The Firebrand

by Susan Wiggs

  “Mr. Higgins?”

  Rand glanced up from his desk to see his secretary in the doorway to the office. “Yes, Mr. Crowe?”

  The earnest young man crossed the room and held out a small note. “A message from Mrs. Higgins, sir.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Crowe. Do I have any other appointments this afternoon?”

  “One more, sir. It’s about a loan extension.” He set down a flat cardstock file, bound with a brown satin ribbon. “One of those loans in the batch you acquired from Commonwealth Securities.”

  “Thank you,” Rand said again, keeping his expression impassive. He never betrayed his opinion about a professional matter, even to his secretary. It was this fierce discretion that had secured his reputation in the banking business, and he wasn’t about to compromise that.

  In the years since the fire, Rand had discovered within himself not just a talent for banking, but a passion for it. He welcomed the responsibility of looking after people’s money and embraced the task of lending to those who demonstrated a brilliant idea, an acute need or a promising enterprise. Sometimes he thought his love of banking was the only reason he’d carried on following those shadowy, pain-filled months after the fire.

  When Crowe left, Rand opened the note, written in a fine, spiderweb hand on cream stock imported from England. At the top was the Higgins crest, a pretentious little vanity created by his great-grandfather decades ago. The gold embossed emblem of an eagle winked in the strong sunlight of late afternoon. Rand stood by the window to read the note.

  Another invitation, of course. She was constantly trying to broaden his social horizons, trolling the elite gatherings of the city like fishermen trolled Lake Michigan for pike, and setting her netted catch before Rand.

  The trouble was, he thought wryly, that after a while the catch began to stink. It wasn’t that he had no interest in social advancement—he knew as well as anyone that, in his business, connections mattered. It was just that he found them tedious and, deep down, hurtful.

  This evening’s soiree was a reception for a popular politician, arranged by Jasper Lamott, who also happened to be on the board of the Union Trust. Lamott’s group, a conservative organization called the Brethren of Orderly Righteousness, was raising funds to oppose a bill before the legislature giving women dangerously broad rights to file suit against their own husbands. Like all decent men, Rand was alarmed by the rapid spread of the women’s suffrage movement, which was causing families to break apart all across the country. He believed women were best suited to their place as keepers of hearth and home, with men serving as providers and protectors. Perhaps he would attend the event after all. He would most certainly make a generous donation to the cause. The fact that women no longer knew or respected their place had brought him no end of trouble, and he supported those who labored to correct the situation for society in general.

  Taking advantage of a rare lull in the day’s activities, he turned to the picture window, with its leaded fanlights. Resting his hands on the cool marble windowsill, he looked out.

  It was a dazzling spring afternoon, the sunlight shimmering across the lake and illuminating the neatly laid-out streets of the business district. Across from the bank was a park surrounded by a handsome wrought-iron fence. In the center, a larger-than-life statue of Colonel Hiram B. Hathaway commemorated his heroism in the War Between the States. Slender poplar and maple trees lined the walkways. The green of the grass was particularly intense. Newcomers to town often commented on the deep emerald shade of the grass in the rebuilt city. Some theorized that the Great Fire of ‘71 left the soil highly fertile, so that all the new growth was surpassingly healthy.

  Rand looked down at his scarred hands and felt the ache of the old unhealed injury in his shoulder.

  He started to turn away from the window to neaten his desk for the next appointment when he spied something that made him pivot back and stare. Out in the street, wobbling along like a pair of circus performers, were two bicyclists. It was a common enough sight of late. Bicycles were all the rage, and recent improvements in the design had made the new models slightly less hazardous than the extreme high-wheelers. In the lead rode a black-haired woman, followed by a scruffy little boy on a child-size bicycle of his own.

  They looked absurd, yet he couldn’t take his gaze away. Patently absurd. The woman’s dress was all rucked up in the middle, bloomers bared to the knees for anyone to see. The boy resembled a beggar in patched knickers and a flat cap set askew atop his curly brown hair.

