She pressed up against him, arching her back, the full length of her against the full length of him.
He snaked his hand between them, tracing her ribs, one after the other, always lower and lower still until he reached the soft expanse of her belly. The spread of his hand spanned her whole being there, and he tipped and twisted it until down was up and up was down and his fingers came to rest at the soft curls of her femininity.
"Are you still cold?" he asked, his fingers poised to make her warmer yet. Her answer came with hard breaths, her mound thrust up toward him.
"Don't stop," she said, willing beneath his touch. "Oh, please don't stop."
"Don't stop!" Liberty shouted from the windowsill, where he had courteously turned his back until now. "Oh! Oh! Oh! Don't stop! Shut up, you stupid bird!"
Charlotte was up before he could stop her, pulling the robe against her bare skin, her eyes frantic as she searched in the darkness for her things.
"Ow! Ow!" she yelped as quietly as she could, hopping around holding her toe and affording him a view in the lamplight that was worth going to hell for—no doubt the price he would pay for seducing his brother's wife.
"Are you all right?" he asked, averting his eyes and holding out her still-dripping undergarments.
"No, I'm not all right," she said, clutching the wet things to her breast and starting to shiver all over again. "I'm married to your brother, for heaven's sake! What did I think I was doing? My God! I've given myself to my husband's brother!"
"Okay," he said, one hand up to calm her down. "Whoa, there. You haven't given yourself to anyone. We did not actually do anything... really. I mean, not anything like you're feeling guilty about...." She knew what they hadn't done. Did he have to spell it out? It wasn't as if he'd docked his boat in her slip.
Shocked didn't quite describe the look on her face. Incredulous, maybe. Flabbergasted.
"We didn't kiss? You didn't—" She pointed in the general vicinity of his lips and then her breast. "And you did touch my—my—" She clutched his robe more tightly around her middle.
"No. I didn't touch your—your—" They were beginning to sound like Davis. I nearly touched your—your— but I stopped before—" He made a rolling gesture with his hands to indicate that there was plenty more he hadn't done.
Her eyebrows came down over troubled eyes. "Before what?"
Jeez, Louise! Didn't the woman know anything? "Before I really touched you."
"You mean fornication."
He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He waved his arms, but still the words were stuck in his throat.
"Right?" She looked at him with obvious confusion.
"No," he said slowly. "I meant that I didn't touch the parts you are worried that I touched. And fornication is a very ugly word, young lady."
"Oh, please! And what we were doing was all right?" She dropped her righteous indignation for a moment. "And I know you touched what I think you touched."
"There's a lot more to it!" He ran his fingers through his hair. Was he really having this conversation with his brother's wife? "You've got better parts!"
"Oh, good glory! There are only so many parts and you covered them. Not that I couldn't have stopped you— should have stopped you—I'm a married woman. What do you think this band means?" she asked, holding out her left hand.
"I only got as far as the gangplank," he said, sitting down on the bed with his hands in his lap. He had a bad feeling he was never going to regain his original proportions if they didn't drop this subject. "I never got on board the ship."
She pointed to her chest. "Am I the ship?" She seemed highly insulted.
"They call ships 'she' for a reason," he said, hoping she wouldn't ask what it was.
She did.
"How the hell should I know?" he said, throwing up his hands. "Maybe because they can give you a good ride and then kill you. And the way I see it," he added, "you are certainly no married woman."
"Oh, really? Maybe you ought to tell your brother that." She was juggling her wet underthings, trying to keep his robe closed, and still maintain her dignity. She simply couldn't have all three. Ash was hoping the closed robe would be the one to go.
"I did. But it doesn't seem to me that either of you knows what marriage means."
She turned away, staring out the window into the darkness. "We took vows, Ash. Signed a wedding license and a marriage certificate."
"And he broke that contract. Has he loved, cherished? Has he honored and obeyed? Charlotte, there is no marriage here. You got to be a lawyer, and he got a partner he doesn't have to pay."
"I knew what Cabot couldn't do before I married him, Ash. Don't think that he tricked me or anything. Your mother explained the way things were with Cabot, and I accepted that."
"Did you know he wouldn't touch you?"
She shook her head.
"Did you know there would be no kisses, no hugs, no touching your—your special places?" She blushed, but he had to admire her honesty when she shook her head.
