Memory's Embrace

by Linda Lael Miller

She bent to remove his boots and smiled to remember the first day she had met him, in his camp near Simpkinsville. And then she remembered what they had done, inside his peddler’s wagon, and blushed crimson.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked, watching her. Though he was pale with the stress of just traveling to the shop and getting up the stairs, there was a mischievous light in his blue eyes.

  “Nothing,” lied Tess.

  He was looking directly, shamelessly, at her breasts. “I want to make love to you,” he said.

  Tess flushed again. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t lain in that bed, alone and miserable, and wished that Keith were there to touch her, to kiss her, to drive her to that sweet madness that was so much like dying and coming to life again, but now she felt as nervous as a virgin.

  “You are in no condition for that,” she pointed out primly. “Besides, it’s still daylight and Rod and Emma are here and there are customers—”

  “Excuses.”

  Tess resisted a childish urge to stamp one foot and picked up a small bell she had set on the bedside table. “If you need anything, just ring this. I have to get back to work.”

  Azure eyes gleaming, Keith idly picked up the bell and rang it. A pulsing silence filled the room, and heat surged through Tess’s body as he swept his eyes over her in blatant, masculine appreciation.

  Tess swallowed and turned to leave, he caught her arm in his good hand and brought her back, toppling her down onto the bed beside him.

  “Stay,” he breathed.

  The weight of him, the lean, hard pressure—Tess’s head spun and her breath came in quick gasps. “I can’t—customers—work to do—”

  Keith was unbuttoning the bodice of her gingham dress. His eyes never left Tess’s face, and the motions of his fingers were so practiced that she was sure he had been rehearsing them in his mind for a long time. “Umm—customers,” he agreed, in a throaty whisper, as his mouth came down, hard and demanding and completely welcome, upon her own.

  Involuntarily, Tess moaned as he kissed her, his tongue sparring with hers, his hand displacing her muslin camisole and closing possessively over the warm, plump breast beneath.

  “Keith …” she protested weakly, aware of the bell downstairs, over the shop door, tinkling repeatedly. Customers were coming and going. Was Emma taking proper care of them?

  His lips moved, heated and smooth, over her neck, down over her shoulder and collarbone, reaching her breast with unerring boldness.

  As Keith’s mouth closed over her pulsing, distended nipple, all thoughts of the shop fled her mind. In a convulsion of pleasure, she arched her back and knotted her hand in his hair, pressing him closer and then closer still.

  He drank of her at his leisure, savoring her, driving her wild. Each playful nip of his teeth or foray of his tongue brought a small, fevered cry of need from her.

  “We can’t,” she whined, in desperation. “Your injuries—”

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” he retorted. “We’re going to die if we don’t.”

  Tess couldn’t say whether he would die if they didn’t make love, but she knew for certain that she would. “H-How—?”

  Keith took his time answering, attending the other breast with his tongue first, taking sweet suckle at a fount that swelled in his hand and blossomed in the warm moisture of his mouth.

  “Lock the door,” he said finally.

  Dazed, Tess swung off the bed and stumbled across the little, breeze-freshened room to obey. The process of latching that door seemed entirely too difficult for such a simple task.

  She managed it, however, and then stood with her back to her reclining husband, her forehead resting against the wood of the door, her breathing requiring too much effort. “You can’t,” she whispered fitfully. “You’re hurt.”

  “Come here.”

  Tess turned, made her way to the side of the bed, for despite all good sense, it was not in her to resist him.

  “Undress,” he said.

  Like a woman moving in her sleep, Tess removed her shirtwaist, the camisole beneath, her skirt and shoes and stockings and finally her drawers. The touch of the fresh air coming through the window was almost as sensuous a thing as Keith’s calm, hungry perusal.

  Tess quivered with anticipation and the special vulnerability that is womanhood as he studied every curve and line of her. The breeze moved over her like an invisible caress and, reveling, she reached up and unpinned her hair, allowing it to fall around her shoulders and breasts, down her back.

  The motion undid Keith’s resolve to prolong the experience; he groaned and caught her hand in his own, pressing it to the hard ridge of his manhood, straining beneath the cloth of his trousers.

