The Firebrand Read online

  Lucy tried to push her attraction away to the hidden place in her heart where she kept all her shameful secrets.

  Men were trouble. No one knew this better than Lucy Hathaway. She was that most awkward of creatures, the social misfit. Maligned, mocked, misunderstood. At dancing lessons when she was younger, the boys used to draw straws in order to determine who would have the ill luck to partner the tall, dark, intense girl whose only asset was her father’s fortune. At the debutante balls and soirees she attended in later years, young men would place wagers on how many feet she would trample while waltzing, how many people she would embarrass with her blunt questions and how many times her poor mother would disappear behind her fan to hide the blush of shame her daughter induced.

  In a last-ditch effort to find their daughter a proper place in the world, Colonel and Mrs. Hathaway had sent her away to be “finished.” Like a wedding cake in need of icing, she was dispatched to the limestone bastion called the Emma Wade Boylan School for Young Ladies, and expected to come out adorned in feminine virtues.

  Women whose well-heeled papas could afford the exorbitant tuition attended the lakeside institution. There they hoped to attain the bright polish of refinement that would attract a husband. Even those who were pocked by imperfection might eventually acquire the necessary veneer. Lucy found it bizarre that a young woman’s adolescence could end with instructions on how best to arrange one’s bustle for sitting, or all the possible shades of meaning created by a crease in a calling card, yet she’d sat through lengthy lectures on precisely those topics. To her parents’ dismay, she was like the wedding cake that had crumbled while being carried from oven to table. No amount of sugar coating could cover up her flaws.

  Whenever possible, Lucy buried her social shortcomings between the delicious, diverting pages of a book. She adored books. Ever since she was small, books had been her greatest treasures and constant companions, offering comfort for her loneliness and escape from a world she didn’t fit into. She lived deeply in the stories she read; caught up in the pages of a book, she became an adventuress, an explorer, a warrior, an object of adoration.

  And ironically, her many failures at Miss Boylan’s had endeared her to some of the other young women. There, she’d made friends she would cherish all her life. The masters at the school had long given up on Lucy, which gave her vast stretches of free time. While others were learning the proper use of salt cellars and fish forks, Lucy had discovered the cause that would direct and give meaning to her life—the cause of equal rights for women.

  She certainly didn’t need a man for that.

  “We stray too far from the virtues our church founders commanded us to preserve and uphold,” boomed the Reverend Moody, intruding into Lucy’s thoughts. She stifled a surge of annoyance at the preacher’s words and pressed her teeth down on her tongue. She mustn’t speak out; she’d promised. “The task is ours to embrace tradition…”

  Lucy had a secret. Deep in the darkest, loneliest corner of her heart, she yearned to know what it was like to have a man look at her the way men looked at her friend Deborah Sinclair, who was as golden and radiant as an angel. She wanted to know what it was like to laugh and flirt with careless abandon, as Deborah’s maid, Kathleen O’Leary, was wont to do belowstairs with tradesmen and footmen. She wanted to know what it was like to be certain, with every fiber of her being, that her sole purpose in life was to make a spectacular marriage, the way Phoebe Palmer knew it.

  She wanted to know what it would be like to lean her head on a man’s solid shoulder, to feel those large, capable hands on her—

  Exasperated with herself, she tried to focus on the mind-numbing lecture.

  “Consider the teachings of St. Sylvius,” the preacher said, “who taught that ‘Woman is the gate of the devil, the path of wickedness, the sting of the serpent, in a word a perilous object.’ And yet, my friends, it has been proposed that in some congregations women be allowed to hold office. Imagine, a perilous object holding office in church—”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Lucy shot up as if her chair had suddenly caught fire.

  Moody stopped. “Is there some discussion, Miss Hathaway?”

  Unable to suppress her opinions any longer, she girded herself for battle. She’d promised Miss Boylan she wouldn’t make waves, but he’d pushed her too far. She gripped the back of the empty chair in front of her. “As a matter of fact, we might discuss why our beliefs are dictated by men like St. Sylvius, who kept paramours under the age of fourteen and sired children concurrently with three different women.”

