California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) (55 page)

She threw her arms around him, sobbing
again. "I was so certain you… would."

"I don't. I'm angry. Happy. Sad.
Grateful you're alive. God, it will take months for me to understand it, accept
what you did. Perhaps even more time to absorb the fact that so much stands
between us, that we can't be together, under the circumstances. But no, I could
never hate you."

"I love you, Alex."

He eased her back, smiling, trying to
calm her. Here, now. A married woman isn't supposed to talk that way."

"I am married to you!"

He thought about that for a moment.
"I… suppose you are."

"I…
I've never… I don't sleep in the same bed with Carter."

"But the boy?"

"When you see him, I won't have to
tell you whose son he is."

Alex looked at her incredulously.

"His name is Todd."

He put his arms around her, rocking back
and forth, trying to assimilate all of it. "That night?"

"Yes. That one night. In the dark.
Upstairs. I wish…"

"If I told anyone all this, they'd
think I was as crazy as Emperor Norton. Twenty years. Good God! Twenty-two
years!"

"Twenty-one this past summer."

"If I told Billy, even he wouldn't
believe me. He's looked you square in the face and not recognized you."

"I've gotten fat."

"Fat, hell. You're—"

"Don't tell anyone."

"Don't—?"

"About me. It doesn't matter. We
know. That's all that matters. And if you still want me…"

"Oh, God, Esther, a part of me wants
to horsewhip you for all the years we've lost… but another part of me…"

"If you still want me, I will see to
it that we are together as often as possible."

He kissed her cheek. "Twenty-one
years. And yes, I do still love you, want you…"

"Then it's been long enough, hasn't
it?" She laughed nervously, stroking his hair. "All but once. That
night. God in heaven, married or not, I want you to carry me upstairs
and…"

"Begin an affair—with my own
wife." He smiled, still staggered by it all, but happy for the moment.

"Yes," she whispered, leaning
over and kissing him softly. "Can you? Will you…?"

"Oh, yes."
He
picked her up in his arms and started toward the stairs.

"Yes," she whispered, covering
his mouth, his cheeks, his eyes with kisses. "Yes… yes… yes… yes… Oh, God,
in heaven,
yes
!"

It was far from easy at first. From time
to time, what she had done reached out from the past and tore at him. Sometimes,
during the weekends they spent together once or twice a month, he hardly spoke.
Moods came upon him suddenly, locking away his desire as well as his voice. For
a time he urged her to leave Carter. But then, after seeing his son, he
recognized the need to protect the child, allow him time to reach an age when
he could adjust to such a drastic change more easily.

He was uncomfortable about becoming
Todd's godfather, but Carter was in eastern Nevada at the railhead, and Alex
realized during the solemnity of the church service that the connection would
permit him to visit the child—and Esther—occasionally in Sacramento. In
mid-1867, he won an appointment to the superior court. The work absorbed him
and accelerated his acceptance of things as they were. The months passed,
Esther traveled to San Francisco more frequently, sometimes with Todd in tow,
and Alex eagerly took the steamer upriver once a month. The days they spent
together were carefree, happy. The nights, the sweetest either of them had ever
known. He did not ask her how she had come to be so skill
ful
with a man's body until almost a year had
passed. They were in the bedroom of her San Francisco house.

"From a book I found in Dr. Canby's
library. A French book. Do you remember him? At Bent's Fort? I have been saving
the knowledge all these years."

"Well, you certainly have a good
memory!" He laughed, not quite believing her, but content as she lay
nestled in his arms. He decided to change the subject. "They say the
railroad will be joined late next spring."

"I know. I've been thinking about
it."

"Todd will be seven. That may not be
quite old enough to—"

"He will simply have to adjust to
it. I couldn't bear being under the same roof every day with Carter. Not now,
if I ever could. The few times he's been here during the last two years have
been almost unbearable, even sleeping in separate rooms. Do you have any idea
how many deaths that man and Crocker are responsible for? Hundreds. Perhaps
thousands. Men crushed, blown to bits by dynamite and that new liquid they're
using."

"Nitroglycerin."

"Hanging by ropes down sheer cliffs,
falling to their deaths. All for an extra mile of track, a day's lead on the
railroad coming west from Chicago.
I
despise him! All of this!"

It was time to change the subject again.
"I have a surprise for you."

"Tell me!"

"I'll be moving over to the
Sacramento court for a spell come the first of the year."

