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  The Courtship by Stephanie Mittman

  TWO BROTHERS ...AND THE WOMAN WHO CLAIMED THEIR HEARTS ...

  Ash Whittier had barely returned to Oakland's harbor when he was arrested for arson, insurance fraud, and murder. His only hope was his brother Cabot, the best lawyer in Oakland, and Cabot's young wife, Charlotte, the town's first lady lawyer. He knew he could count on his brother to rescue him, just as he'd done before. The last time had put Cabot in a wheelchair...This time there was Charlotte, whose no-nonsense suits weren't doing much to hide her needy heart.

  All Charlotte had ever wanted was to be a lawyer. Cabot had given her the chance, and so much more, when he'd married her. He'd taught her to dress like a lawyer, think like a professional, and act like a man. But somehow her brother-in-law still saw the lace beneath the starch. And suddenly being a lawyer wasn't the only thing she wanted anymore.

  They were his lawyers, determined to save his life. But as his trial approached, it became clear that if Ash won his case, someone would still have to lose.

  "ASH?" HER VOICE QUAVERED. "SHOULD I LEAVE?"

  "That all depends on why you're here," he said, shocked at how gruff his voice came out, how raw his need could sound. "Did you come to discuss my case?"

  "No."

  He took her hand and pulled at her until she sat on the edge of his bed within the curve of his body. "The weather?"

  Gently he pulled her with him as he moved back on the small cot. He looped his arm about her legs and pulled them up until she lay against his side.

  "Did you want to talk about Kathryn or Cabot or your woman suffrage?"

  She shook her head against his chest and laid a tiny hand on the side of his neck, where she no doubt felt his blood racing, just as her head must have heard his heart beating a double-time tattoo.

  "Why are you here?" he whispered against her hair while his hands searched for the answers beneath her nightdress....

  "So that I'll be warm when I'm old," she said, leaning down and touching her lips to his. She kissed him tentatively at first, and then instinct overcame her and she kissed him with all the passion she had stored within her, all the fire he had stoked with every look he'd ever given her, all the love he had promised her with each of a million silent smiles.

  Published by Dell Publishing a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  1540 Broadway

  New York, New York 10036

  Copyright © 1997 by Stephanie Mittman

  ISBN: 0-440-22181-1

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  January 1998

  This book is dedicated to three incredible people without whom I would be just a lump under my electric blanket:

  Alan, who is every hero I have ever imagined and then some. I love you more than all the stars in the sky, times all the grains of sand on all the beaches, times infinity to the infinite. And that's on a bad day!

  Sherry, who is a best friend and a half—always and through everything. I couldn't have invented a better friend for me than you. Thanks for being real, in every sense!

  Laura, who is the editor of my dreams. Just hearing your voice on the other end of the line makes me think I can do it, again and again. And makes me want to!

  Thank you all.

  And a special thanks to our cat, Karma, who only ripped up two pages of this manuscript in an effort to remind me that he can't work the can opener himself. Good Karma!

  CHAPTER 1

  Oakland, California: 1888

  Above Ash Whittier's head the courthouse ceiling fans droned rhythmically as they circled round and round. Behind him, in the heavy oak pews, an impatient crowd stirred restlessly. And beside him his sister-in-law Charlotte's skirts whooshed with her every move. Yet despite all the commotion surrounding him, it was a tiny, constant chirping that was grating on his nerves.

  He laced his hands out in front of him, cracking the knuckles, and silently counted the seats in the empty jury box.

  "Nervous?" Charlotte asked him, her huge hazel eyes scanning the courtroom as she adjusted the hat resting on her open satchel. Like her suit, it was a no-nonsense dark blue—without a frill, a ribbon, a bow—as close to a man's hat as it could be. With delicate fingers she turned the hat over to rest its brim on the case's edges, so that it now sat like an empty nest. At least it appeared empty. If not, he'd swear it was the source of that chirping that was crawling up the back of his neck.

  "Where's Cabot?" he asked, twisting in his chair to check yet again the back of the courtroom for any sign of his brother.

