Susan Wiggs Great Chicago Fire Trilogy Complete Collection

by Susan Wiggs

  * * *

  Deborah stayed in the house for as long as she could stand. She inspected the dwelling where Tom Silver lived, finding it spare and utilitarian. Other than a shelf filled with all sorts of books there was nothing but plain wooden furniture, bare plank floors and unadorned walls. The only colorful object was the braided oval hearth rug.

  She wondered what Asa had been like, then wondered what Tom Silver had been like before the boy had been killed. Had he smiled and laughed? Had he relaxed in front of the fire, playing checkers with the boy, telling him stories? She could almost imagine him doing such a thing. Almost.

  Going into the other room, she pulled the blanket up over the bed and stood back, considering. The coverlet didn’t look quite right. How did a maid do it? Deborah had seen a nicely made bed every day of her life yet she had never wondered how it was done. So she just smoothed out the drab blanket as best she could.

  “What am I doing here?” she muttered under her breath. Feeling frustrated, she went outside. Smokey lay on the porch in a patch of weak sunlight. The dog thumped his tail in a cheerful greeting and she reached down to pet him. The fact that the only welcome she’d received came from a dog filled her with bleakness.

  Yet at the same time, it occurred to her that she did not miss her old life. Her typical day started late, with a light breakfast served to her on bone china and sterling silver. Then came a French lesson, though her French was quite different from the colorful patois of Lightning Jack. She would organize her social engagements with the assistance of a social secretary who had a fine hand and an unerring nose for gossip. In the afternoon, she might have a dress fitting or perhaps one of those all-important engagements. A luncheon or tea, perhaps a philanthropic event. Without fail, there would be a supper engagement possibly followed by some sort of entertainment—the theater, dancing, the opera.

  She shuddered, hearing echoes of Mozart’s Don Giovanni in her head, but like someone touching a hot stove, she drew back quickly, stung. Who was that girl who had drifted from hour to hour, day to day? She was like a boat directed by the wind and water. Her will was not her own. And yet she had been content. As a caged bird is content, she reflected. The canary sings despite its captivity. Does it even know it’s a prisoner?

  She had gone from one sort of prison to another. From the gilded cage of a Chicago heiress to a rockbound island in the far north, she was as much a captive in one place as another. All that had changed was the identity of her jailer. And the worst of it was, she had no idea how to escape.

  Loneliness finally drove her to seek company even though she suspected she would encounter hostility. She walked across the yard and out to the main road. There were a few people around, mostly women and children. The women who had been doing laundry were still there, pegging clothes on a cord stretched between two fenceposts. When they saw Deborah they fell immediately silent. The open hostility of their stares assaulted her, and she fought the urge to flee back into the house.

  It was unlike her to be bold with strangers, but her recent adventures had been so unlike her own life that the rules of etiquette no longer applied.

  “My name is Miss Deborah Beaton Sinclair,” she said formally, stepping close to the fence. She looked from the pale, fair-haired woman to the dark one. “I would guess that you already know that.”

  “Then I would guess you already know why we’re not welcoming you with open arms,” said the dark-haired woman.

  Deborah kept a pleasant look on her face, though she wanted to run and hide. All her life, everyone had always fawned on her. Open hostility was new and unwelcome. “I don’t want to be on this island any more than you want me here,” she said. “But since I’ve been forced to stay here, I feel compelled to address the tragedy blamed on my father.”

  The woman’s gaze flicked to Deborah’s silver combs and snapped downward to her manicured hands. “So you’re the reason a man like Sinclair is so greedy. So he can keep buying pretty things for you and your mother.”

  “I have no mother,” Deborah said. “She died when I was very small. And yes, my father indulges me by buying pretty things. He always has. But to suggest that I am the sole reason for the mining disaster is as wrong as Tom Silver was to kidnap me.”

  They looked reluctantly interested. She realized that the fire and her capture made for an intriguing tale, and that for all its improbabilities, it was true. It had happened to her.

