California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) (50 page)

"I will live in your home, undertake
all the other duties of a wife. I will say nothing. No one has to know. But I
will not spend another night in bed with you."

"For God's sake, Esther.
This
ain't fair!
"

"If you raise your voice to me, lift
a hand, I will do the same thing. And you will look like an utter fool, to
Crocker and everyone else."

He stared past her, his face frozen in a
scowl for a moment, then collapsing in resignation. "I can't believe you'd
do this. I never—"

"You did, and you know it. Why don't
you act like a man and accept this for what it is? A business arrangement.
That's what you had in mind to begin with."

"But now it's different."

"That's too bad."

"You're a bitch, ain't you? A
twenty-carat bitch. I can't believe this."

"Believe it. In time, you'll accept
it, if you've got half a brain. You have what you want. No one need be the
wiser. And I certainly won't expect you to live up to your vows."

"You mean…?"

"Yes, I mean. Whoever, wherever you
want. As long as you don't cause either of us embarrassment or bring attention
to what the truth really is."

"I'll have to think about
this."

"No, you won't. Just sleep on it,
Mr. Carter. I'm sure you already understand it's to your advantage. Just
remember what I said."

"Do you… do you want me to get out
of bed right now?"

"That won't be necessary," she
said, turning her back to him. "It will be the first of many penances I
must undertake for doing this just the way you would have."

She knew she was pregnant even before the
doctor confirmed it. Now, sitting in the parlor of Bull Carter's surprisingly
comfortable and well-kept house on the far end of I Street, she had a passing
thought about finding a way to safely rid herself of the baby. But she knew the
unborn child might have been fathered by Alex. There was at least a 50 percent
chance of that. She had received both their seeds within the space of a
week—and Carter had pulled out of her hurriedly, for the most part spending all
over her thigh. The irony of it made her smile.

She got up and walked through the house.
Carter would not be back from Crocker's dry-goods store before supper. He had
railed off and on about her sexual embargo for a few weeks, then pleaded for a
few more. Now a cool, polite truce existed between them. She climbed the stairs
to the second floor. His brother had moved out of the third bedroom and into a
hotel the day she arrived. She glanced in through the door. It could be fitted
out nicely as a nursery. The house would not be a bad place to raise a child,
she thought. The fenced rear yard was ample. There was a loft over the carriage
stable that could be made livable, if she decided to have
Solana
move here from the school to help her.

Turning, she started back down the hall
and went into the room where Bull Carter grudgingly slept by himself. She began
to make the rumpled bed.
In time
, she thought
, it will not even
matter to him
. She finished, went into her own bedroom, and glanced at the
tintype of herself taken in San Francisco the day of their wedding. The other
daguerreotype, of the two of them smiling, was downstairs on display in the
foyer.

She went to her desk and looked at the
calendar. Eight weeks had passed since the wedding, and it seemed to be working
well enough. Carter had his "nights out" once or twice a week. The
rest of the time he read his paper and went to bed early. She fulfilled her
promises, kept the house neat and clean, cooked, saw to it that the Chinese man
who came in to do their laundry attended to his shirts, socks, and underwear
properly. She had even darned a bit, repaired the seam in one of his jackets.
Twin pangs of regret and remorse stabbed at her for a moment. She no longer
believed Carter was an evil man. Just morally small, dense, and overly
ambitious. He hated the arrangement. She was certain that he had indeed
experienced a sudden infatuation for her that morning in the kitchen.
Nonetheless, he spoke to her courteously and avoided arguments. When she
carefully suggested several ways to negotiate cleverly and protect himself from
Crocker, he not only listened but implemented the advice. As a result, he had
been able to buy for himself the superintendancy of the construction company
Crocker, Huntington, Hopkins, and Stanford were putting together. He had not
fared as well in acquiring stock in the Central Pacific Railroad; he and Esther
owned only one-quarter as much as each of the four principal officers. But he
was satisfied, and so was she.

Esther sat down at her desk, thinking
about what she had heard the icy-eyed Huntington say in the sitting room
downstairs the night before. They were going to ask the government for
alternate sections of land on either side of the entire line as one
consideration. It was outrageous, but after her first careful look at
Huntington and two sentences from Crocker, she had no doubt they would get what
they wanted. And a joint, one-twentieth ownership of just the acreage alone
would probably make her richer than she had ever been prior to the crash of
'55. Richer and more powerful, in an indirect way. The thought warmed her as
much as the summer sun coming through the window.

