by Susan Wiggs
She stared at him for a moment. The fine frock coat had twisted awry, revealing a small pearl-handled handgun protruding from his cummerbund. How odd to think of Philip carrying a gun. Yet after last night she realized she didn’t know him at all. Reflexively, she reached for the gun.
A large, soot-smudged hand closed around her wrist. She cried out and tried to pull away, but her abductor’s hold on her was implacable. She was a fool for not being quicker and grabbing Philip’s gun when she had the chance. Not that she knew the first thing about using a handgun. But now she had nothing, not so much as a hatpin with which to defend herself.
The man pulled her away from the road and down toward the lake.
“No!” Numb inertia gave way to defiance. She dug her heels into the grassy embankment by the roadway. “Let go of me!”
He ignored her protest, dragging her along behind him with callous brute force. Dear God, what had she done? Why had she hesitated to join Philip in the enclosed safety of the carriage?
It occurred to her, in a flash of new awareness, that she’d had a third choice. She could have—should have—fled by herself. Yet she’d failed to seize the opportunity. Independence had never been an option for her.
“Help,” she called to all the people they passed. “Save me! This man is trying to kidnap me!”
Some within earshot stared at her curiously but most merely shook their heads and went back to their own struggles. No doubt they had seen more bizarre sights this night than a hysterical woman.
“Please,” she tried again. “I don’t know this man. He’s abducting me. For the love of God, please help!”
A workman in knickers and shirtsleeves stepped into their path. The wild man said nothing, only gave him a burning look, and the man stepped out of the way. The brute’s towering height and the breadth of his shoulders made him a fearsome spectacle, Deborah realized with sinking hopes. Still, she kept screaming, and a priest in a long cassock approached, rolling back his voluminous sleeves to reveal surprisingly beefy forearms.
“See here now,” he said in a thick Irish brogue. “The poor lass is out of her head with fright.”
“That’s a fact, mon frère,” said the big man. “My poor wife lost everything tonight, and she’s not herself.”
“Wi…wi—” Deborah was too shocked to get the words out.
“I reckon she’ll be all right by and by,” her abductor said, grasping her insolently around the waist. He held her so tightly she could scarcely breathe. “We could use your prayers, mon frère. We surely could.” He pulled her quickly away, heading down toward a wide wooden pier that jutted out onto the lake.
“But he’s not…I’m not his wife—” she called, but she was dragged relentlessly along, and the Irish priest had already vanished into the throng on the beach. Deborah opened her mouth to call out again, but before she could speak, her captor pressed her roughly against one of the wet timber piers upholding the dock. He put his angry, frightening face very close to hers. She could smell the leather and smoke scent of him—the essence of danger and strangeness.
“Quit your caterwauling,” he ordered. “I’m out of patience.”
She forced herself to glare up at him. He was a giant of a man. She had never seen a man so tall. She was terrified, but she had nothing to lose. “And patience is such a gift of yours, I’m sure,” she spat with far more bravado than she felt. “What will you do? Sock me in the face? Shoot me?”
“Tempting offers, both of them.” He took her upper arms in a bruising grip and lifted her bodily off the ground. The sensation of being entrapped between his strong hands raised a havoc of panic in her. The blood drained from her face and dry screams came from her throat, but he didn’t seem to be bothered by her protests. Handling her like a longshoreman with a timber bale, he bundled her into a small wooden dinghy tied up at the pier and cast off the ropes.
“What are you doing?” Deborah shrieked. “You can’t—”
He shoved off with such force that she fell backwards, hitting her shoulder painfully on something hard and sharp. The impact drove the breath from her lungs. By the time she righted herself, he was pulling strongly out into the lake. The hot glow from the burning city made him appear more fierce and frightening than a dark angel.
He glared at a spot over her shoulder. “What the hell is that?” he muttered, laying aside his oars.
“What is what?” she asked.
“Something in the water.”
She grabbed the side of the boat and twisted around. “Philip?”
