Mittman, Stephanie

by The Courtship

  "Well, Cabot has a tendency to make me curse too. And did you get him at the seminary as well? Don't tell me. You were taking husbandry." That smile was surely something. It was a wonder it had taken Cabot as long as it did to snap her up.

  Ash had been on one of his first trips to the Hawaiian Islands when his mother had mentioned a young lady in the house doing filing and such for Cabot. He supposed in all the intervening years he'd never been around long enough to hear the "Courting of Charlotte Reynolds" story. Amazing that he hadn't wondered before this very moment.

  She stood there with that dazzling smile, her hair glistening in the glow of the gasolier, and it occurred to him that there was really no rush for him to get on up to bed. "So you met my brother at the seminary?" he asked. It was about time he got at least one version of the story.

  Charlotte's head bobbed up and down, all those glints from her hair nearly blinding him. "Oh, yes! But not in husbandry, Mr. Clever! Nor in the classics lectures or the botany field trips or—well, certainly not at roller skating!"

  She squatted down next to the couch, and he handed her a nut, which she offered without hesitation to Liberty. There weren't many women brave enough to put out their hands to the huge macaw, whose beak could probably snap off fingers as delicate as hers were.

  "Not that I skate anymore. Anyway, Cabot was speaking there—part of a lecture series about the law—and he was magnificent!" She sighed, rolling her eyes. "I can still remember him looking out over the crowd of girls and telling us that we could make a difference in every major case that came to trial. It was the first time I had a sense of worth as a person."

  "The first time? Surely when you were accepted at the seminary you knew you were special." Ash had forgone college, opting for experience and the chance to get away from home, but he'd been sorry later. Regret was like a big pot of stew for him, and college was just one of the many ingredients that went into the tasteless meal he couldn't avoid.

  "Oh, I was just sent there by my grandmother to learn the fine art of being the wife of someone of importance." She seemed to consider what she said and find it amusing. "I suppose that's what I became. I really wanted to go to Hastings Law School, you know, not that my grandmother would have stood for it. After she died, the cost was such that I could never... so when Cabot..."

  Even in the dim light he could see her blush as she stumbled to correct the impression she had inadvertently given. "I don't mean that I married Cabot because I couldn't go to law school. You shouldn't think that. I'm not the kind of woman who would take advantage of a man, or a situation, or..."

  "Oh, no. I don't think that at all," he was quick to reassure her. "You're a stellar example for all women—" he said, stumbling over his words.

  "If I am, it's because of your brother. Because that afternoon he said that how women felt and acted impacted the world at large. That our opinions carried weight."

  "And you fell in love with him, then and there?" he asked, amazed at how her skin glowed in the semidarkness. He supposed that a man who could make a woman feel important was probably worth his weight in gold. Had he ever made a woman feel like anything more than a pleasurable moment in a pleasure-seeking life? No instance sprang to mind.

  "Fell in love?" She seemed taken aback by the question. "No. Well, maybe. I was only seventeen. I just knew that I wanted more. More of him, more of the heady feeling of making a difference in the world."

  "You certainly make a difference," he said, nodding in the boy's direction.

  "Well, if I do, it's because of Cabot. I actually begged him to let me come and help him. You should have seen me, nearly prostrate, begging him to use me."

  Still seated on the floor, she demonstrated, bending over herself so that her head nearly touched his bare toes, and looked up at him with pleading eyes. He didn't suppose she could have looked much younger then than she did at that moment. Or more appealing. "And Cabot succumbed." It was more a statement than a question.

  She remained on the floor, rising enough to clasp her hands together. She begged with her eyes, big and innocent; with her lips, soft and pouty; with her chest, which rose and fell with every breath. It didn't take much to imagine her as a teen. She was barely a woman now. "Oh, please," she said so sweetly he could taste it in his mouth. "I'll do anything, I begged him. I thought if I could only convince him..."