"No," she admitted, "but I didn't want any of those things from Cabot."
"And now you want them?"
Her hair was drying in ringlets around her face, curls that hung down and brushed her shoulders, and they danced as she spoke.
"Not from him," she admitted shyly.
"Affection is a good thing, Charlotte. Now that you finally know how good, you should demand it."
"I don't think so." She stared down at her feet, the ends of his socks empty and bent beneath her. "Not from Cabot."
"Well, don't look at me, honey," he said, stroking her cheek and lifting her chin so that she had to look into his eyes. "For one thing, I'm probably going to prison for the rest of my life, and then where would you be?"
"Don't say that! Don't even think it! Cabot will get you off. Your brother would never let you go to prison for something you didn't do."
Ah, but how about for what Ash wanted to do? Something he wished to the heavens he could do? And which involved Cabot's own wife?
"And for another, he's my brother, Charlotte. I cut the ground out from under him once before. I can't do it again."
"So what was this about?" she asked, waving her hand over his bed. "Why did you kiss me and touch me and—"
"I just wanted to show you," he lied. "Didn't I tell you all the while I was doing it that Cabot could do it as well? Someone had to show you. Now you've just got to make him love you, Charlotte, and then we can all be happy."
She ran from his room in tears, as he'd suspected she would. Slowly he lowered himself to the bed and sat there in the dark, only his memories to keep him company.
Come'ere twerp! Come on, Ashford, you little twerp!
He'd hated Cabot that afternoon all those years ago. The thought surprised him, but he didn't dwell on it. He'd only hated him half as much then as he hated him now.
CHAPTER 14
You might try the California Penal Code instead of Garner's Estates and Trusts," Cabot said to her as she came down the ladder in his office with Garner's in her hand, nearly falling as her heel got caught in the hem of her skirts.
"And you might try steadying me," she grumbled back at him, massaging the elbow that had crashed against the shelf to stop her fall.
Cabot's teacup seemed frozen in midair. "Are you all right?" he asked.
"Of course I'm all right," she all but barked at him. "As if it matters to you," she added under her breath as he set down his cup and returned to work. She still missed her mother's cup. Now she just passed on tea when it was offered. The pleasure was gone.
"The Penal Code," he said, reaching his hand out for it without even lifting his head to look at her. "Where's Ashford anyway? I've got some questions about Greenbough, and if you can't find the damn code, I'm sure he can just—"
Oh, yes—Cabot and Ash and her all in the same room. That was what she needed. The man had touched her breasts. And every time she thought about those moments she felt a tightness, tingl
ing, almost as if he were touching them again.
"Charlotte! The book?" Cabot had thrown off his reading glasses and sat with his hands crossed over his chest. "It would help me immeasurably if you would keep your mind on your work today."
She had lain in bed with his brother, the silk of his dressing gown the only thing covering her nakedness, and Cabot wanted her to restrict her thoughts to the law. "Is that all you ever think about?" she asked him, handing him the book and standing close enough to smell the bitters he'd mixed into his tea. "The law and your flowers?"
"What are you getting at, Charlotte?" He always began or ended a sentence with her name, it seemed, as if he wouldn't know who she was otherwise.
"Are you sorry you married me?" Her voice squeaked like a little girl's, embarrassing her.
"What would make you ask? Have I done something that makes you feel that way? Have I asked too much of you? Kept you up working too late? Canceled your charges at Capwell's or Pennoyer's? What have I denied you that you've requested?" He rubbed at his brow as if the entire subject was tiresome but that he would deign to discuss it because he was a more patient man than she deserved.
"I didn't ask if you were good to me, or generous or kind. I asked if you're sorry you married me, and I want an answer, not an evasion."
"Why?"
"That's an evasion." And worse, something she refused to answer, couldn't answer. Why did she want to know? Was she sorry? Or was she seeking his permission to look for love elsewhere if he wasn't willing to offer it to her himself?
"No, it's a request for clarification."
"The question is simple. Do you regret making me your wife?" She took a step closer to him, so that now her thigh pressed against his upper arm. If he merely turned his head, his face would be lost in the folds of her skirt.
