Free Memory's Embrace by Linda Lael Miller Page B

Hastings!
    But Keith knew why he was taking Tess to Portland, despite the fact that it was one of Jeff’s favorite harbors, a place where the Corbins were widely known. He had to risk losing the game, risk being recognized, because Tess had risked so much for him. Because her mother was there.
    They reached the roominghouse within the hour, and it was, to all appearances, completely dark. Still, Tess seemed nervous, hesitant.
    “She must suspect something by now,” she breathed, her small hands knotted in her lap, her shoulders slumped beneath the suit coat Keith had loaned her. “She would expect me to wait for a reply from your family and then report to her.”
    “Do you want me to go inside with you, Tess?” He had not planned to make that particular offer, it just sprang to his lips.
    She shook her head, drew a deep breath, and jumped nimbly down from the wagon seat. “You’ll wait for me?”
    For some reason, it hurt Keith that she would ask him that. His jawline tightened and he whispered, “Yes, damn it!”
    Tess hesitated another moment and then turned and sprang over the gate, like some gangling boy. She was a shadow, scurrying up the walk, opening thedoor so quietly that Keith didn’t hear it from the wagon.
    In her bedroom, Tess looked out the window and saw what she had feared—a lamp flickering in the southern car, where her aunt’s room was. Derora was waiting up, probably watching for any sign of her niece, no doubt suspecting betrayal already.
    There was no time to pack all her clothes—Tess dared only to fill a small valise with a nightgown, some underthings, two practical dresses, and the photographs she had taken. She abandoned all but the one of Keith, taken beside his wagon, one of her mother, and one of Emma.
    Emma! Where was Emma? She was supposed to spend the night here, Tess remembered suddenly, and the show on the riverboat had been over for hours. Where was that silly little monkey? Not, please God, with Roderick Waltam?
    Tess sighed, clutching her camera and the valise, making her way quietly out of her room and down the dark stairs. Surely Emma had had the good sense to go home, where she belonged. She wouldn’t have come here, to the roominghouse, because she’d been miffed with Tess. That was it. That had to be it.
    Joel—no, Keith—was waiting just where Tess had left him. She felt a thrill of anticipation as she hurried toward him, a sensation of impending adventure. Which was odd considering the rashness of the whole situation.
    He tucked her things beneath the wagon seat and smiled at her, his teeth catching the moon’s light, andthe expression in his eyes was at once mischievous and wary.
    “Ready?” he asked.
    “Do I have a choice?” she retorted, impatient to be gone.
    “I guess not,” he replied. And when they were outside of town again, on the road to Portland, he stopped just long enough to light the lamps on the sides of the wagon.
    The light danced ahead of them on the crude, rutted road, like a golden specter, and Tess was suddenly very tired. Knowing better, she rested her head against the peddler’s hard, sturdy shoulder all the same. And she slept.
    It bothered Emma, the way Roderick kept scanning the salon with those wonderful brown eyes of his. She had a feeling that he was only half listening to her.
    “I was married to an elephant for three years,” she said, to test him. “We were very happy together.”
    “That’s nice,” Roderick muttered, looking annoyed and rather disappointed, too.
    He was searching the salon for Tess, of course. Emma was all too used to that, men cozying up to her just so they could be close to her best friend, and she was sick of it. Maybe she wasn’t as pretty as Tess, maybe she wasn’t as bright, either. But she had better bosoms and rounder hips and she never went around with her hair flying in the breeze, like a hussy. She would make some man a good and fruitful wife.
    Like this one, for instance. Emma imagined