The Firebrand

by Susan Wiggs

  He braced himself for tears, but she was as stoic as any young man pulling himself up by his bootstraps. “You are looking at columns of numbers, Mr. Higgins,” she stated. “That’s your mistake.”

  “I don’t make mistakes in banking, Miss Hathaway.” His arrogance was justified. Sound judgment, strict rules and a tireless capacity for work formed the cornerstones of his success. Banking was his life, the source of his greatest satisfaction. He knew nothing else.

  “You should be looking at the heart of the matter, not just the numbers.”

  He tried not to seem patronizing as he leaned back in his chair to listen to her womanish ramblings.

  “There is something that I bring to the table,” she said, “that cannot be shown in any ledger. Something that will make the difference between success and failure.”

  “And what, pray, is that?”

  She leaned forward, pressing her dainty hands on the desk again. The angle of her pose proved the truth of what he had suspected the moment she’d walked into the room—she wasn’t wearing a corset. “Passion,” she said in her naturally husky voice.

  Rand cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon.”

  “Passion,” she repeated, pushing back from the desk. “That is what I have for my enterprise. You cannot put a value on it, but it is the most tangible of all my assets.”

  He tried not to stare at her uncorseted…assets. “And you contend that your passion for selling books will turn these figures around.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Have you any proof of that?”

  “I do. You see, my shop is not merely a place where people come to buy books.”

  “That would be entirely too simple.”

  She sniffed. “The Firebrand is a meeting place where people exchange ideas. They talk about the books they’ve read, and of course buy them.”

  “Then why aren’t you showing a profit?”

  “Look at my balance sheet. The foreign tariffs on my imports are exorbitant.”

  “Then why import foreign publications? Sell American works.”

  “Spoken as a true chauvinist. I’ll have you know I am the only bookseller in the area who carries French periodicals. Everyone else thinks they’re immoral, just as everyone else thinks the science tracts from Germany are ungodly and English periodicals are tedious. I proudly carry them all.”

  “And pay a small fortune in tariffs. Tell me more about these immoral French magazines. I’m fascinated.”

  She turned bright red but didn’t shrink from replying. “The most recent issue is about techniques of physical love. If you like, I could send you a copy.”

  “No, thank you.” He felt his face turning redder than hers. “We don’t all share your views on free love.”

  She grinned, but her blush deepened. “So you do remember.”

  He took refuge in anger. “Tell me, did you ever manage to find what you were looking for the night we met? Did you find a lover, Miss Hathaway?”

  “Of course,” she said, her hands twisting in her lap. “Dozens of them! Mainly Frenchmen, for obvious reasons.”

  “In that case, you should qualify for a reduction of your tariffs. They’re cutting into your profits.”

  “When it comes to the hearts and minds of my customers, sir, I can wait for profit.”

  The odd thing was, Rand realized, she did have a passion for what she was saying. She had built her shop out of idealistic dreams. A bookseller. What a perfect occupation for this woman. How she must love knowing what everyone was reading. How she must love telling people what they should read next.

  The receipts from the shop were unusually high, which indicated that she was indeed selling books. He suspected it was quite impossible to get away from Lucy Hathaway without buying at least one book.

  “An admirable sentiment,” he said, not allowing his judgment to be swayed by the force of her personality. “But the trouble is, the bank won’t wait. Your notes are due.”

  “I expect receipts to pick up,” she said as if she hadn’t heard him. “I’ve had lectures from some of the most respected leaders of our age—Miss Clementina Black, Mrs. Kate Chopin and Mrs. Lillian Paul in the past year alone.”

  “Radical activists are always a lucrative draw.”

  She dismissed his sarcasm with a wave of her hand. “I’ve been corresponding with Miss Harriet Beecher Stowe, who has agreed to present a lecture and sign books when she comes to Chicago.”

  “And this event is scheduled?”