  Instinctively, tenderly, she caressed him. And then, knowing now what to do, she undid the buttons of his trousers and laid the fabric aside, baring him. He was magnificent and, for a timeless moment, she stroked him, delighting in his groaning surrender.

  When neither of them could bear another second of separation, he positioned her so that she sat astraddle of him and gently, slowly sheathed his sword within her.

  The sensation was so wondrous that Tess gasped and flung back her head, baring her teeth in a soft, primitive cry of welcome. He stroked her breasts, first one and then the other, as they both climbed toward fulfillment, moving in fiercely metered unison.

  Release came in a fiery burst that seared them both, causing them to cry out simultaneously and then sink, shuddering, into a deep stillness. Keith flung his head backward, as though to drive it through the pillow and even the mattress, while Tess sagged forward, sated into sweet exhaustion.

  It was a long time before she came back to herself, but when she did her eyes widened with alarm and she drew in a sharp breath. What kind of hussy was she? Keith had just gotten out of the hospital, for heaven’s sake, and his right arm and shoulder were still in a sling!

  “Did I hurt you?” she whispered, on the verge of tears.

  His laughter was a low, husky sound, joyous and vital. “Hurt me? If that was hurting me, I love pain.”

  Tess was swept up in a wave of happiness, of relief, of love. “I’ve missed you so much. Visiting the hospital just wasn’t the same.”

  “Do you love me, Tess Corbin?”

  She laughed now, and touched his wonderful face with the fingertips of her right hand, in wonder. To reassure herself, perhaps, that he was really there. “Oh, yes.”

  “Say it.”

  It came so easily. “I love you.”

  He smiled and tangled his good hand in her hair, stroking her, soothing. “And I love you.”

  Tess moved to leave him, he held her in place. When she was settled, he smoothed the moist flesh on her back.

  “Keith—” she ventured, as the heretofore friendly breeze brought in a shiver of uneasiness.

  He waited patiently for her to speak, giving no prompt, his hand still warm and strong on her back, his masculinity firm within her.

  “When you’re well, will we leave here? Will you go back to preaching?”

  The hand fell away from her, instantly, and it was as though a veil had been drawn across the mischievous azure eyes, the strong chin, the arrogant mouth. “I’m not going back to preaching.”

  Tess had no desire to leave her shop, but she was stricken by his response, all the same. His face was closed against her, and the closeness between them had evaporated.

  She shifted away from him, standing up on shaky legs, and he made no move to stop her. Indeed, he didn’t look at her at all, and he didn’t speak.

  Tess could be as stubborn as anyone. If Keith was going to ignore her, refuse to speak or even meet her eyes, she wasn’t about to let him know that she was hurt. Briskly, she dressed herself again, brushed her hair, wound and pinned it into a bulky coil, and left the room.

  She and Emma worked until it was time to close the shop, and then they locked up and pulled the shades and went upstairs to prepare supper. Rod had gone to buy railro
ad tickets with the money Asa had sent for the purpose and would not be back until later.

  Tess tossed one look in the direction of the closed bedroom door and sighed. Too late, she realized that Emma had been watching.

  “You’ve had a fight already?” she asked, with typical bluntness.

  Again, Tess sighed. “Not exactly. I asked Keith if he intended to start preaching again, and it was as though I’d slapped him or something. He was so cold, Emma—like he didn’t even know me, let alone love me.”

  “Give him a chance to adjust, Tess,” Emma said quietly. “He’s just out of the hospital, after all. Did you know he isn’t going to press charges against Mama? Rod spoke to him about it yesterday.”

  Tess only nodded. She and Keith had never really talked about what they would do after he recovered, whether they would travel in his medicine wagon or stay here, in her shop. That didn’t really concern her, but something else did—the quiet, wounding certainty that he had not resolved his conflict with God. He was still angry, and he could be angry for only one reason: he still cared for Amelie.

  Keith was awake when Tess took his dinner to him, but he refused to speak to her, and his eyes were fixed stonily on the ceiling. She set the tray down within his reach and went out.

