The Mistress

“Eh? Sorry, dear chap, I didn’t hear what you said,” the Englishman prompted.

“I said,” Dylan heard a stranger’s voice intone, “I had best stay in the city and lend a hand fighting the fire.”

“We’ll leave the heroics to you Yanks,” said the Englishman. “They say fools rush in…” Laughing at his own wit, he entered the coach.

As he watched the big, roomy vehicle roll away up Clark Street, Dylan gritted his teeth and cursed. What kind of fool stayed in the city, after all? What was he thinking? Within an hour he could be at some millionaire’s country place in Lake View, sipping sherry and making up stories about his Harvard days.

The courthouse alarm sounded again. Dylan ducked his head into the wind, held his tall hat in place and started walking. People milled about in the streets. No one seemed unduly alarmed, and neither was Dylan. Fires had been a nightly event of late because the weather was so unseasonably dry. He decided to make an early night of it, then begin his hunt for the delectable Miss Kate in the morning.

Though no one in Chicago knew it, his pied-à-terre was actually a pied-à-l’eau—a broken-down cabin boat moored under the Rush Street Bridge. He had found the leaky, listing vessel moldering in the river, and had claimed squatter’s rights. It was cramped, smelly and depressing, but he endured the conditions because he knew they were only temporary. He just had to figure out a new angle and he’d be back in the game.

Things grew more chaotic as he headed toward the lake. Crowds surged along the Van Buren Street rail line, fleeing from the West Division. Dylan hurried, his long strides putting ten city blocks behind him as he made for the bridge that spanned the mouth of the river near Lake Michigan.

On the sloping bank under the bridge, he stood still for a few moments, reluctant to seek shelter in the miserable boat. The wind held the shrieking promise of a tornado, somewhere out on the prairie beyond the stockyards. Horses in the roadway shied as their drivers laid into them with whips.

Dylan tried to decide whether or not he was afraid, and realized with no surprise that he was not. Things like firestorms and waterfalls didn’t scare him. Never had, which was probably why he had done a brisk business performing daredevil acts. He had a knack for learning tricks and a flare for the dramatic. His first stunt had taken place right in the train station where his mother had abandoned him.

With nothing left to lose, he had climbed to a steel girder in the terminal. He had no thought but that he wanted to be up high, like a bird, where nothing could touch him. He still remembered the faces of the onlookers. No one dared move or look away. Their riveted expressions of awe and dread had given him a keen sense of power. So long as they watched, he held them in the palm of his hand. Their attention went wherever he commanded it. With a heady feeling of complete control, he could make them gasp, cause their hearts to pound, force them to weep or sweat with worry for him. When he leaped down and stood unscathed on the platform, coins had showered him and he knew he was made for this life.

Not long afterward, he had apprenticed himself to a saloon owner in the bowery where he had performed stunts of increasing complexity. He quickly graduated to confidence games, tricking people out of their money by convincing them that a painted brick was solid gold, or that his Colombian parrot could tell the future, or that he was a direct descendant of an Egyptian king. In his lonely search for a place in the world, he had donned every persona except his own. He didn’t even know who he was anymore, and didn’t much care.

Hoping he’d left a bottle of spirits in the boat, he decided to seek shelter instead of standing around watching the chaos. The wind whipped viciously at the opera cloak he had helped himself to, temporarily covering his face with the expensive fabric. At the same moment, someone—a very large someone—jostled him, and he found himself shoved back against a timber bridge support.

“You move pretty fast for a dead man,” growled a deep, unpleasant voice.

The cloak was pulled out of his face. “Nice threads, Dylan,” said the voice, rich with sarcasm. “But you weren’t wearing it the last time I saw you. Seems I recall you were wearing ten thousand dollars in bank notes strapped around you.”

Damn it. He was hoping to avoid this. What a fiasco. He thought his daredevil escape over the falls meant he’d seen the last of Costello. Within hours of fleeing Niagara Falls, he had donned a new identity and hopped a train, knowing his former partner was likely to track him down in due time. As smart as Dylan and even less scrupulous, Costello had a special gift for getting what he was after.

“Vince,” he said, staring down at Costello’s meaty fingers, which clutched the cloak at his throat. “How did you find me?”

“I followed the smell, you low-bellied slug.”

“Very funny.”

“Yeah, I was tickled pink when I read in the papers how a certain Mr. Kennedy just got back from hobnobbing with the Vanderbilts all over the Continent. The bit about your being granted the Studleigh Prize by Queen Victoria was a dead giveaway.” He snorted. “Studleigh was the name you took for card-sharping in Albany.”

Dylan didn’t bother playing dumb. “How have you been?” he asked, and since Costello had not killed him yet, he dared to add, “How’s Faith?”

Vincent Costello dropped his hands. His face, which resembled a very healthy russet potato, with interesting knobs and creases, closed in a furious scowl. “You broke her heart, Dylan. She thought you were going to marry her. Even though I just about spent my last breath trying to convince her you’re no damned good, she’s got it in her head that she wants to marry you.”

