The Firebrand Read online

  Praise for the novels of Susan Wiggs

  “Susan Wiggs paints the details of human relationships with the finesse of a master.”

  —Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author

  “Fans of historical romances will naturally flock to this skillfully executed trilogy.”

  —Publishers Weekly on the Chicago Fire Trilogy

  “Wiggs provides a delicious story for us to savor.”

  —Oakland Press on The Mistress

  “Susan Wiggs delves deeply into her characters’ hearts and motivations to touch our own.”

  —RT Book Reviews on The Mistress

  “Once more, Ms. Wiggs demonstrates her ability to bring readers a story to savor that has them impatiently awaiting each new novel.”

  —RT Book Reviews on The Hostage

  “Wiggs is one of our best observers of stories of the heart. Maybe that is because she knows how to capture emotion on virtually every page of every book.”

  —Salem Statesman-Journal

  “Susan Wiggs is a rare talent! Boisterous, passionate, exciting!”

  —Literary Times

  “Susan Wiggs writes with bright assurance, humor and compassion.”

  —Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author

  Also by SUSAN WIGGS

  Contemporary Romances

  HOME BEFORE DARK

  THE OCEAN BETWEEN US

  SUMMER BY THE SEA

  TABLE FOR FIVE

  LAKESIDE COTTAGE

  JUST BREATHE

  The Lakeshore Chronicles

  SUMMER AT WILLOW LAKE

  THE WINTER LODGE

  DOCKSIDE

  SNOWFALL AT WILLOW LAKE

  FIRESIDE

  LAKESHORE CHRISTMAS

  THE SUMMER HIDEAWAY

  Historical Romances

  THE LIGHTKEEPER

  THE DRIFTER

  The Tudor Rose Trilogy

  AT THE KING’S COMMAND

  THE MAIDEN’S HAND

  AT THE QUEEN’S SUMMONS

  Chicago Fire Trilogy

  THE HOSTAGE

  THE MISTRESS

  THE FIREBRAND

  Calhoun Chronicles

  THE CHARM SCHOOL

  THE HORSEMASTER’S DAUGHTER

  HALFWAY TO HEAVEN

  ENCHANTED AFTERNOON

  A SUMMER AFFAIR

  SUSAN WIGGS

  The Firebrand

  THE CHICAGO FIRE TRILOGY

  I have a great desire to see a variety of employments thrown open to women, and if they may sell anything, why not books? The business seems to partake of the dignity of literature.

  —Miss Elizabeth Peabody, Boston bookseller, 1848

  This is for booksellers everywhere, including Tamra, Beth Anne, Donita, Dean, Jennie, Terry, Gerald, Michael, Mary Gay, donNA, Donna, Sally, Lucinda, Marge, Rose Marie, Lois, DeeDee, Stefanie, Ruth Ann, Tanzey, Judy, Judy, Kyle, Charlie, Elaine, Char, Mary, Sharon, Virginia, Anne Marie, Leah, Yvonne, Tommy, Bobbie, Tina, Mark, Maureen, Cathy, Kathy, Rose, Dawn, Bronwyn. And of course, Fran at the Safeway. You enrich the lives of readers beyond measure.

  Thanks to Barb, Joyce and Betty for knowing what’s right and finding what’s wrong, to Martha Keenan for her expert editing and to the Chicago Historical Society for keeping bygone days alive.

  Contents

  Part One

  Prologue

  Part Two

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Three

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part Four

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Part Five

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Afterword

  Part One

  I suppose I need hardly say that I like Chicago—like it in spite of lake-wind sharpness and prairie flatness, damp tunnels, swinging bridges, hard water, and easy divorces.

  —Sara Jane Clarke Lippincott

  (aka Grace Greenwood), 1871

  Prologue

  Chicago

  Sunday, 8 October 1871

  The city was like a matchstick, waiting to be struck. The shipyards were stacked with lumber from the north woods, soon to be transformed into warehouses, tenements, breweries and shanties. In just a few short years, the prairie town had sprawled into an ungainly maze of wooden structures.

  Many of the buildings looked grand. Some even appeared rock-solid. But in fact, most structures were clad in the false and fancy dress of ornate facades. Their insincere faces were painted to resemble stone or marble, copper or tin. But scratch beneath the surface, and the flimsy substance would be revealed—wood, as dry as tinder, capped by a deceptive veil of shingles glued on by flammable tar.

  The roadways radiated like arteries from the giant, churning heart of the lake. Six hundred miles of wooden sidewalks and sixty miles of pine-block roadways spread through the business district and working-class neighborhoods where immigrant mothers tried to hush their fretful children, suffering in the unseasonably dry heat. Rickety boardwalks and causeways spread across manufacturing centers and even dared to encroach upon the fashionable wealthy areas north of the river.

