Mittman, Stephanie (29 page)

Jeez,
Louise! Didn't the woman know anything? "Before I
really
touched
you."

"You
mean fornication."

He
opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He waved his arms, but still
the words were stuck in his throat.

"Right?"
She looked at him with obvious confusion.

"No,"
he said slowly. "I meant that I didn't touch the parts you are worried
that I touched. And
fornication
is a very ugly word, young lady."

"Oh,
please! And what we were doing was all right?" She dropped her righteous
indignation for a moment. "And I know you touched what I think you
touched."

"There's
a lot more to it!" He ran his fingers through his hair. Was he really
having this conversation with his brother's wife? "You've got better
parts!"

"Oh,
good glory! There are only so many parts and you covered them. Not that I
couldn't have stopped you—
should
have stopped you—I'm a married woman.
What do you think this band means?" she asked, holding out her left hand.

"I
only got as far as the gangplank," he said, sitting down on the bed with
his hands in his lap. He had a bad feeling he was never going to regain his
original proportions if they didn't drop this subject. "I never got on
board the ship."

She
pointed to her chest. "Am I the ship?" She seemed highly insulted.

"They
call ships 'she' for a reason," he said, hoping she wouldn't ask what it
was.

She
did.

"How
the hell should I know?" he said, throwing up his hands. "Maybe
because they can give you a good ride and then kill you. And the way I see
it," he added, "you are certainly no married woman."

"Oh,
really? Maybe you ought to tell your brother that." She was juggling her
wet underthings, trying to keep his robe closed, and still maintain her
dignity. She simply couldn't have all three. Ash was hoping the closed robe
would be the one to go.

"I
did. But it doesn't seem to me that either of you knows what marriage
means."

She
turned away, staring out the window into the darkness. "We took vows, Ash.
Signed a wedding license and a marriage certificate."

"And
he broke that contract. Has he loved, cherished? Has he honored and obeyed?
Charlotte, there is no marriage here. You got to be a lawyer, and he got a
partner he doesn't have to pay."

"I
knew what Cabot couldn't do before I married him, Ash. Don't think that he
tricked me or anything. Your mother explained the way things were with Cabot,
and I accepted that."

"Did
you know he wouldn't touch you?"

She
shook her head.

"Did
you know there would be no kisses, no hugs, no touching your—your special
places?" She blushed, but he had to admire her honesty when she shook her
head.

"No,"
she admitted, "but I didn't want any of those things from Cabot."

"And
now you want them?"

Her
hair was drying in ringlets around her face, curls that hung down and brushed
her shoulders, and they danced as she spoke.

"Not
from him," she admitted shyly.

"Affection
is a good thing, Charlotte. Now that you finally know how good, you should
demand it."

"I
don't think so." She stared down at her feet, the ends of his socks empty
and bent beneath her. "Not from Cabot."

"Well,
don't look at me, honey," he said, stroking her cheek and lifting her chin
so that she had to look into his eyes. "For one thing, I'm probably going
to prison for the rest of my life, and then where would you be?"

"Don't
say that! Don't even think it! Cabot will get you off. Your brother would never
let you go to prison for something you didn't do."

Ah,
but how about for what Ash wanted to do? Something he wished to the heavens he
could do? And which involved Cabot's own wife?

"And
for another, he's my brother, Charlotte. I cut the ground out from under him
once before. I can't do it again."

"So
what was this about?" she asked, waving her hand over his bed. "Why
did you kiss me and touch me and—"

"I
just wanted to show you," he lied. "Didn't I tell you all the while I
was doing it that Cabot could do it as well? Someone had to show you. Now
you've just got to make him love you, Charlotte, and then we can all be
happy."

She
ran from his room in tears, as he'd suspected she would. Slowly he lowered
himself to the bed and sat there in the dark, only his memories to keep him
company.

Come'ere
twerp! Come on, Ashford, you little twerp!

He'd
hated Cabot that afternoon all those years ago. The thought surprised him, but
he didn't dwell on it. He'd only hated him half as much then as he hated him
now.

You
might try the
California Penal Code
instead of Garner's
Estates and
Trusts,"
Cabot said to her as she came down the ladder in his office
with Garner's in her hand, nearly falling as her heel got caught in the hem of
her skirts.

"And
you might try steadying me," she grumbled back at him, massaging the elbow
that had crashed against the shelf to stop her fall.

Cabot's
teacup seemed frozen in midair. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"Of
course I'm all right," she all but barked at him. "As if it matters
to you," she added under her breath as he set down his cup and returned to
work. She still missed her mother's cup. Now she just passed on tea when it was
offered. The pleasure was gone.

"The
Penal Code,"
he said, reaching his hand out for it without even
lifting his head to look at her. "Where's Ashford anyway? I've got some
questions about Greenbough, and if you can't find the damn code, I'm sure he
can just—"

Oh,
yes—Cabot and Ash and her all in the same room. That was what she needed. The
man had touched her breasts. And every time she thought about those moments she
felt a tightness, tingling, almost as if he were touching them again.

"Charlotte!
The book?" Cabot had thrown off his reading glasses and sat with his hands
crossed over his chest. "It would help me immeasurably if you would keep
your mind on your work today."

She
had lain in bed with his brother, the silk of his dressing gown the only thing
covering her nakedness, and Cabot wanted her to restrict her thoughts to the
law. "Is that all you ever think about?" she asked him, handing him
the book and standing close enough to smell the bitters he'd mixed into his
tea. "The law and your flowers?"

