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.
"You will not," he said, returning his gaze to her, "ever go to the courtroom alone again."
Cabot seemed highly amused by his brother's outburst. "Do the words remanded to the custody of Cabot Whittier mean anything to you? Charlotte is not some little priss that would be bowled over by some spittle-laden wind, however strong, that might come within a few feet of her."
"Hit her cheek," Selma said. "Didn't you tell them, Charlotte? I do admire you so. There were bets, you know, that you'd cry. Silas Haring lost fifty cents!"
Ash Whittiers knuckles were white as he gripped the edge of the table. "If my brother cannot accompany you, I will see that Moss Johnson is there," he said through gritted teeth that nearly made his words unintelligible.
"Charlotte can take care of herself," Cabot said. "She needs to overcome the odds, and I understand that need. There are few things in this world as we know it that a woman can take pride in, and I'll not let you rob my wife of them."
"Your wife?" Ash said, coming to his feet. "Do you know that may be the first time I've heard you refer to her as that? Look at this table—you across from Mother, Charlotte on the side like a guest. Oh, you'll no doubt say she'll eat all the same. I've no doubt you're quite right about Charlotte. She can take care of herself. She's had to, hasn't she? There are many things a person can do. Why, they can even manage to spend their life in a c
hair if they have to. But how many would you actually choose for yourself?"
His mouth was still open, but there seemed to be nothing left to say. His hands were raised, but they pointed nowhere until one finger warned her. "No going to court yourself. Understood?"
He didn't wait for her to nod, and she wasn't sure she could. Could one nod without breathing? Without moving a muscle at all?
Something seemed to satisfy him, a look, perhaps, or her very silence, which he might have taken for some sort of affirmation, since after his warning he simply strode from the room with just a quick nod of politeness at Eli and Selma.
"He doesn't understand pride," Cabot said. "Not the way I do."
CHAPTER 10
Two nights later, when he heard the footsteps on the stairs, he knew they belonged to her. After all, they were too light for anyone but an angel. He shook his head at his own foolishness and suffered Liberty's derisive laugh.
"Someday it's going to happen to you," he warned the bird, watching him break his nuts into smaller and smaller pieces so that the little chickadee could share his meal. "If it hasn't already," he added.
He waited for her to tap on the door, anticipating her knock as if it were a reprieve from the governor. Not that he cared all that much about his case anymore, except that it was a shame for the guilty to go unpunished. Still, Cabot would get him off, or he wouldn't, and Ash would leave Oakland, one way or the other, and none of it made any difference because she wasn't going to be a part of it. Sometimes, in his darkest moments, when he lay alone on his bed in the middle of the night and knew she was alone, too, just a floor beneath him, he thought it might be best if he pleaded guilty just to keep her safe from him.
Not that he would force himself upon her—no, never! He wanted to put the twinkle back in her eyes, not see it gone for good. What a mess he'd made of Cabot's life and what a mess Cabot had made of Charlotte's. She might as well be a nun for all the pleasure afforded her by his unloving, unlovable big brother.
The knock was soft. Hell, beneath all the starch and serge everything about her was soft He made sure his shirt buttons were closed, his sleeves rolled down, and then opened the door slightly. Best that they kept their distance, after all.
And then he saw those sad eyes, that tiny pink tongue licking that lush bottom lip, and he swung the door open wide, grabbed her arm, and yanked her inside.
"I was looking for the little chickadee," she said as if to explain why she had chosen just that minute to breathe life into his mundane existence.
"He's here with Liberty," he said with a jerk of his head toward the birds, pretending that he hadn't been wishing, wanting, making deals with himself and bargains with God, if only she'd come to him.
Her jaw fell slightly, in clear concern for the tiny bird's safety, before she could fully comprehend that the bigger bird was making a meal for, and not of her little friend. "I thought I'd better get him fed," she said. Her hair had lost its willingness to stay pinned up and was falling softly around her face like streamers around the prize float at the parade.
"He's eating," he pointed out unnecessarily.
"Yes, I see." At the rate they were going they might actually get to the weather by midnight.
"You don't seem very pleased." Actually, she was sniffing and fishing around in her pocket almost frantically. He handed her his handkerchief, grateful Rosa had left him a clean stack just that morning, and lifted her chin, only to drown in her eyes.
"Oh, I'm pleased," she said, her nose twitching, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.
"Good," he said. "That's what we want."
"We?"
"Yeah, all of us," he said, spreading his arm to include Liberty and the chickadee and even Van Gogh, who'd nosed out from under the bed at the sound of his mistress's voice.
"Well, I'm happy." She smiled at him, or tried to.
"Good."
There was only the sound of the birds breaking seeds and nuts for a moment.
"You happy?" she asked, and for the first time let her eyes meet his, search his, pierce the ridiculous shield he'd raised to fight the dazzling effect of her. "Are you happy, Ashford?"