  “I am so sorry for the families of the men who were killed. I have already vowed to Mr. Silver that my father will accept responsibility. I know it’s horribly inadequate but—” Seeing their flat stares, she changed tack.

  “I am guilty,” she said starkly, “but not in the way you believe. I’m guilty of willful ignorance. I never gave a thought to my father’s business affairs. I didn’t think they concerned me. I was taught that it was unseemly for a woman to take an interest in business and so I shut my eyes and ears to his mining deals, to all his many other enterprises.” She folded her hands in front of her.

  “We have a different way of living up here,” said the big blond woman. She spoke with a clear, simple dignity. “Families work together. You know what your sons, daughter, neighbors are doing.”

  Deborah was unprepared for the intense yearning those words evoked. Families living and working together toward a common goal was an alien notion to her. In her world, families embraced ostentation and posturing for the sake of raising their status. None of that seemed to matter to these people.

  “We have work to do.” The dark woman indicated the basket piled high with wet clothes. A subtle pride shaded her words. In that moment, Deborah knew for the first time in her life what it felt like to be excluded, set apart. The feeling sat like a rock in her stomach. She pressed herself against the fence, determined to stay. “I hope one day you’ll tell me your names and the names of your loved ones who died. And I hope, too, that you’ll believe me when I say I am determined to help. Now that I understand the nature of my father’s involvement, I must return to Chicago to tell him what occurred here and see that he does the right thing.”

  “There’s no making this right,” the dark-haired woman said coldly. Both of them kept working, their hands deft and mechanical.

  “I can’t argue with that.” Deborah swallowed past a lump in her throat. She looked from one woman to the other. Their faces might have been carved of granite. “I would really like to know your names,” she said softly, then turned to head…she didn’t know where. Down to the landing, perhaps, to look out at the vast and endless water.

  “Ilsa Ibbotsen,” said a quiet voice behind her.

  Deborah turned slowly to face the pale woman.

  “My name is Ilsa,” she repeated, “and it was my brother-in-law who died in your father’s mine. He was buried, and we never recovered the body.”

  “Thank you for telling me that. I do wish to God you still had him with you,” Deborah said.

  “I am Celia Wilson,” the dark-haired woman said. She seemed more reluctant than Ilsa, her overture less genuine. But it was a start, Deborah thought.

  “We could use some help.” Ilsa indicated the shallow wicker basket piled high with just-washed clothes.

  “Of course.” Deborah stepped through the gate into the yard. On the beaten-earth surface, two children played with a hoop and a stick. Even she could do laundry, she reasoned. Emulating the others, she picked up an item—a nightshirt, or so it appeared—and shook it out. Celia held the pegs in her teeth. Deborah couldn’t quite bring herself to do that. She pegged the shirt to the line and immediately the garment dropped into the dirt.

  Ilsa said nothing. She picked it up and gave the fabric a shake, inspecting it. “Not too soiled,” she said. “Use at least two pegs.”

  Embarrassed, Deborah tried again. She worked more slowly than the others, but managed to do her share. She felt slightly chagrined, realizing that all her life she had taken this for granted. When she carelessly soiled a cuff and left it in a h
eap on the floor, it never occurred to her that someone had to come along behind her, pick it up and restore it to pristine condition. She had heard women refer to the drudgery of chores, and now she was experiencing it first hand. Except that, in the company of other women, it was certainly no less boring and toilsome than doing petit point in her father’s cavernous summer parlor. The mound of clothes quickly shrank to the last item—a large quilt. It was made of small hexagonal pieces that ranged from deep blue to pale cerulean, arranged so the light ones appeared to reflect the dark.

  “This is simply beautiful,” Deborah said.

  “My mother made it for me as a Christmas gift,” Celia said. “That pattern is called sky river.”

  Deborah pictured a small woman with small hands, like Celia, working by lamplight. How many stitches had it taken to join these hundreds of bits of fabric together? “A true labor of love,” Deborah said, folding a corner over the line. “I envy you.”

  “Me? What could a rich girl from Chicago find to envy in me? I bet your blankets come from London or…or Persia.”