  Yet even so, the sight of the child struck Rand in the only soft spot left inside him. The only place the fire hadn’t burned to hard, numb scar tissue. The lad looked to be about the age Christine would have been, had she lived.

  Briefly Rand shut his eyes, but the memories pursued him as they always did. The images from the past were inside him, and he could never shut them out. He was filled with bitter regrets, and they had made him a bitter man, the sort who resented the sight of a healthy young boy and an audacious woman riding bicycles.

  Each morning when he woke up, he played a cruel and terrible game with himself. He imagined how old Christine would be. He imagined the little frock she would wear, and how the morning sunlight would look shining down on her bright curls. He imagined having breakfast with her; she would probably still favor graham gems with cream. And each day, before he left for the office, he would imagine the sweetness of his daughter’s kiss upon his cheek.

  Then he would force himself to open his eyes and face the harsh truth.

  He opened his eyes now and studied the only picture he kept in his office. Gilt cherubs framed a photograph of Christine at fourteen months of age, clutching a favorite blanket in her left hand, startled by whatever antics the photographer had performed to get her attention. As soon as the flash had gone off in the pan, Rand recalled, she’d burst into tears of fright, but the picture showed the child who had brought him the ultimate joy with the simple fact of her existence.

  He pulled in an unsteady breath. There were some moments when it was hard to resist wishing he’d lingered longer with his daughter each morning, watching the play of sunlight in her wispy curls.

  He glared at the outrageous woman on the bicycle, resenting her for having the one thing he could never get back.

  She wobbled to a halt in front of the bank building and dismounted gracelessly, launching herself off the bicycle like a cowboy being bucked from a horse. The lad was more nimble, landing on both feet with catlike lightness.

  They leaned their bicycles against the brass-headed hitch post the bank had installed for the convenience of well-heeled customers. Then the black-haired woman shook out her skirts, straightened her ridiculous hat and marched up the marble steps to the bank. Her son came, too, clinging to her gloved hand.

  Rand noticed something vaguely familiar about the woman. A chill of apprehension sped through him, and something made him pick up the file his secretary had delivered, containing the papers pertinent to his next appointment. He untied the brown satin ribbon and flipped open the file.

  His next appointment was with someone he hadn’t thought about in years, but whom he’d never quite forgotten: Lucy Hathaway.

  What the devil was she doing, applying to him for a loan extension?

  What the hell did she need a loan for, anyway?

  And what was her name now that she was a wife and mother?

  Some days, he thought, scowling down at Lucy Hathaway’s file, banking offered unexpected challenges.

  He stood behind his desk and waited for Crowe to show her in. She arrived like a small tempest, wrinkled skirts swinging, the feather on her hat bobbing over her brow and the little boy in tow. The lad stared openly at him, then whispered, “He’s a giant, Mama, just like—”

  “Hush,” she said quickly. But her manner was all business as she held out her hand. “Mr. Higgins, how do you do?”

  Oh, he remembered that husky, cultured voice from their first meeting that long-ago evening.
He remembered that direct, dark-eyed stare, that challenging set to her chin. He remembered how provocative he had found her, how intrigued he’d been by her unconventional ways.

  He remembered that she’d asked him to be her lover. And he remembered the look on her face when she learned he was married.

  As he offered her a chair, he knew he would not have to worry about her being attracted to him now, scarred and dour creature that he had become. She gave his imperfect face, camouflaged with a mustache these days, a polite but cursory glance, nothing more.

  “Very well, thank you,” he said, then glanced pointedly at the boy, who boldly peered around the plain leather-and-wood office, looking like mischief waiting to happen. “And this is…?”

  “My daughter, Margaret,” said Lucy.

  Margaret stuck out a grubby hand. “How do you do? My friends call me Maggie.”

  Rand was thoroughly confused now. She called her son Margaret? Then it struck him—the child in the rough knickers, short hair and flat bicycle cap was a little girl. He tried not to look too startled. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Maggie.”

  “I’m afraid I had no choice but to bring her along,” Lucy said. “Ordinarily there’s someone to look after her when I have meetings.”

