Mittman, Stephanie

by The Courtship

  "Come next door. Please."

  A chill went through her and she pulled the wrapper tighter around her. "Is something wrong? Should I get Arthur?"

  "God, no! Just come in. I can't talk to you through the damn wall."

  "I'm not dressed," she mumbled, looking down at herself and realizing she was as covered from her neck to her toes as ever he'd seen her.

  Sneaking out her door, looking both ways like an errant child, she hurried to his door and knocked so quietly, she suspected he wouldn't even hear her.

  "Come in," he whispered like some coconspirator.

  He lay in his bed. To the best of her recollection she had never seen him ready for sleep before. He was propped up with several pillows behind his head and lay on the left side of the bed, leaving the right empty. He had on a blue dressing gown and white nightclothes, which peeked out from beneath it.

  "Close the door. If you don't mind, that is." And then he cleared his throat and smoothed out the empty side of the bed.

  With one hand on the knob and the other near the edge, as if that would make it any quieter, she closed the door and then stood inches from it, fighting to swallow. "Is something wrong?" she asked when he just lay in the bed staring at her.

  He opened his mouth to speak and then shut it.

  She bit at her lip and waited.

  He opened his mouth again and, once more managed to clear his throat.

  She pulled at the ties of her robe until she nearly severed her top half from her bottom and made it almost impossible to breathe, which she wasn't doing anyway. She took a step back and hit the door with her heel.

  "What are you doing way over there?" he asked. "This is hard enough."

  "What is?" She felt her legs getting rubbery.

  "Maybe it would be easier if you came and sat here," he said, pointing to the chair at his bedside. "Or on the bed."

  "Are you going to fire me?" she asked. "Because I'd just as soon hear that from over here."

  His eyes widened and his jaw dropped and then he threw his head back against the pillows and laughed. "Is that what you thought? You poor child! No, no, I'm not going to fire you. Now come and sit."

  She did as she was told, taking in her surroundings as she did. It was a Spartan room. She supposed he needed a great deal of space to maneuver around up here, what with the difficulties involved in getting him dressed and undressed and all. It wasn't easy to move his heavy legs, shift his uncooperative torso, lug him from his chair into his bed.

  There was a notebook and pen on his nightstand and she reached for it.

  Again he laughed, this time nervously. "You won't need to take notes."

  "Cabot, what is this all about?" It was late and she was tired, and being in Cabot's room gave her the willies.

  "I think there's something going on between you and my brother."

  Just like that he said it. No preamble, no leading up to it or letting her see it coming.

  "And I want you to know that I don't blame you. You don't know Ashford all that well, but he's been a ladies' man since he was in knickers. No doubt he told you that he loves you, and no doubt you think that you are in love with him."

  She studied the small checks on her dressing gown and fiddled with her belt but said nothing. Cabot had been the one to teach her never to show her hand until she knew just what the opposition held.

  "You know, of course, that you weren't his first, and that you won't be his last. You're no fool, but neither are you an expert when it comes to love. Neither am I, of course. But I do understand human nature and I do have compassion for your needs."

  "Cabot, I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. Are you forgiving me my trespasses? Because I don't think there was anything to forgive." She corrected herself. "Not what you think, apparently, anyway."

  He sighed deeply. "I'm glad to hear it. My brother is not a bad man, Charlotte, but he has bad habits. Using women is one of them. If he ever hurt you, I think our vows would override my blood ties to him. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

  Of all the scenarios she could have imagined, this was the worst. She could have faced his anger, his outrage, even his indifference. Not his caring, his kindness, his protectiveness.

  "Are we finished, then?" she asked, beginning to rise. "It's very late and I—"

  "Would you stoke the fire for me?" he asked, handing her the poker and explaining that he had rapped on the wall for her with its end.

  She took the poker and awkwardly moved the screen from the fireplace.

  "Put on another log, if you're able," he directed, turning on his side to watch her. "Careful of your robe."

  She held her clothes away with one hand and tried to juggle the log with the other.

