by Susan Wiggs
Lord, but he was a handsome devil, she thought with a shiver of pure sinful lust. Even with his cheeks shadowed by the stubble of a beard, he looked as perfect as a god. She still couldn’t believe she was married to him, that she had done the most unimaginable things in this bed with him. Was that what the rest of her life with him was to be, then?
She wanted it to be. She wanted it with all her heart. Yet each moment drew her closer to having to confess the truth about who she was and where she came from. Putting it off would serve nothing.
She slipped out of bed and went behind the screen. She ached in every muscle, bone and joint, and she ached in other places as well. She’d lost count of the number of times he had made love to her. In fact, she didn’t know when one session ended and another began. It just seemed like one long magical night of love, interrupted here and there by sleep. With Dylan, even eating soda biscuits was a way of making love. She shivered just thinking about it.
She used a soft linen towel and water from the basin to bathe herself. She contemplated the formal gown and shoes she had worn Sunday night, and shuddered at the thought of putting on the smoky garments once more. In one of the traveling valises, she found a lady’s shift and put it on, then a shirtwaist and skirt. She stuck the jewels inside the bodice of the shirtwaist.
She had one remaining comb left in her hair, and she used it to tidy her curling, smoky locks, making a simple braid down her back. Studying her image in the small pedestal hand mirror, she felt a small welling of disappointment. This was nothing like the elegant, gleaming style she had affected for Sunday night. She looked…ordinary. Never mind that she greatly resembled the person she truly was; she much preferred the rich mystery of the woman she had been that night. The woman Dylan Kennedy had fallen in love with.
A shiver of fear coursed through her. Exactly what did he love? A bold debutante in a Worth gown and diamonds, or the person underneath? In the very smallest corner of her heart, she was afraid to learn the answer.
When she emerged from behind the screen, Dylan was awake and gazing at her. His wonderful smile bathed his face in radiance, and she dared to relax a little.
“You look lovely,” he announced.
She relaxed even more. He was a man of depth, bless him, able to see beneath the artifice of dress. “I was thinking I look quite plain.”
“Clean and braided and fresh as a schoolgirl,” he said. “You awaken my lecherous impulses.”
Before she could scold him, her body reacted with a rush of warmth that flooded the places he had discovered last night, places that were sweetly sore from his tender attentions. And the all-over blush he alone had the power to ignite swept over her. “I’ll just look out and see where we are now.”
She went to the window and froze. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” she whispered, her breath fogging the window.
He got out of the bed, bringing a sheet with him to wrap loosely around his waist. “What is it?”
“Look where we are.”
A low whistle emerged from between his teeth. “I’ll be damned.” Standing behind her, he rested his hands on her shoulders.
“We’ve come back to Chicago,” she said, baffled. “The train was on the move all night, and now we’ve come back.”
He inspected each end of the car. “We’re uncoupled,” he reported. “I imagine they wanted this car out of the way so the freighters can come and go.”
“We should try to find out what became of Father Michael and Bull Waxman,” she said.
“Anything might have happened to them, with the city in flames. I hope they had the sense to stay put in that train car.”
She bit her lip and made herself look out at the ruined city with its broken walls and crumbled chimneys. “It is like gazing upon a corpse,” she said finally.
His arms slid around her, cradling her body to his, and she took comfort in his nearness. All the landmarks were gone. The skeletons of once fine buildings were visible through the shifting veil of smoke and mist. She shuddered, trying to get her bearings amid the shattered masonry. Huge chunks of smoldering debris created the illusion of some awful tomb. The long, straight roads stretching westward from the lake still smoldered, their surfaces paved by live coals. Nothing obstructed her view except the smoke, but the lively wind playing across the river and lake parted the curtain from time to time.
A sob caught in her throat.
“What is it, my love?” Dylan asked, turning her in his arms.
She pressed her palms to his warm, smooth chest, taking comfort in his nearness. “I was just…thinking of my family.”
