Mittman, Stephanie (18 page)

"Not
that one." He gestured at the suit she wore and clawed at his own arms.
"Just remembering it makes my skin crawl."

"Now
I recall that suit," Kathryn said, her eyes dancing with the memory.
"We had to leave the church before the poor reverend had even begun the
sermon, your brother pretending to have something caught in his throat, or some
such nonsense."

"And
Cabot telling you that you should have expected I'd go for style and not
quality. And your insisting that the best lessons were often learned from our
mistakes. And Cabot suggesting it was a perfect suit for church because it was
certainly a penance to wear it!"

"Then
all men's clothes don't—" Charlotte interrupted herself to stand and pull
off the jacket, then commenced rubbing at her sleeves. Ash had the fear, and
the hope, that her shirtwaist would be the next to go.

"You
stubborn little thing! You'd have just sat there through the whole meal,
wouldn't you?" Ash asked her.

She
smiled a Cheshire-cat smile, leaning against the door frame and using it like a
scratching post. "Mmm-hm," she purred. "We law partners can't be
thin skinned."

Good
God! The woman hadn't an ounce of guile, or she wouldn't be moving the way she
was moving in front of him. In front of him
in front of Kathryn!
Had she
ever tried that little maneuver in front of Cabot? That ought to get the man
off his we're-above-such-base-thoughts high horse. It would take more than
paralysis to not feel
something
when she moved like that. A man would
have to be dead... for a long time... longer than Ash could imagine.

"I'd
thought to give the suit to Davis tomorrow, but I think the poor child surely
has enough troubles," she said as Ash retook his seat. He crossed his
legs, slipped the chair beneath the tablecloth, put his hands in his lap. But
he still felt as if his mother could surely see that he was the son with the
dirty mind, while Cabot was the one with all the moral integrity.

"Go
change," he said as calmly, as coolly, as casually, as he could make the
words sound when what he really wanted was to shout them at her.

"Yes,
dear," Kathryn said. "Do get comfortable."

Leaving
the cigar beside her plate, Charlotte pranced from the room and Ash caught the
quickest flash of hand to bottom before she was out of sight. He loosened his
collar and took a long drink of wine.

He
was in deep trouble, and once again, only Cabot could help him.

Cabot,
whose job it was as the woman's husband to reach out to her, to take her hand,
touch her shoulder, unbutton the back of her blouse. Cabot, who had tutored the
girl into a lawyer, should now have the pleasure of ushering her into
womanhood. Cabot, whose responsibility it was to see that Charlotte was happy,
satisfied, fulfilled. If his brother was so bent on Charlotte being all she
could be, how about that side of her?

He
could feel his mother's eyes boring into him, just the way they had when he was
younger. All the world's oceans hadn't hampered her ability to read his
thoughts and disapprove. Yet even knowing his weaknesses, she managed to remain
full of unconditional forgiveness for his every wayward thought and act. And
the more she forgave, the more full of self-recrimination and self-loathing he
always became.

And
why shouldn't he hate himself, salivating over his brother's wife like she was
a two-bit tart?

"Lovely,
isn't she?" Kathryn asked him.

"Who?"
He gave her his blankest stare, which she didn't even pretend to buy.

"She's
just what your brother needed." Kathryn stared at him as though he
actually required the extra warning. "She's the light to his darkness. The
warmth to his coldness. She's the laughter to his—"

"And
what is he to her?" Ash heard himself ask. "When she cries, is he the
comfort to her sorrow? When she's lost, is he her beacon in the night? When she
doubts herself, is he there to tell her who she is? Or just who he wants her to
be?"

Kathryn
was quiet, fingering the edge of one of her teaspoons, aligning her silverware
as if her children's happiness depended on where each implement rested on the
table, when Charlotte returned. She was clearly not in "something
comfortable" as his mother had suggested. He could hear the rush of
petticoat beneath a heavy wool skirt as she hurried to her chair. And while she
might have forgone the stays, her shirtwaist was as starched and stiff as ever.

"It's
just you and me and Mother," he said with as much exasperation as he felt.
"Why can't you once wear something lovely? Something full of lace and
fluff and femininity? We'd swear never to tell, wouldn't we, Mother?"

"I
don't care for all that frippery, that fuss and feathers," Charlotte said,
pulling at her cuffs to straighten them. "I am not some decoration for a man's
pleasure. If you want lace, you wear it!"

"Really?
I see. I stand corrected. Then I suppose those stockings I found in my room,
the ones with all the lace, weren't yours?" he asked. "Just some
stranger's, who left them there in passing?"

Beet
red. Strawberry bright. Ripe-apple shiny. Oh, but the woman could blush a
robin's breast pale by comparison.

"Are
you implying," she asked, trying to busy herself with catching up on the
main course of deviled rump steak, "that I would wear something as
frivolous as lace-topped stockings?"

"Ashford
Whittier!" his mother scolded. "Such a topic of conversation! And at
the table! I never!"

Ignoring
his mother, he leaned forward and stared at her while she struggled to swallow
the last of her meal. "Are you saying they weren't yours? Because if I
remember my fairy tales right, there would be a way to prove to whom they
belong. Think they would fit, princess?"

"Ashford!
Stop this before it goes any further!" Kathryn pounded her cane against
the floor for emphasis, but darned it if the girl hadn't gotten his dander up
with all this ridiculous denying of who and what she really was, inside, deep
inside.

"Why
would I have a patently capricious piece of—"

"You
denying it or sidestepping the question, counselor?" He was leaning over
the table now, his nose nearly touching hers.

"What
if they were mine?" she asked, her eyes over-bright.