  “I’d rather sleep under a quilt made by my mother.” She pinned the corner, marveling at the tininess of the stitches. “I never knew her.”

  “Ah, that’s hard indeed,” Ilsa said.

  “Yes, it is,” Deborah replied. “In ways I am only beginning to understand.”

  “Do you know how to quilt?” Ilsa asked.

  “No, but I’d like to learn. I know petit point and a lot of fancy work.” Deborah gave a self-deprecating smile. “Hat making used to be a pastime of mine.”

  “Quilting’s not that different.” She picked up the basket. “Come on in for a spell. I’ll show you.”

  Celia flashed her a look but went into the house with them. Deborah was struck by the brightness of the big main room. The walls and floor had a light, scrubbed look, and a large plank table dominated the room. Rows of benches lined the periphery.

  “We hold Sunday services here,” Ilsa explained, catching Deborah’s inquisitive look. “My husband is the pastor.” As she crossed the room, she touched the back of the large chair in the parlor—a man’s chair. Pride and affection softened her plain, pale face.

  She pulled a wooden rack from the corner. “My quilting hoop.”

  It resembled a large embroidery hoop. Stretched across it was a pieced-together quilt of faded bits of fabric. “I’m doing a vine,” she said. She bent and lifted the lid of a wicker hamper to reveal colorful bits of fabric. “I’ve collected far too much,” she said. “This is all extra.” She picked out a square of warn red flannel. “My son Nels’s fishing shirt. He swore he’d never catch another fish if I put this in the rag bag. But he simply got too big.” She sifted through more scraps, relating a story to go with many of them.

  For the rest of the morning, Celia and Ilsa showed Deborah how a design was imagined, the components cut and pieced together to make the design. Deborah felt drawn to the craft. There was something slightly mystical about the idea of transforming old and useless scraps into a quilt to warm someone on a cold winter night.

  “Would you like to take the scrap box and try something for yourself? You could start with something small, just for practice.”

  “Thank you, yes,” Deborah said. “Lord knows I shall need something to occupy me while I’m here. Tom Silver has deemed me—let me see if I can remember his charming phrase—useless as tits on a fish.”

  Celia ducked her head, but Ilsa laughed outright. “Sounds like our Tom.”

  “Does it?”

  “You’ve crossed two lakes in his company,” Celia pointed out. “Surely by now you know what he’s like.”

  “As you can imagine, we are not on the best of terms.” She looked from Celia to Ilsa, falling easily into the rhythm of their conversation. In some ways they were not so different from Lucy and Phoebe back in Chicago. “Did he tell you how he kidnaped me?”

  Suddenly they were rapt with attention. Deborah related the story of the fire, from the moment Tom Silver burst into her father’s house.

  “You slid down a banister and hit him?” Celia gave a low whistle.

  Deborah hadn’t thought she’d done anything extraordinary at the time, but she could see they were impressed. She described the mayhem of the collapse of the alley, being separated from her father, seeing Tom rescue a lost child and using the chance to elude him. She told them of the trapped dog and how she had nearly lost herself in the crowd, only to be recaptured at Lincoln Park. She did not speak of Philip, but still wondered if she should have gone with him. Tom Silver had taken the decision away from her.

  “And so here I am,” she concluded, “with a strange man who has some crazy revenge scheme.” She shuddered.

  “Has he always been…odd? Or is it just since the accident?”

  Ilsa began sorting the scraps. “He has lived at Isle Royale since he was a boy. Grew up helping Lightning Jack duBois on his trawler. He was always a wild, restless boy, given to running off into the woods and getting into mischief. Years ago when they were mustering troops for the war, he ran off and signed up.”

  “Lied about his age and joined a Michigan regiment,” Celia added.

  It was hard to picture him as a soldier. She couldn’t imagine him marching in a drill, following orders. Although, all too easily, she could imagine him rushing into battle. He had that reckless, deadly look about him sometimes. She’d noticed it the moment he’d first burst upon her father in Chicago. Tom Silver had the look of a man who didn’t care about the risk to himself.