“There, there. I’m certain they’ll worry when they hear of the fire, but when we find a telegraph station that’s operating, we’ll send a wire to Baltimore informing them that you’re safe and sound.” He lifted her hand to his lips. “And married.”
Her throat locked with fear. She had to swallow several times before forcing out the words. “Dylan, about my family—”
“They’ll understand. They have to. Our marriage was meant to be.” He was so earnest, he broke her heart. “What are the chances of us meeting on the night of the worst fire in history? Things happen for a reason, Kate. You have to believe that.”
When he called her Kate, she wanted to wrap herself in his image of her and never come out. But enough pretending. The train had returned to the station. The harsh light of day penetrated the smoky gloom, revealing the wreck and ruin of the city. It was time to tell Dylan the truth, too.
“Please, just listen,” she said softly. Even as she spoke, her hands moved over his bare chest and shoulders, as if to memorize the landscape of his body. And somewhere deep inside she knew why. After he was gone from her life she would have nothing but memories.
“My family is in Chicago,” she said.
He grinned. “Excellent. Why didn’t you say so before?”
She couldn’t help smiling back. “I’ve been trying to.” The smile faded. “They are—or were—in the West Division.”
“Odd,” he said. “I always thought the West Division to be a shantytown. Perhaps while I was overseas, some fashionable hotels were built.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“Look, sweetheart.” He pressed a finger lightly to her lips. “The city is impassable. The streets are too clogged with rubble to navigate. Maybe we could take the river, but if the bridges are down, we won’t get far. The heat and wreckage are too dangerous.” He tucked her cheek against his chest. “We’ll go when it’s safe, and not a moment before. I won’t risk losing you, Kate. God forbid that I should lose you.”
She felt the slow, steady beat of his heart against her cheek, and she could hear the whisper of fabric as the sheet slid, unheeded, to the floor. Without quite knowing how it happened, she found herself undressed and pressed back onto the bed, transported once again to the dreamworld he created with his love. She nearly wept with the beauty of it, and she clung to him.
As the smoke slowly blew across the smoldering ruins of the city, she realized beyond doubt that they had survived. She was safe in the arms of Dylan Kennedy. Her husband.
And in her heart, a dream came to life like the sudden, unseasonable bloom of a rose. She could have the genteel way of life she had always craved. The fire was an act of God. Of fate. Destiny. Dylan had said as much. Everything happened for a reason. Why shouldn’t that reason be that she had been born into the wrong sort of life? Perhaps this was fate’s way of fixing a mistake.
Ah, how often she had fantasized that she’d been born into the wrong family. When she was very young, she imagined that she had been born to an exotic foreign princess who had tearfully left her with compassionate nuns. The nuns had delivered the mysterious babe, wrapped in the sheerest veiling, to a kindly but impoverished family, who raised her as their own.
Though admittedly fanciful, the notion that the Lord must have meant for her to find Dylan eased her misgivings over the deception. He loved her. He’d proved it in so many ways, with his ki
sses and his caresses and the things he whispered in her ear. Of course he loved her. And when he learned the truth, his love would not change. When he met her family, his heart would melt with affection.
Sated by his lovemaking, she sighed contentedly and tucked herself against his shoulder. The magic of love, she now knew, was that it made anything, everything, possible. Being in love was far more wonderful than she had ever dared to imagine. She adored him so insanely that when she lifted her head and saw him smiling down at her, she knew in every bone of her body that he would forgive her anything, just as she would absolve him if there were anything to forgive. That was the true gift of love.
They slept some more, lightly, and a few hours later were awakened by a prolonged grinding noise from the rail yard. They got dressed and stepped outside, blinking through the smoke. A few strangers milled about, some huddled together in groups, some wandering lost, a few calling out the names of family or friends. They resembled survivors of a great battle—disheveled, disoriented, displaced. Scorching winds still howled in from the prairie, fanning the fire to seek out new fuel.
Meanwhile, men discussed the disaster in hushed whispers. A burning vessel had drifted into the Chicago Avenue Bridge, setting the span afire. People had died screaming as the fire pursued them into dead-end streets and trapped them there.