  The barons of industry and commerce had put up varnish factories, alcohol distilleries, coalyards, lumber mills and gasworks with more regard for fast profit than for fire prevention. They lived for show, in houses built to resemble the centuries-old manors of aristocrats. Blooded coach horses occupied stables crammed with dry straw and timothy hay. Avenues of trees, stripped dry by the summer-long drought, connected neighbor to neighbor, each trying to outdo the other in ostentation. Those who had established themselves in the city a mere fifteen years ago liked to call themselves Old Settlers, and the new arrivals had no grounds to challenge the designation. Instead they set to work earning their own fortunes so that one day they might buy their way into the ranks of the merchant princes.

  Many of these newcomers stayed at the Sterling House Hotel, which was considered the very height of fashion. Literally. Crowned by a dome of colored glass, the five-story structure boasted a steam elevator and commanded an impressive view of the river.

  Feverish and impatient with ambition, no one cared that Sunday was supposed to be a day of rest and reflection. No one heeded the fire alarms that had been shrieking through drought-choked neighborhoods all week. The wheels of commerce ground on with dogged relentlessness, and only those too timid to dream greatly would pause to worry that Chicago was a city built of tinder; or that sparks from a hundred thousand chimneys infested the gusting night air; or that the fire-fighting companies had already worked themselves into exhaustion.

  To be sure, no one could have predicted the vicious speed with which the fire took hold. No one could have imagined that, with such a modern system of alarms and waterworks, the Great Fire would burn without interruption Sunday night, and on through Monday, and deep into the middle of Tuesday. No one looking at the falsely solid brickfronts could have believed the city wo
uld be so vulnerable.

  But like anything built on an unstable foundation, the city had only the thinnest of defenses. Chicago was not long for this world.

  Part Two

  We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

  —Thomas Jefferson

  “Declaration of Independence,” 1776

  We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

  —Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  “Declaration of Sentiments,” 1848

  One

  Lucy Hathaway perched on the edge of her seat, pretending to hang on every word spoken by the evangelist. Anyone in the crowded salon who saw her attentive posture would admire her piety. Observers would find the sight of the dark-haired young woman, with her hands clasped in religious fervor, uplifting. Inspirational, even. Commendable, most assuredly.

  “Your eyes are glazing over,” said a deep, amused voice beside her.

  She didn’t recognize the voice, which was unusual, for Lucy Hathaway made it her business to know everyone. The man must have slid into the seat beside her after the start of the lecture. But she didn’t turn to look at him. She pretended not to notice that he’d spoken at all.

  “…St. Paul is clear on this point,” Reverend Moody intoned from the podium. “A wife must submit to her husband’s leadership in the same way she submits to the Lord….” The message rang through the room full of people who had braved a dry windstorm to attend the event at the fashionable Hotel Royale.

  Lucy blinked slowly, trying to unglaze her eyes. She kept them trained straight ahead with unwavering attention. She tried to govern her mind as well, batting away the preacher’s words like bees at a picnic, when she really wanted to leap to her feet and object to this claptrap about the superiority of man over woman.

  And now, despite her best intentions, she found herself wondering about the insolent man sitting next to her.

  The man whose whisper had come so close that she could feel the warmth of his words in her ear.

  “You know,” he said, leaning even closer. “You might try—”

  “Go away,” she said between clenched teeth, not even moving her lips as she spoke. He smelled of bay rum and leather.

  “—leaning on me,” he continued insolently. “That way, when you fall asleep from boredom, you won’t attract attention by collapsing on the floor.”

  “I will not fall asleep,” she hissed.

  “Good,” the man whispered back. “You’re much more interesting wide-awake.”

  Ye gods. She mustn’t listen to another word of this.

  The Reverend Dr. Moody came to a lull in his address, pausing to fortify himself with a glass of lemonade from a pitcher.

  She sensed the man next to her shifting in his seat and then leaning back to prop his ankle on his knee in an easy, relaxed pose. By peeking through lowered eyelashes, she caught a glimpse of his pantleg. Charcoal superfine, perfectly creased, fashionably loose-fitting.

  Lucy herself was being slowly strangled by a corset designed, she was certain, for use in the Spanish Inquisition, and she resented him more than ever.

  “We should leave,” he suggested, “while we have the chance.”

  She glared stoically ahead. This was the first lull in forty minutes of the stultifying lecture, and the temptation to flee burned like a mortal sin inside her. “It’s interesting,” she said, trying hard to convince herself.

  “Which part?”

  “What?”

  “Which part did you find so interesting?”

  Lucy was chagrined to realize that she could not recall one single word of the past forty minutes. “All of it,” she said hastily.

  “Right.” He leaned in closer. “So now I know what bores you. Suppose you tell me what excites you.”