  Ash crossed his legs, and shifted in his chair, grateful when she finally sat up and brushed the hair from her eyes. "And he took you up on it. You were, what did you say? Seventeen? That's pretty young." She still seemed young. Still seemed innocent, fresh. He could imagine his brother being quite seduced by her joie de vivre, her thirst for knowledge, her slim body with those slight soft curves just where a woman's curves ought to be. His brother must have found that bottom lip impossible to resist. His brother must have wanted to run a finger, just one finger, or perhaps the back of his hand, against that cheek to see if it could possibly be as soft as it appeared.

  "Oh, not too young for Cabot. He says you can't be too young. That way you've no bad habits to break."

  But his brother should have known the hell better than to let this woman, this child, offer herself up like some sacrifice. "No? I suppose bad habits get developed as you age."

  When he tried to draw a breath he found his chest was hot and tight. With great deliberateness he worked at rolling up his sleeves while she continued to tell him the intimate details of her infant association with Cabot.

  Details he had no desire to hear. And yet he couldn't pull himself from the room, couldn't pull his body from the chair, couldn't pull his eyes from her face.

  "Oh, Cabot doesn't permit bad habits. He's very demanding, you know. You'd guess he was soft, but he can become rigid in an instant. You know, just like that!" She raised her index finger up, then, studying his face, she hedged. "Well, maybe you don't."

  He uncrossed his legs and tried to put his weight onto his feet. He wanted to get up, to leave the room, but his lower half refused to obey anything he wanted it to do. Or not do. He recrossed his legs, his hands in his lap. Rigid was something he understood perfectly at the moment.

  "Of course, he was patient with me," she said. "Despite all that insistence that I use my hands and not my mouth. And all that practicing, practicing."

  "I would really prefer not to hear this," he said. He knew damn well he was misunderstanding everything she said. He had to be, or his brother was about to lose the use of his arms along with his legs.

  "He was right," she said in defense of the man whose wife she now was. Ash had to give Cabot that. He'd married her, kept up his end of the bargain. "I'd never have learned, otherwise. I've such a big mouth, and I'm so quick to use it."

  There was no question that he wasn't hearing right. That he had a dirty, filthy mind and that he was putting words in her mouth she couldn't be saying. And because he was a hopeless reprobate he was now forced to sit on one hip, curled nearly in a ball, still too mesmerized to simply get up and leave the room. In all his experience, no woman had ever been so blunt, so...

  "I mean, the written word is so much more effective than the spoken one. And Cabot is right. A judge makes his decision on the strength of the papers before he even walks into the courtroom to hear oral argument, more often than not."

  "Oral argument?" Ash choked out, his voice breaking high.

  "My forte, Cabot says. He could see that right from the beginning. That's why he made me write out everything, ad astra! I didn't get to use my mouth till I got to say 'I do,' in the judge's chambers. And even then, I thought he'd make me write out my vows!"

  He tried to catch his breath, control it, smooth the hairs that stood on end down his arms and up his neck. He concentrated on the Latin phrase she used, trying to overcome his body's reaction to what he'd thought he'd heard. Ad astra? Ad astra? To the stars.

  "What exactly was it you did for him?" he asked, ashamed of himself for wanting to know but unable to resist knowing every detail of their li
ves. "When you started out with him... at seventeen... before you married him... then." He stumbled over his words like a schoolboy. He wondered if it wasn't her very presence that had made the young boy sleeping behind her stutter so. Another conversation like this one, and Ash, too, would be stuttering hopelessly.

  "Filed. Edited the papers he wrote. Let him practice on me," she answered. He choked on air and she watched him sympathetically until he motioned for her to continue, elaborate. "Speeches, summations. Just like now. Not much changed when we married."

  He couldn't keep from wondering if she was doing it on purpose.

  "Except of course that you live here now. Share a table... an office... a bed."

  There was something in her eyes—there for a second, then gone. He could have sworn it was pain that flickered there, and then the innocence returned, more genuine even than it had seemed before.

  "Charlotte? Did I say something wrong?" he asked when she came abruptly to her feet and stretched.