"How wonderful!"

"We'll have to be discreet."

"I'll sneak over at midnight, just
the way
I
did when you were
waiting for me in the barn in Ohio."

"Sneak over where? I'll be in some
hotel. It won't be that simple with people about."

Esther propped herself up on one arm,
staring past Alex out through a window at the ships in the harbor. She
estimated a third of them had brought iron, rails, coal, lumber, locomotives,
and cars built in the east for the Central Pacific's lethal battle with the
mountains. "I'll sell you my house," she mumbled absently. "At a
reasonable price, of course."

"Why should you sell me this
house?"

She came back to the present. "Not
this one. The one in Sacramento. I've been thinking of getting rid of it
anyway. It's been empty for more than two years."

"Marvelous. I'll probably make a
profit on it when I move back to San Francisco."

"When
we move back," she said, touching him, bringing the physical part of him
she loved most back to life quickly. "And we begin a new life
together."

She had scarcely even thought of Mosby
for two years. When she read that he had been defeated for reelection in
Nevada, she wondered briefly whether he would return to the South or stay in
Virginia City. For an hour she daydreamed about seeking him out, having him
killed, but then she dismissed dwelling on it. She was too happy, too hopeful
to go back to that state of mind permanently. Sooner or later, she reminded
herself. God would make him pay for all he had done.

For
a time she felt almost as if she had returned to her girlhood. On her trips to
San Francisco she had to be careful about being seen with Alex. She experienced
almost an adolescent excitement when she spent an extra day in the city before
returning to Sacramento, covertly sitting in the gallery of Alex's courtroom
and watching him at work. Perched there, high above the bench and the jury box,
hidden, she thought, by other spectators, she was thrilled by the contrast
between her casual outward appearance and the tingling, illicit pleasure of
being so close to Alex in public.

"You think I don't know you've been
sitting up there in the gallery, don't you?" he said, carrying in a block
of ice for the new cooling box she had bought for her San Francisco house.

"Why, I—"

"Six months in the workhouse for
long-distance lust over a judge." He laughed. "Now, what's for
dinner?"

"Bread and water for me, roast beef
for you, your honor."

"Sentence suspended. By the way, do
you have to leave tomorrow?"

"I should. It's stretching things
enough getting back to the school on Tuesday."

"Too bad. I'll be trying an
interesting case."

"Oh?"

"Some woman, one of those ladies who
flit around the stock exchange looking for tips and then capitalizin on the
knwledge

"A female curb-broker."

"Right. One of them is trying to
capitalize on a night or two in bed with Billy's partner, William Sharon."

"I don't like that man."

"Well, that doesn't justify some
woman taking him to the races, does it?"

"Who is she?"

"I
know what you're thinking. But it isn't Katherine McDonnell. Wouldn't that have
been a twist? I haven't seen her, but the woman's name is Lovell. Marcy
Lovell."

Esther decided to stay one extra day,
just to see Sharon in an uncomfortable situation and satisfy her curiosity
about what his Jezebel looked like. Neither Sharon nor the woman had appeared
when the clerk suddenly came out through the door to Alex's cham
bers
and announced that session had been
postponed until the following day.

"I had to disqualify myself,"
Alex said that evening as they sat at her dinner table. "You might as well
go on back."

"But why?"

He hesitated for a moment. "I wasn't
planning to tell you. But it is Katherine McDonnell. She’s just using a
different name. I held a conference with the attorneys for both sides just
before the session was about to start. She was with her lawyers in the waiting
room. You should have seen the look on her face. Both her attorneys resigned
the case when I told them I'd disqualify myself and I'd testify against her.
I'm not crazy about Sharon, but I'd be derelict if I didn't."

"Do you have to get involved in it?
There's sure to be embarrassment for you."

"Not enough to amount to anything. And
I'm conscience-bound to do whatever I can now that she knows there's even a
possibility that I'll be testifying."

"What do you mean?"

"It's my guess she'll try to find
the most persuasive counsel she can lay her hands on."

"Does that matter? Sharon has a good
attorney, doesn't he?"

"Damn
fool is representing himself. I'm told he practiced law briefly somewhere in
the midwest, but he hasn't set foot in a courtroom in fifteen years. If
McDonnell gets herself anyone of consequence, he'll wrap Sharon right around
his finger."

