Mittman, Stephanie (21 page)

"You're
such an expert, are you? On what a woman needs?" Cabot swung his arm
toward a long row of books behind his chair. "Read any one of these and
you'll find the truth—that sex is a burden to a woman. It's demeaning and
degrading, and any woman of virtue would prefer avoidance if it wouldn't cost
her the affections of her husband or rob her of the opportunity to bear
children. Since the latter is not a possibility, I've simply spared her the
humiliation of spreading her legs for a pleasure in which I can't
partake."

Ash
gripped the curtains tightly as if they were his temper and he could rein that
in as easily. It took him a moment to compose himself, to remember the
circumstances and that no one was more responsible for them than himself.

With
all the self-control he could find, he sat calmly in the chair across from his
brother. "Look," he started softly. "There are things you just
don't know, haven't experienced, that aren't in those books of yours. If you'd
ever seen the look in a woman's eyes as you leaned above her, heard the sigh of
contentment after you've taken her places she's never dreamed of going..."
This wasn't easy. He'd never put into words the sheer wonder of giving someone
else pleasure, though it had been a by-product often enough when all he was
seeking was enjoyment himself.

Cabot
laced his fingers and leaned forward on his desk. "Aren't you leaving out
the best parts? How her fingers feel wrapped around your manhood, guiding you
into that slippery nest of tangles? How her breath quickens with your every
thrust until you think you'll burst and end it all? Didn't you forget about the
way her nipples strain toward you and brush against your own naked skin while
her nails dig into your back and she begs you not to stop?"

Sweat
beaded on Cabot's forehead, and he swiped at his upper lip.

"What
about the slime that covers her belly as you shrink back to reality and become
two sweaty bodies who couldn't control the animals within you? Is that what you
see when you look at my wife, Ashford? An animal that can't rise above those
base needs—like some serving girl that a man could fire for serving two
masters?"

Ash's
eyes were closed, his mind a mess of memories that only now began to make
sense.

"Matilda?"
he asked, remembering the pretty maid he'd been so fond of and who had left so
suddenly just days before the accident.

Cabot
shrugged noncommittally. He was right. What did it matter?

"Charlotte
is unsullied and will remain that way. She's a masterpiece that I created for
better things than lying on her back." His hand curled in on itself and he
tightened his grasp. "She is intellect. She is strength. She is
brilliance."

"She
is a woman," Ash said. "A creation of something much more powerful
than you or I could ever understand. You're like some Greek myth gone mad,
Cabot. Like Pygmalion, making a sculpture and falling in love with it and
asking Venus to bring her to life. Only, you took a creation so perfect already
that it should have taken your breath away, and you sought to suck the life
from it, from her. You tried to take out the softness, the heart and flesh and
blood, and make her as cold and unfeeling as, as..."

"As
me. Go ahead and say it. I was a man once. I walked and ran like any man would.
I thought and acted like any man would. Hell, I enjoyed a woman like any man
would. It galls you that Charlotte won't succumb to you like the rest of them.
That she's above and beyond all of that. She can do without the physical side
of love just as I can...."

"But
it's not Charlotte's debt," Ash said softly. "Don't make her pay
it."

"Whose
debt is it?" Cabot shouted back at him, pounding his desk with his fist
while Ash rose and stared out the window, blinking at the strong winter sun.
"Is it mine?"

Lightning
could have struck him then and it all wouldn't have been any clearer. He'd
spent more than twenty years waiting to be handed the bill for his brother's
pain.

And
here it came, glistening like gold in the sunshine, coming up the walk and
giving him a triumphant wave.

***

Davis
watched as Mrs. Charlotte Whittier, who really was a lawyer, if Mr. Whittier
was to be believed—and he couldn't imagine anyone not believing what Mr. Cabot
Whittier said—leaned against the closed front door from the safety of the inner
hallway. He watched her tug at the plain gray hat she wore and then raise her
little finger, turning it this way and that to get a good look at it in the
stream of sunshine shining through the fancy glass in the front door.

She
was lucky that stupid peacock was so slow. And she was lucky she still had her
finger, from what he could see. The bird was nothing like Liberty, who the
mister had him talking to while he watered the plants in that plant room for a
dime a day. Every time he stuttered, the parrot cocked his head and made noises
that Davis would have gotten smacked for in church. It wasn't any wonder the
bird had learned to say, "Shut up, you stupid bird!" He was always
saying it just when Davis had a mind to.

"M-m-mis..."
he started, silently cursing his tongue as he struggled to tell her that the
mister wanted to see her. She jumped at the sound of his voice and then tried
to guess at what it was he wanted. Patience. Everyone was telling him he ought
to get some, but he didn't think there was much extra laying around. Maybe if
he closed his eyes and pretended she was that hardhearted parrot—
"Mist—" His tongue seemed frozen in his mouth and he gave up,
pointing toward her husband's office.

She
nodded. "Oh, he does, does he?" she said in a huff, straightening her
hair and her jacket and her back all at the same time. "Wants to hear
about it all, does he? Well, he'll just have to wait."

She
rushed past him, then turned around in her tracks. He could see then that her
eyes were sparkling, but not with any sort of cheer or nothing. If he had to
guess, he'd figure something bad had happened and she didn't want to talk about
it. Well, it wasn't any of his business, and he wasn't even a mite bit
interested, anyways. Leastwise he wasn't till she smiled that real soft smile
of hers at him and he felt his insides go to mush.

There
wasn't much that was sadder than a lady smiling with tears in her eyes. When he
pictured his ma, more than not, that was the face he saw.

He
didn't like looking, and didn't figure she'd want him to stare at her anyways,
so he glued his eyes to the
floor and set to wondering how she could
stay upright on such tiny little feet.