  “Not…exactly. Miss Stowe is currently in South America, observing the mating habits of the Andean llama.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “I also create events for my customers to draw them into the shop. Mrs. Victoria Woodhull is coming for the Centennial March this summer, and last year, I set up a registry for voters.”

  He removed a newspaper clipping from the file. His predecessor had been thorough in keeping records on this particular client. “It says here you were arrested for encouraging women to register illegally to vote.”

  “And does it say that I protested the arrest on the grounds that I was simply exercising my constitutional rights?”

  “It says you created a public scandal.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “A public scandal occurs with every election in which women are denied the right to vote.”

  “According to this report, you had a mob of radical suffragists in your shop trying to corrupt decent women.”

  She laughed, looking genuinely incredulous. “I had a group of voting registrars, assisting American citizens in registering to vote.”

  “You were arrested.”

  “My constitutional rights were trodden upon.”

  “You were made to pay a fine.”

  “By a twisted, unfair, corrupt judge. And I never did pay.”

  He slapped the file shut. “So this shop is where you advocate free love and divorce on demand? Where you meet your lovers?”

  “So what if I do?” she retorted.

  “My point, Miss Hathaway, is that the loan committee is bound to view your so-called passion in quite a different light. To them, your actions will seem a sign of irresponsibility and immaturity, making you a bad risk.” He wondered why he was taking the time to explain all this when it should be a foregone conclusion. “I’m sorry, Miss Hathaway. The loan is due, and there can be no extension.”

  She sat very, very still. Her absolute stillness discomfited him. As did her direct stare. Finally she spoke. “I love my bookshop with a passion you will never understand. I don’t know why I’ve tried to explain it to you. Sir, you have a heart of stone. You have never loved a thing.”

  Her bald statement seared into him like a brand, igniting a rage and resentment he hadn’t known he possessed. “Love has nothing to do with it,” he snapped. “But I wouldn’t expect a woman to understand that. Like all of your sex, you are a creature governed by sentiment, not sense. You belong at home rather than struggling through a morass of crass commerce. Look to your duties as a mother, and leave the commerce to men.”

  “I have heard such views voiced before,” Lucy said, unaware of the absurd bobbing motion of the feather in her hat. “I have heard such views from Southerners who favor slavery. They claim slaves are incapable of looking after themselves and need to belong in bondage to men who will ‘care’ for them. Tell me, Mr. Higgins, do you favor slavery?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. No thinking man approves of slavery. It took a war to settle that, but it’s settled.”

  “Then perhaps it will take a war to settle rights for women.”

  “I don’t doubt that you shall do your part.” In spite of his outrage, he felt a reluctant compassion for her. “Look, Miss Hathaway. You seem a genuinely determined woman. Perhaps, given time, you might be able to eke out a living as a bookseller. But I’ll never convince my associates of that. They are a conservative lot, as intractable as they come.”

  She leaned forward again, her ey
es bright with optimism. “You must be my advocate, then, Mr. Higgins. You must convince them that I am a good risk.”

  “You’re 486 in arrears, Miss Hathaway. I cannot tell them it is light when it’s dark, or it’s Wednesday when it’s Friday.”

  “I see. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.” She shoved herself back from the desk. With the motion, her fingers pushed at the leather-and-felt ink blotter, and the single framed picture on his desk fell facedown.

  They both reached for it at the same time.

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “No harm done—”

  They both spoke at the same time.

  Their hands touched. And just for an instant, a current of recognition sizzled between them. Rand felt it all the way through him, hand and heart and body, and it astonished him. He hadn’t felt anything remotely like this in years.

  Lucy glanced down at the sepia-toned photographic portrait, but looked immediately back at him, eyes wide as if she, too, felt the bright heat of their connection. “I thought you said you had no children.”

  “I…” Clumsily he propped the picture up, facing him. “My daughter, Christine, was killed in the fire.”

  “Oh, good heavens.” She captured his hands in both of hers. “Oh, Mr. Higgins, I am so terribly sorry.”

