride, no?”

  “No. I mean, yes!” Tess knew that Cedrick and Rod were standing on either side of her now, but she did not spare so much as a glance for either of them. “Where is Keith Corbin?”

  “Bride?” echoed Cedrick, in wounded tones.

  “I’ll explain later,” answered Rod.

  “What room?!” shouted Tess.

  The nun was not intimidated; Tess suspected that nothing could have frightened that woman, not even a demon chorus singing hell’s anthem. But she did relent.

  “Room 14,” she said, gesturing toward one of four hallways. “You must be quiet and not avaken him.”

  “Thank you,” Tess whispered, hurrying into the shadowy, quiet hallway the nun had indicated and searching frantically for Room 14.

  Behind her, at the desk, she could hear Cedrick rasp, “Married?”

  Rod said something, she
was in too much haste to care what it was.

  Room 14 was at the end of the hall, and although it had four beds, all but one were empty. Keith lay in that one bed, his head and one shoulder neatly bandaged, his flesh pale as parchment.

  Tess touched his face. “Keith?”

  He opened one eye. And then the other. “Hello, shoebutton,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  Tess wanted to laugh and cry, but she did neither. Or was it both? “What do you think I’m doing here?” she whispered. “I’m looking for the man who left me standing at the altar.”

  He laughed hoarsely. “I bought a ring—I was going to the livery stable—this woman—”

  Tess touched his mouth; it felt too dry and too warm, and she cast about for a water pitcher and glass, found them. She held both the cup and his injured head while he drank. “You don’t need to explain, Keith. Not now.”

  His wonderful, pale blue eyes were full of pain, some of it physical and some of it, Tess thought, emotional. “I’m sorry. You were waiting. You didn’t know—you must have thought—”

  She silenced him with a tender kiss. “Hush. You need to sleep now.”

  “You sound like Attila the Nun,” he said obliquely.

  At that moment, Cedrick and Rod came in. Rod was quiet, watchful, but Cedrick was in a grand rage. “Now,” he boomed, glaring at Tess. “I assume you’re satisfied and we can go back to our dinner?”

  “Dinner?” Keith whispered, looking at Tess’s dress again, at the coiffure that had been so special. The pain in his eyes was more than she could bear to see, but bear it she did. “You were at dinner?”

  Tess ached. “You don’t understand, Keith—I thought—”

  “I know what you thought,” he hissed. “It didn’t take you long to mend your broken heart, though, did it, shoebutton?”

  “Keith!”

  He rolled away, facing the wall. And it was then that Tess Bishop’s heart broke. Exactly then. “Please, Keith, listen to me.”

  Silence. He was not going to look at her, not going to listen.

  Rod took her arm gently. “Come on, Tess,” he said, sounding for all the world like a devoted brother. “You can explain tomorrow. I’ll help you. But you need to rest now, and so does he.”

  “Rest?!” thundered Cedrick. “What about my play? What about Tess’s part in—”

  At this, Keith stiffened beneath his thin hospital blankets. She reached out to touch his bandaged shoulder and then drew back, thinking better of it.

  “Take your goddamned play and—” Rod began angrily, but before he could finish—and perhaps that was fortunate—the German nun swept in and ordered them all out.

  Cedrick pouted all the way back to his house, but Rod was gentle, even solicitous. “Tess,” he kept saying, “everything will be all right. I promise that it will.”

  Tess clung desperately to those words, but they made a scant handhold, and she felt herself slipping away from them, into hopelessness. Keith was a stubborn man, so stubborn. He was never going to believe that she had only gone to dinner at the Goldens’ because she couldn’t bear to wait and worry all by herself. Never.

  Further drama awaited them at the Golden house. It seemed that Emma and Cynthia had gotten into a spirited row; there was food all over the dining room floor—it even dripped from the wainscotting—and Cynthia was standing in the middle of the table, shrieking.

  Emma stood like a small boxer, her fists in position for round two. “Come down here, you hussy, and I’ll—”

  Rod turned bright red and then pure white. “Emma!” he gasped in horror.

  “Oh, help me!” wailed Cynthia, with added drama. After all, she had an audience now. “Save me! Someone save me!”

  “What in the name of Zeus is going on here?!” bellowed Cedrick.

  “That woman is trying to kill me!” whined Cynthia, pulling one dainty foot out of a pound cake. “Oh, Cedrick, it was horrible—”

  “Horrible?” leered Emma, her arms folded now, her hands still making pudgy little fists. “I’ll show you ‘horrible,’ you brazen—”

  “Emma!” shouted Rod. His acting career was over, as far as Cedrick Golden was concerned, and the knowledge flared bright red in his face. “Apologize immediately!”

  “I will not!” screamed Emma.

  Good for you, thought a weary and, despite everything, wryly amused Tess.

  Cedrick was making a visible effort to control himself. His somewhat narrow chest moved rapidly as he drew deep breaths and his eyes were tightly closed. “Our driver,” he said, with consummate politeness, “will take you home.”