  "He's got a jury summation down the hall," Charlotte told him for what he supposed was the third time. She opened her mouth just enough to allow a small pink tongue to run quickly back and forth over her bottom lip before catching herself in what was apparently a nervous habit.

  "There's really nothing to worry about," she said a bit too glibly as she caught a wayward spiral of chestnut hair and poked it into her very tight bun. It was unclear whether she was reassuring him or herself with her words. "Judge Hammerman will ask to have the charges read. The district attorney will state arson and probably also insurance fraud, for motive. Brent, the old windbag, will state his case, which will take forever, or at least feel like it. We'll say it's circumstantial, which of course it is, and then the judge will ask how you plead."

  "This is ridiculous, you know," he said. That only made a half-dozen times he'd said as much since he'd been led into the courtroom to find her sitting at the defense table instead of his brother. All of it was crazy: that the police would imagine that he'd set fire to his own warehouse just a few hours after he'd sailed the Bloody Mary back into Oakland Harbor; that his business partner would accuse him of the crime; and that a lady lawyer (his brother's wife, no less) was preparing to defend him.

  Talk about a short plank over a deep pier.

  "It's all very routine," Charlotte said, fidgeting with that ugly hat of hers as if she found it more interesting than his legal proceedings. "We stand. I say you're represented by Whittier and Whittier and—"

  "Whittier and Whittier...?"

  "Cabot and me."

  She said it so matter-of-factly that Ash was almost forced to wonder whether Cabot had actually broken down and made her a partner in his practice.

  "Change the sign, did he?" he asked. "The stationery?"

  His sister-in-law glanced quickly at the floor and ignored his question, busying herself with looking over the papers in front of her. For Ash, who knew his brother all too well, that was as good as answering. Cabot would never give a piece of himself away.

  "You can prove where you were last night between midnight and three or so, can't you?" she asked, looking at him with eyes so big and innocent a man could drown in them.

  "Sure," he said, then hedged. "Maybe." He tried to remember a name, but the truth was they'd probably never gotten past sweetheart and honey. He knew she was blond. That is, she was blond on top. And she'd been walking the street somewhere between the pier and the bar where he and Moss, the best damn foreman any warehouse operation ever had, had stopped to have a few too many.

  "Where?" Charlotte moved her hat over to the edge of the open Gladstone, where it perched precariously, and peeked in. Again he could hear the chirping, louder, crawling on his nerves like ants over a ripe peach. He gripped the edge of the table while beside him his sister-in-law checked the watch hanging from a golden bow that, while small, wasn't much bigger than the breast on which it hung. Well, leave it to Cabot to be above such things as choosing a woman by the size of her... he reined in his thoughts.

  "I was on the Bloody Mary" he mumbled at her.

  "That's fine. Crew members saw you,
naturally?"

  Someone had rowed him and the girl out to the boat— Jonesy maybe, or Flint, after he'd left Moss back in the bar to pay the bill and go home to his wife and kids. And someone had to have taken the girl back to shore later. She hadn't been there when the police arrived.

  "Did anyone see you?" she repeated.

  He hadn't sold tickets, for Christ's sake. "I suppose, coming or going...." he said, his voice trailing off. Where the hell was Cabot? This wasn't the sort of thing he could talk about with his sister-in-law.

  "Coming when? Going where?" she asked. Before he could answer she laid a small hand on his arm and nodded toward the side door. Things were about to begin. And about time, too.

  A clerk came out and went directly to the district attorney's table. At Ash's side Charlotte sat up straight and tall, the itsy-bitsy pink nails of one hand tapping expectantly on the table.

  "Where the hell is Cabot?" he couldn't help asking, as sweat broke out on his upper lip. The DA nodded at something the clerk said while Ash continued to badger his sister-in-law. "He wouldn't leave me to you, would he?"

  "Ashford, he's at least as worried about you as you are about yourself." She rose abruptly, taking her briefcase carefully with her. "Would you excuse me for a moment?"

