by Susan Wiggs
Deborah spoke aloud, but she couldn’t even hear herself. She gritted her teeth and sucked in breath after breath of the hot, filthy air. They reached an intersection where the crowd thickened. A runaway cart, driverless and pulled by a panic-stricken horse, careened into the crowd. Deborah felt the maid’s hand torn from her own, and for a moment a gap separated them. Then a flood of people flowed into the gap, engulfing the lost woman, and Deborah could only go on.
She recognized the street that ran along the edge of the Catholic cemetery. Two blocks beyond that lay the lakefront park. People hurried faster, eager to reach the safety of the water. Deborah kept her head down, the shawl pulled up over her hair. She darted glances here and there, praying the wild man would not see her. Perhaps she had managed to elude him. If so, it was the only lucky thing that had happened to her in days.
She wondered what in heaven’s name the man could have been thinking. What would prompt him to burst upon her father, intent on murdering him in the midst of a catastrophe? Her father had assumed the man was a looter. No doubt there was plenty of that going on in the city tonight. But the insane man had not shown any interest in robbing the Sinclair house. He seemed focused only on killing her father. He had known her father’s name. Had mentioned a place…an island?
The memory of the intruder made her recoil, and bitter bile rose in her throat. She fought down the need to be sick, wishing, not for the first time in her life, that she was made of sterner stuff. No one had ever taught her how to contend with matters such as how to escape an insane murderer in the midst of a fire of Biblical proportions. Or how to find her father, borne God-knew-where in a runaway carriage. Or how to survive the night.
Each time she heard the clop of hooves or the grind of cart wheels, she checked to see if it was her father. But she never saw him. She could do no more than hope he had brought the team under control and headed toward the lake. From there, he would travel northward to his summer estate. The trouble was, the streets were clogged with fallen rubble and fleeing people. Landmarks crumbled even as she passed.
She wondered what he thought had become of her. In the sudden confusion of the collapsing roof, the gunman and the spooked horses, he might be imagining any number of fates. She hoped madly that he had not tried to fight his way back to the house on Huron Avenue to search for her. The whole district, once a tree-lined bastion of fashionable mansions, was now engulfed in flames.
“I’ll be all right, Father,” she said under her breath, then nearly choked on the irony of her own words. “If tonight doesn’t kill me, I’ll be all right.” She intended to get to the lakeshore and work her way northward. Perhaps she would find a driver to take her to the summer place. She would find her father at Avalon. She had to believe that.
She hoped he would believe it, too. But there was no reason for him to consider her capable of surviving. Arthur Sinclair had raised her to be as useless and ornamental as a rose in a corn patch. All she was and all she knew were those things useful to the wife of a wealthy man. She was known to be accomplished, according to the glowing reports from Miss Boylan’s. But those accomplishments had to do with ballroom dancing or doing needlepoint or reciting poetry in French. None of which was likely to help her survive the fire destroying a whole city.
Her thin-soled Italian shoes were not made for trudging any distance, and her feet quickly grew blistered and sore on the rubble-strewn roadway. She had little sense of direction, having been chauffeured all her life, so she simply followed the general direction of the surging mob. A man leading a brace of horses thrust her aside. Something in the way he pushed at her shoulder made her jump back and scream with panic, slamming against a building. She shut her eyes as the horses passed, telling herself to calm down.
At a fork in the road, she saw people rushing along each branch of the split. A decision. She had to make a decision. What a remarkably novel notion.
She had no idea which was the quickest path to the lake. It was dark up ahead, indicating that the fire had not yet reached the north shore. For no particular reason, she took the left branch and found herself hurrying in a crowd of people, some of them in nightclothes, their arms burdened with hastily snatched possessions, their sooty faces pinched with fright. No one had been prepared for a fire of this speed and intensity.
