Mittman, Stephanie (20 page)

Dr.
Mollenoff blotted at his lips with his napkin and then, pinkening a bit
himself, raised his glass toward Kathryn. "Prettier than the Vhittier
vomen, they don't come," he said, lifting the glass toward Charlotte as
well, and then taking a small sip. "Not that my Selmala isn't the first
crocus of spring herself, mind you."

"All
beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain,"
Cabot said.
"Whitman.
Leaves of Grass."

"Nothing
radiates beauty so much as a good heart,"
Ash said,
looking at Charlotte so intently that she could feel the blush creep up her
cheeks like warm winter sun through the conservatory windows.
"Whittier."

"John
Greenleaf Whittier?" Cabot questioned, his eyebrows lowered over his
doubting eyes. "From what poem? Is that 'Ichabod'?"

"Whittier,"
Ash repeated, fighting to keep a straight face and losing. "Ash
Whittier."

"Is
there more to it than that?" Charlotte asked, touching a cool hand to her
warm cheek.

"What
was the first line?
Nothing radiates beauty like a good heart?
Knowing
my brother, the second line is likely to be:
And nothing relieves gas so
well as a good fart."
He looked accusingly at Ash, as if he'd been the
one to be so uncouth at the table.

"There
isn't any more," he said softly, the look intent on her again.
"Yet."

"Perhaps
you've been lacking in the inspiration department," Dr. Mollenoff said,
lifting Selma's chin with a finger as if he were offering her to Ash. "The
right voman, she could make you breathe poetical."

Ash
pulled his gaze from her and smiled at Selma. "I'm certain you're
right," he agreed, while Charlotte chewed on the inside of her lip and
wished he'd look her way again. "The right woman might even turn a man
like me into a soul worth saving."

And
then he did look Charlotte's way again and the breath caught in her throat all
the while his eyes held her.

"Lord,
save my soul!" Liberty shouted from beyond the swinging doors.
"Again! Again!"

Squashing
the napkin in his hand and flinging it to the table, Ash began rising. He did
it slowly, deliberately, moving the chair back, then forcefully returning it to
the table before him. "Shut up," he said distinctly, each word ground
out from between clenched teeth. "Shut up, you stupid, stupid bird."

Cabot's
laughter nearly drowned out the
crack, crack, crack
of boot against wood
as Ash marched across the dining-room floor and flung the door to the kitchen
wide.

"How
would you like to spend the next thirty years in the cellar?" they could
all hear him threaten before the door swung closed and the real squawking
began.

Cabot
appeared amused, leaning back with a smirk and tapping the arms of his chair
while the rest of them bit at their lips, wrung their hands, and furrowed their
brows. "No! No! No!" the bird yelled, accompanying himself with sharp
whistles and calls. "Oh, my! So big!"

"Shut
up!" Ash shouted. "Get over here before I turn you into parrot
soup!"

"Awk!
Awk!" Liberty's screams pierced the walls and struck like knives against
their eardrums.

Charlotte
squeezed her eyes shut and felt her shoulders heading for the ceiling.

And
then there was quiet. An eerie, unnatural quiet.

Cautiously
she opened one eye and saw the stricken look on Davis's face. She gestured
toward the kitchen door. "Go ahead and check on them. I'm sure everything
is fine, but you'll feel better if you see it for yourself. You know Mr.
Whittier wouldn't hurt a thing, don't you?"

Cabot
raised one eyebrow and backed his chair away from the table. "I need you
to change the date on Ash's case, Charlotte. Are you still planning on going to
court on Monday?"

Was
Lake Merritt wet? Of course she was still planning to go to court. "I do
have Virginia Halton's case to move forward," she said, busying herself
with straightening her silverware. Of all the houses in Oakland, she supposed
that the Whittiers' had the most perfectly laid tables and decided that there
were certainly worse habits than lining up silverware to table edges.
"Even if there isn't a judge in all of Oakland willing to listen to my
argument. In Wyoming, not only do the women vote, but—"

"We're
not in Wyoming, Charlotte," Cabot interrupted. "And you play with the
hand that you are dealt and argue in front of the judge you draw."

"But
there's a—what is it they call it?" Charlotte said, searching for the
right words. "Oh, yes. 'A stacked deck,' I believe."

"It
is what it is," Cabot said, shaking his head. "And it seems to me
that your expenses on this case must have exceeded your retainer by now. You'd
be perfectly justified in—"

"I
have no desire to withdraw from this case, Mr. Whittier," she said
formally. "You know that my heart and soul are in those papers, and I
can't believe you would even suggest that I drop so important an issue as a
woman's right to information regarding her own—"

"Charlotte!
Not at the table! Please!" Kathryn pulled a lace-edged hankie from her
sleeve and waved it in the air before dabbing at her nose.

"Your
heart and soul are in those papers?" Cabot leaned forward and narrowed his
eyes as if he could get a glimpse of that very soul from across the table.
"After all I've taught you? Sometimes you make me think I've wasted my
breath altogether."

"I
do believe my son prefers that his lawyers not have a heart or soul,"
Kathryn explained to Eli Mollenoff with a slight laugh meant to lighten the
situation.

At
just that moment Ash came back into the room, straightening his collar and
dusting off his shoulders as he did. At his mother's comment he stopped in his
tracks and looked from Charlotte to Cabot. "I do believe he feels quite
the same way about his wife as well."

Charlotte
could just make out Selma, her smile wide, her hand held up triumphantly, at
the very edge of the crowd that gathered around her as she made her way to the
back of the courtroom. Being Eli's sister, she had to be careful about
associating herself too closely to the cause or someone might begin to wonder
just what Dr. Mollenoff's views were. And it wouldn't matter that he was
innocent, that he spent those nights in his back room repairing the damage that
other doctors, or women themselves, had done.