"What
are you getting at, Charlotte?" He always began or ended a sentence with
her name, it seemed, as if he wouldn't know who she was otherwise.

"Are
you sorry you married me?" Her voice squeaked like a little girl's,
embarrassing her.

"What
would make you ask? Have I done something that makes you feel that way? Have I
asked too much of you? Kept you up working too late? Canceled your charges at
Capwell's or Pennoyer's? What have I denied you that you've requested?" He
rubbed at his brow as if the entire subject was tiresome but that he would
deign to discuss it because he was a more patient man than she deserved.

"I
didn't ask if you were good to me, or generous or kind. I asked if you're sorry
you married me, and I want an answer, not an evasion."

"Why?"

"That's
an evasion." And worse, something she refused to answer, couldn't answer.
Why did she want to know? Was
she
sorry? Or was she seeking his
permission to look for love elsewhere if he wasn't willing to offer it to her
himself?

"No,
it's a request for clarification."

"The
question is simple. Do you regret making me your wife?" She took a step
closer to him, so that now her thigh pressed against his upper arm. If he
merely turned his head, his face would be lost in the folds of her skirt.

His
fingers worked the spokes of his wheels furiously. "Is your name not on
the sign with mine in front of this very house? And did I not give you that
name? What greater proof could you be seeking?"

She
squatted beside his chair, ignoring for once the degree to which he despised
the action as condescending. Her face inches from his now, close enough to
notice that the tea still glistened on his mustache, the skin around his nose
was chafed, and the whites of his eyes were bloodshot and yellowed. "I'd
like a kiss," she said softly, praying that Cabot could erase the memory
of Ash's lips burning her own. "You could prove it with a kiss."

"How
sad," he said touching her cheek gently and cupping her chin as if she
were a small child come to learn at his knee. "You've confused love with
desire. Did you get these thoughts from that Ebell Society of Women? Or your
Halton case?
Fornication without procreation
—isn't that their motto? A
bit base, don't you think?"

She
said nothing, rising with the slight swish of petticoats and serge.

"It's
not something you can't work on, can't rise above."

A
short bitter laugh escaped her. "It's so very easy for the man who isn't
hungry to say no to the dessert tray."

The
thought seemed to give him pause, but she watched him rally, just as though he
were in front of a jury. His voice strong, yet quiet enough for only her to
hear, he said, "And I would imagine it equally easy for the woman who has
never tasted cocoa to refuse the unattractive brown offering."

Through
the pebbled glass of the office door Charlotte could see the silhouettes of Ash
and Maria heading their way, Maria carrying a tray. Wishing she could be
swallowed by the curtains, absorbed by the walls, she backed up as they entered
the room.

"Tea
and coffee," Maria said, setting the tray on the sideboard. "And Mrs.
Mason, she baked some little cakes. The yellow ones, they are lemon, and these,
they are choco-lat."

***

Charlotte
rushed past him, pushing him aside as she went. Everything in him wanted to go
after her, but somehow his shoes stayed nailed to the patent tapestry carpet
that covered the area in front of Cabot's desk. He waited impatiently for Maria
to leave him alone with his brother.

"What
was that all about?" Ash asked. He didn't dare give away any more than
Charlotte had. His brother could put a bullet through Ash's own double-crossing
heart anytime he wanted, but Ash had no desire to put Charlotte at her
husband's mercy.

"She
isn't feeling very well," Cabot said. He fingered the small plate of cakes
that Maria had removed from the tray and set on his desk. "For such a
brilliant woman, she still can't rise above her sex in so many small but
significant ways."

"Well,
women are plagued by cycles we can hardly fathom," he said. "They can
hardly be asked to rise above the physical...." Jeez, women were entitled
to feel awful every few weeks. If what happened to them happened to men... Ash
didn't even want to think about it.

But
apparently that wasn't what Cabot meant. "Always at the mercy of her
emotions. You should have seen Charlie when I met her—a silly little schoolgirl
trying to be a grown-up matron. She had on the ugliest shoes I have ever
seen."

Cabot
was looking beyond him at some speck on the wall, and seeing a past only he
remembered.

"She
wouldn't take a break, you know. Not for tea or dinner or even to stretch her
legs. Insatiable.
Teach me more, more. Are you proud of me? Did I get it
right?
When the lessons were over and I'd send her home, I'd watch her out
the window, her feet dragging, her nose in whatever book I'd loaned her to
study.

"There
were days, weeks, when I gave more thought to her lessons than to my own cases.
Her challenge became mine, her goals were my goals. Imagine! A woman lawyer
practicing in the courts. Could I pull it off?

"Oh,
rabbits out of hats for my guilty clients were everyday occurrences for me by
then, but this was putting the beautiful lady in the locked box and, with all
the flourish of the great magicians, pulling off the cloth to reveal"—he
paused, waved his hand in the air and continued—"a roll of the drums,
please... a fanfare... I give you—ta da—the lady lawyer!"

His
brother was breathing heavily, a contented smile on his face as close to
satisfaction as Ash imagined Cabot got.

"Well,
you should be very proud of yourself. Charlotte appears the consummate lady
lawyer."

"I
showed them all," Cabot said, and Ash knew the words were not for him, but
for Cabot himself and all the people who had ever seen him in that wheelchair
and taken pity on him. "She'd been educated to be nothing more than a
competent wife, schooled in the graces that enhanced a woman's value as an
ornament, the best mare in a gentleman's stable, as it were. And I taught her
to think, to analyze, to consider...."

He
stopped there, grimacing as he looked at Ash, as if deciding whether or not to
continue.