Susan Wiggs Great Chicago Fire Trilogy Complete Collection

by Susan Wiggs

  As they drew nearer and nearer to Number 137 de Koven Street, Kathleen felt her mood sinking by inches. It was one thing to romanticize their Romeo and Juliet affair, but quite another to make the rest of the world understand it.

  “Kate, love, are you certain you know where you are?” Dylan asked. “This doesn’t look like the sort of place your family would—”

  “I know exactly where I am,” she said faintly.

  The next half block resembled an unhealthy set of teeth, with gaps where houses used to stand. Kathleen hardly dared to breathe for the suspense. She craned her neck to see if her family’s home had been spared.

  It had.

  As she looked at it, with its charred wood siding and broken-out windows, a black scar of scorched earth where the cowshed used to be, she felt a lurch of her heart.

  This was the lowliest hovel on the block, but it was the place where she had been raised, where she had learned to keep rhythm at the butter churn while her mother sang ballads and where her father’s laughter rang to the rafters even when times were hard.

  Sitting in front of the house, on the blackened steps, was a woman in a robe and kerchief. She sat with her head bent and her knees drawn up. The pose and the gray smoky air made her look older than her years.

  Kathleen must have made some sound, half sob, half gasp, for Dylan sent her a questioning look. “Do you know this poor woman?”

  At that moment, her mother looked up. Her face, which had been drawn in sorrow, suddenly bloomed with a smile of purest relief and thankfulness. Too moved to speak, she simply stood and opened her arms. Kathleen broke away from Dylan and went to her, feeling the strong, familiar embrace that had kept her feeling safe and loved all her life. Into the smoky, damp shoulder, she murmured, “Mam. Oh dear God, Mam, you’re all right.”

  Her mother pulled back, her work-worn hands cradling Kathleen’s face, stroking her hair. “Blessed be,” she said. “Blessed, blessed be.”

  “The others…?”

  “All fine, but we’ve nary a thing left except this broken old house.” Her eyes shone as she kissed Kathleen’s forehead. “And I’ve never been richer, colleen, never.”

  A masculine clearing of the throat reminded Kathleen of the less pleasant duty that lay before her. Now she had to untangle the web of lies that had brought her to this place. Trying to appear calm, she took both her mother’s hands in hers. Feeling the calluses and creases of labor there, she had a brief, swift vision of herself at her mother’s age—and the vision terrified her. God forgive her, but she didn’t want the life Mam had endured, with all the hard work and babies and worries keeping her awake at night.

  She squared her shoulders and drew her mother to the front boardwalk. “I’ve brought someone to meet you,” she said simply, and turned to face Dylan.

  He stood back, regarding the two of them with a puzzled expression. “One of your domestics?” he asked.

  Her mother, who had inherited Gran’s sense of humor, burst out laughing. “Sure and who is this fine gentleman, then?”

  With the inborn grace that had captivated Kathleen in her first glimpse of him, Dylan bowed from the waist. “Dylan Francis Kennedy, ma’am.”

  “My, but you’ve the manners on you, sir. You must be one of the nobs from the North Side.” She dipped her head and averted her eyes in deference.

  Kathleen felt a deep and secret shame at her mother’s servile attitude. You’re just as good as anyone, Mam, she wanted to scream. She always wanted to scream when her mother dipped and scraped before the monied folk, but she never did.

  Dylan’s smile was charming, though still baffled. Kathleen took a deep breath, knowing she could put this off no longer. She held her mother’s hand tightly.

  “Mam,” she said, “Dylan and I were married late Sunday night.” Before either could react, she put her hand out to her husband. “Dylan, this is my mother, Mrs. Catherine O’Leary.”

  Nothing. No sound or movement. Even the autumn wind ceased to blow.

  Kathleen could feel her mother’s fingers chill. She could see the same arctic cold suddenly freeze in Dylan Kennedy’s eyes.

  Dropping her outstretched hand, she tried to pluck a bit of courage from the silence. Dylan loved her, she reminded herself, not her financial circumstances. It didn’t matter one whit that her family had nothing. His own vast fortune would suffice for the two of them. And if he was any kind of a son-in-law at all, it would keep her family as well.

  It was Dylan who spoke first. He drew himself to his full, impressive height, and gave her a smile that was as cold as a winter moon. Insolence, and a dark admiration, flickered in his face. “Brava, my dear. You gave a masterful performance. You actually had me—and all of society as well—believing you were an heiress.”

  “I never meant to—”

  “Please.” He held up one hand, palm out. She could scarcely believe it was the same hand that had caressed her so tenderly she had nearly wept. “Don’t spoil the show with stammering explanations. Your maneuvering was utter perfection. Leave it at that, Kate.”

  “Kathleen,” she said, scarcely able to speak as her insides shriveled up. “Kathleen Bridget O’Leary. I signed the marriage certificate in that way exactly.”

