Mittman, Stephanie

by The Courtship

  "No!" He gagged on the word, scurrying from under the bed, scraping his hip, clipping his elbow, banging his head, in his haste to get to her. The railing that had been placed out there after Cabot's fall could stop an accidental catastrophe, but if she was bent on destroying herself...

  She looked up at him, startled, as he came barreling out through the window. From the pot over which she was bowed, a pair of pruning shears in her hand, she stared at him with wide eyes. "I thought you were down at the lake," she said, dabbing at her eyes with the cuff of her very full sleeve. "I didn't mean to intrude. It's just that I haven't seen to these plants in several days and I..." She let the sentence trail off, looking everywhere but at him, shaking her little head, putting the pruners down, picking them up, putting them down again.

  "Are you all right?" He rubbed at his elbow and then felt for a bump on his head.

  "Your fingers are all white," she said, reaching out for his hand and studying the crisscross of lines the ropes had left. She took his hands in hers and traced the marks across his palms. "What in the world have you been up to?"

  "Just fixing something," he said lamely. "Or trying to."

  "Oh." She let go of his hands, reluctantly. Or did he just imagine that she didn't want to let him go before she started rubbing her hands up and down her arms and giving him that sad little smile that sat heavily in the pit of his stomach?

  "You all right?" he asked again. Go ahead, talk to me. Pour out that little heart of yours.

  "Of course I'm all right," she said brusquely, clipping what appeared to Ash to be a perfectly formed green leaf off some flowering thing. "Why wouldn't I be?"

  He stared at her, hard, trying to tell her without words that he knew—and, more, that she was safe telling him.

  "Everything is fine."

  "And Cabot, is he fine?" That is, are you and Cabot fine?

  "Of course. Cabot is... well, Cabot."

  "What I'm really asking is are things fine between you and Cabot? He seemed a bit angry down there and I wouldn't want you two fighting on my account."

  "Cabot and I don't fight, Ashford." She seemed unable to meet his gaze.

  "You don't seem to do much else either," he said, tipping up her chin. Then he realized the implications of what he'd said and added, quickly, "I mean you don't seem to go out much, or socialize, or sit in front of the fire or—"

  "Cabot and I work together," she said, pulling her chin from his touch. "What we do is a lot more important than going to the theater or nonsense like that. I'm not the 'little lady'—Cabot's or otherwise—and if you've been imagining me sitting around embroidering pillow slips while Cabot smokes a pipe, I'm afraid you've got the wrong household in your mind."

  Imagining her? She hadn't been in his mind once in the five years she'd been married to Cabot. Not until now, when he couldn't seem to have a thought without her in it. "I just meant that you and Cabot seem more like partners than like man and wife."

  Oh, jeez! He'd done it again.

  "We are partners, Ashford. Nearly equal partners. And I mean to outlawyer my half of the Oakland bar."

  "I'm sure you're a great lawyer. Probably as good as Cohen. I only meant that... he doesn't seem, and you don't seem... that is, you don't... well, you both don't..."

  He put out his hand and took hers, holding it up for her to see them intertwined. Touching her, he had to remind himself to breathe. And he was certain this time that she didn't want to pull away. Still, she did.

  And he should have let it go at that, he knew, yet he didn't. "And you don't do this," he added, and squeezed her shoulder gently.

  And when that should have been enough, he still went on. "Or this." He rubbed his knuckles against her cheek, and she closed her eyes for a brief second before pulling back.

  "I've got to go meet Cabot in the conservatory," she said, putting down the shears and fingering the blossom on one of the plants. Had he imagined that she warmed to his touch?

  "Does he have roses for you there? For Saint Valentine's Day?"

  "Is it February fourteenth?" she asked. "Good glory! I've got papers due tomorrow in bankruptcy court!"

  He plucked a flower from one of her plants and held it out to her, along with his heart. "Does he at least say nice things to you, Charlotte?"

  "What?" He couldn't tell if she hadn't heard his whisper, or didn't understand.

  "Does he compliment you much, my brother?" he asked, noticing how the sun played with her hair while the breeze set a strand or two dancing.