  "Do you think he'll be all right here?" she asked, gesturing toward the boy. "Or should we put him up in one of the bedrooms?"

  "Best to leave him here. If I try to move him, his injuries will probably wake him up. I think it's pretty wonderful of you to try to help him," he added, not willing to allow the evening to end.

  She smiled sadly. "I hope Cabot won't mind."

  "I'm sure you'll make him see reason," Ash said, wondering how Cabot could resist granting his wife anything she asked for. He stayed where he was seated, his hands in his lap to hide the effects of their conversation.

  "I haven't yet, but I haven't given up trying," she said with a shrug. Instead of leaving, as he'd expected, she knelt, picked up another nut from the hand that rested upturned in his lap, and offered it to Liberty, all the while worrying her bottom lip. He waited, staring at her mouth, sure she wanted to say something more, but nothing was forthcoming.

  Finally she let go a ragged sigh and asked, "How do women get you to do what they want, Ashford? I mean, when you've refused to see things their way, don't understand what it is they need, how do they..." She covered her face with her hands, but not before he saw the pink creep over her cheeks.

  "They look at me about like that," he said, tipping her chin up so that he could look into those huge eyes of hers. "And sometimes—on very rare occasions—that's enough."

  She stared back into his eyes, unblinking. If the warmth in them should ever be meant for him, he would be a cinder at her feet. She struggled to give him a smile. "Would that were always the case," she said softly. "I guess I'd best get up to bed."

  "Yes," he agreed, coming to his feet and allowing Liberty to pace across his shoulders until he found the spot he wanted, before turning down the lamp.

  Charlotte rose and stood just beyond his reach by the doorway. She looked tired, sad. What he'd said wrong was a mystery, but he had the urge to tell her how sorry he was, nonetheless. Instead he just stroked her arm and steered her toward the stairwell.

  At the landing she turned and whispered good-night. "And thank you for helping with Davis. I think if you hadn't come in with Liberty when you did, he'd have insisted on going back home."

  He nodded, brushing away her praise. He'd done nothing but show off his parrot, while she had offered the boy her home, her expertise, and her protection. And all without losing that soft, innocent vulnerability she strove so hard to hide.

  Just outside Cabot's bedroom door she came to a stop and waited for him to pass, smiling politely as he did. Three steps up the next flight he still hadn't heard her open the door. He stopped and leaned over the railing just in time to see her leave Cabot's door and enter the room next to it.

  Except now you share a bed, he'd said.

  And she hadn't answered, had she?

  CHAPTER 5

  Many had been the mornings he'd woken up with a small ear and long silky hair resting on the pillow beside his head. This was the first time, though, Ash had awakened to a long silky ear and a small hare just inches from his nose. Somewhere in the early hours of the morning, when he'd finally stopped tossing and turning in a vain attempt to smother notions better left unthought, he'd heard the scratching under his bed again. The patter of rodent's claws forced him out of the bed and left him eye-to-eye with a one-eared rabbit who clearly thought that the high room was his. The rabbit's left rear leg impatiently tapped the floor as he waited for Ash to clear out.

  "No dice," he'd told the rabbit, who'd eyed him suspiciously and then, apparently deciding Ash was not worthy of his fear, had hopped up nimbly onto the bed and wiggled his cotton-tailed behind between the covers and the pillow, and shut his eyes.

  Ash had been willing to share his bed—provided the rabbit was willing to listen to the troubles of a man with a clear path to hell by way of the gallows. He'd spent the rest of the night regaling the rabbit with tales of the high seas and low ports, neither of which appeared to impress the furry creature.

  Long about dawn he'd begun to question the bunny, figuring that a critter his size, with a demonstrated penchant for hiding under beds, would know quite a bit about what went on at Whittier Court.

  Evidently, the rabbit felt it was none of Ash's business, because he kept his mouth shut regarding his mistress and her exploits.

  Exploits?

  What did he think Charlotte was doing, other than tending a few miserable creatures and brushing her hair where Cabot couldn't see her?