No,
guilt by association was ugly and Charlotte didn't want to find herself
defending the good doctor from a witch hunt.

"Congratulations!"
they said, one after the other, as she tried to fight her way through the
throng.

"It's
only the first step," she reminded them. Getting the court to hear the
case was hardly the same as winning it. But Virginia would have her hearing and
Charlotte would settle for one victory at a time.

"The
first step on the road to hell," someone toward the back of the crowd
shouted. "You're doing the devil's work."

"If
your husband was any kind of a man, he'd keep you at home where a woman
belongs," someone else hollered.

"Silas,"
some woman replied for her, "if you were a man you'd be holding down some
job and not here harassing this woman for doing hers."

"If
she were doing her job she'd be on a first-name basis with the midwife instead
of with the judge."

"You
been testing the evidence for accuracy, little lady?" some man asked,
trying to wrest her briefcase away from her.

Well,
there it was. Just as Cabot had warned. Someone—probably a lot more than just
this one man—was inferring that because she was defending her client's right to
send information related to the avoidance of conception through the mail, she
was practicing the methods herself.

"She's
given women a voice," someone said while Charlotte struggled to keep hold
of her briefcase and exit the courthouse.

"I
got my own voice," another woman said. "She don't speak for me."

"I
speak for my client," Charlotte said, throwing back her shoulders and
pushing her way toward the door.

"And
for me!" several women shouted. "For us!"

Something
hit her face, moist and clingy, and she reached up with her hand and wiped at
it. Against her serviceable chamois gloves, glistening in the sun that streamed
through the cut glass of the courthouse doors, was someone's spittle. She
spread her fingers, expecting it to flow between them like the white of an egg,
but it clung on determinedly, seeping into the leather while she simply stared.

"Let
me through," she said, the sea of people unwilling to allow her an easy
path. She kept her hand in front of her, palm upward as if the saliva would
somehow evaporate in the warmth of the sun, and bent her head into the crowd
until she was free of them all. Gulping the fresh air, she stood on the
sidewalk for a moment and fought to get her breathing under control.

You
asked for this, Charlotte,
she could just hear Cabot saying. Cabot, who hadn't
come with her this morning because he'd had too much to do on his brother's case.

His
brother. Had she really lied to Ash, told him that it was simply a
landlord-tenant matter to which she had to attend? What else, she'd asked him,
would Cabot allow her to take care of herself?

Ash
Whittier would have taken apart, limb from limb, the man who had spat at her.
He'd have hung him from a yardarm, or whatever it was that sailors did. He'd
have fed him to the sharks.

The
spittle shine had dulled, leaving several wet patches on the plain beige gloves
Cabot had purchased for her to wear to court. Unsnapping the dull flat buttons
at the cuff, she peeled the chamois glove from her hand and let it fall to the
sidewalk.

Ash
Whittier would have ground his heel in it and taken her arm to help her cross
the street.

And
for some reason she couldn't fathom, that wouldn't have insulted her in the
least.

***

There
was something she hadn't told him, and Ash didn't like being played for the
fool. Oh, her arguments had been plausible enough—if the case had any import at
all Cabot would never have allowed her to go off and slay her own dragons—but
her cheeks had been just a little too pink, her eyes a bit too bright. She'd
tugged too hard on her gloves and had gripped her Gladstone too tightly. And
then she was gone.

He
handed the piece of paper he'd been writing on to Cabot. "If there are
other merchants in California we've sold to, I'm not aware of them," he
said.

"And
competitors? Other people who would benefit by the shortage of goods the fire
caused and the lack of competition you're likely to offer in the next
while?" Cabot asked as he looked at the list and moved a bowl of nuts out
of Liberty's reach.

"You
plan to have the investigator looking into this, as well, I take it?" he
asked his brother, moving the nuts back to where Liberty could help himself.

Cabot's
mouth twitched. "I'll get him on it tomorrow. He's had no luck with your
lady friend, despite a decent reward, and I've had him concentrating solely on
the fire, but I don't know that he's come up with enough to raise so much as a
doubt about your guilt."

"In
whose mind?" Ash asked him.

"Don't
start with me, Ashford," Cabot said. "I've got Charlotte off getting
into who knows what depths of trouble, and I'd just as soon not go any rounds
with you." His fingers played with the spokes of his wheels, and he ran
his tongue against the rough bottom bristles of his mustache.

"You're
worried about Charlotte?" He knew there was more to it than she'd let on.
"Why? Is it that woman's case?"

Cabot
shrugged. "Don't concern yourself. You've never given a damn about anyone
else before. It'd be a shame to ruin a perfect record."

"Is
she in danger?" He was looking out the window, watching for her, before he
realized he'd come to his feet.

"She's
going to a court of law. What kind of danger could she be in? And do you think
I'd have allowed her to go if I thought for a moment she was?" Cabot asked
him. "Don't forget, she's my wife."

"I
haven't forgotten," Ash said, keeping his back to his brother. "I
wasn't so sure you were aware of it."

"As
I said, don't concern yourself. What goes on between Charlotte and myself is
none of your business."

"Business!
Mind your own business!" Liberty snapped. It was good advice, and Ash
wished he could take it.

"It
appears to me that nothing goes on between you and Charlotte. And since I'm to
blame for that, I think I have no choice but to make it my business."

Cabot
opened his top left drawer and placed the dish of nuts into it. "Out of
sight, out of mind," he told the bird as he shut the drawer.

"Do
you really think that that applies to your wife as well? That separate bedrooms
will keep her from needing the affection that a woman, a person, needs?"