  "Whenever I've done something to deserve it," she said, ducking her head under the window sash and waving away his help.

  He let her leave the room and close the door behind her before he allowed himself the last word. "I suppose," he said softly, surprising himself, "that would apply to every breath you take."

  CHAPTER 7

  Overnight the house had become too small. Ash didn't care if it did have fourteen rooms. Since he'd stood on the roof with Charlotte, the walls of each and every one of them had begun to close in on him. He needed to stretch his arms out. Like Liberty he needed room to flap his wings. He needed to put his muscles into something, to fight the elements, to...

  He kicked the heavy oak foot of his bed in frustration and winced as the sharp pain danced up his leg and dissipated in his belly.

  He needed to get new boots with stronger toes in them. In fact, he might need new toes if he didn't get his emotions under control.

  Surely he knew better than to try to tell Cabot anything, so why was he even considering marching downstairs and telling the idiot that all the stiff muslin shirtwaists and blue serge suits in the world weren't going to change that sweet wife of his into a cigar-smoking, curse-wielding, tradition-flaunting trouser-wearer?

  And what good would it do to tell Charlotte that he'd looked into the eyes of a hundred women and none were as soft as hers, as full of life and love and all that was feminine? Especially when she was trying so hard to deny it?

  He needed air.

  Pulling at his shirt collar, he unfastened two buttons. He threw open window sash after window sash until breezes whipped the curtains around him. And still he couldn't draw a breath.

  Salt air. Brine. That was what he needed. To be at sea again. Out of this house. Away from this family.

  Away from her.

  Her? Charlotte?

  Ridiculous! Even if she wasn't his brother's wife— which she was and he had no intention of forgetting that—she wasn't his type at all. He preferred women who relished their femininity, waved it at him like a cape at a bull, and enjoyed the charge as much as he did.

  Charlotte?

  He could see her in the bullring, her arms crossed over her chest, trying to stare down the bull. He sat on the bed, running his fingers through his hair and fighting the image of heeling to her command.

  She was interesting, that was all. As a sister-in-law.

  Naturally he felt warmly about her. Wasn't she a relative? Didn't they break bread at the same table? Sleep under the same roof?

  She was a curiosity. The lady lawyer.

  If only he hadn't seen those stockings, he was sure he wouldn't imagine the lace around her thighs every time he looked at her tailored dark skirts. If he hadn't come across her damn hairbrush again, hadn't conjured up pictures of her sitting on the window seat brushing out that chestnut hair and watching some sailboat on the lake, he could just have put her from his mind. If he hadn't heard her sobs, he might have been convinced that she was as tough as she pretended to be.

  But now that he had, even days later, he couldn't forget she was a woman. So how the hell could she? How did Cabot do it?

  The how puzzled him. The why left him with his jaw open, staring off at Lake Merritt. He was wholly startled by the knock at his door.

  Rosa poked her head in and told him that the senor wanted to see him. He took no offense that Cabot was the only one referred to as the mister of the house. It was Cabot's house, after all, his staff, his
life, into which Ash had come barreling at full speed. It was a wonder he hadn't smashed it to kingdom come.

  In the conservatory, surrounded by his precious gardenias, orchids, and gloxinias, a pair of tweezers in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other, Cabot sat waiting for him. He turned at the sound of Ash's footsteps, each one echoing deafeningly off the tile floor.

  Ash stopped walking and the noise became an awkward silence. The cloying sweetness of gardenias made the place smell like a funeral parlor.

  "Think Greenbough could have set you up?" Cabot asked, bending his head once again to his work.

  "I didn't think he was smart enough, but I don't know who else to suspect," Ash admitted.

  "Well, that's what the investigator is for. That and to find the woman you were with. Charlotte's spoken with a couple of your crew and says that the truth is your alibi is weak, at best." Cabot placed the tweezers down carefully next to several other implements on a clean white cloth that all but covered a silver tray.

  "Well, Charlotte's an intelligent woman," Ash answered. Cabot, who had been reaching for a small brush, stopped, his hand in midair, to stare at his brother.

  "Did you think I would marry just any woman? A twit to stand beside my chariot here and impress my associates? Did you doubt for a moment that when I wed, if I wed, it would be to the crème de la crème? Stone walls do not a prison make, nor rubber wheels an object of pity."

