The Mistress

Tonight, curiosity had turned to terror.

“Move along, miss,” the fire marshal said, his brass buttons flashing importantly. “You don’t want to be around when the gasworks blow. See if you can flag down a hack.”

She moved out of the way so he could direct his crew toward the blazing Hinkler’s Stage and Omnibus Company. With a deepening sense of dread, she headed north to the Lake Street Bridge, ever aware that her options were running out.

She felt a tingling at the back of her neck, a presence, and she whirled around. The man called Bull loomed like a shadow over her.

“Why are you following me?” Kathleen demanded.

“You all alone and the city’s going crazy. Somebody might take a notion to grab you. Rob you, maybe.”

“A shocking idea,” she said, leveling a look of accusation at him. But she could not cling to her anger. She was too desperate to find her family. “You’re right about the robbing,” she conceded. Without slowing her pace, she unclasped the precious Tiffany necklace and removed the matching earrings and bracelet. She had a fleeting memory of Dylan Kennedy putting the earring on her. Even now, in the middle of mayhem, she felt a sweet, melting sensation deep inside her. She wondered why she hadn’t thought to hide away the valuables before. She simply wasn’t used to wearing anything of value. She would have put the jewels in her reticule, but she had managed to lose that somewhere. A bad sign, losing Gran’s mass card. It was supposed to have been her good luck token.

“Don’t look,” she said to Bull, and turned away.

“You just a skinny little thing, anyway,” he grumbled.

She stuffed the jewels down her bodice, grimacing at the sharp feel of the priceless stones next to her skin. He was a convict, guilty of Lord-knew-what heinous offenses. He had tried to rob her. Yet now, with him limping along beside her, bleeding from the head, she felt unaccountably safe.

The next bridge was impassable. Seeing it, she had a sinking sensation in her stomach. Carts, buggies, wagons and pedestrians poured across the span.

Bull said nothing, but she could feel his “I told you so” emanating from him as if he had spoken it aloud. Shouts and the clatter of wheels filled the air and she had to jump back to make way for the fleeing populace. In their arms, people carried the things they could not bear to leave for the fire to devour.

Some looked grateful to escape with the clothes on their backs. Others wore layer upon layer of clothing despite the heat. There was one old lady in a fur coat and hat with so many layers beneath that she appeared as swollen as a tick. One nervous, suspicious woman grasped at her valuables, looking over her shoulder and hovering over her treasures like a hen with a clutch of eggs. In contrast there was a man wearing nothing but a nightshirt and a silk top hat. In one hand he held a bottle of brandy, in the other a cigar. He sat calmly in a crowded hack, watching the mountain of fire beyond the bridge. A woman hurried past on foot, pushing a baby carriage. From the expression on her face, it was clear that everything important to her lay within the carriage.

Kathleen wondered what she would save if she stood to lose everything. And she discovered, with a flash of resentment, that the answer eluded her. She had nothing of her own, nothing worth saving. Unlike the woman with the pram, she had no idea how to cherish what she had rather than wishing for something different.

Her gaze fixed on a man clinging to the tailgate of a stout insurance patrol wagon. She squinted through the smoke and—

“Pegleg!” she yelled, pushing toward the street. “Daniel! Mr. Sullivan!”

Daniel Sullivan, known to all as Pegleg for his wooden prosthesis, lived in her family’s neighborhood. At the sound of her voice, he glanced around, craning his neck.

“It’s me, Mr. Sullivan,” she cried. “Kathleen O’Leary!”

“Lord bless you, child, so it is.” The man shifted on the cart. Crammed with too many passengers and driven by Commissioner Benjamin Bullwinkle himself, the wagon lumbered along at a snail’s pace. “Can you climb aboard, then?”