But the mayor’s frantic predawn telegrams had reached their destinations. Dylan spoke briefly with a railroad man who said they were moving cars again to make room for engines and firefighters from distant cities. Milwaukee sent three engines. Others began to arrive from Cincinnati, Louisville, Detroit, Port Huron, Springfield and Pittsburgh. Without horses to pull the engines, men wheeled them by hand to battle the still-menacing fire. Demolition crews attacked buildings that stood as fodder for the flames. Streams of water, drawn by hoses from the lake and river, played on bridges, lumber, coal piles, goods stacked by the shore.
“I should join in the effort,” Dylan said.
She grasped his hand, remembering his ordeal on the steeple of the church. “Don’t,” she said in a fearful whisper. “Dylan, I beg you. Stay with me.” She put up her hand to cup his stubbled cheek. “You’ve given enough of yourself to this fire. Now I need you.”
A shadow flickered over his face, but then he swept her up into his arms. A young girl tending a donkey nearby sighed with longing as he carried Kathleen back to the parlor car. People could tell they were in love, she thought.
“It’s getting late,” he whispered to her. “Time for bed…again.” Within moments, the darkness consumed them, and they gave in to the passion that seemed to rule inside the confines of the train car. Before meeting Dylan, Kathleen had had no idea it was even possible for a man and a woman to spend so much time doing this, and the rest of the time thinking about it, dreaming of it. She realized that, at any moment, someone could open the parlor car and find the two of them, but she was too lovestruck to worry about it.
“What are you thinking?” Dylan asked her, toying with a lock of her hair as if it were a rare and precious artifact. She had lost count of the number of times he had kissed her and joined his body with hers, and the thought immediately made her want more.
“That if I have to be confined like this, there is no one I’d rather be with.”
“You are incredibly sweet,” he said. “I’ve never met anyone with your sweetness, your candor.”
“I want to tell you all the secrets of my heart,” she confessed, so moved that tears stung her eyes. All but one.
“Then tell me, Kate. Tell me, and I’ll make them all come true.”
She blinked away the tears and managed a laugh. “I’m afraid you’re too late for some of them.”
He looked crestfallen. “What do you mean?”
“Well.” She sat up in bed and helped herself to a biscuit, wishing there was something else to eat. “I used to dream about my wedding, for one thing.” She nibbled a corner of the biscuit. “And believe me, it was nothing like the courthouse wedding.”
“Tell me what it was like,” he asked softly.
She stared intently at him and wondered if that particular shade of blue had been invented just to adorn his eyes. With a single glance, the brush of a caress, he drew from her every possible emotion, and she found herself speaking with an ease she’d never felt with anyone. Not Deborah, not her mother. “I used to daydream about the grandest wedding imaginable. I would wear an ivory gown covered in seed pearls and a veil that flowed like the very mists of time.” She paused and let go of the daydream. “Do you think me terribly shallow for dwelling so much on fashion?”
“No, Kate. Your dreams are a part of you. And I of all people know what lies beneath your fashionable surface.” He reminded her of this by lowering his head to her naked breast.
She tucked the sheet up around her, fastening it beneath her arms. “Do you want to hear this or not?”
“Of course, my dear. I simply got carried away. Go on. Where were you? Ah yes. The grand wedding. And the ivory dress with beads—”
“Seed pearls,” she corrected him, trying not to giggle with the absurdity of it. “There would be glorious music playing.” She shut her eyes and inhaled. “We’d have a ceremony outside, of course, under a garden gazebo all twined with flowers. The smell of lilacs and lilies of the valley would perfume the air…and after the speaking of the vows, white doves would take flight.”
“Doves?”
“At least a dozen of them. Think how pretty they would look against the blue sky.”
He grew quiet, his face unsmiling and pensive.
“I know it must seem silly to you,” she said, discomfited.