  She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, for no man had ever voluntarily made small talk with her. He was probably setting her up for some sort of humiliating moment. Some social faux pas so he and his cronies could have a chuckle at her expense. So what? she thought. It wouldn’t be the first time someone made her the butt of a joke. She’d survived moments like that before. Many moments.

  “Ha,” she muttered. “As if I would tell you.”

  “I’m leaving,” he said. “Come with me.”

  Lucy ignored him. If she got up now, people would notice. They might think she was following him. They might even believe she had “designs” on him.

  As if Lucy Hathaway would ever have such a thing as designs on a man.

  “Quickly,” he urged, his whisper barely audible. “Before he gets his second wind.”

  The audience, restless and trying not to show it, buzzed with low, polite conversation while the evangelist refreshed himself. At last Lucy could resist no longer. She had to see who this rude, mellow-voiced stranger was. With the bold curiosity that caused her such trouble in social situations, she turned to stare at him.

  Heavens to Betsy. He was as handsome as a sun god.

  Her eyes, no longer glazing over, studied him with unabashed fascination. Long-legged. Broad-shouldered. Deep brown hair, neatly combed. An impeccably tailored suit of clothes. A face of flawless, square-jawed strength and symmetry such as one saw on civic monuments and statues of war heroes. Yet this particular face was stamped with just a hint of wicked humor. Who the devil was he?

  She didn’t know him at all, had never seen him before.

  If she had, she would have remembered. Because the unfamiliar warmth that curled through her when she looked at him was not a sensation one would easily forget. Lucy Hathaway was suddenly contemplating “designs.”

  He smiled, not unkindly. She caught herself staring at his mouth, its shape marvelously set off by the most intriguing cleft in his chin. “Randolph Birch Higgins,” he said with a very slight inclination of his head.

  Guiltily she glanced around, but to her relief noticed that they sat alone in the rear of the salon. She cleared her throat. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Please don’t. I was simply introducing myself. My name is Randolph Higgins.”

  “Oh.” She felt as gauche as a schoolgirl unprepared for lessons.

  “I believe the usual response is ‘How do you do?’ followed by a reciprocal introduction,” he suggested.

  What a condescending, pompous ass, she thought. She resented the marvelous color of his eyes. Such an arrogant man did not deserve to have perfect leaf-green eyes. Even more, she resented him for making her wish she was not so skinny and black-haired, pinch-mouthed and awkward. She was not an attractive woman and she knew it. Ordinarily that would not bother her. Yet tonight, she wished with humiliating fervor that she could be pretty.

  “Miss Lucy Hathaway,” she said stiffly.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Hathaway.” He turned slightly toward her, waiting.

  She had the oddest sensation of being alone with this man. On some level she perceived people milling around the large outer salon behind them. Through the arched passageway, she vaguely noticed ladies laughing and flirting, men stepping through the French doors to light up their cigars in the blustery night. In the lecture room, people spoke in low tones as they awaited the next portion of the address. Yet a strange electricity stung the air around Lucy and the man called Randolph Higgins, seeming to wall them off into a place of their own.

  “Now you’re supposed to say ‘It’s a pleasure to make your ac—’”

  “I don’t need lessons in idle conversation,” she said. Lord knew, her mother had taught her that well enough. Ensconced in a North Division mansion, Viola Hathaway had elevated frivolity to an art form.

  “Then we should move on to meaningful conversation,” he said.

  “What makes you th
ink you and I could have a meaningful conversation?” she asked. Her parents had spent a fortune to drill her in manners, but all the deportment lessons in the world had failed to keep Lucy from speaking her mind.

  She wished Mr. Higgins would go away. Far away. A man who produced this sort of discomfiting reaction in her had no possible use except…

  Lucy was nothing if not honest with herself. Perhaps she should quit trying to feel peevish and admit that she was most inappropriately intrigued. A sudden, sinful inspiration took hold. Perhaps he could be useful. As a New Woman who adhered fervently—if only in theory, alas—to the radical notion of free love, Lucy felt obliged to practice what she preached. Thus far, however, men found her unattractive and annoyingly intellectual. Mr. Higgins, at least, seemed to find her interesting. This was a first for Lucy, and she didn’t want to let the opportunity slip away.

  “You’re looking at me like a cat in the creamery,” he whispered. “Why is that?”

  She snapped her head around and faced front, appalled by her own intoxicating fantasy. “You’re imagining things, sir. You do not know me at all.”

  The lecture started up again, a boring recitation about the ancient founders—male, of course—of the Christian faith. She tilted her chin up and fixed an expression of tolerant interest on her face. She’d promised Miss Boylan not to argue with the preacher; her radical views often got her in trouble, tainting the reputation of Miss Boylan’s school. Instead she kept thinking about the stranger beside her. What wonderful hands he had—large and strong, beautifully made for hard work or the most delicate of tasks.