  "Take off your wrapper," he said. "It'll be easier with just the gown."

  "I can do it," she insisted, losing her balance and dropping the log, which missed her toes by inches.

  "For heaven's sake, Charlotte. You can take off your wrapper. I am your husband, after all. You're certainly safe with me. And when you're done, I think perhaps you should come lie on the bed beside me."

  She couldn't look at him, and so she stared into the fire, her face flushed by the heat and her body beginning to sweat despite how cold and clammy she felt. When she could breathe again she hurled the log into the fire from a few feet away and then poked it toward the back. Sparks flew wildly, and a wall of heat came toward her.

  "It's all right, Charlotte. I couldn't hurt you if I wanted to. Come now. Close the curtains and stretch out beside me." He patted the spot beside him and waited patiently while she stood in front of the window. "Are the lights on in the carriage house?"

  She could make out Ash's shape in the window, as she supposed he could make out hers. Was he counting from the corner, wondering whose room it was she stood in? She hurried to shut the curtains and dragged her feet over to sit on the far edge of the bed.

  "It's best he know that you aren't his to toy with. We'll all be more comfortable if we all understand... Charlotte, are you all right?"

  She was shaking uncontrollably, her hands twisted in her nightdress and clutching each other. Unless she was wrong, and she was sure she wasn't, he was going to touch her any minute now. Her husband was going to touch her, and all she could think, the only words that swam in her head, were too late. Too late.

  "Lie back. I'll put the cover around you. It must be eighty degrees in here. I don't see how you could be so cold." He eased her back against him and pulled the covers up and over her. Then he touched her forehead lightly with the back of his hand.

  He was checking for a fever, she knew, just as her father had done so many times when she was a sickly little girl.

  "Let me feel. When Ash was little..." he began to say, then stopped abruptly as he leaned over her and placed his lips just above her eyebrow. "No fever," he reported, but he kept his face so close to hers that she could feel his shallow breathing on her cheek.

  "I'm fine," she agreed, and lay perfectly still in his arms as he fiddled with the ruffle of her nightdress idly.

  "You look like a little girl with all these ruffles and that short mop of hair," he said, tucking the covers down some until they were under her armpits. Abruptly he slipped his hand within the covers and rested it on her breast. After a minute or two he began to move his fingers, much as if he'd lost something and was trying to find it. Maybe, she thought, it was the past he was searching for but couldn't seem to find. She had no trouble recalling how it felt when Ash had touched her, but one seemed to have nothing to do with the other.

  When Ash had touched her she was fire.

  Cabot's touch had left her like stone.

  "Perhaps it will get easier with time. Now it's late," he said, then briefly touched dry lips to hers. "I'll get the light."

  She fought against the covers, trying to sit up. "Did you mean for me to stay here?" she asked, unable to keep the shock from her voice. "I mean we've never... that is..."

  "
Would you prefer to return to your room?" Maybe it was the dressing gown, but he seemed so much more vulnerable than in his navy suit within his wood-and-wicker wheelchair.

  "If you would prefer me to stay," she said deferentially. "Or go," she offered as well, perhaps with a bit more hopefulness than the first option.

  "Actually, it's time you got to bed and I'd like a cigar and to read a bit. I know how the smell bothers you, so perhaps if you'd like to return to your own room..."

  In thirty seconds she was out of his room, in her own, and leaning with her back against her closed door, trying to catch her breath. Dear God! It was like lying in bed with her own uncle! Her father! The water in the pitcher on her dresser was ice cold, but she stripped to her skin and washed in it anyway, washed places he'd touched and those he hadn't. And then, God help her, she went and stood by the window and wished for Ash to want her again.

  ***

  He'd tried to be glad she'd been in his brother's room. It was where she belonged, after all. He'd told her as much and he was glad she'd listened. He'd virtually ordered Cabot to see his duty through with her, and now it appeared that Cabot had taken his words to heart.