  Rod collected his wife and fairly thrust her out of the Golden house, down the walk, and into the waiting carriage. Tess followed numbly along behind, wishing that this dreadful day would be over. Or better yet, that it had never dawned at all.

  What if she’d lost Keith? What if he wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t understand? It was just a simple misunderstanding, really. Surely, he would be able to see that.

  Rod instructed the driver to stop at Tess’s shop and climbed into the vehicle to sit beside Emma. To his sister, he said, “We’ll be in Father’s suite at the Grand Hotel, should you need us.”

  Tess was too tired and too soul-sick to say more than, “I thought you’d been turned out.”

  Rod glared down at his unrepentant, tight-lipped wife. “We have another week,” he said, in tones that promised that it would be a dire week indeed.

  When they reached the shop, Rod got out and waited conscientiously while his sister unlocked the door. When she had, he accompanied her inside, found a lamp for her and lit it.

  “I’m sorry, Tess,” he said. “About Cedrick and the play and everything else.”

  “You won’t—you wouldn’t beat Emma or anything, would you? She was only jealous—”

  Incredibly, Rod smiled. “She was wonderful, wasn’t she?”

  Tess found a smile somewhere inside herself and held it for a fleeting moment. “She was magnificent. Good night, Rod.”

  “Good night,” he replied, brushing her forehead just briefly with his lips. He waited on the sidewalk until Tess had again locked the door, and, as she went up the stairs, carrying her lantern, she heard the rattle of carriage wheels on the rutted street.

  What might have been the happiest night of her life was to be, after all, the loneliest.

  Chapter Fifteen

  KEITH STARED BLANKLY UP AT THE CEILING OF HIS HOSPITAL room. The pain was unrelenting.

  The ache in his shoulder was a constant, fiery throb, and the place just above his right temple, where the other bullet had grazed him, stung like the venom of a thousand bees. Both injuries were trifles, though, compared to what Tess had done to him.

  He swallowed hard. When he’d lost Amelie, he’d thought that there could be no greater pain. Apparently, Tess Bishop had been sent into his life to prove how wrong he’d been.

  The German nun stood at his bedside, and he focused his attention on her, desperate to distract himself from thoughts of Tess.

  “I suppose you’ve contacted my family,” he said, in hollow tones.

  Attila nodded, sympathy written in every line of her starched and bulky being. How much did she know? Had he been raving in his sleep, calling, God forbid, for Tess?

  Tess, Tess. Her name pounded beneath his injuries like a steel hammer.

  It was as though just thinking her name had worked the magic necessary to conjure her. She came bursting into the room then, her heavy hair already rebelling against its pins, her eyes enormous, her fine cheekbones flushed.

  Keith gazed at her steadily, fiercely, because he could not look away. He was absorbing the sight of her, storing every detail within himself. In the days and months and years ahead, he knew, he would need the memory to sustain him.

  “He is resting!” protested Attila sharply.

  “I don’t care,” replied Tess, in an even voice, her small shoulders squared, her eyes never leaving Keith’s face. “H
e can rest another time. Right now, he’s going to be married.”

  Married. Keith used all his considerable will to tear his gaze from her, to focus again on the ceiling. There were rusty blotches in the plaster, where the rain and snow had leaked through, and he methodically counted them. Again.

  He felt Tess drawing nearer to his bed; all his senses leaped in response, and the pain, suddenly, was much keener than before.

  She touched his face, her hand cool and light and still slightly rough from years of hard work. “Why are you so angry with me?” she whispered brokenly. “I only went to dinner—”

  “With an actor,” Keith said, still not daring to look at her. He knew he was behaving like a spoiled child, knew it but couldn’t seem to stop.

  Tess persisted. “I thought you had abandoned me, you know,” she said.

  “So you found yourself someone else.” His voice was gruff, rattling in the sore depths of his throat. “You’re resourceful, I’ll say that for you.”

  Her voice rose a little. “You are being deliberately difficult, Keith Corbin, and we both know it. I didn’t know that you had been shot. I thought you had—you had just gotten wh—what you wanted and left.”

  “You must have been devastated. For five minutes at least.”

  Her hand tensed against his face; she tried to turn his head, make him look at her, and he resisted stubbornly.

  Tess drew a deep, quivering breath. He heard it, felt it in his own lungs. “Rod—my brother—had been pressuring me to go to dinner at the Goldens’. You see, Mr. Golden is producing this play and Rod is an actor and he wants a role very badly—”

  “What does that have to do with you?” Keith was thawing, gentling toward her, against his will, against his every effort.

  Tess sighed. “Mr. Golden wanted me to be in the play, too. I’ve told him that it’s out of the question, but he just keeps asking.”

  Tess’s fingers were moving on the unbandaged side of his face, their touch almost imperceptible and yet devastating. “Then it would make sense, it seems to me, to avoid him—not to go galavanting off to his house on what was supposed to be your wedding night!”

  “You’re jealous!” Her laughter pealed, soft and musical, in the dreary room. “You’re actually jealous of that presumptuous, effeminate fop!”