Memory's Embrace (31 page)

She looked down, saw a long but not particularly deep cut on her arm. She was bleeding, and the slash stung fiercely. That was fortunate, for it brought Tess out of her shock and made her think with the cool clarity of those that are hunted. She edged into the deepest shadows, to hide herself.

Cobwebs draped themselves over her face and her hair, and something scurried down her arm.

Cynthia, still in the doorway, bent forward slightly, peering. Tess could see her clearly now, see the ordinary
kitchen knife she carried in one hand. “Come out,” she said, in that same schoolyard voice. “I can’t see you.”

Tess reached down, groped in the darkness for a chunk of cut wood, found one. Then, forcing herself to breathe normally, she clasped it in both hands and rose slowly to her feet. With it, she could get past Cynthia. She could get away.

Cynthia came further inside the shed, annoyed now, like a child who has been left to search too long for the hiders in some game. “Come out,” she wailed.

Tess might have made her escape then, gotten clear of Cynthia and the shed without incident. But for the fact that Keith suddenly filled the doorway. She knew by his stance that he was momentarily blinded, his eyes adjusting from the bright light outside to the dimness of the shed.

“Tess? Are you—”

Cynthia, startled, whirled around. The knife was clasped high above her head, in both hands, ready to plunge into Keith’s chest. Before he could react in any way, the weapon was descending.

Tess screamed. Wood splinters bit into her hands. She sprang from her hiding place, making an animal sound low in her throat, and struck the woman who would hurt Keith with all the strength she possessed.

And when Cynthia crumpled to the floor in a little heap of vengeance and cambric, Tess couldn’t stop screaming.

Keith grasped her by the shoulders and shook her. “Tess!”

Still she screamed, and he slapped her. The force of
the blow silenced her, made her draw in her breath in a sobbing gasp.

“What in the name of God happened here?” Keith demanded, looking back at Cynthia and then going to crouch beside her on the woodshed floor. She was stirring now, making a whimpering sound.

Tess, hugging herself with both arms, swayed on her feet. “She—she was going to kill me—because of Cedrick—”

Outside, she could hear excited voices. Running feet. Her screams, apparently, had been heard from the street. Tess remembered how Cynthia had held that knife, how near she had come to killing Keith instead of herself, and folded to the floor in a deep faint.

When she awakened, she was inside the shop, lying on their bed. Her right forearm was neatly bandaged, and Keith was putting some kind of salve on the palms of her hands.

“It’s over,” he said, when he saw that she was awake and afraid. “You’re going to be all right.”

Tess didn’t care about a few silly scratches and a cut. “What about you? Keith, did she hurt you?”

His wonderful mouth quirked into a teasing grin. “Do I look like I’ve been hurt, shoebutton?”

There were a lot of people in the kitchen. Suddenly, Tess was aware of them, hearing their muffled voices, their shuffling feet.

“The police are here,” Keith explained calmly. “They want to talk to talk to you .”

Tess sank deeper into the pillows, gnawing at her own lip. “I must have killed Cynthia. I must have killed her.”

Keith finished salving her hands, wiped his own on a damask towel, and shook his head. “No, shoebutton, you didn’t kill anybody. At most, Miss Golden will have a few bruises and a headache.”

Tess’s eyes went to the closed door. “She isn’t here, is she? She isn’t out there—”

“She confessed to murdering her brother, Tess, though she didn’t seem to see it as that. She’s been taken away.”

Tess was nauseated, and she had a headache of her own. “Why—why do the police want to talk to me?”

He bent forward, kissed her cheek. It made a reassuring, smacking sound. “They just want to hear your version. If you don’t want to talk to them now, you don’t have to. I’ll send them away.”

Tess considered, sighed. There was nothing to be gained by putting the ordeal off, she supposed. “I’ll talk to them now.”

Keith admitted one constable to the room and ordered the others out. Her husband’s presence—he stood very near, leaning back against the bureau, his arms folded across his chest—made it easier for Tess to answer the grueling, endless questions that were put to her.

When the policeman was gone, she turned her head into the pillow. “I want to leave here, Keith. I want to forget this place, forget everything.”