  He sensed the questions she was too polite to ask aloud, the questions so many had asked with their suspicious stares. Where were you when your child was in danger? Why didn’t you save her?

  He’d asked himself the same questions every single day.

  He extracted his hands from hers, expecting her to take her leave. Instead she snatched up the portrait of Christine and stared at the picture as if she’d never seen a baby before. Her cheeks drained to a sick pallor, and she sank back down into her chair. “Mr. Higgins,” she said, “is it terribly painful to speak of your loss?”

  “Of course it is.”

  She shut her eyes, and her chin trembled. He was amazed at how moved she was. She’d never known Christine—she barely knew him—yet she looked devastated. “Sir, may I ask…what were the circumstances of your baby’s, uh, accident?”

  Rand knew he had every right to dismiss her question and order her from his office. But she seemed so genuinely distressed that he found himself, perversely, willing to speak of that night.

  “My wife—we left Christine in the care of a nurse at Sterling House. As you might recall, we attended a meeting at the Hotel Royale and stayed until it grew quite late.”

  “Yes,” she said faintly. “Yes, I did the same.”

  “By the time we realized the fire was heading our way, it was almost impossible to get through the city. Diana and I went on foot, and we nearly made it to Sterling House. But there was an explosion, a varnish factory.” Rand took another deep breath as nightmare images streaked through his mind. “I knew nothing until I awakened weeks later in a hospital. No one expected me to survive. But I…I did. I survived.”

  “And your wife?”

  “Diana recovered sooner than I. It was she who first heard about the disaster at Sterling House. The damage to the area was so great that very few…remains were recovered.” He and Diana had been strangers in the middle of the burnt-out city struggling to rebuild itself. No one came forward to comfort them in their loss, and those few who had probably didn’t recognize Rand, mummified by layers of bandages.

  Lucy got to her feet and took an awkward step backward. “I really must be going. I’m sorry we could not come to an accord. I’m sorry…for everything. Good day, Mr. Higgins.”

  Before he could even rise to see her out, she was gone. He turned to the window in time to see her and the little girl called Maggie wobbling down the street on their bicycles.

  Eight

  “I was transported by the book,” declared Mrs. Dottie Frey, bustling into the shop. “Utterly transported. I swan, I haven’t been so entertained since Mr. Frey decided to take up golf. Thank you for recommending it to me, Miss Hathaway.”

  “My pleasure, of course,” Lucy told her customer. “I’m delighted to hear you liked it.”

  “I count on your recommendations, dear.” Mrs. Frey, who hailed from Buffalo, was one of her favorite customers, always ready with a lively, insightful review of a book she’d just read.

  When she’d first come to the shop, Mrs. Frey had never read a novel. Her devoutly Baptist husband disapproved of secular entertainment. Lucy had invited her to join a discussion group of Hope Leslie by Catharine Maria Sedgwick, and the lady had been a devotee of reading ever since. Her husband, who loved his wife better than he loved conservative dogma, wisely held his tongue.

  “Tell me, has the author ever written any others?”

  On any normal day, Lucy would have taken great pleasure in leading Mrs. Frey to the fiction shelves. But today her smile felt stiff and forced as she went through the motions. “Mrs. Frey, you are in luck. Barbara Dodd is a very prolific writer, and we have several more of her titles in stock.”

  “Oh, I must have them.”

  All day long, Lucy had been battling a persistent feeling of dread. She tried to deny what she knew in her heart to be true, but her conscience wouldn’t leave her alone. Preoccupied, she led the way to the fiction shelves and climbed halfway up the wheeled brass ladder to reach the books.

  “Here you are. Fire on the Wind and Candle in the Window. Two of my favorites.”

  The bright, cherubic older lady took the books and hugged them to her chest. “Mr. Frey won’t be back from St. Louis for a week, and it’s wretchedly lonely without him. I don’t know what I’d do without a good book to read.” She flipped through the new volumes she’d chosen and sighed. “Ah, to be young again, as Beatrice was in the Stokely Hall series. I was such a hopeless twit when I was young, and I had such a wonderful time. There is something to be said for being a twit at times.”

