Mittman, Stephanie

by The Courtship

  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."

  CHAPTER 9

  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 whit
e 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?"

  "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.