Susan Wiggs Great Chicago Fire Trilogy Complete Collection

by Susan Wiggs

  Arthur had told them to begin with a search of the house and grounds. He had not allowed himself to think, to feel, as he made this request, for he knew what he was asking. The last he had seen of Deborah, she had raced out of the house while the burning roof collapsed over her head.

  But no remains had been found. No sign of her. The assumption was that she had escaped the fire. But to where?

  He picked his way through the broken remnants of the once-grand mansion. Hell of a thing, he thought, unable to decide how he felt about the loss. All the art and antiques, the fine things with which he had surrounded himself, had turned to ashes and embers.

  Somewhere down the block, a woman began to keen with a thin, chilling wail of loss. Her grief sliced like a sword through the layers of fog that shrouded the avenue. He couldn’t see her, but the sound she made cut into him, and his heart hurt with a cold fire.

  The clop of hooves caught his attention, and he turned. Two men in long black coats approached him. The elder wore a full salt-and-pepper beard, the younger an eyepatch. Arthur had known Allan Pinkerton for years, ever since Pinkerton had made his name exposing counterfeiters for the sheriff of Cook County. Nowadays his detective agency guarded against train robberies, labor uprisings, bank jobs and any private matter that promised a reward. Arthur admired the way Allan worked. He was swift and sure—even when he was wrong.

  “My operative, Price Foster,” Pinkerton said in his rolling Scottish brogue. His gaze swept over the devastation. “You were hit hard, Mr. Sinclair. I’m sorry to see it. Right sorry indeed.”

  “It’s my daughter, Deborah,” he blurted out. “She is…gone.”

  Gone. He had turned the moment over and over in his mind until he could see it like a stereogram. The gunman bursting in. Deborah sweeping down, an unlikely avenging angel, crashing into the intruder. The thunder of gunshot.

  It should have been so simple. The phaeton was waiting. He and Deborah should have driven away, leaving the madman to burn with the Chippendale furniture.

  Instead, something had gone wrong. She had lagged behind, somehow got separated from him. The next thing he knew, the whole of the alley had gone up in flames and the horses had bolted. The carriage had clattered several blocks along Chicago Avenue before he’d brought the horses under control. By then, the neighborhood was a sea of flame, the way back to his house impassable.

  He reported all this to Pinkerton in a flat, dispassionate tone.

  “So you last saw her in the alley. And the only other witness was the looter.”

  Again that icy burn in his heart. He stared down at his shoes. A fine gray dust powdered them, and the cuffs of his trousers, settling in the creases. “He wasn’t—” Sinclair stopped. How much to reveal? “He claimed he was from up north. Isle Royale, in Lake Superior. I tried to open a mine there last summer, but it ended in a mishap.”

  “A mishap.”

  “There was an explosion, ruled an accident. I think the gunman—”

  “He had a gun?”

  “Seemed to be on a mission of revenge. There really wasn’t time—” He stopped again, appalled to hear a quaver in his voice. “I want her found,” he concluded. “Today.”

  “Sir, I’d like to make a note of her appearance,” Price Foster said, taking out a folded paper and the stub of a pencil.

  “I brought this down from the lake house.” Arthur handed him a small photograph of Deborah on a draped stool, posing with an absurd porcelain pug dog. The painter who had later rendered the image in oils had made both the girl and the dog look real and natural. It struck Arthur that, in the photograph, Deborah looked as stiff and lifeless as the statue.

  But there was no denying her beauty; he could see that by Foster’s reaction to the picture. Everyone had that reaction to Deborah—a moment of intense, startled admiration, such as one might feel seeing the first rose of summer.

  Arthur glossed over his last conversation with his daughter. There was no need to hash out their quarrel for this stranger. Despite the eyepatch, Price Foster had a keen way about him, as if he knew thoughts that weren’t spoken. “Sometimes people who disappear,” he said matter-of-factly, “don’t want to be found.”

  “That’s not the case this time,” Arthur snapped. Yet still he was haunted by Deborah’s unhappiness that night as she had begged him to let her break her engagement to Philip.