  "Are you going for Cabot?" he asked. He was not about to spend another night in jail just to avoid insulting his sister-in-law's prowess as an attorney. "I think you'd better get him now."

  With that tiny hand of hers she patted his weatherworn one reassuringly, even patronizingly, then walked over to the prosecution's table and leaned forward to speak quietly with both the bespectacled man who sat there and the clerk. When both men nodded, she bent over and picked up her valise.

  So that was where she'd hidden her softness. Whether it was bustle or actual bottom he couldn't tell, but his sister-in-law surely improved a courtroom when she conferred with the enemy. His gaze followed her all the way to the back of the courtroom until she passed through the double oak doors.

  He ought to be ashamed of himself. This woman was Cabot's wife. And it had taken his brother long enough to find her. Well, women weren't exactly lined up outside Cabot Whittier's doors, no matter how impressive those mahogany and cut-glass panels were.

  There were some magic tricks that even Cabot couldn't pull off.

  That Cabot had found Charlotte Reynolds attractive was easy enough to understand. According to Cabot (whose standards had always been impossible) Charlotte was smarter than three quarters of the men he knew, and all of the ones he'd opposed in court. And Ash had to admit, despite the man-tailored clothing she had on, that she was pretty in an innocent way—which was to say that she had no cleavage and her wide eyes were smolderless. She was pleasant enough too. She hadn't mentioned that he'd repeated himself a hundred times, or complained when she'd had to repeat herself on his behalf. And she was young, practically a child when Ash compared her to Cabot's years.

  But no doubt what Cabot found most attractive had to be that she clearly worshiped the ground beneath him.

  Ash did concede, however, with her third trip down the hall, that in contrast to her many assets, she apparently possessed the smallest bladder in California.

  He stood politely as she returned to the table and took her seat once again. When she'd finished adjusting her hat and bag to her own satisfaction, opening the bag and carefully putting her hat atop it again, he demanded to know if Cabot was coming.

  "Oh," she answered, those big eyes so bright he nearly had to shield his own. "You should see him! He's in courtroom number three waving some photographs in front of the jury, and jaws are falling faster than pigeon droppings on the cupola at City Hall."

  "Charlotte," he begged, not even trying to feign enthusiasm. "Does that mean he's almost done?"

  "I told you," she said, frustration finally tinging the edges of her voice. "They've got nothing on you to warrant your being held for trial. This is just routine. Cabot lets me handle these kinds of proceedings every day."

  "Not for me," he grumbled, tired of waiting for things to get started. If he ran his shipping company the way Oakland ran its courts, there wouldn't have been anything in the warehouse to burn. He had no patience for mistakes and the Oakland police had obviously made a big one.

  He stretched out his legs, knocking her hat from its perch. He reached down for it, his head almost level with the top of the alligator Gladstone he'd bought her as a wedding gift in Argentina, and stopped.

  There, in the bottom of her monogrammed lady's version of the same case he'd brought Cabot, was a small box lined with straw. A tiny baby bird strained his neck up at Ash, opened a beak smaller even than Charlotte's fingernails, and chirped.

  Well, at least he wasn't crazy.

  Charlotte was.

  Without sitting back up he cocked his head and took a long look at his sister-in-law, the only lady lawyer in all of Oakland. With the exception of that Clara Foltz person his brother had told him about, she might have been the only lady lawyer in the whole state of California.

  At the moment she looked like some schoolgirl caught with someone else's lunch pail at recess. Her cheeks glowing, she shrugged and tried to wave away the bird with her hand.

  "He needs to eat every few hours," she explained.

  It was a struggle to keep the smirk from his lips, but he thought he succeeded admirably as he nodded at the esteemed Charlotte Whittier, Esquire, respected member of the bar. "I see. We wouldn't want your bird to be hungry"

  "He isn't my bird," Charlotte said, her chin so high, he could hardly see those long dark eyelashes of hers.

  "Then he belongs to Cabot?"

  "Oh, yes," she said, not even trying to hide the sarcasm. "And judges never sleep on the bench. It's no one's bird. But someone has to feed it or it'll die."

