Memory's Embrace Page 5

  Among other things, Derora Beauchamp prided herself on her modern, forthright opinions and her knowledge of current affairs. For this reason, she took weekly newspapers from Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco, reserving Sunday afternoon for the pleasant task of reading each tabloid from beginning to end.

  Today, however, she was somewhat distracted. Roderick had gone back to the ship, to rest up, he said, for tonight’s performance.

  Settling back into the rumpled satin pillows, Derora allowed herself a contented smile. After last night, she could believe that the dear lad needed a rest. She needed one herself.

  But good habits are nothing if they are not studiously maintained, she reflected, opening the first newspaper that came to hand, The Seattle Times, with a determined flip of the pages.

  The advertisement was there, as always. Until now, Derora had always skimmed it to see if any changes had been made and then gone on.

  But this time the thing took up a half-page—they had to be rich, those Corbins—and a sketch was included. Derora sat up straight, her mouth dropping open, just for a moment, in surprise. The peddler—this sketch was of the peddler, Joel Shiloh!

  “No,” said Derora, in disbelief, even as she studied the drawing. Same strong jawline and square chin, same direct gaze and straight nose. The hair was shorter—

  The bold-faced print above the likeness drew Derora’s attention, she read it with a rising sense of excitement.

  Have You Seen This Man? Five Thousand Dollar Reward Willingly Paid. Contact Adam Corbin Port Hastings, Washington.

  “Port Hastings,” Derora repeated to herself, and then she studied the sketch again. Was this a picture of the peddler who called himself Joel Shiloh or wasn’t it? The resemblance was striking, but it could be only that, a resemblance.

  She got her spectacles out of the drawer in her bedside table and put them on. “My goodness,” she muttered, staring at the drawing in the newspaper and thinking of the places five thousand dollars could take her, all of them far from plodding Simpkinsville, thank you very much. “If you’re not Mr. Joel Shiloh, you certainly should be,” she told the newsprint image.

  Derora closed the newspaper and folded it neatly. Then she removed her spectacles and hid them away again, in the depths of the drawer. Contact Adam Corbin, in Port Hastings, the advertisement had said. But how? It was Sunday and the telegraph office would be closed ….

  She rose from the bed, dressed, and groomed her hair. Andrew McMichaels, the telegraph operator at Western Union, was a friend of hers. Surely she could prevail upon him to send a wire; this was an emergency situation, after all.

  What if she were wrong, though? What if Joel Shiloh were not the person this Adam Corbin man was seeking?

  Derora unfolded the newspaper again, turned to the advertisement, and studied it. Then, on a hunch, she searched through the Portland paper, too. The advertisement was there, but it gave no further information, for it was an exact duplicate. In The San Francisco Chronicle, however, she found a slight variation in copy. The blurb above the sketch read:

  Missing. Keith Corbin. Likeness Below.

  And under the image—Lord, but he did look like Joel Shiloh—was the same offer of a reward.

  Derora sat down at her dressing table, staring at her own image in the mirror but not seeing it. Five thousand dollars, she thought. Five thousand beautiful dollars.

  The decision was made. She would wire Port Hastings, that very night. If she was wrong, if this peddler was not Keith Corbin, well, anyone could make a mistake. She would have lost nothing but the cost of sending a single wire. Time was of the essence—how long would it be before someone else noticed the similarities between the drawing and Joel Shiloh? Suppose someone beat her to that reward?

  Yes, indeed, time was of the essence.

  Chapter Four

  EMMA LOOKED VERY PLEASED. “TESS, PAPA HAS ALREADY developed your photographs,” she said, scurrying along beside her friend as she wheeled her bicycle into the little stable behind Derora’s house. “I have them right here, in my bag!”

  Tess leaned the bicycle against an inside wall and tossed her head, so that her hair flew back over her shoulders. After eating lunch, she had taken the photographic plates to Mr. Hamilton, Emma’s father, and ’ asked him to process them. Then, because she couldn’t bear to sit still, she had pedaled off into the countryside. Knowing where Joel Shiloh was camped, she had, of course, ridden in quite the opposite direction.