  As Foster questioned him further, making notes, a coach lurched crookedly to a halt in front of the iron gates. Philip Ascot approached with long loose strides. He was impeccably dressed, not a fair hair out of place. It was as if the fire could not affect a person like him.

  Arthur looked at this man and saw everything he wanted for his daughter—an aristocrat. An Old Settler gentleman to whom misfortune simply did not happen. Ascot had never known a day of want. Not the cramping hunger of an orphan picking through kitchen middens outside a rich man’s house or the shriveling cold of a January night spent huddled in a woodshed. He didn’t have that darkness, that blight on his soul that shadowed Arthur no matter how much money he spent gilding the past. With a man like Ascot, Deborah’s days would be filled with light and frivolity, something Arthur could never give her. God Almighty. What was he going to say to Ascot?

  “I saw her,” Philip said. “I saw what happened.”

  As he explained the incident in Lincoln Park, the icy fire in Arthur’s chest flared and burned with a forceful, steady ache.

  ELEVEN

  The ancient timbers of the old fort rose in a picket line against the deepening amber sky. Hurrying along the plank boardwalk, Tom raised a hand now and then when he spied a familiar face. Since founding the trading post on Isle Royale, he had done a good bit of business at Sault Sainte Marie. It was a polyglot border town, bracketed by the red ensign of Canada, and the stars and stripes flying over Fort Brady. A traveler was likely to hear English, French, Chippewa or a patois of all three. The voyageurs and coureurs de bois were probably little different from the trappers who had founded the portage two centuries before. Clad in hide and fur, they sat in the dim, cramped tavern drinking toasts with big city businessmen from Milwaukee, Detroit, Duluth and Cleveland.

  The whores were as friendly as ever, and Tom was no stranger to their plump, accommodating arms. This time, however, he passed them by with a wink and a wave. He paused to hand a few coppers to an old Indian holding out a trembling hand. The Chippewas had adjusted less readily to the rush of miners, lumbermen and fishermen through the Sault. Seining for fish in the rapids, gathering wild rice from the marshes and portaging furs around the rapids had suited them fine for untold centuries. Copious amounts of cheap whiskey did them far less good.

  Martin Eagle had always preferred trading to drinking. Proprietor of the busy company store, he drove a hard bargain and had little truck with the men reeling and puking on the boardwalk outside. He greeted Tom with a cordial nod. “Headed back up to the island?” he asked.

  Tom nodded. “I need a few things.”

  “Won’t be long until ice-up,” Eagle said as Tom set a large crate on the scarred wooden counter.

  “That’s a fact.” He rattled off the usual list of provisions—flour, salt, coffee, beans and oil. Tom filled the crate with some fresh apples and a round of cheese. “I’ll need some soap,” he said to Martin Eagle. “And a razor and strop,” he added, absently rubbing his rough cheek.

  Eagle handed him a cake of oily lye soap wrapped in parchment. Tom hesitated, then handed it back. “Uh, do you have something that smells a little better?”

  Eagle shrugged and tossed him a round cake that reeked of lilacs. “Nice Canadian lady makes that.”

  “These bed linens?” Tom asked, indicating a stack of folded fabric on a shelf.

  “Yeah.” The proprietor handed him a set. “Comes with a featherbed, too.”

  “A featherbed?”

  “You know, like a mattress.”

  “An actual mattress,” Tom muttered under his breath.

  “What?”<
br />
  “Nothing. I’ll take the linens and the feather mattress.”

  While Eagle rolled out a length of newsprint for wrapping, Tom browsed the shop. “What’s this?” he asked, handling a thin garment between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Ladies’ unmentionables,” Eagle said. “Real batiste and lace.”

  “I’ll take that, too.”

  Martin Eagle sent him a wink and a grin. “You laying in for a bride, Tom Silver?”

  “Christ, no.” Tom felt his neck and ears turn red. “Got a passenger aboard the Suzette. Female passenger,” he added. “Reckon I need some ready-to-wears.”

  Eagle’s grin widened, showing teeth in varying degrees of decay. “Why the hell didn’t you say so?” The diminutive man took a step back, crossing his arms and tucking his hands under them. “You have no idea how to provision for a woman, do you?”

  Tom gestured at the crate. “Soap, linens, unmentionables. What else do I need?”