Keeping her head down, she hurried along a street lined by older buildings that housed shops and saloons burning from the roof down. A street-level window shattered as she passed it. Ducking instinctively to avoid the flying splinters, she felt a rush of heat and the sting of stray shards of glass on her face. Choking, her eyes streaming, she wiped her bloodied hand on her skirt and moved on.
A high-pitched yelp pierced through the roar and din of the fire. She peered into the window of a dry goods shop and saw a mongrel dog scratching frantically at the glass pane. For some reason, in the midst of this rush of humanity, Deborah’s heart went out to the creature.
Darkness shrouded the abandoned shop, yet at the back of the room she detected the hungry glow. Within moments, the shop would be afire. She urged herself move on, but the dog’s frenzied barking caught at her. She tried the shop door and found it locked.
“Help,” she said, turning to the first man who came along. “You must help this poor creature!”
The man, burdened with a clock and a bottle of liquor, glanced into the window. “It’s only a dog,” he said, not even slowing his pace. “Best worry about saving yourself, miss.”
“Please—” she began, but he was already gone.
Deborah was not sure what to do. She had never rescued a dog from a fire before. She had never even met a dog before. Her father had commissioned her eighteen-year-old portrait to be done with her holding an ugly little pug dog, but she had posed with a porcelain model, not the real thing.
The trapped mongrel scratched at the window with undiminished vigor. Deborah gave a sob of frustration, then took off her shawl, wrapped it around her hand and pounded at the window. The panes rattled but didn’t crack. The dog feinted back and cringed in confusion, then started yelping again. Nearly weeping in desperation, Deborah shut her eyes, turned her face away and whacked the window with all her might. The glass shattered and a blast of heat exploded from the building. The dog came out as if shot from a cannon. She caught it in her arms, hardly able to believe it had survived her bumbling rescue attempt.
The dog leaped out of her grasp and shied away in a panic. She put out her hand, but the creature just snapped at her finger.
“Come on, then,” she said. The dog hesitated until a coal dray clattered past, nearly crushing it beneath an iron-banded wheel. Then the mongrel sprang back into Deborah’s arms. It was a smelly, scruffy thing, but she savored its lively warmth as she struggled on through the street. She had gone a full block before she became aware that somewhere along the way she had lost her shawl. She’d probably dropped it after breaking the window.
She cast about furtively, looking for the wild man, and to her relief she did not see him. She pushed on, still holding the little dog. Nothing felt real to her. It was a night out of hell. It was what she had imagined war to be. Terror and wounded refugees and the sense that the world was being ripped to pieces. Only the hope that she might find a way to her father and their home on the lake kept her going.
At last she reached the rockbound shore of Lake Michigan. The water stretched out endlessly before her, a churning field of ink. The howling wind whipped up wavelets that reflected the towering fire. The water itself resembled a sea of flame. The lake bristled with ships’ masts and the smokestacks of steamers. Hundreds of vessels had gathered to witness the spectacle. Boats plied back and forth between the lighthouse and the pier, rescuing people and belongings.
For as far as the eye could see, the lakeshore teemed with refugees and conveyances, barnyard animals and pets running willy nilly through the night. People had waded out into the water to escape the blizzard of sparks and flying brands of flame. Deborah had no idea what to
do. She tried to press northward, but it was a struggle hampered by the crush of humanity, the chilly water sloshing at the shore and various landings and piers jutting out into the lake. At last she could go no farther, for the way was blocked by a jetty of sharp black rocks.
She simply stood still, hemmed in by family groups clinging together amidst an outer circle of coaches, carts and barrows. She hugged the small mongrel dog to her chest, then, lifting her face, observed the burning city with a solemn sense of shock and awe. The flames formed a vast inverted bowl of unnatural light over a huge area. There was something mystical and magnificent about the conflagration. Others around her seemed to share her hushed awe, her openmouthed silence. There was simply nothing to say. There were no words to speak in the face of a disaster so vast and so all-consuming.
What had become of her father? His beautiful mansion? His business offices in the city? What had become of the only world she had ever known?