  “Let’s see them,” she said casually, walking back out of the rarely used stable—Derora did not own a horse or carriage—and into the late afternoon sunshine.

  Emma was eager to hand the four-by-five-inch photographs over and obviously disappointed in the idle manner in which Tess flipped through them. There was a lilac bush, just blooming. There was a riverboat, passing blurrily by on the Columbia. There was Mrs. Swendhagen’s hopelessly ugly baby. There was Tess, herself, standing in front of the peddler’s wagon, his hat on her head, an idiotic smile on her lips.

  And there was Joel. Only one of the two plates she had used had turned out, but the likeness was a good one, clear and fairly pulsing with the distinct personality of that difficult, audacious, and completely wonderful man.

  “Tess?” Emma whispered. “Is something wrong?”

  Tess could not raise her head, but she did manage to shake it. “No. No, nothing is wrong.”

  Emma was instantly mollified, for once. “I’ve got a surprise for you, Tess,” she said, with proper mystery and relish. “Guess what it is!”

  Tess tucked the photographs carefully into her skirt pocket and lifted her head, meeting Emma’s eyes, praying that her friend would not notice the shimmering mist in her own. “You know I hate to guess,” she answered. “Tell me!”

  Emma beamed. “Tickets! Tess, I have tickets to the show on the riverboat—Mr. Roderick Waltam gave them to me himself!” She paused, considering, her eyes shining. “I think he likes me,” she added, at last, in a shy voice.

  Tess linked her arm through Emma’s and ushered her toward the kitchen door, failing to mention that Mr. Roderick Waltam had spent the night with Derora.

  “Let’s have some teacakes—there are some left from last night, I thi’nk. When is this show, anyway?”

  “Why, it’s tonight!” cried Emma, all ashiver at the very prospect. “It’s going to be spectacular, Tess! You will go with me, won’t you? Please?”

  For once, Juniper was not in the kitchen. Tess put on a pot of coffee and, as Emma settled herself at the round table with its checkered cloth, took the remaining teacakes from a tin box on the counter. “Of course I will. What kind of show is it, Emma? A play? A musical review?”

  Emma reddened a little and lowered her voice to a confidential whisper. “It’s burlesque,” she admitted. “I told Mama and Papa it was a rendition of Macbeth—I do hope neither of them see the bills the company has been posting around town.”

  Standing at the stove, Tess looked at her friend and shook her head. “Emma Hamilton, you amaze me sometimes. Lying to your mother and father! It’s a wonder you haven’t been sent off to boarding school long before this.”

  Emma shifted in her chair, her plump little body stiff with determined defiance. “Are you going with me or not?” she demanded.

  Tess retorted with a question of her own. “Don’t people take their clothes off in burlesque?”

  “I don’t know,” Emma answered, with a converse sort of certainty, “but I surely intend to find out.”

  “Your parents will be furious!”

  Emma shrugged. “For an hour, a day, a week. But I’ll remember seeing a show on a real riverboat all my life! No matter what they do to me, it’ll be worth it!”

  The coffee came to a boil, and Tess reached for a potholder before grasping the handle, filling a cup for Emma and one for herself. In a way, she agreed with her friend—interesting experiences were rare enough in Simpkinsville, and something as wondrous as a professional burlesque show
would probably be well worth the average punishment.

  “I told Mama I’d be spending the night here,” Emma imparted, as she was about to leave. “That’s all right, isn’t it?”

  Tess nodded. Derora would not care, as long as she was up and about her chores first thing the next morning. Her only reservation was that Roderick might spend the night again and shatter the romantic fancies Emma was no doubt entertaining.

  “I’ll bring my things over after supper, then,” Emma said, again speaking in a conspiratorial whisper. “The show begins at eight.”

  “Eight,” confirmed Tess, hiding a smile. When the door closed behind her friend, she immediately plunged a hand into her pocket and drew out the photographs. Laying the one of Joel Shiloh on the table before her, she cupped her chin in her hands and tried to will herself into it. She would travel with him, as his wife, selling medicines from door to door, farm to farm, lumbercamp to lumbercamp. They would have a cabin for winter, a cabin with gingham curtains at the windows. And perhaps a plump baby would play on the hearth ….