  “But today is Grammy Vi’s dominoes day,” Maggie said.

  She really was a rather pretty child beneath the bad haircut and shapeless clothing. He tried to picture her in a little pinafore done up in ribbons and bows, but she moved too fast for him to form a picture. She darted around the office, spinning the globe and lifting a paperweight so that a breeze from the open side window swept a sheaf of papers to the floor.

  “Maggie, don’t touch anything,” Lucy said half a second too late.

  “No harm done.” Rand bent to retrieve the papers. At the same time, the little girl squatted down to help. Their hands touched, and she caught at his, rubbing her small thumb over the shiny scar tissue there.

  “Did you hurt yourself?” she asked, her face as open as a flower.

  “Maggie—”

  “It’s all right,” Rand said with rare patience. He was accustomed to people staring, and to youngsters who didn’t know any better asking questions. Some children turned away in fright, but not this one. She regarded him with a matter-of-fact compassion that comforted rather than discomfited. He studied her small, perfect hand covering his large, damaged one. “I did hurt myself,” he said, “a long time ago.”

  “Oh.” She handed him the rest of the papers. “Does it still hurt?”

  Every day.

  He straightened up, put the papers back under the paperweight, then saw Crowe standing in the doorway.

  “Is everything all right, sir?” Crowe asked.

  “Everything’s fine,” Rand said.

  “I wondered if the little b—”

  “Miss Maggie would love to join you in the outer office,” Rand said hastily, cutting him off. He winked at Maggie. “Mr. Crowe is known to keep a supply of peppermints in his desk, for special visitors.”

  “Can I, Mama?” Maggie’s eyes sparkled like blue flames, and suddenly she didn’t look at all like a boy.

  “Run along,” Lucy said. “Don’t get into anything.”

  After the door closed, Rand said, “Congratulations. You have a very lively little girl.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You and your husband must be very proud of her.”

  “I’m afraid Maggie’s father is deceased,” she said soberly.

  His heart lurched. “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “Thank you, but I never knew the man,” she replied. Then she laughed at his astonished expression. “Forgive me, Mr. Higgins. I’m doing a poor job explaining myself. Maggie is my adopted daughter. She was orphaned in the fire of ‘71.”

  “Ah, now I see.” What a singular woman she was, adopting an orphan on her own. Months after the fire, Rand had actually considered taking in an orphaned child or two, but discovered he had no heart for it. Losing Christine had taken away all he’d ever had to give to a child.

  “I consider myself fortunate,” Lucy went on, “for I never did encounter a man I wanted to spend my life with, and this way I simply have no need of one.”

  “Lucky you.”

  Her face colored with a vivid blush, like a thermometer filling with mercury, and Rand knew he’d made his point. Clearly she now remembered the outrageous proposition she’d made to him at their last meeting.

  Perhaps she recalled it as vividly as he did. No matter how hard he tried, he hadn’t forgotten the forbidden attraction that had flared between them. She’d been the steel to his flint, two entirely different substances that struck sparks off each other.

  “Tell me,” he said, “do you often gallivant about town on bicycles?”

  “I’ve never been accused of gallivanting before,” she said with a little laugh. “I find it a useful means of transportation. Our bicycles are the most modern ever, built by an acquaintance of mine. Mr. Gianinni made them as prototypes for the Centennial Exhibition this July. The design still has a ways to go but at least the cycles are less ornery than horses.”

  “I see.”

  “They eat less, too, and I don’t have to stable them.”

  He straightened the papers on his desk in preparation for getting down to business. He regarded Lucy Hathaway with a mixture of disapproval and interest, feeling drawn to her in spite of himself. She dressed her daughter in trousers and rode a bicycle. Yet she had the most fascinating dark eyes he’d ever seen, eyes that penetrated deep as she inspected him with unblinking curiosity.

  It had taken him years to inure himself to the staring of strangers and acquaintances alike. Now Lucy’s perusal made him freshly aware of the old wounds. “Is something the matter?” he asked.

  “I was just wondering,” she said, “if you knew you were missing a cuff link.”