  Of course, it would be that for twenty-eight years not a soul on the planet had done what he'd requested of them, with a few notable exceptions who'd been paid for the pleasure. And they'd chosen now, of all times, to listen to him?

  Good, good, he tried to convince himself. With Charlotte being so hungry for love and Cabot finally willing to feed her, he could feel proud that he'd been able to do something right for his brother to help make up in some small measure for the wrong he'd done him.

  Then he made the mistake of looking up again.

  Nothing billowed around the slight form that was silhouetted in Charlotte's window. No full sleeves, no shapeless chemise. And his heart ached and his loins burned, and he would have given anything he would ever own to scale the walls of her fortress and abscond with the princess who had captured his heart and soul.

  Not that it could make any difference, but as always in his life, his timing left a little to be desired. Just this morning Cabot had finally been honest enough to tell him that, as things stood, it would take a miracle to get him off scot free. His brother might be able to get him off on the manslaughter count by preying on the jury's sympathy—it was simply bad luck that anyone had been trespassing at the time. But the fire itself had all the earmarks of an insurance arson, and he'd be lucky to get away with five years.

  Five years, he thought, as he tried without success to pull himself away from the window.

  As long as Charlotte had been married to Cabot.

  A lifetime.

  CHAPTER 18

  When he heard the banging at the door and opened his eyes, it took Ash a moment to realize where he was. He hadn't slept all night, images of Charlotte and Cabot twisting his gut, the vision of her naked at the window torturing him lower still. Shortly after sunup he'd headed down to the temporary space Moss had leased for the goods that had followed the Bloody Mary back to Oakland and arrived after the fire. The second floor of a bar down by the wharf had been willing to trade them some space for a few cases of liquor until something better could be found. Or until Ash went to prison and the business was dissolved.

  He'd slipped out without notice, hoping that there was something he might see in the light of day that had evaded him in the darkness. Maybe, too, he wanted a quick taste of freedom again before it was too late. On his return he'd fallen into bed. And now with the light streaming in from the window blinding him after perhaps an hour's worth of sleep, he barked at whoever was knocking to come in, adding that it had better be important.

  In the doorway Davis stood stoically, but no one could miss the pain in the child's eyes, even from a good ten feet away.

  "What is it?" Ash asked him, halfway into his pants and shoving his feet in his shoes before the boy could even begin his stuttering. "Charlotte?" he demanded. "Cabot?"

  Each question was met with a shake of the boy's head.

  Ash stopped his frantic circling of the room in search of this or that and took the boy by the shoulders. "My mother?" he asked, facing the fact that with that ivory-handled cane of hers, the woman was poking harder at old age every day.

  "Fire," the boy managed to get out without stuttering.

  "Good God!" Ash said, rushing past the child and out onto the grassy lawn that separated the carriage house from the main one.

  There was no sign of fire—no acrid smell in the air, no cloud of darkness hanging over the house. The window to Charlotte's bedroom was open just a crack and he could see the fresh air ruffling the curtains within.

  "Where?" he demanded, shaking the boy. "Where's the fire?"

  The boy swallowed, obviously preparing to talk. He exhaled, and at the end of the breath spit out, "The new warehouse," without his usual struggle.

  Ash thought of the pathetic little floor above the seedy bar at the wharf where he'd been just a few hours before.

  Again the boy took a deep breath and let most of it out. "Miss Mollenoff's hurt." He'd seen Selma there. She'd been surprised to find him there and he'd asked her to keep it to herself.

  "Damn it to hell and back," he said, kicking at the fence posts that lined the drive. "If they want me so bad, why the hell don't they just come after me? Or burn out the damn Bloody Mary?"

  He followed Davis up to the house, assuring him more than once that he'd had nothing to do with Sam Green-bough's wife, that he wasn't undercutting his competitors, that he'd done nothing wrong, as if the boy cared.

  "How bad?" he asked when he found Cabot and Charlotte preparing to go out. Cabot's hat was already in place and Charlotte was working in front of the mirror in the hall, attempting to secure hers to her head without sufficient hair through which she could run her hatpin.