“Close. I think it’s a rat.” He reached down, the fringe on his sleeve brushing the surface of the water, and scooped up the animal, holding the dripping, shivering creature aloft. “Yours?”
She grabbed the dog and gently cradled it to her breast. The smell of smoke and wet fur nearly made her gag, but just for a moment, she felt a flood of hope and relief. Then she looked at her captor, his huge form lit by the glare of the burning city, and the terror and confusion returned. Without taking her eyes off him, she set the dog in the bottom of the boat. The mongrel shook itself violently, spraying water. Deborah knew she had to act. Her hesitation on the shore had cost her dearly and she must not make the same mistake again.
No longer worried about the indignity of making a scene, she seized one of the oars. Drawing back, she swung it at the big man. Being violent was harder than it looked, she realized as he ducked. Frustrated, she swung it back the other way. He put up a hand and caught the oar, wrenching it from her grasp. He never said a word, just took up rowing again.
Deborah slumped down on the hard, narrow seat. She had gained nothing by trying to fight back, yet the very idea that she had dared made her feel slightly better. Very slightly. Within moments, fright and uncertainty returned with a vengeance.
The stranger’s simmering silence alarmed her far more than any tirade of threats. He had a hard look about him that frightened her, yet she found herself studying his shadowed face with something more than fright. There was a large swelling on his head where her father had struck him with the marble statue. The blow probably would have cracked the skull of any other man. His bear-paw hands gripped the oars with easy certainty, and his smooth, rhythmical strokes told her he was an experienced waterman.
She had no idea why she was speculating about this stranger, so she forced herself to stop. She held fast to the wet, smelly little dog as each powerful stroke of the oars bore her farther from shore.
Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore. “What do you want with me?” she demanded.
He gave no answer, and the look he shot her made her doubt whether or not she truly wanted to know.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked. She definitely wanted to know the answer to that.
He simply kept rowing. The small boat pounded through the choppy water, riding up the crest of each wave, then slapping down in its trench, one after the other. The dog trembled in her lap.
She bit her lip, trying to hold in a rising panic. Even after all she had seen this night, she still felt no easing of her terror. With each passing second, she slipped farther and farther away from all that was familiar. She felt numb, yet beneath the numbness lay a banked hysteria beckoning her to madness. If she gave vent to it, she might never stop screaming.
Drawing in a deep breath, she asked, “Are you a white slaver?”
“What?”
“A white slaver,” she repeated. “Is that what you are?”
“Yeah,” he said, flashing her a predatory grin that was even more intimidating than his thunderous scowl. “Yeah, that’s me. A white slaver.”
She shuddered, resentful of his sarcasm. The idea of white slavers had been planted by the forbidden novels the young ladies of Miss Boylan’s giggled over late at night. In the books, the adventure seemed to befall innocent, usually fair-haired girls, though what became of them after being taken by their brutal captors was always left to the imagination. Deborah had always envisioned a shadowy plac
e, the air spiced with incense, exotic music emanating from the unseen corners.
The stranger brought the dinghy alongside a larger boat. The firelight picked out the low-browed profile of a small steam freighter. In the pilot house a single lamp burned, swinging with the motion of the waves.
He tied the dinghy to the stern. Without bothering to ask permission, he bent and scooped up the dog, which immediately bit him.
“Ouch! Damn it!” He brought the dog over the side, practically flinging it into the trawler. He swung around to glare at Deborah. “Climb aboard,” he ordered.
She clutched the sides of the rowboat. “No.”
He let out a long breath that sounded of repressed fury. “Do you really want to fight me on this?”
“I refuse to go.”
“Climb aboard or I’ll heave you over, too,” he said.
She stared at him, all six and a half feet of him. The fringed buckskins of a savage. The dark, lank, sawed-off hair of a backwoodsman. The bear-paw hands that could snap a person in two. The reflected glints of fire and rage in his eyes. No. She did not want to fight him.
For the first time in her life, she was going to have to think ahead, to plan. She would wait for the right opportunity, and then she would act.