“Not silly, Kate. Not in the least. You’ve survived a terrible ordeal, and you deserve to have your dreams come true. I wish this wasn’t just a train car, but a golden palace. I wish these soda biscuits were made of butter, and the honey was caviar. I wish I could have given you the wedding you dreamed about.”
With a cry of dismay she came up on her knees and straddled him, pushing him mercilessly against the pillow. “Dylan Kennedy, don’t you see what I am trying to say?”
He thought for a moment as if trying to decide which answer would satisfy her. “Um, maybe you’d better explain.”
“I was a foolish article of a girl,” she declared. “I did not know the first thing about dreams—true ones or otherwise. I dreamed of a beautiful ceremony, yes. But I was too stupid to see that it’s all just pomp and illusion. It’s what comes after that matters. And never once did I dream about what comes after.” She smiled at his endearing male bafflement. “Foolish, foolish me. You’ve shown me that what comes after is better than any daydream.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple sliding enticingly. She bent and kissed it.
“Really?” he said.
“Really.”
With wicked precision, he grasped her hips and positioned her just so. “Prove it,” he challenged her.
And she did, finding within herself an unabashed sensuality that responded to his slightest provocation. In the hours she spent with Dylan in the parlor car, she felt as though they lived in a world unto themselves, where no one and nothing could touch them. He made it easy, she thought, so easy to lose herself in loving him. So easy to forget that she had yet to tell him the truth about herself.
* * *
“Extra, extra, read the story of the century,” called a young, clear voice. “Extra, read it right here!”
Groggy, Dylan lifted his head from the pillow next to Kathleen and squinted out the train car window. It was dawn…Wednesday? Thursday? He couldn’t recall.
The newsboy’s call faded. Dylan hurried out of bed, pulling on pants, shirt and shoes even as he left the car. The reek of creosote and wood smoke nearly gagged him, but he followed the boy’s voice. The urchin’s face was smeared coal-black, and his eyes shone as Dylan whistled to get his attention.
“Paper, mister?” the kid asked. “First extra in the city, guaranteed.” He prou
dly displayed a page, printed on one side. “It’s the Journal.”
Digging in his pocket, Dylan found some pennies and gave them to the boy, who seemed inclined to talk. “I’d best go,” he said, walking away. He didn’t like being around kids like this one. It always made him think of himself at that age, abandoned, all too eager to be whatever someone wanted him to be. At that age he had been as earnest as a puppy, one that would follow even the most abusive master anywhere in order to keep from being left behind again.
When Dylan was that age, he would have done anything to avoid being abandoned. He had done anything, he thought with a shudder. Anything and everything.
Rolling up the small paper, he stalked back to the palace car, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the etched windows. Kathleen was awake, watching him anxiously from the bed.
“Is everything all right?” she asked. She bit her full lower lip, then added, “You don’t look like yourself, Dylan. What is it?”
He almost laughed at her then, it was so damned ironic. He never looked like himself because he didn’t have the first idea who the hell he was. But he guessed that she, who seemed to know him with more of her heart than anyone he’d ever met, saw a difference in the devil-may-care bridegroom who had left her sleeping in the berth. Perhaps she saw the disquiet that burned in his eyes. Perhaps she somehow heard echoes of the leftover thoughts of the past he couldn’t quite force himself to forget. With a practiced will, he thrust the thoughts to the back of his mind and put on a dazzling smile.
Yet when he came to the bed, he noticed something interesting about Kate. She didn’t seem dazzled. She gave him a sad, loving look, full of an intimate knowledge he didn’t want her to have. What the hell was it about her, that she could see behind his careful façade and probe at him in places he didn’t want her to wander?
“Here,” he said, averting his eyes. “I found a kid selling papers.”
“So soon? How on earth did a newspaper manage to go to press?”
“I didn’t ask.” He scanned the page, grateful to have something to focus on other than the chill darkness sweeping over him. “Says here they found a rotary press in Cincinnati and brought it back to town.” He gave a short laugh. “I’ll be damned. I wonder if that’s where the train took us.”