  Eagle guffawed, then bolted into action, selecting gloves and a bonnet, ready-made plain dresses and fluffy white objects Tom could fathom no purpose for. “I don’t need all that gear,” he said. “It’s only temporary.”

  “Perhaps so. But a woman’s pride is forever.” Martin Eagle took delight in provisioning Tom with dozens of ladylike objects.

  Tom had no idea what most of the things were. Where he came from, the women made their own underthings and soap and such, and the men didn’t hear a word about it. But Deborah Sinclair was different. High-strung, headstrong, skittish—qualities he couldn’t stand in a woman.

  * * *

  At dawn the day after passing through the locks, the steamer set a course for the west. Deborah felt the engines churn to a high speed. Through a narrow louvered vent, she could sense a subtle difference in the wind and the current. The water, curiously enough, smelled different. Fresher, perhaps, with the green scent of the great pine forests riding the breeze. She had never been north of the locks, and she realized that this would be the strangest and wildest part of the voyage for her. Farther from home.

  Thoughts of the strange and the wild seemed to summon Tom Silver. The dog growled malevolently at the intruder, then went scampering out of the room. She heard the tread of giant feet. She tensed up, feeling hideously vulnerable. Ignoring him, she stayed abed and kept her back turned. Her heart felt numb from the effort of hating him. She could hear him banging around, and curiosity burned inside her, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of turning to look. She made a game of trying to figure out what he was doing based on the noises he was making.

  The metallic bump. The loud slosh of pouring water. The crackle of paper, as if a parcel were being unwrapped. More pouring water and, amazingly, the warm smell of steam. Was he making tea?

  His harsh, impersonal hand poked at her shoulder. She forced herself not to flinch. “We’re under way,” was all he would tell her. Then he left the cabin, pulling the small door shut behind him.

  Slowly, cautiously, Deborah rolled over. On the floor sat an oval-shaped hip bath of steaming water. Next to that lay a sea sponge, a square cake of surprisingly fragrant soap and a towel. Amazed, she lifted a folded garment to discover it was a set of fresh bed linens. Under that lay a huge, puffy featherbed. In another parcel she discovered a shift, a chemise and a blue wool dress. She also found thick woolen stockings, a nightgown and woolen underclothes. Things to wear in winter. Dear God. Was it possible she could be a prisoner that long?

  A cold shudder seized her. She wondered if he was tidying her up for a reason. Maybe he intended to sell her, perhaps trade her to lake pirates or backwoodsmen. Her imagination ran wild, and she nearly resolved to stay unkempt and dirty just to defy him.

  Almost.

  The hot bath beckoned her with wispy fingers of steam. Uttering a soft cry of gratitude, she stripped off her clothes and sank into the bath. The tub didn’t allow for movement, but by crouching and ducking this way and that, she managed to clean her hair and every inch of her skin. A bath had never, ever felt so good. Not even in the huge marble tub in her father’s mansion. Not even when she was attended by three maids. Here, all alone in this cramped shipboard bunk, she put her head back and felt the water trickle like silk over her throat. All the ash and grime of the fire flowed away, and she nearly laughed aloud with the sheer relief of being clean once again.

  She stayed in the bath until the water grew tepid and Smokey scratched impatiently at the door. Wrapping herself in a towel, she picked up the clothes, turning each garment this way and that. The ready-made clothes were shapeless and lacking in any discernible style, but crisply clean. They were made of cotton or wool rather than silk or satin, but seemed serviceable enough. She put on each piece, grateful to discover that the fastenings of the chemise and shift were located in the front. Garments like this, she reflected, were designed for women who did not have maids to do them up in the back.

  The wool dress, of a quaint print of small blue cornflowers, fit like a loose sack. She pushed back the sleeves, tugged the sash snugly around her and felt as fine as a princess. She did her hair as best she could, combing through the damp locks and pinning them back with the few celluloid pins Lightning Jack had given her.

  When she stepped out of the chamber, Smokey yapped and pawed at her hem. She scooped up the little dog and brought him up on deck with her. “I imagine you don’t even recognize me,” she said with a chuckle. “I no longer smell like a burning city.”