"Is
that an admission?" He signaled for Rosa to wait where she was, holding
the dessert he had requested be made in Charlotte's honor. "Answer the
question," he demanded. There was a flush of power that surged through him
and for the first time ever, he could understand what his brother saw in the
law.

"Am
I on trial here?" she asked, folding her arms over her chest.

He
stared at the pretty face above the no-nonsense white shirtwaist.
"Yes."

For
a moment the room was silent, and then Kathryn rapped her cane once again.

"Ashford,
sit down! Stop this at once," she sputtered, reaching for her goblet and
knocking it over. Water flew across the table, trails of it reaching out for
Charlotte, who ignored the cold wetness that was seeping through her sleeve.

"On
trial for what?" she asked.

His
breathing was coming hard now, his frustration pressing against his chest like
a stone. "For the abduction of Charlotte Whittier, the woman."

Kathryn
gasped.

Charlotte
swallowed hard.

And
he forged ahead, his words pouring forth on their own, out of his control.
"Or have you actually killed off the woman, Charlotte? Have you and Cabot
succeeded where God failed?"

"I
won't have it!" Kathryn said, coming to her feet. "Not such blasphemy
in my home and at my table!"

"You're
jealous!" Charlotte shouted right back at him, not relying on Kathryn to
end her battles for her. "Every man but Cabot is jealous because I've
succeeded where they've failed. I've done what they've only wished they could
do. And I've proven a woman can do it. I've done it for every wife at her
husband's mercy, for every daughter that's made to learn the graces at the
expense of common sense, for every woman whose rights are canceled by a man's
tyranny. You watch me, Ashford Whittier. I'll be on the bench one day. And
someday I'll vote too. And then there will be no stopping women. First in the
courtrooms and then in the polling places. Eventually in every branch of
government right up to the Congress and the White House itself!"

"And
what will you have accomplished for women if you can't be who you are? What
good will you have done them or yourself if all you're doing is emulating a
man? Charlotte, you aren't a woman lawyer, you're just one more male lawyer,
only you're wearing a dress."

Kathryn
had made her way to the hall. She was stopped in the doorway, looking first at
Ash and then at Charlotte as if the two were batting a lawn-tennis ball. She
was stooped slightly, more weight than usual on her cane, and she balanced
herself by holding on to the door frame. It appeared she was going nowhere
without hearing Charlotte's response.

"Do
you think that I could have gotten where I am, allowed to practice in any court
in California, if I wasn't as tough and strong as I've become?" Charlotte
asked him. She still sat at the table despite the fact that he towered over her
now, shouting at her, berating her as if it were her fault he had fallen in
love with her.

The
knowledge staggered him, and he sat in the nearest chair, his knees just inches
away from her thigh.

"Listen
to me, Charlotte," he said softly, reaching for a dry cloth and patting at
her sleeve for her. "You are a brilliant and talented woman. But you
are
a woman, and that's where your strength lies. Don't you see that as a woman
you bring something special to the table? To the court? To everywhere you
grace?"

"You
don't understand," she said, and her bottom lip trembled so that she had
to bite on it to get it under control.

"No,"
he said, signaling for Rosa to place the fancy cake in front of her. "It's
you who don't understand. A woman doesn't just see the issues, the way a man
does. She
feels
them. And to deny that gift, to shut off that caring
side, that womanliness, is to throw away all that you've gained for women just
for Cabot's misplaced respect."

"He
does respect me, you know," she said softy, her hazel eyes swimming in
tears. "And I deserve that respect."

"I
don't doubt you deserve it," Ash agreed, cutting a piece of the cake for
her. "And a lot more."

"What
is this?" she asked, looking at the cake ringed with upright ladyfingers
and filled high with whipping cream. There was also, according to Mrs. Mason,
just a touch of almond liqueur.

"It's
a charlotte russe," he said softly, licking off the bit he had gotten on
his fingers in serving her. Mrs. Mason had done his request justice with the
recipe she'd found in Mrs. Beeton's
Household Management.
He found
himself entirely satisfied with her interpretation of the French confection.
"The sweetest thing in the world."

He
watched her eat every drop on her plate, delighted with how well she fancied
it.
Charlotte Russe,
he thought.
Indeed, the sweetest thing in the
world.

Still
and all, the celebration went flat, the rest of the cake was returned to the
kitchen, untouched.

He
coulda just gone straight to old Doc Mollenoff's place instead of dropping by
the tavern. His pa would have found out when he got home—if he wasn't too far
gone to notice Davis missing from the couch. That's what anybody with a lick of
sense woulda done. He coulda left a note reminding the old man that he'd be
rubbing elbows with the silver-spoon crowd. But no, he had to go right into
McGinty's and push his pa's nose in his own droppings.

He
brushed at the fresh bruise on his cheek and gingerly touched an ear. The darn
thing was probably still bleeding even with all the packing the doc had done.

"I—I..."
he'd started to tell the old man sitting there on the stool like Her Majesty's
own consort, with Deirdre hanging on his every word as she filled his small
glass with another whiskey and the large mug with still more Oakland's Best.

Ewing
had glared at him, waiting, and then turned away when Davis's tongue decided on
its own that the old man wasn't worth the effort. Instead he'd just thrust the
card the woman had given him at his father.

"And
you think I wouldn't be knowing where me own son was wettin' the pillow with
drool?" his father had asked. "The one lady in all of Oakland that's
got 'er nose higher in the air than old Judge Mallory, and she's gotta take a
shine to me own millstone. I know where them Whittiers are and I know what they
be up to at any given moment."

Then
he'd launched into one of his nothing-happens-in-this-town-of-which-I-ain't-aware
speeches and proceeded to tell Deirdre, and anyone else who could stand hearing
him crow like some peacock again, about how important a carrier of the mail
could be.
He was a bloomin mailman! Lord give him patience!