Mittman, Stephanie (35 page)

"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.

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.

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.