  "Eli's with her at the hospital," Cabot said, "Arthur's having the carriage brought around. Couldn't have come at a worse time with your case just days away and the boy's appeal in the middle of all of it."

  "Oh!" Charlotte said, running up the stairs with her skirt hiked up in a very unladylike, albeit efficient—and provocative—manner. "I'll be right back."

  Ash and his brother waited for her in silence, Ash rocking back and forth on his heels, Cabot running his hands along the spokes of his wheel.

  "Sleep well?" Cabot finally asked, just, Ash supposed, to break the silence, and not because he was interested. Unless of course he was hoping that Ash would ask him the same question in return—which he wasn't likely to do before San Francisco was swallowed by the bay.

  "Good fresh air out there," Ash said. "Wonderful view." He thought of Charlotte at her window, moonlight reflecting off two tiny breasts, and repeated himself.

  "Whatever are you doing with my prize striated rose velvet gloxinia, Charlotte?" Cabot asked when she came down the stairs with the most magnificent plant Ash had ever seen. "You weren't considering bringing so precious a plant to the hospital, were you?" he asked while Ash took the plant from her so that she could put on her coat.

  "It's not your prize anything," Charlotte said, taking the plant back now that her coat was on. "It was just some runty little seedling you told Mr. Newcomb to throw out."

  Ash fixed her collar for her and managed to touch her neck just by accident—twice. "So you don't just rescue wounded animals," he said. "You can't let plants the either?"

  As she shrugged shyly at him, Cabot examined the plant in her hand, turning a few leaves over and examining the rose and deep-maroon-striped flowers. "I never threw away this plant," he argued. "This is a rare specimen. I would never throw away something so valuable and precious."

  "Well, you did," Charlotte said over her shoulder as she walked toward the door.

  "And you would," Ash added, racing to get the door for the little lady who always managed to put everyone in their place.

  "Can't you bring her one of the red ones?" Cabot asked, rolling through the door that Ash held open.<
br />
  Charlotte hugged the plant to her navy double-breasted coat protectively. "No, I cannot. And if Selma is well enough, I'll go down to court on Monday to demand a hearing date be set for the Halton case. The sooner the better. That might give Selma an incentive to get well."

  "Charlotte, that case is dangerous," Cabot said. "And that plant cost more than my coat. Arthur could run in and get a lovely—"

  Charlotte let Arthur hand her up into the carriage, and Ash climbed in next to her. While Arthur secured the ramp and pushed Cabot's chair up into the specially designed coach, Ash made sure to comment loudly on how lovely the flowers really were and added that he was sure Selma would appreciate Charlotte's generosity.

  Cabot seethed, and that was just fine with Ash, whose thigh was pressed up tight against Charlotte's. Despite the layers of coats and skirts and trousers, he was sure he felt the warmth of her leg through them all, and he removed his hat and unbuttoned his coat.

  "And this time, Charlotte, while you're at the courthouse, you be sure to change the date Ash's trial is set to begin. Tell the clerk I've a conflict. Jack likes to accommodate me whenever he can."

  "He likes the Chivas Regal he gets for accommodating you," Charlotte said, looking for a place to put the potted plant.

  "Would you like me to take that for you?" Ash offered, reaching out and letting his fingers touch hers. He took the plant and placed it on his lap, finding it ridiculously stimulating to think that it had just rested on her own.

  Good God! If holding the same plant she had could make his stomach fly and flop like flapjacks, what would touching her again do to him?

  Resolutely, he planned to never find out.

  ***

  The hospital was bustling, too busy for its size and too noisy for its patients. At first the nurses thought that Cabot was injured, being wheeled into the front hall in an invalid's chair, which he found profoundly humiliating. Being horribly petty, Charlotte considered it nothing more than he deserved after trying to stop her from bringing her very best friend in the world a plant that she had nurtured herself on the roof outside the high room.