The Firebrand

“Well, I must thank you for keeping my husband entertained,” Diana remarked. “He was quite certain this would be a hopelessly dreary evening.”

Rand shifted beneath a mixed burden of guilt and irritation. During the argument they’d had prior to his coming to the evening’s event, he’d claimed she’d be bored by a bombastic evangelical reading, and that the only reason he was attending was to make the acquaintance of the prominent businessmen of Chicago.

The irony was, he’d really meant it.

Lucy Hathaway clasped her hands demurely in front of her. “I’m afraid I’ve failed, then,” she said. “Your husband doesn’t find me at all entertaining. Quite the contrary. I fear I’ve offended him with my…political opinions.”

“You’re not offensive, Miss Hathaway,” Rand said smoothly. “Merely wrong.”

“Isn’t he charming?” Diana laughed. Only Rand, who knew her well, heard the contempt in her voice.

Miss Hathaway moved toward the door. “I really must be going. I don’t like the look of the weather tonight.” She curtsied in that curious trained-spaniel manner. “It was a pleasure to meet you both, and to welcome you to Chicago. I hope you’ll be very happy here.” In a swish of skirts and wounded dignity, she walked out of the salon.

“What an odd bird,” Diana remarked in an undertone.

What a strangely charming bundle of contradictions, Rand thought. He was intrigued by women like Lucy. But he was also discomfited by a surprising and unwelcome lust for her. He’d engaged her in what he thought was a harmless flirtation, nothing more, but she had taken him seriously.

“How on earth did you get stuck with her?” asked his wife.

He’d seen her sitting alone at the back of the salon, and pure impulse had compelled him to sit down beside her. He thought about the way Lucy had taken his hand later, captured his gaze with her own and confessed her attraction to him. But to his wife, he said, “I have no idea.”

“Anyway, you did well,” Diana declared. “It’s important to impress the right people, and the Hathaways are undoubtedly the right people.”

“What are you doing here? Is Christine all right?” he asked.

“The child is fine,” Diana said. “And I came because I am the one who is sick, not our daughter. I am positively ill with boredom, Randolph. All I’ve done all day long is sit by the window watching the boats on the river and the traffic going over the bridge to the North Division. I’m so tired of living like a gypsy in a hotel. Shouldn’t you have started work on the house by now?”

“You’re sure Christine’s fine,” he said, ignoring her diatribe. Their fifteen-month-old daughter was the bright and shining center of his life. Earlier in the evening she’d been fretful, a little feverish, and he’d convinced Diana to stay at Sterling House rather than leave Christine with the nurse.

“The baby was fast asleep when I left,” Diana said. “Becky Damson was in the parlor, knitting. I thought you’d be delighted to see me, and here you are, flirting away with the most famous heiress in Chicago.”

“Who? Lucy?”

“And on a first-name basis, no less. The Hathaways are an Old Settler family. Her father is a war hero, and her grandfather made a fortune in grain futures. If you hope to be a successful banker, you’re supposed to know these things.”

“Ah, but I have you to keep track of them for me.”

“Apparently I need someone to keep track of you,” she observed.

Already regretting the brief flirtation, he vowed to devote more attention to his increasingly unhappy wife. No matter what he did, it wasn’t enough. She’d been dissatisfied with their life back in Philadelphia, so he’d moved her and their baby daughter to Chicago.

He was trying to launch a career in banking while Diana frantically shopped and planned for the grand house they intended to build on the fashionable north shore. But even the prospect of a palatial new residence failed to keep her discontent at bay.

“Come and meet Mr. Lamott,” Rand suggested, knowing she would be impressed, and that Jasper Lamott—like every other man—would find his wife enchanting.

As he escorted her into the reception salon, Rand fought down a feeling of disappointment. When he and Diana had married, he’d been full of idealistic visions of what their life together would be like. He had pictured a comfortable home, a large, happy family putting down roots in the fertile ground of convention. They were things he used to dream about when he was very young, things he’d never had for himself. But as the early years of their marriage slipped by, Diana paid little attention to roots or family. She seemed more interested in shopping and travel than in devoting herself to her husband and child.

He kept hoping the move to Chicago would improve matters, but with each passing day, he was coming to understand that a change of venue was not the solution to a problem that stemmed from the complicated inner geography of his heart.

He caught himself brooding about Lucy Hathaway’s bold contention that women were stifled by the unfair demands foisted upon them by men who shackled them with the duties of a wife and mother.

“Do you feel stifled?” he asked Diana.

She frowned, her pale, lovely face uncomprehending. “What on earth are you talking about, Randolph?”

“By Christine and me. Do you feel stifled, or shackled?”

She frowned more deeply. “What a very odd question.”

“Do you?”

She took a step back. “I have no idea, Randolph.” Then she fixed a bright, beautiful, artificial smile on her face and walked into the reception room.

Rand couldn’t help himself. He kept trying to catch a glimpse of Lucy Hathaway, but apparently she and her friends had already left the hotel. For the past forty minutes, he’d wanted to do the same, anxious to get back to Sterling House and his daughter. She would be asleep by now, but that didn’t matter. He loved to watch Christine sleep. The sight of her downy blond curls upon a tiny pillow, her chubby hands opened like stars against the quilt, always filled him with a piercing tenderness and a sense that all was right with the world.

Diana had never been quite so well-entertained by their daughter, although she was proud of Christine’s beauty and loved the admiring comments people made when they saw the baby. At the moment she was gossiping happily with the mayor’s nieces and showed no sign of wanting to leave.

Restless, Rand went to the tall windows that framed a view of the city. Gaslight created blurry stars along the straight arteries of the main thoroughfares and the numerous tall buildings of the business district gathered around the impressive cupola of the massive courthouse.

“Quite a sight, isn’t it?” asked a slender, vaguely sly-looking young man.

Philip Ascot, Rand recalled. Ascot, with some combination of Roman numerals after his name to prove to the world that the family hadn’t come up with an original name in several generations.

It was a mean, petty thought, borne of impatience. Still, he had a low opinion of Ascot, who claimed to be in the publishing business but who, as far as Rand could tell, intended to make his fortune by marrying one of the debutantes of Miss Boylan’s finishing school. Lucy? he wondered, recalling Diana’s assessment that the Hathaways were stinking rich.

Rand stifled a grin. Lucy would make duck soup of a fellow like Philip Ascot.

“It is indeed,” he said at last. Flipping open the gold top of his pocket watch with his thumb, he checked the time. “It’s a bit late for sunset, though.”

“Oh, that’s another fire in the West Division,” Ascot informed him. “Didn’t you hear?”

A cold touch of alarm brushed the back of his neck. “I heard there was one last night, but that it had been brought under control.”

“It’s been a bad season for fires all around. But I can’t say I’m sorry to see the West Division burn. It’s a shantytown, full of immigrant poor. Could stand a good clearing out.” Ascot tossed back a glass of whiskey. “Nothing to worry about, Higgins. It’ll never get across the river.”

Even as he spoke, an explosion split open the night. From his vantage point, Rand saw a distant flash of pure blue-white light followed by a roaring column of pale yellow flame.

“It’s the gasworks,” someone yelled. “The gasworks have blown!”

Rand crossed the reception room in three strides, grabbing his wife by the arm. “Let’s go,” he said.

“Randolph, you mustn’t be rude—”

“We’re leaving,” he said. “We’ve got to get home to Christine.”

Chapter Three

The big, blocky coach with the crest of Miss Boylan’s school on the door lumbered through streets jammed with people. Every few feet, the driver was obliged to stop and make way for the firefighters’ steam engines or hose carts.