He wanted to be honest with her. Really, he did. He wanted to tell her that he couldn't be happy as long as she was trapped in a loveless marriage to his coldhearted brother. He wanted to tell her that, no, he wasn't happy, would never be happy, because the one thing that could bring him happiness in the world was forbidden to him forever, that he'd tossed away those rights unwittingly before she'd even learned her letters.
"If you're happy, I'm happy," he answered, as honest an answer as he could find in his heart to give.
"Good," she said again, resolutely, as if that settled the matter.
"Yes," he agreed.
She made her way to the desk and handed Liberty a nut, watched him crack off the shell, break the meat down into small bits, and lay them at the chickadee's feet. "We don't lie very well, do we?" she asked finally.
"Well, I wasn't trying all that hard," he said, defending his acting skills.
"Really?" She turned and looked up at him, those piercing eyes stabbing him with their pain again. "I was trying with all my might."
"Then we'd better hope you never have to convince anyone of something you don't really believe."
"I'm not a good liar," she agreed, tilting her face up toward his. "I'm not much good at anything but the law, and that relies rather heavily on the truth of things."
He wanted to tell her that it didn't seem that way from where he sat, not as someone who'd always been privy to the machinations of a family involved in the law from as far back as they could trace and then some, but it seemed to cast aspersions on something she treasured. The notion that the law was imperfect and that justice was neither blind nor evenhanded merely sullied it, and her along with it. And so he just nodded, his head getting that much closer to hers, his lips nearly brushing her temple, yearning to ask her if she cared for him, terrified to know. "Do you always tell the truth?" he asked, letting his lips taste the warmth of her skin.
Before she could answer he heard the uneven tap of his mother's cane on the steps—rap, step, step. Rap, step, step. Charlotte's wide eyes and her dash for the window told him that every now and then she at least attempted to keep the truth to herself.
"Charlotte, don't be ridiculous. There's no reason for you to go out there," he said as he fought her efforts to raise the sash. "There's nothing wrong with you coming up to my room."
"Look at my face and tell me I hadn't better hide," she said. There might as well be big bold letters spelling out a guilt she had no reason to feel.
Unless, of course, she was feeling what he was feeling, had come for what he had been hoping she'd come for.
He lifted the sash and handed her out the window, then hurried to the door, opened it, and leaned against its frame.
"And what canary have you swallowed?" his mother asked him as she went around him and into the room.
***
Charlotte positioned herself between the windows that faced north and those that faced east and leaned back against the overlapping wooden boards, grateful she was short enough to avoid the mansard roof. Cabot had always said her honest face would be her undoing, and here she was, out on the roof in February hiding from her mother-in-law to prove it.
"Have you seen Charlotte?" she could hear Kathryn asking. "I do swear this room gets higher every time I manage to get up here."
"You never swear, Mother," Ash answered, obviously trying to avoid the question rather artlessly.
"I've looked for her everywhere. I've been down to the cellar where she kept that poor cat with the horrid eyes, and out to the carriage house where the squirrels have all but taken over. Did you know she feeds those rodents?"
"No," he answered, coming and sitting on the window-sill so that she could watch his back expand and contract with every breath while he talked with Kathryn as if not a thing had passed between them.
&
nbsp; She reminded herself it hadn't. Not beyond her mind, anyway.
"Though I admit it doesn't surprise me. She seems to have a weak spot for all living things."
"Even Cabot?" Kathryn said. "Is that what you're thinking?"
"What would make you come looking for her here?" Ash asked. Apparently he enjoyed playing with fire after all. Maybe Charlotte ought to rethink his innocence with regard to the warehouse. "For heaven's sake, Mother. Sit down and catch your breath."
"It's those stairs. I believe there's a new one for every year. The older I get, the more of them there seem to be. Isn't that her bird?"
"Go ahead, Mother dear. Out with it. I've seen you do it with others, but never known you to play cat-and-mouse with me before." His fingers traced the window ledge, reminding Charlotte of how Cabot traced the spokes of his chair wheels, reminding her they were brothers.
"What is it you think I have to say?" his mother asked. "That I'm concerned about you? That I see time hasn't healed that pain, that—"
Ash cut his mother off. "Did you really come to talk about me, Mother, or about Cabot? Or about Charlotte and Cabot, perhaps?"
"You're right, I'm worried about all three of you. I admit it. You want me to say it? All right. I'm concerned that perhaps you've decided that Charlotte deserves more than Cabot is capable of giving her."
"Isn't she?"
Charlotte swallowed hard. The air was cold and bit at her nostrils and her throat.
"Oh, Ashford," Kathryn said, and Charlotte could hear the fracturing of her heart in her voice. "You don't understand Charlotte at all. There is nothing more important to her than the law. There never has been. Her name is on that marriage license and I know she sees it as a contract with Cabot. Charlotte would sooner let one of her precious animals die than go back on her word. If you think otherwise, Ashford, you'll find yourself wrong, and you'll be terribly, dreadfully hurt. I know that child as well as one of my own, and there's no doubt in my mind that she's made of better stuff than you give her credit for."
Mittman, Stephanie Page 15