  “You’re as bad as Emma,” Tess scolded herself aloud, putting the photograph back into her pocket and standing up. Full of silly dreams, that’s what she was. And the reality was that Joel Shiloh would go away and she would stay here, dusting and cooking and changing bed linens. Occasionally she would hear a lecture. She would take her photographs and ride her bicycle—dear Lord, she would go mad if she couldn’t do those things—and eventually she would be married, probably to an ordinary, hardworking man like Mr. Wilcox, the boarder who worked in the sawmill.

  Patently depressed, Tess cleared away the cups, put the few teacakes that had not been consumed back into the tin breadbox, and went upstairs to her room. She had barely had time to hide away the cherished photograph of Joel Shiloh when a furious tapping sounded at her door.

  “Tess!” cried Derora, from the hallway, “open this door!”

  I wouldn’t have thought she’d miss a few teacakes, Tess marveled to herself as she obeyed. Derora looked outraged, but it was a studied sort of look, like Roderick Waltam’s smile.

  “What’s going on between you and that peddler?!” her aunt demanded, waving an exact duplicate of the photograph Tess had just secreted away in her bureau drawer. “And where is he, anyway? I haven’t seen him since this morning!”

  Confused, Tess resisted an urge to snatch the picture from Derora’s fingers, and said, “He’s gone.”

  The color beneath Derora’s rouge seeped away, leaving the cosmetic to stand on its own. “Gone?” she echoed. “Gone where?”

  “B-Back to his camp. He said it would be b-better if he left—”

  Considering that she might well have been done out of a night’s room rent, an event she wouldn’t take lightly, Derora seemed strangely relieved. A fact which made her question that much more of a shock. “Have you been dallying with Joel Shiloh, Tess?”

  “D-Dallying?”

  “Don’t be coy, my dear. You know perfectly well what I mean. Did you allow that man to take liberties with your person?”

  Coming from Derora, such a suggestion was indeed ironic, but Tess wouldn’t have dared to laugh. She wasn’t inclined to anyway; she was too insulted. “I most certainly did not,” she said, holding her chin high.

  Derora further surprised her niece by giving a high, trilling burst of amusement. “I thought you might have taken that free love lecture seriously—don’t try to deny that you heard it, Tess, because I saw you sitting there with that Hamilton girl—and it’s obvious that you’re taken with Mr. Shiloh or there wouldn’t be a photograph like this one, would there?”

  Tess reached tentatively for the picture, Derora withheld it.

  “Oh, no. This is mine. Do you realize what a scandal this could have started, Tess? Why, if Mr. Hamilton hadn’t warned me—”

  “A simple photograph?” Tess broke in, in angry wonder. “How could that start a scandal?”

  “It implies improper familiarity, Tess!” snapped Derora, impatient now, red with conviction.

  “You’re a fine one to talk about improper familiarity!” Tess burst out.

  She was immediately and soundly slapped for her trouble. “I will not endure such insolence, Tess, not for one moment! If it hadn’t been for Mr. Beauchamp—may he fry in hell—and myself, you would have been alone in this world! Alone. May I remind you that we took you in, that we gave you a home after your dear, foolish mother lost her mind?”

  Dear, foolish Mother. How Tess missed her, how she wished that they had never come to this place, hoping to make a new life. If they’d stayed in St. Louis ….

  But they hadn’t. Mr. Asa Thatcher, Esquire, her mother’s lover, had grown tired of his mistress and turned her out of her gilded cage, along with Tess, his illegitimate child. It had all been handled by minions, of course, clerks from his law firm. Olivia Bishop had had no choice but to pawn what remained of her jewelry, garnered during the days of favor, and buy train tickets for herself and her daughter.

  Olivia must have loved Asa Thatcher, dour curmudgeon that he was, for even in the West, where men were anxious to court so lovely a woman, even willing to overlook her past, she had not thrived. No, she had written long letters to Asa, Olivia had, and when there were no answers, she had sighed and shed tears and gradually faded away into a staring silence that excluded the rest of the world.

