Mittman, Stephanie (30 page)

"The
intellectual stimulation excited her, the mind puzzles were challenges—you
don't know how I loved to watch her struggle with a problem, wrestle it out in
her mind or on paper, and come to me to see if she had won."

"Did
I hear you use the word
love?"

"There
seems to be a lot of doubt about that suddenly. Do you doubt that I love
Charlotte? And do you think putting all these doubts in her head will make her
any happier?" He sighed. "I've worked so hard with her, Ashford, to
make her better than the rest. Above them all. And don't think I don't know
who's been filling her head, and what's weighing on her mind."

The
accusation hung there in the stuffy air of Cabot's office. Finally Ash answered
it as best he could. "I don't doubt you love what you have created. What I
doubt is that you love who Charlotte is."

"Charlotte
is what I have created," Cabot said. "And that, dear brother, is what
makes her so worthy of my admiration."

"It's
a good thing this house was built with double doors, or you'd never fit that
head of yours through the doorway. Were you always so pompous an ass, or has it
grown on you with age like the mold on cheese?"

"It's
so very like you to attack what you can't comprehend. Haven't you ever yearned
to do what those around you cannot? Don't you ever long to sail faster, climb
higher—ah, I forget myself. Here's one for you—don't you want to cover more
women in one night than the next man? Don't you want to reach that peak again
and again and again until she begs you to stop and then once more to prove you
can?"

"You
don't think very much of me," Ash said. "But then that comes as no
surprise. No, dear brother, I have no grand desire to fuck my own brains out,
nor those of some poor woman along with me."

"Crude,
but to the point. All right. Don't you wish to win for yourself the most
beautiful woman in the world?"

Ash
imagined Charlotte as he pulled her in from the storm, and pictured her in the
lamplight as she stood before him. "The most wonderful, yes," he
agreed.

"Well,
let me tell you this. If you were to win her, being the man you are, you would
find that with that challenge faced and conquered, you would grow tired of the
success and seek out a new woman, more beautiful than the first woman. And the
attempt to seduce her would begin again."

"Ah,
but the first woman was the most beautiful. How could there be one even
lovelier? I would be more than satisfied, I assure you."

"Not
you, Ashford. No more than me. Men need a hill to conquer, and once they've
climbed it, they must go seek a mountain."

"If
I could stake my claim on that first hill, there is nothing that would make me
look beyond it."

Cabot
looked at him dubiously. "Before you go planting your flagstaff, little
brother, I suggest you check that there isn't a prior claim on the land.
Trespassing carries a pretty stiff penalty."

Ash
shrugged his shoulders as if none of this mattered to him at all, as if it was
all just hypothetical and they weren't talking about the woman who gave him
reason to breathe. Deciding that there would be no work done that morning, Ash
rose and opened the door that connected Cabot's office to Charlotte's.
"Aren't there any statutes regarding abandoned property?" he asked
over his shoulder as he started to leave the room.

"Just
a minute," Cabot said, and gestured for him to sit. "The flowers in
Charlotte's office. I don't recognize them as ours. Do you know where they came
from?"

"They're
from a little shop near the wharf," Ash said. "Why? Were you hoping
to send her some yourself, after all?"

"By
the wharf," Cabot said, ignoring Ash's challenge. "Naturally you had
Moss pick them up for you."

Ash
was silent. That investigator of Cabot's wasn't making any progress at all,
according to Charlotte. Was he supposed to remain confined to his room, twiddling
his thumbs, while the man who had set fire to his business walked free?

"Tell
me that Moss picked up those damn lilies." Cabot's face was red, his
nostrils flared, as he spoke.

"I
only meant to show her my appreciation, Cab. They're called stargazers, and
I've seen her, once or twice, staring out the window and dreaming. Haven't
you?"

"You
went out," Cabot said, the flared nostrils now the softest of his angry
features. "Didn't you?"