Bracing her hands on the hull of the trawler, she pulled herself up. The churning water made her lose her footing, but she clung tenaciously to the ladder. Her foot snagged in the hem of her skirt, and she heard a ripping sound. It crossed her mind that climbing a ladder in front of a gentleman was a risky and unladylike thing to do. Another swift glance at Paul Bunyan reminded her that he was no gentleman, and that ladylike qualms would not be tolerated.
Then a moment of utter clarity came over Deborah. She held the ladder with one hand while a wave lifted the stern end of the trawler, bringing the molten glass water up to her knees. She had it in her power to end this here, now.
Before she could change her mind, she simply opened her hand and let go of the ladder. A brief sensation of falling, then the cold shock of the water stunned her. She felt her wet skirts bell out, trapping air momentarily before pulling her down, down…
It was the worst possible moment to change her mind, but Deborah couldn’t help herself. Something deep within her protested and rebelled. She didn’t want to die at all, no matter how miserable she was. She wanted to live. She scissored her legs, trying to kick toward the surface, so hungry for air that she feared her chest would explode. She wasn’t going to make it, she thought, seeing blackness through her slitted eyes. She’d failed at suicide, and now she would fail to save herself.
Her arm brushed something hard and rough—a floating log or part of the ship, perhaps—and felt herself being dragged up to the surface. She coughed up water, then sucked in air with explosive breaths. Only then did she realize her captor had gone in after her. Looking even more forbidding soaking wet, he grabbed the ladder with his free hand and hauled her up and over the transom, manhandling her as if she were livestock. In the open cockpit of the trawler, the wild man regarded her with disgust.
“What the hell’s wrong with you, woman?” he demanded.
She knew he didn’t want a response, and for a long time, she couldn’t speak anyway. Her legs felt weak and rubbery with fatigue. The ecstatic dog greeted her, turning like a dervish on the cluttered deck and yelping joyfully. She felt too numb to do any more than sit down heavily amid her wet, tangled skirts and stare at nothing at all. After a while, she managed to catch her breath. “Smokey,” she said, addressing the dog. “That will be your name.”
The wild man secured the dinghy to the steamer. “You mean you don’t even know this dog?” he demanded. “We took on a stray?”
“If you don’t like strangers on your boat, then let us both go,” she challenged him.
“If that critter gets on my nerves, he’s cutbait,” her captor promised, pulling in the ladder. Without a word of warning, he peeled off his fringed jacket and then his shirt, revealing the deep chest, narrow waist and giant arms of a lumberjack. Then he unlaced his trousers.
Deborah gasped and looked away. “How dare you? It’s indecent.”
“I’ll tell you what’s indecent. Jumping into Lake Michigan in October. On second thought, that’s not indecent. Are you crazy, or just stupid?”
When she dared to look back at him, he was dressed in denim jeans and a bleached shirt, and was lacing on another pair of boots.
The big boat smelled of dampness and fish. It had a broad deck behind the raised pilot house, and rows of crates lashed along the periphery. A narrow hatch covered by wooden louver led below.
Deborah had spent plenty of time on the lake, but never in a craft like this. She had enjoyed endless summer afternoons flying along in her catboat, or long lazy days cruising aboard her father’s steamer yacht, the one he had bought from Mr. Vanderbilt of New York City, just so he could have something once owned by a Vanderbilt. Sometimes they steamed as far north as the locks at Sault Sainte Marie.
But this was not a pleasure cruising boat, she knew.
The man crossed the deck with heavy, thudding footsteps. The small gray dog backed against her skirts and growled.
A thump came from below, where she imagined the cabins and the boiler room to be. As Deborah watched, the louvered hatch opened and a small, wiry man with sleek black hair emerged. He took one look at Deborah and his eyes widened, then sharpened with astonishment.
“A visitor, eh? I thought I’d heard someone,” the man said. The faint flavor of French tinged his words. As he hoisted himself up and out of the hatch, Deborah saw a streak of pure white against the black strands of his hair. Though not young, he was fit and muscular. An Indian. She had never seen an Indian at such close range before.