  During the war years, it was considered a young man’s duty to fight for the Union. Most came back thin and sad and unnaturally quiet, but some never returned. Philip had not gone off to fight. In addition to being the sole son and heir to his family line, he suffered from nearsightedness and could not take to soldiering, or so he said. Deborah pulled her mind back to the matter at hand—Tom Silver.

  “Tom was a courier,” Celia supplied. “Ran messages between regiments.”

  “He’s not one to talk about what went on,” Ilsa said. “He came back after a few years with a little boy. Said it was his friend’s son, that the friend died after the war.”

  “He never said a word, but Asa once showed me a box of medals and decorations Tom earned,” Celia continued. “One is the Congressional Medal of Honor. His citation was for conspicuous bravery and heroism.”

  Deborah heard a warmth in the young woman’s voice that had not been there before. Could it be that Celia had set her cap for Tom Silver? It wasn’t so far-fetched, she supposed. Some women might favor a brutish man like him. He was certainly strong. She had seen him lift a dinghy one-handed out of the water. Protective, too. He definitely had that tendency.

  “What sort of bravery and heroism?” she asked Celia.

  “No one knows. He won’t talk about it.”

  “Have you asked him?”

  “Of course.” Her mouth softened, though she didn’t smile. “Doesn’t mean I got an answer.”

  “Lightning Jack was told he braved an intense fire that mowed down his unit at Kenaha Falls,” Ilsa stated. “He climbed the breastworks so close to an enemy gun that the blast hurled him into a ditch, and somehow he managed to enter the gun pit. When the gun crew saw him, they all fled.”

  “That,” said Deborah, recalling his aggressive presence, “does not surprise me.”

  “Lightning says he used the last shot in his pistol to capture a Confederate flag bearer and guard.”

  His past was a vast wilderness to Deborah, as hers was to him. Best they keep it that way. “You know this man well,” Deborah said, hope rising within her. “You could speak to him on my behalf. Convince him that what he is doing is a mistake.”

  “Is it?” Ilsa asked.

  “No good can come of keeping me here against my will. If he lets me go, I can persuade my father to help the mining families. I can convince him not to prosecute Mr. Silver for his reckless act.”

  “Seems to me Tom’s
not the reckless one.”

  “But holding me prisoner won’t solve a thing. It’ll only create more trouble.” She shivered, imagining what her father would do. The revelations she’d had about him over the past few days had left her shaken. Almost reluctantly, she recalled an incident that had occurred when she was very small. Unbeknownst to her father, she used to hide in the kneehole of the massive desk in his study, creating a tiny dark cocoon just out of reach of his feet. He had not known she was there when a man had come to his office.

  “Please, Mr. Sinclair,” the man had said, “I’ll have the money in a week—”

  “You’re three months in arrears already,” her father had said in an angry voice. “I’ve no room in the lumber mill for a worker who doesn’t earn his keep.”

  “It’s the wife,” the man had persisted. “She’s been sick since the baby came—”

  “Get out before I have you thrown out.”

  Even now, years later, she remembered the harshness in her father’s voice. It had made her stomach feel all hard and cold. After that day, she had stopped playing in his study.

  “My father often hires the Pinkerton agents to look after matters of security,” she told the women. “Tom could be thrown into prison. Hanged from the nearest tree.”

  “Really?” Celia asked.

  “I’m afraid so.” To her surprise, Deborah didn’t want that to happen to Tom Silver. She simply wanted to go home. “I have to be given the opportunity to settle this,” she said. She ran her hand over the mounds of scraps. “I might be useless when it comes to practical matters, but I do know my father. I can make him listen to me.”

  Ilsa and Celia exchanged a glance.

  “Please.” Deborah sensed an advantage and she pressed at it. “Help me to convince Mr. Silver to send me back to Chicago.”

  “That’s what you want, then,” Celia said. “To go back to Chicago.”

  Deborah bit her lip. Her mind flashed on the sort of life she had there. “I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she said quietly. Philip, a New Yorker, wanted to move back east once they were wed. She hadn’t given the prospect much thought, but now she realized she had no interest in living in New York City.