Memory's Embrace Read Free

authoritative.
    Tess found herself huddling deep in the blankets, the side of the wagon’s door frame digging into her back. A chill shook her and her teeth began to chatter. “Stay away from me,” she whispered.
    Joel Shiloh laughed and sprang past her into the wagon. “Your virtue is safe with me, Miss Bishop,” he said, rummaging around in the darkness behind her. “I prefer grown women.”
    “Grown—” Tess choked out, in aborted protest. A sulphur match was struck, its scent acrid in the moist air, and then the light of a kerosene lantern flickered, revealing an unmade bunk, stacks of wooden crates, and Tess’s camera.
    “Women,” he finished for her. “You, of course, are only a girl.” He wrenched open one of two drawers beneath the quilt-tangled bunk and plucked out a shirtand a pair of trousers. Trousers! “Now, put these things on or I’ll do it for you.”
    “I am not a girl!” argued Tess, as the garments were literally flung into her lap. Why was it so important to impress him with the fact that she was old enough to support herself, and did; that she was not a child as he obviously thought?
    Glacier-blue eyes swept her; it was as though he could see through the blanket to her small but wellshaped breasts, the slender waist and smoothly rounded hips of which she was circumspectly proud. “I could have sworn you were,” he replied, and then he was gone, leaping out of the wagon, gasping at the insult to his burned foot, and limping back to the struggling fire he had built in the limited shelter of the trees.
    Tess looked down at the trousers and shirt and knew that she was going to have to obey his edict, however improper it was. She was cold to the bone and it was still raining, and the walk back to Simpkinsville and her aunt’s boardinghouse would be a long one. The chances were that she would come down with a bad cold, or even pneumonia, if she didn’t remove her wet clothes and warm herself a while beside the peddler’s fire.
    Drat him anyway, she thought, as she got awkwardly to her feet and made her way into the privacy of the wagon, wrenching the door shut behind her with a clatter that elicited another shout of amusement from the direction of the fire.
    Glumly, muttering to herself all the while, Tess Bishop removed her calico dress and the muslin drawers and camisole beneath it. Then, teeth clattering like a telegraph key sending an emergency message, shepulled on the trousers and the shirt. They were much too large, of course—the shirt hung well down her thighs and the trousers had to be gripped tightly at the waist or they would have fallen off.
    Grateful that she could at least wear her own shoes and stockings, Tess moved toward the wagon door. She would stand by that fire, all right. She would wear those outrageous clothes. And she would let Mr. Joel Shiloh know, in no uncertain terms, what she thought of his orders and his condescending manner. He had his nerve being so patronizing, a man who carried on arguments with and even threw things at God!
    She was just reaching for the catch on the door when a well-worn Bible caught her eye. It lay open in the twisted bedding on the bunk, and, for a reason Tess could not have explained, she took it up. The print was smudged here and there, and passages were underscored. Why would a man with so obvious an animosity toward heaven make such thorough use of the Scriptures?
    Frowning, Tess turned the book and read the name embossed in gold on the front cover. Keith Corbin. Keith Corbin?
    She set the Bible carefully back in its place, open to the same passage, and bit her lower lip as she once again worked the catch on the wagon door. Why would the peddler carry a book with another man’s name embossed on its cover?
    The name—Keith Corbin, not Joel Shiloh—was familiar, too. Where had she heard it?
    Tess was startled to find Mr. Shiloh standing just outside the wagon door, and a guilty flush moved up her face. Did he know that she had