His fingers worked the spokes of his wheels furiously. "Is your name not on the sign with mine in front of this very house? And did I not give you that name? What greater proof could you be seeking?"
She squatted beside his chair, ignoring for once the degree to which he despised the action as condescending. Her face inches from his now, close enough to notice that the tea still glistened on his mustache, the skin around his nose was chafed, and the whites of his eyes were bloodshot and yellowed. "I'd like a kiss," she said softly, praying that Cabot could erase the memory of Ash's lips burning her own. "You could prove it with a kiss."
"How sad," he said touching her cheek gently and cupping her chin as if she were a small child come to learn at his knee. "You've confused love with desire. Did you get these thoughts from that Ebell Society of Women? Or your Halton case? Fornication without procreation—isn't that their motto? A bit base, don't you think?"
She said nothing, rising with the slight swish of petticoats and serge.
"It's not something you can't work on, can't rise above."
A short bitter laugh escaped her. "It's so very easy for the man who isn't hungry to say no to the dessert tray."
The thought seemed to give him pause, but she watched him rally, just as though he were in front of a jury. His voice strong, yet quiet enough for only her to hear, he said, "And I would imagine it equally easy for the woman who has never tasted cocoa to refuse the unattractive brown offering."
Through the pebbled glass of the office door Charlotte could see the silhouettes of Ash and Maria heading their way, Maria carrying a tray. Wishing she could be swallowed by the curtains, absorbed by the walls, she backed up as they entered the room.
"Tea and coffee," Maria said, setting the tray on the sideboard. "And Mrs. Mason, she baked some little cakes. The yellow ones, they are lemon, and these, they are choco-lat."
***
Charlotte rushed past him, pushing him aside as she went. Everything in him wanted to go after her, but somehow his shoes stayed nailed to the patent tapestry carpet that covered the area in front of Cabot's desk. He waited impatiently for Maria to leave him alone with his brother.
"What was that all about?" Ash asked. He didn't dare give away any more than Charlotte had. His brother could put a bullet through Ash's own double-crossing heart anytime he wanted, but Ash had no desire to put Charlotte at her husband's mercy.
"She isn't feeling very well," Cabot said. He fingered the small plate of cakes that Maria had removed from the tray and set on his desk. "For such a brilliant woman, she still can't rise above her sex in so many small but significant ways."
"Well, women are plagued by cycles we can hardly fathom," he said. "They can hardly be asked to rise above the physical...." Jeez, women were entitled to feel awful every few weeks. If what happened to them happened to men... Ash didn't even want to think about it.
But apparently that wasn't what Cabot meant. "Always at the mercy of her emotions. You should have seen Charlie when I met her—a silly little schoolgirl trying to be a grown-up matron. She had on the ugliest shoes I have ever seen."
Cabot was looking beyond him at some speck on the wall, and seeing a past only he remembered.
"She wouldn't take a break, you know. Not for tea or dinner or even to stretch her legs. Insatiable. Teach me more, more. Are you proud of me? Did I get it right? When the lessons were over and I'd send her home, I'd watch her out the window, her feet dragging, her nose in whatever book I'd loaned her to study.
"There were days, weeks, when I gave more thought to her lessons than to my own cases. Her challenge became mine, her goals were my goals. Imagine! A woman lawyer practicing in the courts. Could I pull it off?
"Oh, rabbits out of hats for my guilty clients were everyday occurrences for me by then, but this was putting the beautiful lady in the locked box and, with all the flourish of the great magicians, pulling off the cloth to reveal"—he paused, waved his hand in the air and continued—"a roll of the drums, please... a fanfare... I give you—ta da—the lady lawyer!"
His brother was breathing heavily, a contented smile on his face as close to satisfaction as Ash imagined Cabot got.
"Well, you should be very proud of yourself. Charlotte appears the consummate lady lawyer."
"I showed them all," Cabot said, and Ash knew the words were not for him, but for Cabot himself and all the people who had ever seen him in that wheelchair and taken pity on him. "She'd been educated to be nothing more than a competent wife, schooled in the graces that enhanced a woman's value as an ornament, the best mare in a gentleman's stable, as it were. And I taught her to think, to analyze, to consider...."
He stopped there, grimacing as he looked at Ash, as if deciding whether or not to continue.
"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 an
d 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."
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