  Scandalized gasps and a few titters swept through the audience. Lucy was accustomed to being ridiculed and often told herself that all visionaries were misunderstood. Still, that didn’t take the sting out of it.

  “How do you know that?” a man in the front row demanded.

  Well-practiced in the art of airing unpopular views, she stated, “I read it in a book.”

  “I’d wager you just made it up,” Higgins accused, muttering under his breath.

  She swung to face him, her bustle knocking against the row of chairs in front of her. Someone snickered, but she ignored the derisive sound. “Are you opposed to women having ideas of their own, Mr. Higgins?”

  Half his mouth curved upward in a smile of wicked insolence. He was enjoying this, damn his emerald-green eyes. “So long as those ideas revolve around hearth and home and family, I applaud them. A woman should take pride in her femininity rather than pretend to be the crude equal of a man.”

  “Hear, hear,” several voices called approvingly.

  “That’s a tired argument,” she snapped. “A husband and children do not necessarily constitute the sum total of a woman’s life, no matter how convenient the arrangement is for a man.”

  “I reckon I can guess your opinion of men,” he said, aiming a bold wink at her. “But don’t you like children, Miss Hathaway?”

  She didn’t, truth be told. She didn’t even know any children. She had always considered babies to be demanding and incomprehensible, and older children to be silly and nonsensical.

  “Do you?” she challenged, and didn’t bother waiting for a reply. “Would you ever judge a man by that standard? Of course you wouldn’t. Then why judge a woman by it?”

  He made the picture of masculine ease and confidence as he stood and bowed to Reverend Moody. “Shall we remove this discussion to a more appropriate locale?” he inquired. “A sparring ring, perhaps?”

  Laughing, Moody stepped back from the podium. “On the contrary, we are fascinated. I yield the floor to open discussion.”

  Fine, thought Lucy. They all expected her to disgrace herself. She could manage that with very little effort. She swept the room with her gaze, noting the presence of several prominent guests—Mr. Cyrus McCormick and Mr. George Pullman, whose enterprises had made them nearly as wealthy as Lucy’s own father, Colonel Hathaway, hero of the War Between the States. She spied Mr. Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the late great Emancipator and one of the leading social lights of the city. Jasper Lamott, head of the Brethren of Orderly Righteousness, sat in smug superiority. Watching them, she felt an ugly little stab of envy. How simple it was for men to stand around discussing great matters, secure in the knowledge that the world was theirs for the taking.

  “I believe,” she said, “that women have as much right as men to hold office in the church or the government. In fact, I intend to support Mrs. Victoria Woodhull’s campaign for president of the United States,” she concluded grandly.

  Higgins’s brow descended with disapproval. “That woman is a menace to decent people everywhere.”

  Lucy felt a surge of outrage, but the heated emotion mingled strangely with something unexpected—the tingling excitement touched off by his nearness. “Most unenlightened men think so.”

  “Her ideas about free love are disgusting,” Jasper Lamott called across the room, instigating rumbles of assent from the listeners.

  “You only think that becau
se you don’t understand her,” Lucy stated.

  “I understand that free love means immorality and promiscuity,” Higgins said.

  “It most certainly does not.” She spoke with conviction, trying to do honor to the great woman’s ideas, even though she knew her mother would be calling for smelling salts if she heard Lucy debating promiscuity with a strange man in front of a crowd of avid listeners.

  “Isn’t that exactly what she means?” Randolph Higgins asked. “That a woman should be allowed to follow her basest instincts, even abandoning her husband and family if she wishes it?”

  “Not in the least.” In the audience, heads swung back and forth as if they were watching a tennis match. “The true meaning of free love is the pursuit of happiness. For men and women both.”

  “A woman’s happiness is found in marriage and family,” he stated. “Every tradition we have bears this out.”

  “Where in heaven’s name do we get this tradition of pretending a marriage is happy when one of the parties is miserable? Marriage is a matter of the heart, Mr. Higgins, not the law. When a marriage is over spiritually, then it should be over in fact.”