“You are very wet,” he observed, glancing from her to the pile of damp buckskins on the deck. “The fire, she is a bad one, eh?” He shaded his eyes and faced the city. “I figured it’d be out by now.” He peered at Deborah. “So. Who the devil are you?”
The dog growled, and she snatched it into her arms.
“Name’s Jacques duBois,” the man said with a trace of Gallic courtesy that surprised her. “Commonly called Lightning Jack. Welcome aboard the Suzette, mademoiselle.”
She stood up and cleared her throat, tasting grit and smoke. Her damp skirts hung in disgrace. “My name is Deborah Beaton Sinclair.”
His congenial grin disappeared. He threw a glance at the other man. “You brought a Sinclair aboard my boat?”
“He’s crazy,” she said in a rush, praying duBois would understand. “He forced me to come with him, though I offered him a fortune to set me free. I am here against my will.”
“Aren’t we all, chère. Aren’t we all.”
“He abducted you, too?” she inquired.
“No.” Lightning Jack gestured at the flaming night sky. “But I have no liking for Chicago. Pile of dry sticks, railroad slums and smelly stockyards. Pah.” He spat over the side.
“Please. This is a terrible misunderstanding. You must take me back to shore. Your friend is not right in the head.”
“Friend.” Lightning Jack winked at the tall man. “Tom Silver was my foster son. Now that he is grown, he is my partner in commerce. Did he not tell you?”
“He told me nothing.” She turned the name over in her mind. Tom Silver. A simple name for a savage man. “Has he always been insane?”
Lightning Jack hooked his thumbs into the rope sash around his middle. He regarded her with a narrow-eyed harshness that made her take a step back. “Mademoiselle, I assure you he is not insane.” He moved past her to join the man called Tom Silver, who was loading wood from a tender tied to the boat. Silver moved with a peculiar ease for one so large. As he bent and straightened with the rhythm of his task, she saw that he had one vanity, something she hadn’t noticed before. Within the strands of his long dark hair, he wore a single thin braid wrapped with a thread of leather. Secured to one end of the braid was a feather, perhaps fro
m an eagle.
Looking at him, she felt an unaccustomed lurch of…not fear, exactly. Trepidation, yes, but it was mixed with an undeniable curiosity. She was alone with two savages, and so far she had not been injured or terrorized. Perhaps they were saving the torture for later.
With a shudder, she turned to look back at the city. Her father, one of Chicago’s most enthusiastic promoters, had always called it “Queen of the Prairie.” But everything had changed in just one night. From the deck, she could see the whole extent of the conflagration. Nothing in her experience approached the terrible majesty of this sight. The fire raged from the southwestern reaches of the city to the north shore of the lake. It spanned the river and its branches, cutting a deadly swath through the entire city, right up to the lakeshore railroad lines. The tower of the waterworks stood like a lonely, abandoned sentinel flanked by the fire. The heart of the city had been burned out.
Flames spun upward from the high rooftops. From a distance they resembled orange tornados, the sort that sometimes whirled across the prairies far beyond the city.
Government Pier bristled with people crowded close together. Deborah imagined they were as dumbstruck and battle-weary as those at Lincoln Park had been.
She wondered about her father, and her friends from Miss Boylan’s. And Philip. How close she had come to taking his hand and driving off into the night with him. She kept picturing that black leather hand reaching for her, kept hearing his refined voice, promising to take her to safety.
Instead, here she was with a skin-clad barbarian, being dragged away like a hunting trophy in his smelly boat.
Like Tom Silver, Lightning Jack wore the skins of dead animals and his hair indecently long. Unlike Silver, he wore a pleasant smile. He caught his partner’s eye. “Alors, mon vieux. We stoke the boilers,” he said and they started climbing down a hatch.
“What about me?” Deborah asked. Her voice rose on a note of hysteria.
The two men looked back at her and Tom Silver narrowed his eyes dangerously. “Don’t you get it, Princess?” he asked in annoyance.