  The brush remained suspended in air as if it, too, waited for Ash's response. "I don't believe anyone pities you, Cabot," Ash offered finally.

  "Not even you?"

  The man had a home, a calling, a wife, all of them exalted, and he thought that Ash might pity him? "Especially not me," he answered honestly. He gestured toward the brush. "What is it you're doing?"

  "Pollinating," Cabot said.

  Ash held his breath, hoping that Cabot wouldn't remind him it was the only method in which Cabot would ever, could ever, propagate.

  "Making perfect specimens," Cabot said after a while. "If I could, I would surround myself with only perfection."

  Ash took the insult for what it was, and shrugged it off. One couldn't pick one's brothers, and Cabot had every right to be dissatisfied. "Well, it seems as if you've managed that with Charlotte."

  "Ha! Do you think so?" Cabot asked. "Sometimes I imagine she's all that I've planned for her to be, worked so hard at. You know it wasn't easy teaching her to rise above her emotions. Even now I'll catch a tear or, worse still, hear a sob when she fancies me occupied."

  Ash smiled indulgently and waited for Cabot to admit he was joking. When no admission came, he demanded one. "You aren't serious, are you?"

  "You don't know how far she's come," Cabot said. "Or you'd understand. Why, she cried when that mangy cat of hers finally died! Sobbed like a five-year-old who'd lost her mother! And throw things! I'd hear china crash against the wall at all hours of the night. Couldn't handle unhappiness. Couldn't abide frustration. Couldn't resist temptation. But she's learning. She wanted to be the best damn lawyer in Oakland and I promised her she would be, next to me, of course. And if I promise it, I see to it. You know that."

  "And if she were only a good wife?" Ash asked, remembering the sound of her sobs in his bedroom. "Cabot, the woman's your wife and you're her husband. Maybe she wouldn't be throwing things against the wall if you just treated her like a wife now and then instead of a partner."

  "What's the difference?" Cabot asked, putting down the brush and dusting his hands off over the cloth before folding it up carefully and placing the tray at the edge of the table. "In our case a partnership is enough."

  "Enough? I've been here over a week and haven't once seen you hold her, touch her, comfort her. I haven't seen—"

  "Looking for a show, are we? Then I suggest you go back down to the docks and put on one of your own. There are half a hundred women down there who would gladly match you thrust for thrust and half a hundred more that would let you watch. Maybe you can even find the one you spent the night fiddling with while Rome burned."

  Bile puddled in Ash's mouth. "Don't debase your wife with talk of two-bit pokies, you bastard. This is Charlotte I'm talking about—about decent, tender expressions of emotion with a good woman who has needs and desires that ought to be seen to by you."

  Cabot shook his head as if Ash's words were senseless, baseless. "Do you suppose my wife to be common because the women you know are of that ilk? Is it so hard for you to imagine her and me on a higher plane? Above needs of the flesh and satisfied with intellectual excitement?"

  "Is that why you don't even send her flowers? Cabot, the woman needs a pair of arms around her to hold her and tell her everything is gonna be all right—is that so demeaning to a man of your high standards and moral stature?" He was pacing now, something his brother hated, no doubt for its excessive show of ability.

  "And what would you propose she do? Crawl up into this chair with me? You of all people should know better than to point out what my limitations are. You, who—"

  "I'm not suggesting you..." He was stuck for the right word, a word that was fancy enough for Charlotte, refined and demure enough to describe the loving of a woman who would never know the fulfillment of her marriage to his brother. "Damn it! All right. All right. I'm not suggesting you dance with her, on your feet or on your back. Don't you know there are a million other ways to love a woman? God in heaven, Cabot, haven't you done any more than kiss your bride?"

  The room was stony silent as the truth settled in.

  Cabot sucked on his mustache and rubbed his hands on his thighs nervously. Finally he said softly, "I made her a partner." Then he wheeled back until he could get around Ash's shaky frame.

  "Oh, dear God—not even a kiss?" he asked the back of Cabot's chair. "Not so much as that?"