  In spite of everything, Rand felt a short bark of laughter in his throat, but he swallowed it. Here she sat, looking at a monster, and her only observation was that he was missing a cuff link. “A habit of mine,” he said. “Being left-handed, I tend to drag my cuff through the ink as I write, so I roll my sleeve back when I work.”

  “I see. It’s unusual to be left-handed.”

  “Indeed so.” It was the one habit Rand’s father hadn’t been able to break him of as a boy, though his father had tried extreme measures to get him to conform in all things. “But I assure you, I am a very ordinary man.”

  “I’m pleased to hear that, Mr. Higgins. Shall we get started?” She peeled off her gloves. He should have watched her without any particular interest, but instead he found the operation intriguing. With unhurried movements, she rolled the thin brown leather down the inside of her wrist over the palm of her hand. Then she neatly bit the tip of her middle finger, her small white teeth gently tugging at the leather.

  Rand had the discomfiting feeling that he was watching a private ritual. The strange thing was, she never took her eyes off him as she worked the glove free, finger by finger, her red-lipped mouth forming a soft O as her little nipping teeth took hold of the leather. He found himself remembering her views on free love; she probably had a stable of lovers at her beck and call.

  Feeling suddenly hostile, he picked up a steel-nibbed pen and noted the date and time on her loan file. “Indeed,” he said. “Down to business. I confess I’m surprised to see you here, Miss Hathaway. You’ll forgive me for saying so, but it’s well-known that you come from a family with quite a noteworthy fortune.”

  She smiled, but there was no humor in the expression. “I come from a family better at preserving appearances than finances. I will be blunt, Mr. Higgins. My father was killed in the Great Fire, his fortune burned to nothing. My mother and I were left destitute. With what little I had, I established The Firebrand—that’s my bookshop.”

  The name of her establishment didn’t surprise him in the least. Neither, in fact, did her enterprising nature. The usual response for
a woman who found herself in dire straits was to hunt down a husband with a worthy fortune. But Lucy Hathaway was an unusual woman.

  “And that is your purpose today, to discuss the loan on your shop.”

  “Yes, sir, it is.”

  In the outer office, a thud sounded, followed by the patter of running feet and a gale of childish laughter.

  Lucy looked over her shoulder. “Oh, dear—”

  “Please, don’t concern yourself. Mr. Crowe enjoys children. Occasionally.”

  “Thank you for understanding. I wouldn’t ordinarily bring Maggie to a business meeting, but unfortunately, I find myself without a wife, so I have brought my daughter along. What luxury that would be, to have a wife. Perhaps a woman should aspire to have one rather than to be one.” She touched the edge of the desk. “Have you any children, Mr. Higgins?”

  “I—” He would never learn the proper way to answer that question. “No. I do not.”

  “But if you did, they would certainly be left in the care of your wife while you attend to business,” she said.

  “Miss Hathaway—”

  “I apologize. I sometimes get carried away with my own ideas.”

  He could not recall the last time he’d spoken to a woman who was so irritating—or so entertaining. But of course he could recall it, he reminded himself. It was the last time he’d met Lucy Hathaway.

  The sooner he concluded his business with her, the better. Perusing the profit and loss statements, he tapped his pen on the file. “Please remember, it is my business to cultivate productive loans for this institution.”

  “I was never in any danger of forgetting it, Mr. Higgins.”

  Her comment assured him that she knew exactly what was coming.

  Bluntly he said, “I don’t believe a woman alone is capable of managing a business on the scale you envision for your bookshop.”

  “I have managed for three years.”

  “And you’ve fallen deeper into debt each year.”

  “That’s not unusual in a new enterprise,” she countered.

  “I see no end in sight.” He flipped to a recent balance sheet. “Your receipts show no sign of outpacing your expenditures. Eventually your credit will be cut off, artery by artery.” He pressed his hands together, peering at her over his scarred fingers. “It sounds harsh, but that is the way of commerce. Businesses fail every day, Miss Hathaway. There is no shame in it.”