  As Lucy wrapped the parcel, she held her smile in place with an effort.

  “So how have you been, dear?” Mrs. Frey inquired as she paid for her purchase. A mischievous gleam twinkled in her eye. “Any suitors come to call?” Mrs. Frey was an incurable romantic who believed in the happy endings of the novels she read.

  “Not this week,” Lucy said. They traded the exchange on a regular basis. It was well-known in the neighborhood that Lucy Hathaway, avowed crusader for free love, had no suitors. For years she’d been telling herself she didn’t need a man. She didn’t know what devilish impulse had possessed her to blithely lie to Mr. Higgins about her legions of French lovers. The truth was, men preferred women who were quiet and demure, not outspoken and ambitious. They liked women who were dainty and fair, not sharp-featured and dark.

  But Mrs. Frey had never been one to give up hope. “Look at me, dear,” she said, spreading her arms. “Plain as biscuit dough, I am, and always have been, but Mr. Frey saw something in me no one else saw. There’s someone out there for everyone. Look at Jane Eyre and poor Mr. Rochester, for heaven’s sake. They were both so troubled, yet so perfect for each other. And so shall you find someone—”

  “Mrs. Frey, you’re very kind, but I don’t need anyone.”

  “Nonsense. Every woman does. Every man does, too, so don’t go spouting your ideas about independent womanhood. Men and women need each other equally. That’s what equality is.”

  In spite of the huge matter weighing on her mind, Lucy laughed. “I give up, Mrs. Frey. You are right. You always are. Enjoy the books.”

  As her customer left, Lucy released the sigh she’d been holding in. Then she impulsively turned over the sign in the door, indicating that the shop was closed. It was only an hour to closing time anyway, and she hadn’t been busy. Some days, she needed quiet time for herself.

  Like today.

  She rushed over to the counter, where a little corner formed a work area. Snatching up a framed photograph, she stared at it with all her might. Her heart lurched, for there was no denying what she’d discovered.

  Her Maggie was not an orphan
after all.

  She was the daughter of Randolph Higgins.

  There could be no mistake, though Lucy had prayed for one. The picture on Higgins’s desk constituted incontrovertible evidence. She was undeniably the baby Lucy had rescued from the fire.

  Soon after the disaster, Lucy had a picture made for circulating to the papers and posting at the local orphanages and churches. Each day, she’d waited for someone to claim the little girl, but as the days stretched to weeks and then months, she’d concluded that Maggie’s family had perished in the fire.

  Lucy had greeted the notion with a certain guilty relief. She’d come to love the baby. As time went on, she stopped thinking about the missing parents, though every so often she would wonder at some unique aspect of Maggie. Where did she get her blue eyes, and why was she left-handed? Was her pert way of cocking her head an echo of her lost mother?

  A passerby peered in the shop window. Ordinarily Lucy would get up to greet a prospective customer with a smile and perhaps a tidbit about a new book, but today she couldn’t think about business. She couldn’t think about anything but the stunning discovery she’d made at the bank.

  She sank down into a chair behind the counter and buried her face in her hands. She could barely remember the bicycle ride home from the bank. While Maggie had chattered blithely away, Lucy’s entire being had been awash with fearful amazement. Upon returning to the shop, she’d sent Maggie off to play in the narrow row garden behind the house until Lucy’s mother returned from her dominoes game. Then Lucy had racked her brain, trying to decide what to do.

  Still undecided, she sat for a long time, her mind sluggish with shock. She felt a dull horror at her own thoughts.

  She was the only one who knew the truth about Maggie. The only one. And if she never told a soul…

  She heard the shop door open and shut. A swift instinct, driven by a sharp protectiveness, made her slap the photograph facedown on the desk.