"Did
you remember to feed Van Gogh?" she asked him in this whispery voice that
made it sound as if they had a secret, which as far as he was concerned, they
did not. Not that he'd told the mister about the rabbit. But he wasn't making
any promises that he wouldn't neither.

He
nodded. Did she think he'd let the ball of fluff starve just because she had
better things to do?

"Thank
you." She didn't make a big thing of it, and he appreciated that.
Sometimes when you did something for a lady she made this big fuss like you'd
all but saved her from the path of a runaway trolley or something. Just saying
thank-you the way she did made it seem more like she really meant it.

"It's
okay." Both words came out clear and he could see the surprise in her
eyes, as if for a second she thought he was cured or something. He remembered
himself the first few times his tongue didn't turn on him. But he knew better
now than to trust it. His tongue was like some tease or bully, taunting him to
try and laughing at him when he failed. He'd known for a long time that it would
take a better man than him to beat it.

"Charlotte?
That you?" The old lady, the mister's mother, came through the doorway
from the parlor, her eyes so squinty that Davis thought she looked like some
sort of owl outta a picture book. "How did it go? Did you give as good as
you got?"

"We'll
have our day in court, Kathryn," she said with a sigh.

"Well,
that's a victory for our side, yes?" the old lady asked, and got a nod
from the missus. "Ironic, isn't it?"

Davis
didn't know what the word meant, but he didn't like the way the missus bit at
her lip before answering. "It's not a war, Kathryn," she said, and he
saw her look toward the mister's office.

"Perhaps
not, but I think he's feeling that he trained the enemy." She tapped that
cane she always carried against the floor like she was applauding.

"I
truly believe he agrees with me in principle," the missus said, shifting
that satchel of hers to her other hand. "I don't want to be anyone's
enemy, least of all Cabot's. I'd always want him on my side." She headed for
the stairs and he was about to remind her that the mister wanted her when the
old lady called after her.

"Where
are you going?" she asked, taking a few slow steps toward the staircase.
"Not up to the high room, I hope."

The
missus put one hand on the banister as if she had to pull herself up to get
there. "I've got plants to see to and I thought that with Ashford busy
with Cabot, now might be a good time."

"What
is it you do up there, Charlotte?" the old lady asked, looking up to the
top of the stairs as if the landing were very, very far away.

The
missus gave one of them quick shrugs. "Hide."

"From
who?" the old lady asked. "Cabot?"

Lord,
if it wasn't the saddest look he'd ever seen when that little missus shook her
head. "Me," she said, nearly choking on the word.

And
then she was up the stairs faster than even Van Gogh could get to the top.

***

"To
Charlotte," Cabot said, raising his wineglass to her and encouraging
everyone around the table to join him. "Your milk will do," he said
quietly to Davis, who sat just to his left, taking the seat that was usually
reserved for Dr. Mollenoff.

As
they all lifted their glasses to her above the glow of the candles that her
mother-in-law had insisted the table be set with, Kathryn added, "You've
done your sisterhood proud," while she held her glass aloft, in danger of
losing a good bit of wine from the angle at which she held the goblet.

"Posh!"
Cabot said. "This has nothing to do with her sisterhood. This is the law,
and she has done me proud. They said I wouldn't be able to pull it off. No one
would take her seriously. They said that a woman would be laughed right out of
court. Three female attorneys in the whole damned state and I'm responsible for
one of them. The best of them." He took a mouthful of the dark red wine
and swallowed it slowly, savoring every drop.

"I
was so proud of you," Selma said. "I took notes on everything you
said so that I could tell Eli later. Oh, how he wanted to be there!"

"It
vas bad enough that you vere there," Eli said, his smile laced with
concern. "I've varned you and varned you about being discreet. You and I
could both be in hot borscht and then vhere vould the ladies be?"

"I
sat at the back of the courtroom, Eli," she defended herself. "With a
hundred other women. No one noticed me any more than anyone else. Surely I was
less noticeable than the man who spat at her."

There
was dead silence in the room and Charlotte studied her plate as if the
beautiful array of veal escalopes with mushrooms, cream, and sherry was the
most interesting display of dead calves she had ever beheld. With her head
tipped so low that she thought her gaze would go unnoticed, she risked a glance
at the man seated across from her.

Ash's
chest was rising and lowering like the piston on some steam engine, ready to
explode if it couldn't move forward.

"You
know," she began, "it was so warm today you'd have thought it was
May. I could have worn my—"

"Who?"
Ash's voice was quiet, but firm.

Selma,
sitting next to him, reached for her wineglass with a shaky hand.

"Who
spit at you?" he demanded, ignoring the wine that had spilled, ignoring
Rosa's efforts to blot at his sleeve with a wet cloth, ignoring Selma's tearful
apology and Kathryn's assurances that it was an old cloth and, knowing Ash, an
old shirt. "I asked you who spit at you?"

All
right. A better woman would have told him she didn't need or want his concern.
Clara Foltz would have called his response typical of what was wrong with
modern man and his view of women's role in society. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
would have blamed a breakdown on him. Charlotte Reynolds Whittier, on the other
hand, had to put the heel of her left foot onto the instep of her right and
press very, very hard to prevent herself from enjoying fully—oh, so fully—the
concern of the handsome—oh, so
very
handsome—man seething across the
table from her.

"It
was nothing," she said, waving the incident away with her hand. "Some
zealot who was convinced that a woman ought not know how her body works."

She'd
said similar words to Cabot a hundred times and they'd never embarrassed her.
Even his response, implying that she had no knowledge herself or any need to
know such things, had never sent the scarlet waves of heat up her cheeks the
way they were climbing now as Ash studied first her and then Cabot.