  After she and Emma had eaten and cleared away their dishes, she checked on Keith again. He was sleeping, or at least he appeared to be, so she left him again.

  Feeling restless, she went downstairs to develop some of the portraits taken that day while Emma sat at the kitchen table, paging through a fashion magazine and doubtless planning her assault on St. Louis society.

  Tess worked for some time, until her muscles ached as keenly as her heart. Only one more portrait and she would be caught up. Lifting her eyes to the ceiling, above which Keith slept or mourned for Amelie, she sighed.

  Staunchly, she set about developing a portrait of Mrs. McQuade, the storekeeper. She smiled, remembering how the woman had confided that she meant to send the finished product to a lonely hearts club and “get herself a husband.”

  The shop bell tinkled once, but Tess was so absorbed in her task that she hardly noticed, except to wonder why Emma had neglected to lock the door. She kept working, eager now to finish and talk with Keith. By heaven, she’d wake him up if she had to, and she’d demand to know what was the matter ….

  “Such devotion,” purred a slightly contemptuous masculine voice.

  Tess looked up, frowning, and was startled to see Cedrick Golden standing in the doorway of the workroom. The expression on his face was an avid one, disconcerting and odd.

  “The shop is closed,” she said formally, retreating a step.

  Though he hadn’t moved from the curtained doorway, it was almost as though he were stalking her. “I didn’t come to have my likeness taken,” he said, in a toneless voice.

  Tess considered screaming for Emma’s help and then dismissed the thought as foolish. Cedrick wasn’t going to hurt her. She wasn’t going to let him hurt her. “Why did you come, then?” she asked, straightening her shoulders and lifting her head.

  Cedrick came inside the workroom now, his arms folded across the braid-trimmed velvet of his elegant evening jacket. “You delight in driving me mad, don’t you?” The words, so sanely spoken, were like a dash of icy water for Tess.

  “I want you to leave now, Cedrick,” she ventured cautiously. “I have work to do and I have to attend my husband.”

  “The invalid,” he responded, making no move to leave.

  Cedrick’s madness was a subtle thing, quicksilver, there one moment and gone the next, but very much in evidence now. Why hadn’t she seen it before, sensed it?

  She swallowed hard and calculated the distance to the door leading out of the workroom and down a path to the privy. And all the while she knew that the latch was in place; opening it was difficult even when one had all the time in the world. Opening it now, when she needed to escape, would be impossible.

  “Emma!” she called out, and the sound was a flimsy squeak that would never be heard from the second floor. Fear had drawn her throat into a knot.

  Cedrick smiled. “Don’t be frightened, darling, please.” His green eyes were shimmering with some mental fever now, consuming Tess.

  Don’t be frightened. She might have laughed if her every instinct hadn’t been coaching her to terror. “I-I’m not alone here,” she managed to say, after a very long time.

  “Of course you’re not alone. You’ve got your crippled husband and your flighty little sister-in-law. Your brother isn’t here, though, is he?”

  Tess shivered, though she kept her chin high. Keith could not help her, that was true, and Emma would probably be too frightened to be of any use. Rod, most likely her only hope, was indeed away, and it terrified her that Cedrick had taken the trouble to find that out.

  “Please, Cedrick. Leave. Right now.”

  “Without showing you that I am the man you need? Why, that would be foolhardy—”

  “I don’t need you, Cedrick,” Tess retorted bravely. “I need my husband. Only my husband.”

  “You’re so wrong, sweetling,” he breathed, drawing nearer now.

  Tess edged along the worktable, hoping to evade him. She tried once again to scream and failed. Her heart was pounding in her throat, dense with terror.

  And Cedrick laughed at her fear. Indeed, it seemed to entice him. “Oh, those delicious breasts of yours. How I’ve longed to bare them, taste them—”

  Tess felt the flat pan of developing fluid she had been using behind her. Cedrick came at her, closed his hands over her breasts, squeezing, hurting. Tess shoved him, hard, in a reflexive desperation that sent him stumbling backward.