Shaking free of the spell cast by the giant fire, she looked around, scanning the crowd for a familiar face and keeping an eye out for the murderer. She wondered who these people were, where they all came from. Chicago was a city of three hundred thousand souls. Most of them had probably lost everything. Would they simply pick up and go on? How would they ever sift through the rubble of the fallen city and find their former lives?
Like phoenixes rising from the ashes, survivors would emerge from the wreckage of the burned-out city. Criminals awaiting hanging might run free. Wives who hated their husbands might escape their torment. Rich men would find themselves suddenly penniless. A poor man might come into wealth he never imagined. In the face of a fire, everyone was equal. It put her on the same level as the criminal who had abducted her, she thought with a shudder.
A tantalizing notion came to her, subtle as a whispered suggestion. What if Philip Ascot never found her again? What if she was lost forever to Arthur Sinclair? Then she would never have to battle her father over marrying Philip.
Deborah tried to imagine what it would be like to be nothing, nobody, to belong to no one. Immediately a wave of resentment washed over her. In running and hiding from an unwanted marriage, she would forfeit her father. Her friends. Her life. No man should have the power to do that to her. Yet still the fantasy held a bizarre appeal. If she were to simply disappear, would she even be missed? What would it do to her father? She honestly didn’t know. She had the sense that he valued her as a commodity, but as a daughter? She remembered back to their moment of connection in the study and thought perhaps he loved her in his blustering, bombastic fashion. Even so, losing her would not change the shape and color of his world. Her father would grieve for a time, then give himself over to business ventures. Philip would find some other heiress to marry. Her friends might honor her memory, but they would find paths of their own to follow.
The fact was, she was not a necessary cog in the wheel of anyone’s life. Remove her, and everything would go on uninterrupted. She wondered what it would be like to be needed in the way this small lost dog needed her. To be the single element necessary for its survival was an awesome thought. She quite doubted that she was equal to the task.
She shivered, feeling a chill wind off the lake, and pulled the dog closer. She thought about her friends, Lucy and Phoebe and Kathleen. It seemed a lifetime ago that they had been getting ready for the evening’s entertainment. Where were they now? she wondered. She prayed they had survived, that unlike her they had realized the danger of the fire and stayed safe away from the city.
Somewhere in the crowd, a baby cried and a woman’s voice spoke in soothing tones. Gradually people began talking, planning, worrying aloud. Prayer and speculation. Arguments and accusations. The babble of voices crescendoed, became deafening. With no one to talk to, Deborah felt more alone than ever. Still holding the dog, she picked her way up and over the rock and rubble jetty, wondering how far she would be able to walk before exhaustion claimed her.
Her clothes were tattered, her feet sore, her hands bleeding. Every part of her ached, right down to the roots of her hair. She wondered when the dawn would come, and what the day would bring. Staggering along the shore, she had to make a wide bow around the mob. She found herself wading into the surf and felt lake water swamp her, swirling around her ankles, stinging and then numbing her raw and wounded flesh.
Then, through the babble of German, Polish and Norwegian, through the brogues of Irish immigrants and the flat accents of native Chicagoans, she heard her name being called in a clipped, educated voice. “Deborah! Deborah, is that you? Deborah Sinclair!”
Her head snapped up and she scanned the lakeshore drive. A tall sleek coach was parked amid the drays and farm carts. A slender man in disheveled evening wear stood on the box, a long quirt in one gloved hand, the other hand cupped around his mouth. The wind stirred his blond hair and in the sky behind him, fire blossoms glowed.
Philip.
FIVE
The moment Deborah recognized her fiancé, everything seemed to be sucked out of her. She stood unmoving, so wracked by dull astonishment that she had frozen solid. Unable to reason. Unwilling to feel anything. There was Philip, looking as handsome and commanding as he had—was it only Saturday night? Now he was calling to her again, ordering her to come to him.