She thought of the other men involved:
Hopkins, the accounting genius, was painfully shy, timid. He probably wouldn't
even plant a radish in the backyard from which he still sold vegetables to neighbors
without his wife's permission. She laughed to herself. Bull Carter weighed
twice as much as Hopkins, and he was behaving just as meekly for her. She
surmised that if Huntington would steal the gold out of his mother's teeth,
Crocker would
beat
his for it at the drop of a hat. It was also obvious,
from what she had overheard during the previous night's meeting, that they all
thought Stanford useless—save for his ability to impress people with his overly
dignified verbosity—and that Bull Carter both hated and worshipped his
half-brother.

It would be interesting to see them
jostling one another for dominance, she thought, wondering how Judah would fare
with them in the long run. She shuddered as she weighed it, suddenly conscious
that if the railroad did make it over the Sierras, and was joined by lines from
the East, Judah, Crocker, Huntington, Hopkins, Stanford—and, in a lesser way,
her husband—could rise to a place among the most powerful men in the nation. If
there was a nation left after the war. She guessed there would be, despite the
dark news of a Confederate victory at Bull Run.

She
opened the latest letter from Ralston. It described in glowing terms the
frenzied expansion of the Comstock, outlined the astronomical rise in value of
her mining stocks, then went on to summarize quickly the gains the rest of her
investments were making on the swell of the silver boom. A trace of
concern
danced through her mind. Although Ralston
had tried to hide it, it seemed apparent that some of what was now going on at
the Comstock was paper speculation, not a solid reflection of ore ripped from
the mines. How widespread and potentially dangerous the inflation might be, she
could not tell. Then the ripple of concern was lost in waves of apprehension
and anger as Ralston turned gravely to a personal matter in a postscript on the
second page. Alex was in trouble.

"And she claims Alex is the
father?" Esther asked.

Ralston put his hand over his eyes.
"I feel like a fool. Worse. A Judas goat. It's a setup. She's after social
position and the money Alex's put away all these years. And I introduced
them!"

They were sitting in his carriage at the
wharf. She had disembarked from the paddle-wheeler
Senator
just minutes
before. Beyond a thick latticework of square-rigger masts and spars, the heat
of a warm August sun rose from the waters of San Francisco Bay and made the
Golden Gate shimmer in the distance. It was Sunday, and there was little
activity on the waterfront. The last of the passengers from Sacramento hurried
past and funneled into the streets of the city as Esther sat there, thinking.

"When does this Miss McDonnell say
they were… together?"

"Two nights after we had our
discussion about the stock transfer."

"What does Alex say?"

"That he was alone, all evening. And
I believe him. The irony of it is that he seems to have driven up to your
place. But you weren't there. I don't know what he wanted to talk to you about,
but he says when he didn't find you, he went directly home."

Esther was rocked by guilt for a moment.
"God… the Wednesday night before my wedding. I was with Connie Kelsey
until late in the evening. She was helping me with alterations on my wedding
dress. Has Alex seen the woman since?"

Ralston snapped the reins, and they
started off toward Esther's home. "A number of times. He says they haven't
been intimate. It seemed strange at first. He didn't particularly take to her
the night we all had dinner together, and I didn't think he'd see her again.
But then about two weeks later he had a sudden change of heart. It wasn't like
him. Usually, when he makes up his mind, that's it. I was glad at first, but
now I could kick myself."

"It's simply her word against his,
then?"

"Not quite. That would be difficult
enough, considering what even an unsubstantiated claim like this would do to
his reputation. But she's got a doctor who'll testify she became pregnant when
she says she did. And an aunt who says she was with Alex that night—and has
spent time with no one else."

"Who is the doctor?"

"A man named Leander Sims."

Esther remembered his name immediately.
If she proceeded with what she had in mind, it was conceivable that Sims might
recognize her from that Sunday at the vigilante headquarters. She had no idea
what might come of such a revelation at this late date, but it seemed likely
that it would cause her more than just embarrassment. She thought of Carter,
then of Alex and the prospect of having almost all of it uncovered, having to
face him and try to tell him why she had deceived him all these years. She
sighed. His honor was at stake, not to mention his money.
If it comes down
to revealing myself
, she thought,
I will simply have to. I must help
him.
It might be that the time had finally come to be honest with Alex.
Reluctant about that, she made one more stab at finding a variation on the
strategy taking form in her mind. "What if you, or another of Alex's
friends, testified that he was with him that night?"