  Tess shook away memories of her unconventional mother and swallowed hard. As a substitute parent, Derora had been cold and largely disinterested, but she had provided food and shelter for her sister’s love child. She had seen that her niece finished school, and after that she had given Tess work to do, there at the boardinghouse, instead of marrying her off or simply turning her out. Furthermore, she had settled Olivia in a good hospital in Portland.

  “I didn’t mean to be ungrateful, Aunt Derora,” Tess said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

  “You should be,” came the clipped response, and Derora turned and swept away, skirts rustling, the photograph of Joel Shiloh still in her possession.

  Tess hadn’t much spirit for attending a burlesque show, even if it was being performed on a riverboat. She wanted to rush to Joel Shiloh, like a wanton, and ask him to take her with him wherever he might travel. But she had promised Emma that she would go, and she intended to keep her word.

  Roderick disliked sharing his quarters on the Columbia Queen with the likes of Johnny Baker, a common, pimply roustabout, but there was nothing for it. Work was work, and it was a rare enough quantity, for an actor at least. Nights like the one just past, spent in Derora Beauchamp’s bed, went a long way toward making life bearable, though he would have preferred to pass the time with the lady’s niece.

  Tess. He smiled, mentally tasting the name, as he applied a blackface for the first performance. The roustabout stood behind him, watching the process with an avid sort of fascination.

  “Last night must have been pretty good, huh?” leered the weasel. “I noticed you was gone.”

  Roderick glued a bushy white eyebrow into place. “Nothing much gets by you, does it, Baker?” he asked, dismissing the man even as he spoke. He’d given Emma Hamilton two tickets to tonight’s performance, an indulgence that had cost him dearly. Would the little chit have the sense to offer the .extra one to Tess?

  He glued on a second eyebrow. “I’d like this room to myself tonight, if it’s all the same to you,” he said to the pockmarked face reflected beside his own.

  Baker looked lewdly delighted. “You bringin’ a woman here?”

  Roderick resisted a temptation to roll his eyes in overt disdain. It wouldn’t do to offend the weasel, not now. “Yes,” he said, affixing a false mustache to his upper lip. The greasepaint made it hard to keep the thing in place. “Maybe you’d like to spend the night in town or something.” Or anything, he added mentally. Just so long as you’re gone before I bring Tess Bishop below deck.

  “I ain’t got no money,” complained Baker.

  Roderick sighed. He�
��d half-expected this development. “There’s a five-dollar goldpiece in my other coat. Take that.”

  Baker’s unfortunate complexion was mottled with pleasure. “Thanks,” he said adoringly. Sometimes Roderick wondered about him.

  “Think nothing of it,” Roderick replied, in blithe tones. What an actor you are, he said to himself, as Baker plundered the pockets of his extra coat for the last cent he had.

  After the roustabout left, he checked his makeup, made minor adjustments to his cutaway satin coat. Damn, but he was handsome, even with his face blackened with greasepaint!

  Tess and Emma boarded the showboat among a throng of other people, trying to appear casual. It was unlikely that they would encounter Emma’s staid and steady parents in such a place, but they could run into Derora, and that would be almost as disastrous.

  The show itself was to be held in the vessel’s gaudily decorated salon, where there was a stage framed with elaborate gilt curlicues and draped in red velvet curtains. Paintings of nudes covered the walls, and there were crystal chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling, where plump, painstakingly carved cherubs cavorted.

  Rows of seats, upholstered in velvet to match the curtains, faced the stage, and Emma and Tess found themselves very close indeed—one good stretch and they could have touched the footlights!

  “Front row seats!” whispered Emma, beaming. “Didn’t I tell you that Roderick likes me?”

  Tess bit her lower lip. Even though Mr. Waltam had fixed her bicycle wheel—a kindly gesture indeed—there was still the fact that he had passed the night with Derora. That had to be borne in mind. “Emma, he’s an actor,” she retorted, hoping to dissuade her friend from further infatuation. “They are not reliable people, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know!” snapped Emma, with spirit. “I’ve never met an actor before! Have you?”

  The gas-powered chandeliers dimmed. “Yes,” she said tightly, after a moment of prideful hesitation. “My mother was an actress, in St. Louis.”