“Well,” he lied, “the feeling was mutual.”

“Then do you mind explaining why you simply disappeared? With, I might add, our entire capital strapped to your waist.”

“Oh,” said Dylan, tensing to flee. “That.”

“Yes,” said Costello, pulling a gun. “That.”

“What’s blocking the roadway ahead?” Lucy Hathaway asked the driver. Their coach, a bulky rockaway with an extended front and the school crest painted on the doors, had rolled to a halt. She had to lean out the window to speak to him. Kathleen could see the roaring wind snatch at Lucy’s jet-black hair.

“A horse car,” the driver yelled. “Someone cut the horse loose and took the fare box. I can see the thief heading on foot for the river.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Lucy pulled her head back in and flopped against the leather seat. “At this rate it’ll take half the night to get back to Miss Boylan’s.”

Phoebe used the speaking tube rather than risk mussing her hair. “Driver, go around the horse car. We really must be getting back.”

Kathleen cast a worried glance at the Randolph Street Bridge behind them. The railed span overflowed with people, livestock, horses and mules hitched to all manner of conveyance.

“Saints and crooked angels. The fire must be even worse than it looks,” she said. In all the excitement and traffic she had not even told them her news—that Lucy had won the bet. Dylan Francis Kennedy had invited her to Crosby’s tomorrow night. She said nothing, though, for the victory seemed a trivial matter now.

Phoebe impatiently rapped her fan at the speaking tube. “Driver, did you not hear what I said? Go around the horse car at once.”

They could feel the coach swaying as the team strained in the traces. But there was no forward movement. Kathleen looked out at the crowded street. With a cold clutch of nervousness she saw the reason they had made no progress.

“Our driver has fled,” she told the others. She dropped her cultured manner of speaking and unknowingly echoed the thick brogue of her mother. “Sweet heaven, preserve us, we have no driver.”

“Don’t be ridicu—” Phoebe half stood, her hand on the door handle.

At the same moment, an explosion split the air. The fire had reached a store of gunpowder somewhere. The coach jerked forward with such force that Phoebe was slammed against the seat. With a scream, she plopped down. Kathleen felt her head snap back with the motion. The driverless horses scrambled ahead in full panic. Not only did they draw the coach around the abandoned horse car, they headed in a new direction entirely.

“We are going directly toward the fire,” Lucy said. Her voice was thick with fear.

“We’re going to die,” Phoebe wailed. “Dear God, we’re going to die and I never even had the chance to marry a duke. And I never saw Pompeii. And I’ve never eaten an oyster. And I’m still a virgin—”

“Can you shut her up?” Kathleen asked Lucy.

Lucy clutched at Phoebe’s shoulders and shouted “Shut up!” in her face.

Kathleen battled the rocking, lurching motion of the uncontrolled coach as she yanked the expensive silk skirts up between her legs and tied the fabric to fit like bulky trousers.

“Do be careful,” Lucy shouted, realizing her intent. “Please, be careful.”

Kathleen nodded grimly. She unhooked the stiff leather windshield of the coach. Immediately smoke and blowing sparks streaked into the interior. Phoebe started to scream again, but Kathleen ignored her and climbed. She was able to grasp the underside of the high seat where the cowardly driver had perched.

The hot wind roared over her face, carrying the scent of the terrified, sweating horses. By the age of eight, Kathleen had learned to drive her mother’s milk wagon and she was determined to control these beasts. “Ho there,” she shouted, hoping they would respond to a verbal command. “Ho!” Then she yelled, “Please, ho!” and finally, “Ho, damn it!”

The team ignored her. They churned along a broad avenue flanked by burning buildings. Their long manes streaked out behind them. Straining every muscle in her body, Kathleen managed to hoist herself through the windshield to the driver’s perch. The speed was dizzying, terrifying. So was the knowledge that the crazed horses were drawing them deeper and deeper into the heart of the fire.

The reins. She had to get hold of the reins. The trouble was, the driver had dropped them and they now snaked uselessly along the street.

She kept shouting Ho and they kept ignoring her. She spied a length of leather that had not come entirely loose, but had become fouled around part of the undercarriage. Perhaps she could reach that. Holding the seat with one hand, she stretched down and forward with the other.

A groan came from her throat. She couldn’t reach. Kathleen wanted to sob in frustration, but she had never been one to cry and saw no point in starting now. She kept reaching. Stretching. The leather slapped tantalizingly against her hand again and again. She finally grabbed hold and gave a shout of triumph. With all her might she hauled back on the single rein.

At first the horses fought her control, but eventually responded to the desperate tugging.

Another explosion sounded. It was terrifyingly close, the heat of it sucking the air from her lungs. With the force of a blow, the blast knocked Kathleen from her seat. She was slammed against the pine block roadway, stunned, unable to draw a breath. People rushing toward the lakefront veered to avoid the racing coach. The horses turned sharply in the middle of the street. The tongue of the coach unbalanced the vehicle and it went over on its side. While she watched in helpless horror, the horses reared, protesting the resistance, struggling to free themselves.