'"We've discussed that. In a case
like this the woman's word would probably carry more weight. She and her lawyer
know that they'd have better than a fifty-fifty chance in court. And by then,
even if they failed, Alex's name would be tarred."

"And if another woman gave such
testimony?"

"That
might do it. It would be worth a try. Might even head her off before it ever
got to court. But she'd have to be pretty convincing."

When Esther arrived at Ralston's office
the following day, she was ready with her story. Alex, so mortified he could
hardly raise his eyes, stared at the floor. Katherine McDonnell, her doctor,
and the lawyers for both sides were already there. Esther nodded at Ralston and
Alex's lawyer, whom she'd met in a hastily called meeting held the day before.
Then she turned again to the McDonnell woman. There was something vaguely
familiar about her, but try as she might, Esther could not place her.

"I think we should get right down to
business," the opposing lawyer suggested confidently. "I see here in
your deposition, Mrs. Carter, that you claim you have had…" He smiled at
Alex. "Ah—congress with Judge Todd."

"That is correct," Esther said,
her eyes on Dr. Sims. His attention on her was disquieting. "I was with
Judge Todd the entire evening in question. And the night before. And the two
nights before that. And each night following until the day of my wedding."
She remembered that Carter had made a preliminary survey trip into the Sierras
with Crocker as soon as they had returned to Sacramento. At the time, she had
been sure he had arranged it simply to be away from her, weigh their
arrangement, and adjust to it. Now she used his absence in a way that would
cause her endless difficulty if the truth ever came out. "My husband was
out of town immediately after we returned to the capital. He was gone for… over
a week… During that time I returned to San F
rancisco
and spent several more nights with Judge
Todd. The entire week, in fact."

The lawyer's expression went from smug to
uncertain. "You are saying that just before and immediately after your
marriage, you… had relations with Judge Todd?"

"I am."

"You realize what this could do to
you in a court trial?"

"I do."

"I take it that is why you have not,
ah, spelled it all out in your deposition."

"That is correct."

"Well, it's an interesting
story." The lawyer frowned, thinking quickly. "That leaves only
Sunday, the night of Mrs. Carter's wedding." He turned to Katherine
McDonnell. "Is it possible you have your dates wrong?"

"No, she hasn't," Ralston
interjected. "She couldn't have been with Judge Todd that Sunday evening,
either. He was with me—until well past midnight."

Esther wondered if Ralston were telling
the truth. Alex put a hand over his eyes as the lawyer turned to her, a
narrow-eyed look of utter scorn on his face.

"I'm sure my client hasn't mistaken
the dates. As sure as I am that Mrs. Carter's story is a fabrication."

Alex's lawyer stood up. "It is no
fabrication. Mrs. Carter is  carrying  Judge Todd's child."

"What?" Katherine McDonnell's
lawyer looked as though he had been hit in the stomach with a shovel. He
quickly collected himself. "You mean to tell me that—? This is absurd.
She's been… cohabiting… with her husband for two months."

"My husband and I sleep in separate
bedrooms. We do not… have not…"

Alex shifted uncomfortably as Dr. Sim's
eyebrows shot up. "Are you telling us that you and your husband
have"—the doctor cleared his throat—"never had relations?"

"That is exactly what I'm telling
you!" Esther thought of the agony she would go through with Carter if she
had to implement what she was about to say. She steeled herself and went on.
"I am also telling you that I will testify so in court, and that I will
also force my husband to verify it."

"My God," the opposing lawyer
said, shaking his head. He turned back to her, bearing down. "You would
reveal this, despite what it would do to you, to your marriage, to your
reputation and your husband's—not to mention Judge Todd, here? Why?"

She gazed at Alex for a moment, wished he
could have been spared all this, hoped he would not put two and two together
and realize who she was. Then she turned back to Katherine McDonnell.
"Because I love Mr. Todd. He is a dear friend and an impeccably honest
man. I will not allow a conniving…"