  The expression on his face as he righted himself was one of absolute hatred. “How dare you refuse me, you chit?” he whispered, in a rasp, running one hand across his mouth as though he had just taken a drink. “How dare you?”

  He came at Tess again and she acted without thinking, sheerly on instinct. She clasped the pan of acid fluid in her hands and flung it at Cedrick.

  Cedrick froze, lumbering slightly, and then screamed. The acid made a sickening, sizzling sound, and he sank to his knees, his shrieks fading to frantic, animallike whimpers.

  Emma burst past the curtain, staring at Cedrick in horror. He was still kneeling, his hands over his face, his cries of pain terrible to hear.

  “Get a doctor, Emma,” Tess said calmly. “And then a constable.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE HOSPITAL WAS QUIET, SEEMINGLY EMPTY. CYNTHIA Golden stood beside her brother’s bed, watching him sleep. Poor, dear Cedrick—he was so much thinner than before, and he had to be strapped in, lest he do himself harm.

  Cynthia winced to remember the maniacal scene he’d made, that day when the bandages had been removed from his face. Nothing had settled him, not the fact that he had not lost his eyesight, as the doctors first feared he would, not the assurance that the scars would fade a little with the passing of time. Cedrick had wanted—still wanted—very much to die.

  And Cynthia didn’t blame him. He was a wretched sight, a monster. The flesh on his face was blistered and stretched out of place, distorting his features. Yes, he resembled a monster more than a man.

  His career as an actor, of course, was over. And with his livelihood would go Cynthia’s, for she was not strong enough, not smart enough, not talented enough, to prosper without him.

  Oh, she might marry, she supposed, but though she loved a dalliance with an attractive man, the idea of being bound to just one, for a lifetime, was inconceivable to her.

  Resentment stiffened Cynthia’s spine, hatred pounded beneath her temples. It was all the fault of that hoyden, Tess. She had done this dreadful thing to Cedrick and she hadn’t even been arrested! Oh, no. The tramp had told the police that Cedrick had intended her some harm—ridiculous thought—and that she had only been defending herself when she’d flung that chemical into his face.

  Incredibly, they
had believed her. Cedrick had lain in this dreary place, helpless and despairing, longing to die, for nearly a month. And in that time, justice had certainly not been served. Tess Corbin was still free. Tess Corbin was busy with her shop, happy with that handsome husband of hers.

  Cynthia was suddenly filled with the first true resolve she had known in all her sheltered life. She took a pillow from another bed, placed it over her brother’s spoiled face, and held it there.

  Cedrick had been sleeping, of course, and he was probably sedated in the bargain. Wide leather restraints made it impossible for him to do more than writhe slightly in a natural attempt to breathe. Cynthia knew what was good for him, though, and she held the pillow firmly in place until he was still.

  Keith was almost completely recovered. He should have been happy, he guessed—he was alive, he was married to a woman he would have died for. All the same, he felt restless.

  Tess slept beside him, exhausted, her beautiful face bathed in the moonlight streaming in through the bedroom window. He smiled and traced the outline of her jaw, so gently, not wanting to awaken her. She’d had a hard day, working in her shop, and the incident with Cedrick Golden, now several weeks in the past, still upset her when she permitted herself to remember it.

  As if those things weren’t enough, Keith suspected that she was pregnant in the bargain.

  He lay back on his pillows and soberly studied the shadowed ceiling. Ever since the day he’d met Tess, he’d been healing, getting stronger, in a way that even the shooting couldn’t have interfered with. It had been a painful, wrenching process at times, a gradual one at others, but it had never stopped. Not for one minute had it stopped.

  He sighed, cupped his hands behind his head. Tess had been sent to him, he knew that now, and not as a replacement for Amelie, either. No. The boyish infatuation he’d felt toward Amelie paled in comparison to this. He belonged to Tess, had been born to love her. It was Tess who’d been meant for him all along, not Amelie. And, just as surely, he had been meant for her.

  It had been good to be with Tess again, so very good. They’d made love every night and sometimes during the day, and each time, though it seemed impossible, had been better than the last.