  The rabbit was right. It was none of his damn business.

  But that didn't stop him from wondering. And worrying.

  And so he'd talked himself blue while the rabbit had listened politely in the dark, offering a reassuring paw on Ash's shoulder and a nuzzle to his neck just when he needed it.

  They didn't share a bed, Cabot and his wife. What stupid, ridiculous assumptions Ash had made over the years. Too young when Cabot's accident had happened for it to have even occurred to him, Ash had never so much as wondered whether Cabot was still able to function as a man. Hell, Cabot had been just eighteen when he'd fallen from the roof.

  Had he ever known a woman intimately? Had he ever felt that surge of passion filling his loins to bursting?

  Had he ever burst?

  Ash groaned and flipped over on the bed, startling the rabbit. "He should have let me take my damn chances," he told the animal, who stared at him with unblinking eyes, "instead of risking his life for me. I'd have come in sooner or later, you know."

  How could he face Cabot now, now that he knew the full extent of what he'd done? Horse dung! as Charlotte said. Feces whatever! Merde! Why hadn't anyone ever told him?

  "Damn!" He threw back the covers and sat up on the side of the bed, his head in hands. So he hadn't only cost his brother the use of his legs—which was hardly an only, though Cabot had seemed to rise above it—he'd cost him the use of what lay between them.

  You share a bed.... Had he really said that to his sister-in-law? As if it were any of his business! He smacked his forehead, shook his head, and smacked it again. He should never have come back home. The Hawaiian Islands were warm and sunny. The pineapples and the women were both ripe for the picking.

  But no, he had to get his beans back to Oakland Harbor, the dung heap of San Francisco Bay. And somehow manage to get himself arrested for murder.

  Manslaughter, he corrected, reminding himself that the people in the fire he hadn't set weren't people at all. Cabot was as good as ever at what he did, better maybe. But, of course, now his brother had Charlotte's help.

  Charlotte. It kept coming back to Charlotte, with that wide, wonderful smile and those big bright eyes. Jeez, she couldn't be more than twenty-three or twenty-four. What was she doing married to someone as old as Cabot, who couldn't even...

  He really was disgusting. People didn't marry just to copulate. Marriage was a merging of the heart, the mind—not just the body. Charlotte wasn't looking for Cabot's physical perfection any more than Cabot was looking for hers.

  Though he could
have found it if he'd just open his eyes.

  The problem was that, the way Ash saw it, Charlotte was a tumbler of cold, fresh milk, condensation on the outside of the glass, maybe a drop or two still clinging to the lip; and Cabot, well, Cabot was a fine cut-crystal goblet full of well-aged wine.

  He wouldn't want a life without either of them, but they sure as heck didn't belong on the same table!

  Beside him the rabbit nudged his thigh.

  "Hungry? Oh, merde!" Charlotte's word again, he thought, as he jumped up to feed the bird, which hadn't been fed since the previous afternoon. He ran to the dresser, only to find that the bird and all his paraphernalia were gone.

  So were the woman's stockings.

  ***

  "I'm telling you, Charlotte, that there is a nest in the eaves somewhere," Cabot was saying to her when Ashford joined them in the dining room. "I heard a bird chirping half the night."

  Ashford's mouth opened, then closed again, and Charlotte swallowed hard, hoping he'd have the sense to keep it that way. Not that she liked lying to Cabot, but it was such a little lie, and for a good reason. Still...

  "I'll have a look outside," she said, wishing Cabot wouldn't put her in this position, knowing she'd done it herself. Again.

  "I could look," Ashford offered. He seemed lost amid the disarray that passed for breakfast at Whittier Court. Cabot was already done and wheeling back from the table, Kathryn was just coming in from the kitchen, Davis in tow, and Charlotte was hallway through her meal.

  "Am I late?" he asked.

  Cabot halted Arthur before the servant pushed him through the door. With his finger waving first at Charlotte and then at Ash, he said, "Don't you go climbing ladders, either of you. I have a gardener who gets paid to risk his neck."