Only seconds earlier she had been thinking of a new life, a new start, unencumbered by expectations, promises and obligations, and her own sense that she had no purpose in life other than fulfilling her father’s intentions for her. Now she conceded, with a humble sense of defeat, that she had no idea how to make a life on her own.
As if in a trance, she picked her way toward Philip, her thoughts dissolving into a confused muddle. Shock and fatigue pushed her toward him, the only familiar face in a world gone mad. She felt as helpless as the dog had been, trapped behind the glass in a burning building, at the mercy of the only person willing to rescue her. The brief fantasy about disappearing swirled away; it had no more substance than the wisps of smoke hovering over the lake. It was time to go back to the life she had planned and to the man who would direct it for the rest of her days.
Chill gusts of lake-cooled wind chased after her as she moved slowly up the steep bank to the place where Philip waited, perched on the running board of a carriage. Numbing exhaustion closed over her. Lines began to blur. Resignation dulled her thoughts. Anything, she told herself, anything was preferable to the hellish night she had just endured.
At last Deborah reached him, reached this man she was scheduled to marry. This man who was regarded by polite society as the American version of royalty. This man who would give Arthur Sinclair grandchildren who would be accepted in the same circles as the Guggenheims and Vanderbilts.
Philip’s handsome face, so refined it was beautiful in the firelight, was her beacon. He extended a gloved hand. “Thank God I found you, darling.” He spoke in the mellifluous lazy drawl of a Harvard Porcellian clubman. “What a stroke of luck!”
She stared at the black leather hand reaching for her.
The long, elegant fingers twitched with impatience. “Come along, then,” he said. “I don’t intend to sit among riffraff all ni—damn!”
The small dog snapped at him. He glared at the creature, then at Deborah. “Where the devil did you get that?”
“From a shop. A burning shop…” Her mind was a screaming jumble. Disjointed thoughts flew past and disappeared before she could grasp them. She felt numb; she could barely speak.
“Never mind,” Philip said. “Just get rid of the filthy creature and take my hand. There’s a girl.”
The screaming in her head grew louder, yet like a sleepwalker, she obeyed. This was Philip, for heaven’s sake. Philip, whom she’d known since she was tiny. Who had suffered through ballroom dancing lessons with her, who had sat stiffly in her father’s study and promised to offer Deborah entree into the highest circles of society in exchange for her hand in marriage—and a staggering dowry.
She thrust aside the instinctual re
sistance that held her back. At Miss Boylan’s she had learned to dread scandal over all else—bodily injury, personal insult, wounds to the soul. Only the lowliest of breeds would make a scene. This lesson had been hammered into Deborah, so she set down the little dog. It danced about her feet and scrabbled its paws desperately at the hem of her skirts, but she ignored it, refused to look down.
Philip gave another expert flick of the whip. The dog yelped and scurried away, scampering under the carriage. Finally coming to her senses, she tried to go after the mongrel, bending low to peer beneath the conveyance. Philip reached for her, and his gloved hand closed around hers, tugging upward.
“Not so fast,” said a rough and terrible voice behind her. “She’s coming with me.”
The madman. Wild dark hair, battle in his eyes, he towered over the crowd gathered in the roadway.
Philip dropped her hand. “Clearly you’re mistaken,” he said with an incredulous bark of laughter. “Stand down, man. You’re in the way, and I’m in a hurry.”
“Philip, this man is a menace,” Deborah babbled. “He tried to murder my father!”
When the buckskin-clad man moved in closer, Philip swore and brandished the whip. The braided leather lashed out, but unlike the dog, the outlaw didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink. He merely put up a fist the size of a joint of roast beef and caught the whip in midstrike.
He hauled back with the motion of a seasoned fisherman, reeling Philip in like a trout. Philip spat a curse even as he fell forward off the carriage box. It was hard to tell if he collided by accident with the other man’s fist, or if the man actually threw the punch that knocked him cold. All Deborah knew for certain was that Philip Ascot IV gave an unhealthy groan and crumpled to the ground like a dropped sack of feed corn.