  “You’re almost as much of a menace as she is,” he said with a harsh laugh. “Next you’ll be telling me you approve of divorce.”

  “And you’ll be telling me you believe a fourteen-year-old girl forced to wed an alcoholic should stay with him all her life.” That was precisely what had befallen Victoria Woodhull. But rather than being beaten down by circumstances, she’d begun a crusade to free women from the tyranny and degradation of men.

  “People must learn to live with the choices they’ve made,” he said. “Or is it your conviction that a woman need not take responsibility for her own decisions?”

  “Like many women, Mrs. Woodhull wasn’t allowed to decide. And sir, you know nothing about me nor my convictions.”

  “You’re a spoiled, overprivileged debutante who deals with boredom by stirring up trouble,” he stated. “If you really cared about the plight of women, you’d be over in the West Division, feeding the hungry.”

  A smattering of applause came from some of the men.

  “Women would be better served if men would simply concede their right to vote.”

  “You should relocate to the Wyoming Territory. They allow women to vote there.”

  “Then they don’t need me there,” Lucy insisted. “They have already won.”

  “Such passion,” he said.

  “Whether you’ll admit it or not, the entire universe revolves around feelings of passion.”

  “My dear Miss Hathaway,” Mr. Higgins said reasonably, “that is exactly why we have the institution you revile—marriage.”

  A curious feeling came over Lucy as she sparred with him. She expected to feel offended by his challenges, but instead, she was intrigued. When she looked into his eyes, a shivery warmth came over her. She kept catching herself staring at his mouth, too, and thinking about the way it had felt when he had whispered in her ear. The feeling was quite…sexual in nature.

  “The institution of marriage has been the cornerstone of mankind since time was counted,” he said. “It will take more than an unhappy crackpot female to convince the world otherwise.”

  “The only crackpot here is—”

  “I beg your pardon.” Like a storm of rose petals, Phoebe Palmer entered the salon, her face a mask of polite deference. The finishing school’s self-appointed doyenne of decency always managed to reel Lucy in when she teetered on the verge of disgrace. “Miss Lucy is needed and it’s ever so urgent. Come along, dear, there we are.” For a woman of the daintiest appearance, Phoebe had a grip of steel as she took Lucy by the arm. Without making a scene, Lucy had no choice but to follow.

  “There is a name for the institution you advocate, Mr. Higgins,” she said, firing a parting shot over her shoulder. “Fortunately, slavery was rendered illegal eight years ago by the Emancipation Proclamation.”

  Phoebe gave a final tug on her arm and pulled her through the doorway. “I declare,” she said, scolding even before they left the room, “I can’t leave you alone for a moment. I thought a Christian lecture would be safe enough, but I see that I was wrong.”

  “You should have heard what they were saying,” Lucy said. “They said we were the gate of the devil.”

  “Who?”

  “Women, that’s who. You would have spoken up, too.”

  Phoebe’s mouth twitched, resisting a smile. “Ah, Lucy. You’re always shooting your mouth off and getting in trouble. And I am constantly trying to stop you from committing social suicide.”

  “I think I did that already, last August when I burned my corset at that suffrage rally.” Lucy extracted her arm from Phoebe’s grip. “Speaking of trouble, how is Kathleen getting along?”

  “That’s why I came to get you.” Phoebe gestured toward the French doors, draped by fringed velvet curtains. “She is flirting outrageously with Dylan Kennedy.”

  Lucy followed her gesture and spied Kathleen O’Leary in an emerald gown, her head of blazing red hair bright against the backdrop of Mr. Dylan Kennedy’s dark suit. Watching them, she felt a keen sense of satisfaction. Kathleen was much more than a lady’s maid. She was their friend. And tonight, she was their pet project.

  Their prank was a social experiment, actually. Lucy claimed it was possible to take an Irish maid, dress her up in finery, and no one would ever guess at her humble background. Phoebe, an unrepentant snob, swore that people of quality would see right through the disguise.