"For
God's sake, there's a man out there somewhere who set my business on fire,
wiped out my stock, convinced my partner I was a goddamn firebug, and killed
people in the process. On top of all that he's left me holding the bag. You're
damn right I went out, Cabot, and I'll be going out again. You know, for
example, what Jack Perry is selling Cuervo for? Twice what I was getting. What
do you think of that?"

"I
think if you go out again, you're on your own. I don't like cases I can't win,
Ashford, and I'm beginning to dislike yours a whole lot."

***

"All
right, Kathryn, I've had quite enough of this game you're playing,"
Charlotte said the following day when she'd finally cornered the older woman
with her nose pressed up against her embroidery board near the fireplace in her
bedroom. "Mrs. Mason has chased me up and down this house half the day
asking me whether I wish to serve oysters on the half shell with soup
à la
reine
or
croûtes aux champignons
with mock turtle soup. Maria
suddenly doesn't know one set of sheets from another, and Rosa isn't sure the
floor is polished to my satisfaction. I'm only waiting for Arthur to find me
and ask me what time Cabot wishes his bath."

Behind
her there was a knock, and she turned to find Arthur in the open doorway, a
basket in his hand and a clean towel over his arm. "Pardon me, ma'am, but—"

"I
don't know," she said angrily without waiting to hear the question.
"I have no idea. Ask Mr. Whittier. Ask Miss Kathryn. Ask Rosa or Maria or
whoever might know, but don't ask me!"

"You
really do have to learn to run a household, dear," Kathryn said with a
sigh. "I won't live forever, and you are the woman of the house. What is
it, Arthur?"

"Might
I speak to you, ma'am?" he said, addressing Charlotte nervously.

"Arthur,
if this is about Mr. Whittier—"

He
cut her off. "It's about the rabbit, ma'am," he said, holding the
basket out to her. "I was cleaning up Mr. Whittiers old chair as Mr. Ash
had asked me to, and I didn't see him there by the wheel and—"

"Oh,
good glory!" she said, rushing to take the basket from him and set it on
Kathryn's bed.

"He
isn't dead, is he?" Kathryn asked.

"No,
ma'am," Arthur answered. "But I've cut up his foot a bit."

"I
thought rabbit's feet were supposed to be lucky," Kathryn said, peering
over Charlotte's shoulder.

"Not
for the rabbits that have to part with them," Charlotte answered. She
wasn't superstitious to begin with, but if a person believed that there was
some force out there that would keep a person safe at the expense of a rabbit,
she said poo on any such force and stepped on every crack she could in that
person's presence.

Van
Gogh whimpered as she examined his paw. Apologizing to him over and over, she
gently tried to trace the tiny bones within his fur and concluded that she knew
next to nothing about a rabbit's anatomy.

"I'll
need some gauze for the bleeding, and a splint might be a good idea," she
told Arthur. "Do you think that you could find something I could use in
the conservatory?" Cabot had all sorts of sticks for training his plants
to grow the way he expected them to.

"I'm
afraid that Mr. Whittier is in there with the investigator again," Arthur
said, screwing up his nose at the mention of him. "But perhaps Mrs. Mason
has something you could use."

"That
man!" Charlotte said through gritted teeth. "I don't know why Cabot
needs him when just one look at Ash's face ought to be enough to convince a
jury of his innocence. Why, just the idea that he could do something as awful
as set a fire anywhere but in a woman's heart..."

Kathryn
gasped.

Arthur
coughed.

And
Charlotte turned three shades of red.

"That'll
be all, Arthur," Kathryn said, and waited for the servant to leave before
continuing. She raised one eyebrow at Charlotte and pursed her lips. "So
you think if people just got a good look at Ashford that would do it?"

"I
think that the truth ought to be obvious and that Cabot's sneaking around
trying to buy something that merely resembles the truth is sordid and implies
that he doesn't believe fully in Ash's alibi or his innocence."