He sat down on the bed beside her, drew her into his arms. “Not everything, I hope,” he teased gruffly, holding her tight. “For instance, I wouldn’t want you to forget that day we made love in the suite, on the pool table—”

It was his genius, his magic, that he could make Tess laugh under almost any sort of circumstance. And she laughed then, though there were tears mixed with the sound, and her face was hot with a blush. “That was scandalous.”

“I liked it,” Keith insisted, his lips in her hair.

“So did I,” Tess admitted, after a very long time.

February 1891

Port Hastings, Washington

A
NOTHER
C
ORBIN WIFE
.

Mrs. Jeremy T. Terwillagher sighed as she settled into the second pew from the front, where she could get a good view of the wife in question, once services were over.

If her friends could be believed, this one had a bicycle and meant to open some sort of shop in the spring. It was rumored that she had a past, too. There was madness in her family, for one thing, and, for another, she had been directly involved in that scandal concerning the Golden Twins a few months ago, down in Portland.

Mrs. Terwillagher harrumphed. Anyone who associated
with theater people might
expect
to be involved in scandal, to her mind.

A longtime resident of Port Hastings, Mrs. Terwillagher was an avid follower of the doings of that outrageous Corbin family. Had been for years. Daniel and Katherine Corbin, the parents of this brood, had kept the waters stirred up, mind you, all by themselves. Still, once those three boys had grown up and started taking wives, well, things had just been fascinating.

First, Adam, the eldest son, had married that lady doctor, the red-headed one with the saucy tongue. Why, just last week, Mrs. Terwillagher had spoken to her in the general store, asked her if the infant she was carrying was her new baby.

“No,” that outrageous hoyden had replied instantly, “this is my grandfather.”

She’d apologized, of course—that was only right—but Mrs. Terwillagher was still very much miffed. For a woman who had reportedly once had two husbands, that Banner Corbin had her nerve.

As if Banner hadn’t been enough of an insult to the good people of Port Hastings, the second son, Jeff, had gone right out and found himself a saloon singer or some such. She was a blonde, not so tart-tongued as her sister-in-law, but Mrs. Terwillagher didn’t approve all the same. After all, how could a good, Christian woman be expected to approve of someone with a name like Fancy, for mercy sakes?

And now there was this new one. Even from the back, she looked wild to Myrtle Terwillagher. She had too much hair, for one thing—rich, brown stuff that threatened to tumble from its pins. She had been right
there, it was said, while the new church and the parsonage were being built—taking pictures!

Inwardly, Mrs. Terwillagher winced. There was every chance that this Tess was even worse than the other two. After all, she’d been in the family way when this church was being built. Imagine prancing around a building site in that condition.

Mrs. Terwillagher reached for her hymnal, deliberately thumping it against the back of the next pew, in hopes that Tess Corbin would turn around and greet her, so that she could get a good look. Alas, she was disappointed. The pastor’s wife was intent on the infant in her arms. A boy, according to the newspaper, named Ethan.

Mrs. Terwillagher sat back in her pew as Pastor Corbin came in to preach his first sermon in this brand-new church. Every eye in the place was fixed on him, and a commanding figure he was, too, speaking with his gentle authority instead of pounding on his pulpit and raging about hellfire and brimstone.

A little disappointed, Mrs. Terwillagher sniffed, her eyes wandering again. There was to be a potluck dinner, after church, at the new parsonage, and she planned to attend. She wanted to see if the Reverend and Mrs. Corbin really had a pool table in their parlor, like Ethel Claridge said. Ethel was a fine woman, but she did tend to embellish a story now and then.

Midway through the sermon, which seemed to hold everyone but Mrs. Terwillagher herself quite rapt, the pastor’s eyes met those of his wife and lingered a moment. Some silent communication was exchanged. Myrtle Terwillagher doubted if anyone else in the
congregation had even noticed. Merciful heavens, she despised people who didn’t pay attention.

There was, indeed, a glow about the Reverend Keith Corbin, especially when he chanced to glance down at his brand-new wife. And Mrs. Jeremy T. Terwillagher would have bet the beef-and-mushroom casserole tucked away under her buggy seat outside that the glow wasn’t spiritual, either.

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