  Cabot gave a tug on the bell pull by the door. "You mind your own damn business when it comes to my wife," he said just before Arthur opened the twin doors.

  "Don't you mean your partner?" Ash corrected, as Arthur struggled with the conservatory ramp and left him surrounded by brilliant flowers, alone in the rapidly darkening room.

  ***

  Cabot was as abominable at breakfast as he'd been at dinner the night before. At Charlotte's suggestion that perhaps they call Dr. Mollenoff, Cabot had stonily rung for Arthur and left the room, ignoring her questions and his mother's pleas.

  "I don't know what's the matter with him lately," Charlotte told Kathryn, pushing away her plate and rising to follow her husband to their offices.

  Kathryn's gaze fixed on her younger son before answering Charlotte. "Sit, Charlotte dear. Finish your tea and we'll talk a bit."

  "But Cabot needs—" Charlotte began, gesturing toward the open doorway through which Cabot's voice could be heard clearly as he berated Arthur for everything from poor steering of his chair to leaving the curtains open to the morning sun.

  "Sit down, Charlotte," Kathryn repeated. "Cabot needs some time to come to himself and a bit of space to do it in. Ashford, aren't you done with those eggs yet?"

  For a moment her son looked surprised. For a good ten minutes he'd been playing with the food on his plate, hardly aware, it seemed, that it was there for eating. But he took her hint gracefully and excused himself, looking relieved to be released from what was sure to be "girl talk." Once he'd left the room, Kathryn made a ceremony of pouring them each another cup of tea. Then, settling against the back of her chair as if ready for a long discussion, the older woman asked after the small bird that had accompanied Charlotte to court for Ashford's hearing.

  "He's doing well," Charlotte told her mother-in-law. "Feathering out and eating up a storm."

  The older woman nodded. "And that one-eared rabbit?"

  "Van Gogh is fine too. He seems to have taken a liking to your son."

  Kathryn laughed, a hearty, throaty laugh that sat oddly with her delicate looks. "Is there anyone who hasn't taken a liking to Ashford?"

  Charlotte smiled her response. T
he man had turned out to be ever so much more likable than Cabot had led her to believe. He was friendly, easygoing, earnest. Everything she spoke of seemed to interest him. There was a warmth about him that enveloped her, a softness despite his manliness that wrapped about her even when she was across the room from him.

  "It's what irritates Cabot so much about him, you know. That easy way of his that makes people take to him so. I think Cabot would give anything to spend one day in Ashford's shoes."

  Charlotte opened her mouth, but Kathryn continued quickly.

  "I don't mean because of his injuries either. Ashford always had that nimbus—that sort of being comfortable in his own skin—that made Cabot all the more uncomfortable by comparison."

  "Are you saying that Cabot is jealous of Ashford?" Charlotte asked. She had to believe that Kathryn was surely off the mark, no matter how well she knew her sons. Cabot's assessment might have missed the mark as well, but surely Cabot thought that Ash was a ne'er-do-well, a rotten apple, a bad seed. While Cabot was becoming the most well-respected lawyer in the Bay Area, he claimed that Ashford carefully, deliberately, became a success at nothing. What was it Cabot called him? A jack-of-no-trades?

  "I'm saying he always was, right from the start, and I suspect he always will be." Kathryn fingered the rim of her teacup and leaned closer to Charlotte. "What else do you suppose is causing this bad humor of his? He's as petulant as he was as a child when Ashford was receiving what Cabot thought was an unfair share of the attention."

  "Cabot was petulant?" Charlotte tried to imagine Cabot's bottom lip protruding, his foot stomping in aggravation. She tried to imagine him as subject to the same feelings and emotions that ordinary people had. The exercise proved futile.

  "Cabot is a competitor. It's what makes him such a good lawyer, don't you know. But it made him a difficult brother, and it left him very little room for other emotions. He was too busy always trying to win...."

  "Win what?"

  "His father's affection, at first. Then, when it became clear to him that Ashford had all the love that Charles had to give—which was never very much, to be frank—he shifted to his father's respect. And there he cornered the market, so to speak. Charles admired Cabot's intelligence, and so that was where the boy's energies became focused."