Read Memory's Embrace for Free Online Page B

aunt’s attention. “Hush!” she hissed, when she dared.
    For all her physical shortcomings, Lavinia Hollinghouse-Stone was a convincing speaker, and shetouted free love with authority and flair, just as she had touted suffrage a month before. She paced and she gestured, she raised and lowered her voice at all the most effective times. At one point, she even wept for all the human suffering that could be avoided if only physical intimacy was not so foolishly suppressed!
    “I’m going out and love somebody,” Emma confided, with conviction, when the speech was over and the tentative applause had subsided. “Preferably Roderick Waltam!”
    Tess had been greatly impressed by the lecture, but not swayed from her own beliefs. “Emma Hamilton, don’t you dare!” she rasped, blushing to the roots of her hair.
    It was later, at the refreshment table set up in the dining room, that Roderick Waltam approached Tess, beaming down at her in a way that seemed rehearsed.
    “Hello,” he said. His eyes were brown, like his hair, and he was clean-shaven except for muttonchop sideburns. Tess noticed that his blue velvet jacket, however well fitted, was frayed at the collar and cuffs.
    “Punch?” Tess offered politely, her hand on the ladle.
    Mr. Waltam nodded; he had taken a plate and was loading it with teacakes and cookies and the tiny, elegant sandwiches Juniper had worked so hard to make. Apparently, the acting profession was not a lucrative one. “Thank you,” he said, and his voice was as commanding, in its masculine way, as that of a politician or a schoolmaster. “What is your name?”
    Tess was ladling punch into one of Derora’s crystal cups, and, before she could answer, she spotted JoelShiloh. He carried his bowler hat in one hand, and he was wearing a suit entirely too perfectly tailored for a peddler.
    “Discussing your pet theory?” he asked, with acid politeness.
    Some of the punch slopped over to stain the linen tablecloth, and Tess’s face flamed.
    “Now, see here—” began Mr. Waltam, lamely, glancing from Tess to Joel and then back again.
    Joel gave the poor man a look fit to skewer steel and the actor retreated, careful to take his plate and his glass of punch with him.
    “That was very rude!” hissed Tess, glaring. Only moments before, she’d been wishing that Joel would appear, actually wishing! How could she have been so stupid?
    He was drunk. How he had managed that in such a short time Tess did not know, but he had. His eyes had a glazed look, and the smell of whiskey wafted across the watercress sandwiches and the teacakes and the punchbowl to assault her nostrils.
    “If you really must explore the mysteries of free love,” he began, causing several feathered-and-beaded heads to turn, “I would like to volunteer as your guide.”
    Tess was mortified. Was there no end to the shame and embarrassment this man could cause her? “I would sooner mate with a monkey,” she replied, and the wife of Banker Flemming fanned herself and rolled her eyes back, about to swoon.
    Joel scanned the room for Roderick Waltam, found him, and swung his condemning gaze back to Tess’sberry-red face. “So I see,” he answered. “Does the organ grinder know he’s loose?”
    Tess had not often been relieved to see her aunt, but at that moment she could have kissed the woman for sweeping imperiously up to the refreshment table and demanding, “Is there a problem, Mr. Shiloh?”
    Not “Is there a problem, Tess?” Oh, no. The implication was that Mr. Shiloh was the offended party. Tess sighed.
    “Absolutely not,” said the peddler, swaying a little and smiling stupidly down into Derora’s upturned face.
    Derora’s responding smile was dazzling. Sweetly forgiving. She hooked her arm through Joel’s and ushered him away from the table, chattering about Mrs. Hollinghouse-Stone’s theories and then proceeding to introduce him to every respectable matron in the place.
    Exasperated, Tess forced herself to