  Framed by the French doors, Kathleen tilted her head and smiled at Mr. Kennedy, one of the most eligible bachelors in Chicago. The night sky in the background seemed to glow and pulse with the city lights. As she watched, Lucy felt a tug of wistfulness. They were both so attractive and romantic, so luminous with the sparkling energy that surrounded them. She could not imagine what it would be like to have a man admire her that way.

  “Well,” she said briskly to Phoebe. “One thing is clear. I have won the wager. You must donate a hundred dollars to the Women’s Suffrage Movement.”

  “There’s still time for Kathleen to stick her foot in her mouth.” Phoebe sent Lucy a wry smile. “However, tonight that seems to be your specialty.”

  Lucy laughed. “Only tonight?”

  “I was trying to be polite.” She linked arms with Lucy again. “I wish Deborah had come with us this evening.”

  A frisson of anxiety chased away Lucy’s good humor. “She seemed quite ill when we left Miss Boylan’s.”

  “I’m sure she will be fi— Good heavens, it’s Lord de Vere.” Without a backward glance, Phoebe sailed off to greet the weak-chinned English nobleman, whom she hoped and prayed she might marry one day.

  Lucy caught herself thinking about Mr. Higgins, and the way their public disagreement had led to private thoughts. It was a rare thing, to meet a man who made her think. She should not have antagonized him so, but she couldn’t help herself. He was provocative, and she was easily provoked.

  As more people filed out of the lecture salon, she spotted him moving toward the adjoining room, and felt herself edging toward an admission. An admission, followed by a plan of action, for that was Lucy’s way. She saw no point in believing in something without acting on that belief.

  What she admitted to herself, what she had come to believe, was that she was wildly attracted to Mr. Randolph Higgins. Until tonight, she’d never met a man who made her feel the lightning sting of attraction. It had to mean something. It had to mean that he was the one.

  That was where her plan of action came in. She wanted him for her lover.

  When he went over to a long table, laden with punch and hors d’oeuvres, she marched straight across the room to him. He gave no sign that he’d seen her, but when he turned away from the table, he held two cups of lemonade.

  “You,” he said, handing her a cup, “are the most annoying creature I have ever met.”

  “Really?” She took a sip of the
sweet-tart lemonade. “I take that as a compliment.”

  “So you are both annoying and slow-witted,” he said.

  “You don’t really think that.” Watching him over the rim of her cup, she added. “I am complimented because I have made you think.”

  Lord, but he was a fine specimen of a man. She felt such a surge of triumph that she could not govern the wide grin on her face. She’d found him at last. After a lifetime of believing she would never meet someone who could arouse her passion, share her dreams, bring her joy, she’d finally found him. A man she could admire, perhaps even love.

  “Do I amuse you?” he asked, frowning good-naturedly.

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because you keep smiling at me even though I have just called you annoying and—”

  “Slow-witted,” she reminded him.

  “Yes,” he said. “Rude of me.”

  “It was. But I forgive you.” She glanced furtively from side to side. “Mr. Higgins, do you suppose we could go somewhere…a little less public?” Before he could answer, she took his hand and pulled him toward the now-empty lecture room. The dry windstorm that had been swirling through the city all evening battered at the windows. Gaslight sconces glowed on the walls, and orange light flickered mysteriously in the windowpanes. Rows of gilded chairs flanked a central aisle, and just for a moment, as she led him along the crimson carpet runner toward the front of the room, she had the fanciful notion that this was a wedding.

  “Miss Hathaway, what is this about?” he asked, taking his hand from hers.

  “I wanted to speak to you in private.” Her heart raced. This was a simple matter, she told herself. Men and women arranged trysts all the time. She should not get over-wrought about it.

  “Very well.” He propped his hip on the back of a chair, the pose so negligently masculine and evocative that she nearly forgot her purpose. “I’m listening.”

  “Did you enjoy the lecture tonight, Mr. Higgins?”

  “Honestly?”