  Well, he'd wondered when Charlotte's nesting instinct would surface. He just hadn't expected it to be quite so literal when it did. Although it'd been five years since she'd married Cabot, there'd been no mention of little Whittiers to date. Even his mother had stayed away from the subject, focusing instead on Charlotte's incredible achievements in the legal field.

  Without a word Ash replaced the hat over the opening of the Gladstone bag. Charlotte didn't seem to be in the mood to be ribbed about her hungry feathered friend, and Ash wasn't in the mood to tease her anyway. He had a bird of his own, a parrot, on board the Bloody Mary, who was no doubt screeching to be fed himself.

  "Cabot is coming, isn't he?" He'd gone beyond begging. Now he was groveling.

  "I told you, it's just routine," she began again just as a haggard clerk with a droopy mustache and a hacking cough opened the door beside the judge's bench and yelled, "Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! The Superior Court of the County of Alameda is now in session, the honorable Judge George Hammerman presiding. All persons having business before this Court shall draw near and ye shall be heard."

  Beside Ash, Charlotte rose, exerting a slight pressure beneath his elbow until he realized that he, too, was expected to rise.

  "I—" Ash began, indeed having business with the court.

  Charlotte stopped him, signaling him with a finger against her lips that it was not time for him to speak.

  "Oh, it's you, Charlotte," the judge said, grimacing. "I expected Mr. Whittier to be here to represent his brother in a matter so grave as this. Not that I have any doubt that you, dear, couldn't do the case justice."

  Charlotte's meager chest rose and fell sharply. Beneath her charming veneer and behind her pleasant smile, the woman next to him was seething.

  "Mr. Whittier is next door explaining the finer points of the law to Mr. Cohen," she said, eliciting a smile from the judge. Everyone knew that Alfred A. Cohen hardly needed lessons in the law from Cabot or anyone else. She pulled back her shoulders and appeared ready to do battle. "So I'm afraid the court will have to settle for Mrs. Whittier for the present."

  "All right, Charlotte," the judge said, signaling her to slow down with a sho
w of his palm. "No need to get all huffy with me."

  While behind her skirt Charlotte's fist balled, she turned a dazzling smile on the judge and nodded, corrected and ready for her next lesson.

  "Mr. Brent," the judge said, looking over his half-spectacles, "are you ready to proceed?"

  The district attorney nodded.

  "And you, Charlotte? You're ready, too, dear?"

  Her intake of breath was audible, but rather than utter a word (which Ash thought was likely to be profane—if the white knuckles dotting her clenched fists were any indication), she simply nodded.

  If he were being perfectly honest, Ash Whittier would have to admit that he was wholly unaccustomed to upholding a lady's honor. Still, in the case of one's sister-in-law (especially when that sister-in-law was attempting to represent one's interests in a court of law), he supposed an exception should be made. And so he cleared his throat.

  "Excuse me, Your Honor," he said, amazed at how loud his voice sounded in the quiet courtroom, how far it carried and echoed back at him, mocking him for this sudden solicitude of the fairer sex. The judge looked over his glasses at Ash, waiting. It appeared too late to turn back, so he continued.

  "As a defender of the law," he said—paused with the hope of finding the right words, abandoned that hope, and forged ahead—"... and an obviously forward-looking person who'd allow a lady attorney to appear before you, I take you to be a man who believes in parity. Right?"

  "Charlotte?" The judge asked, dismissing Ash as if he had suddenly lost his hearing. "Are you having trouble with your client? It seems he doesn't realize that he will most certainly have his chance to speak, but that right now is not that time. Would you like a moment to explain to him the purpose of being represented by an attorney?"

  "No, Your Honor. I'm sure that there will be no further outbursts from my client," Charlotte said sweetly. Her tone, though, held a note of warning for Ash, which she followed with a discreet kick to his shin that brought tears to his eyes. His reflex action sent her Gladstone skating across the floor and her scurrying after it, affording the entire courtroom a delightful view of her bustle. Anxious to get on with it, Ash captured the bag with a single stride and returned it to its place between them.