"So
Ash has done nothing wrong, but in your eyes, Cabot has?" Kathryn's eyebrow
had not come down yet. Perhaps she was remembering a time when Charlotte
wouldn't have thought Cabot could so much as throw a cigar band on the
sidewalk, when the man walked on water for her. He'd taken a few dips since
then. Like during the Murphy case when he'd threatened to reveal the parentage
of a certain small child unless the child's mother cooperated with his
investigation. He had been looking for the truth, of course, but it didn't make
his tactics more palatable.

And
there was the time that a witness for the prosecution mysteriously failed to
show up in court and everyone was baffled but Cabot. And what had he offered
her in his own defense?
The ends, Charlotte. The ends...

He
ought to just have Machiavelli's words printed below his name on the letterhead.

"Charlotte,
be a good girl and take the rabbit and go. I'm very tired." Kathryn sat
down in the overstuffed chair by her fireplace, closed her eyes, and leaned her
head back. Her hair had lost some of its silvery glow in the last few weeks and
looked more white and less abundant than it had always seemed. Her skin, too,
seemed whiter, thinner, like parchment over her bones. "I think I'd like
to just rest awhile."

"I'm
sorry if I've upset you," she said as she touched the old woman's hair and
then laid a kiss atop her head.

"I
just can't see how this will work out all right for all of you, Charlotte. I
just don't." A dainty sigh parted her lips, and then her breathing evened.

"Sweet
dreams," Charlotte whispered, unfolding the patchwork lap blanket that
Cabot's grandmother had made and covering her mother-in-law with it.

***

"Aren't
you freezing out here?" The screen door slammed behind Ash as he joined
Charlotte out on the back porch. "It can't be more than forty-five degrees
and you haven't even got a shawl around you."

"I
didn't want Cabot finding me," she said. She'd assembled everything she
needed to wrap poor Van Gogh's foot, and supposed she ought to be grateful for
the help Ash would be able to offer her with the rabbit, but just having him near
her hurt—hurt her heart and her head and her pride. She told herself it was
only the cold that left her feeling numb as he came up behind her, the breeze
that made her shiver as his hand brushed her arm when he reached out and petted
the rabbit's soft fur.

"Why
didn't you go up to the high room?" he asked, pulling the winter throw
from the wicker rocker and wrapping it around her shoulders.

She
left the question unanswered. He'd made it clear he didn't want her, that his
obligations to Cabot ran deeper than his passing interest in a woman who didn't
even know how intimately she'd been touched. Well, they didn't say that blood
was thicker than water for nothing, but she'd never known how true that old
saying was.

Or
how much it could hurt to know that even though he wanted her—it wasn't only
her breath that was quickening as they stood there together looking down at the
pathetic rabbit whose eyes were locked with theirs—he would never betray his
brother.

Even
if his brother didn't want her any more than she wanted him.

She
shrugged the ratty cloth off her shoulders. "I can't work like that,"
she told him, concentrating on wrapping Van Gogh's paw tightly enough to
protect it while it healed. The rabbit fought her and backed up within the
basket. "Do you think you could..." she asked Ash, gesturing at the
bunny.

"Oh,
of course," he said, reaching into the basket and grasping the rabbit's
middle. "Where should I hold him?"

"Well,
just because I have to hurt him doesn't mean I want to get hurt myself."
She moved Ash's right hand—a big mistake—and tried to place it where it would
do the most good.

"You're
doing it for his own good," Ash reassured her. Oh, but his hand was warm,
despite the cold, and pliant under hers, as if he'd do with it whatever she
wished. But he wouldn't do what she wanted most, and even if he did, without
loving her, what would it matter?

"He
doesn't know that," she answered. "Be sure to hold his head in place
so that he can't bite me."

"He
does know," Ash said.

"Well,
when I hurt him, he isn't going to care about how much better he'll feel in the
long run. He's just going to want to take a chunk out of me, and I don't think
I can stand any more pain than I've already got."