  She found Lightning Jack in the galley stirring a pot of something bubbling and insanely fragrant.

  “Ah. Luncheon is served,” he said, ladling stew onto a tin plate.

  Her eyes widened at the sight of fresh carrots, turnips and peas in the rich sauce. Her mouth watered when Jack sliced into a crusty golden brown loaf of bread.

  “Oh, Mr. duBois, it’s wonderful.” She took a seat and gratefully sampled the stew.

  “You seem much happier, mademoiselle.”

  “I’m not,” she insisted. “Just more comfortable. And…surprised.” I need a proper bath and a change of clothing and an actual mattress to sleep on…. Her own words echoed back at her. “I had no idea Tom Silver gave a fig for my comfort.”

  “It’s to keep you from whining,” Tom said, stepping into the galley. He sat down across from her and she did her best to ignore him, lending her full attention to the excellent chicken stew Jack had made.

  But Tom Silver wasn’t the sort of man she could ignore. It wasn’t simply his large physical size but his presence that intruded into the very heart of the moment. And since he had grabbed her and kissed her, she had even more to think about. Like the shape of his lips and the disquieting feel of his arms around her. She set down her spoon. “I suppose you expect me to thank you.”

  “I expect you to shut up and eat,” he said reasonably.

  “Very well, then.” She started eating again. It made her vaguely uncomfortable to feel beholden to this man. The situation demanded that she be at odds with him every moment. He was, after all, her captor.

  He leaned back on the bench, stretching out his buckskin-clad arms in both directions. He moved, she observed, like a man who was entirely comfortable in his body. Not like the gentlemen she had known, who were always so stiff and starched in their bearing.

  Not like Philip.

  Her appetite suddenly gone, she pushed the dish away and automatically looked around for a napkin. There was none, of course, but a stack of folded papers.

  Her eyes widened. “You have news of Chicago?” Without asking permission, she grabbed the paper and spread out the wrinkled pages.

  “FIRE! Destruction of Chicago!” screamed the headline. It was the Tribune, emblazoned with shouters, illustrated by lithographs of fleeing victims and views of the city. The whole front section was devoted to the fire. Nearly a hundred thousand people had been burned out, and more than a hundred bodies had been pulled from the rubble. Reports of vigilante hangings littered the page.

  De
borah was surprised to feel a lurch of fear in her chest. Vivid images of the fire burst to life in her mind, and she felt a delayed jolt of terror. She didn’t remember being this fearful during the fire itself, but the news stories before her brought the impending danger back to life.

  She moved on to the next paper and started reading an article by a Mr. Edgar of the Chicago Evening Post. He claimed the fire started in the slums—“‘if those miserable alleys shall be dignified by being denominated streets,”’ she read aloud. “‘That neighborhood had always been a terra incognita to respectable Chicagoans—”’ She stopped reading and looked up. “What an insufferable snob.”

  “Have you ever been to that neighborhood?” Lightning Jack asked.

  “Certainly not. I—That’s different,” she insisted, taking up another newspaper. Amazingly enough, The Evening-Journal Extra had appeared only days after the fire. “‘…caused by a cow kicking over a lamp in a stable in which a woman was milking,”’ she read, her mouth twitching slightly with amusement. “Is this plausible?”

  “You’re the expert on the working classes,” Silver commented sarcastically. He picked up the most recent Times. “They’re all saying it. ‘On the morning of the fire Mrs. O’Leary was found by a reporter for the Times sitting on the front steps of her own house. At first she refused to speak one word about the fire, but only screamed that her cow was gone and she had nothing left in the world.”’ He chuckled. “I’m amazed she had front steps left, since her property was the first to burn.”

  Deborah felt a flicker of concern. “You say her name is Mrs. O’Leary?”

  He scanned the column. “That’s right. The Extra identifies her as Catherine O’Leary, wife of Patrick O’Leary, of 137 De Koven Street.”

  It couldn’t be. But Deborah did not forget certain things. Like the fact that each Christmas, she ordered a generous basket to be delivered to Mr. and Mrs. O’Leary in De Koven Street. “Sweet heaven,” she whispered.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me they were friends of yours.”