In his new offices on the fourth floor of
the Miner's Exchange Bank on Montgomery Street, Luther Mosby stared down at the
picture of "Marcy Lovell" on the front page of the morning newspaper.
There was something familiar about the woman, but he could not place her. He
had been following her case in the papers; with a deft suggestion or two, he
had arranged for her to be referred to him by a former political ally after her
lawyers had resigned. He had not been back in San Francisco a month.
Representing the woman, no matter what the results of the trial were, could do
nothing but help in reestablishing a clientele here.

He sat down and gazed at the full-length
picture of Marcy Lovell. Early thirties, he guessed. Wonderful tits; what
appeared—under all that goddamned fabric—to be a thoroughbred pair of legs. And
God, what a face
! I know her from somewhere, goddamnit!
Looking up, he
glanced at the picture of himself in Confederate officer's uniform hanging on
the wall opposite his desk.
Won't be too long'n I'll be sixty fuckin' years
old. Well, five or six more years, anyway.
He turned his attention back to
the picture, feeling stirred as he had not been for years as he studied Marcy
Lovell's features. She would be here within a matter of minutes.
Wouldn't be
too bad havin' a woman like that around. Save a lot of trouble and effort. I
could get rid of that goddamned Chinaman cleans the place. Might cost me less
in the long run. Sixty. Goddamnit!

After she'd arrived and they'd introduced
themselves, he caught himself staring at her face for such lengths of time that
there were long pauses between his questions.

"Is anything wrong, Judge
Mosby?"

He cleared his throat, put totally
off-balance by the beginnings of infatuation. "No, you just… seem very
familiar to me."

"I think I have seen you before, as
well, Judge Mosby." She looked down, feigning shyness. "No one could
forget such a striking man."

He sensed she might be open to
"pursuing things," if the approach was acceptable enough, and he
regained some of his confidence. "You've lived in San Francisco all your
life?"

"No, I grew up in the midwest,
studied there, then came here to seek—a teaching position."

"How long ago was that?"

She glanced past him at the window.
"Oh, the mid-'50s, or thereabouts."

"And you think you've seen me before
too? When do you suppose it was?" In the midst of his commingling
calculations and authentic, incipient feelings for her, he caught a hint that
she was being very careful with her answer.

"Many years ago, I would think.
Probably when I—first came to San Francisco. You were here then, were you not?"

Mid-'50s. Had to be before
the vigilante business.
His mind
ticked off all the possibilities. He knew somehow that it would be an advantage
to know where he had seen her. "Before the War of Secession? Yes. I was
here. I was a lawyer then, too—"

"Before your term on the State
Supreme Court."

He beamed, his ego temporarily stifling
his efforts to recollect. He plunged into it then, as another rush of desire,
and—he had never felt, could not precisely identify the additional
feelings—something more urged him. "I want you to know that I'll be
honored to take your case, Miss Lovell. Honored. It's time a man stood by
you."

"Why, judge, how—"

"I want you to know something else.
I want to be completely honest with you from the start."

"Yes, judge?"

"Please call me Luther. I want you
to know—it's hard for me to say this—that there's more than my wanting to see
justice done in this case." He rushed on. "That… this has never
happened to me with a client… that I'm… taken with you, Miss Lovell. Honorably
taken. And when all this is over…"

"Judge—Luther, you don't have to say
another word. I want you to know that I, too, have been experiencing… feelings…
since I walked in this door." She was certain now that he did not
recognize her, could not possibly remember her from the few days she had been
at Arabella Ryan's, before the fire, just after arriving in San Francisco. He
had looked at her once or twice in the parlor, on the way upstairs with the
Oriental girl. But he had never
been
with
her, never been closer than ten or twelve feet away.

Mosby
stood up, walked around his desk, leaned over gallantly, and took her gloved
hand. "I think this is the start of something much bigger than your case
against Mr. Sharon."

When she was gone, he remembered. She
could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen, fresh off the train when
Arabella picked her up. He would never tell her he knew, never use it
obviously. God, she was beautiful. And unless she was playing him, she was ripe
for the long-term alliance he had in mind. Well, he might not use the knowledge
so she would know it, but he might damn well press her a bit, carefully, so
that he could begin enjoying her long before "all this is over."

Worked
her way up, just the way I did,
he
thought.
Well, what the hell. From what I've heard, some of them make damn
good wives.
He smiled as he thought about how skillful she would be.