  “That will teach me to inspect signatures.” He pointed his toe and bowed, right there in the middle of the road. A few neighbors had wandered out of the ruins to watch. “Kathleen Bridget O’Leary, if I had not lost my hat in the fire, I would doff it to you. I thought myself too wise in the ways of the world to fall for a trick like that, but you fooled me. You charmed and beguiled every soul you met that night. There should be some special prize for your performance.”

  He straightened and addressed her mother. “It was an honor to meet you, ma’am. You’ve a daughter of rare talents.” The cold, silvery rage flashed in his eyes as he regarded Kathleen one last time. “Perhaps we’ll meet again one day,” he informed her, “when hell freezes over.”

  With that, he turned smartly and walked away, looking dignified, unapproachable and intimidating as he strode toward Madison and the horse car.

  Kathleen had turned to stone. She was unable to think, to feel, to move as she watched him go. She stood like a statue, the burned and tattered Worth gown still tucked under her arm, all her dreams as cold as corpses inside her.

  She never wanted to move again. Never wanted to breathe or speak or even blink. Because she knew that if she did, she would shatter.

  Her stare stayed riveted on the tall, black-haired man walking away. At the end of the block, a mound of wheat still burned. When he walked past it, a plume of fire jetted out, followed by a black billow of smoke. And when the smoke cleared, he was gone, as if he had disappeared with the wave of a magician’s wand. As if he had been a dream.

  “Well, miss.” Her mother’s voice came to her as if from a vast distance. “And what is it you’ve got yourself into now?”

  The words melted her strange, frozen state. It was a painful thawing, for Kathleen was forced to feel everything at its most intense. She had never experienced a broken heart before. Indeed, she had thought it a fiction invented by poets and singers. But now she knew. A broken heart hurt with a pain so sharp she could not even scream or rant or beat her breast—all those things she associated with heartbreak. All she could do was turn to her mother and feel the scalding tears press at the backs of her eyes. She held in her grief, unwilling to weep.

  “There, there,” her mother said, tucking a sturdy arm around Kathleen’s waist. “Come inside, then, so the neighborhood snoops will find something else to spy on.”

  Kathleen allowed herself to be led into the dim little cottage, marveling that it still stood after the fire had swept through the neighborhood. She set her meager bundle on a stool. Little James and Mary ran to her on chubby legs, clinging to her and giggling until her mother swatted them off with an affectionate pat.

  “Where are Da and the lads?” Kathleen finally managed to ask.

  “Out s
cavenging for supplies, like everyone else. The place was left standing, but the barn’s gone, my new wagon burnt and all the winter stores of hay and shavings are ash.” She gestured at the plank table of pine, pale from all the years of scrubbing. “Sit down, colleen, and we’ll have a chat.”

  Kathleen moved stiffly, like a mechanical doll. The way she felt inside, it was a wonder she was able to move or even think. Yet here she was, on a visit with her mam, just as if it were her half day off.

  “Do you know, Mam, what they’re saying in the papers?”

  Infinite patience shone in her lined face. “Not that I’ve read it myself, but Mrs. McLaughlin’s boy was by to show me a story or two. And some ee-jit reporter came to ask me if it was a rough night when the fires came.”

  Despite her world coming apart, Kathleen’s lips twitched with a smile. “And how did you answer, Mam?”

  “’Rough!’ says I, ‘Why my God, man, it was a terror to the world!’” She leaned back on the bench and sucked her teeth. Finally, she added, “It could’ve started here, colleen. I’d be seven times a liar if I denied it.”

  “Ah, Mam, there’ve been fires everywhere in this terrible drought. A spark from anyone’s stove could have landed in any barn or mill.”

  “They say I’ll be called to answer before the Board of Fire.”

  “Where you’ll tell them the truth, and they’ll know it for an act of God.”

  Her mother nodded, then fell silent for a time. Behind the curtain, the little ones tumbled about, giggling and stacking blocks of wood, then knocking them down. Kathleen knew her mother was waiting. She knew she would have to speak of what she had done. Better now, she told herself, than after Da and the boys returned.

  “It’s true, what I told you about Dylan Kennedy,” she said. His name stuck in her throat like unshed tears. “I married him Sunday night. We were trapped in the courthouse and we thought we’d die for certain.”

  She remembered with utter clarity the emotions that had blazed through her. Terror, yes, that was to be expected. But she had felt a curious and rare exhilaration as well, clinging to Dylan, waiting for the end. In that moment she had thanked God, realizing that she would die in the grip of something many women would never discover in a lifetime—a perfect, all-consuming love.

  Or so she had thought. Apparently she had not realized what was going through Dylan’s head at the time. Speaking past a knot of shame in her throat, she explained the prank she and the young ladies of Miss Boylan’s had played, and how the fire had turned the world inside out.

  “I tried to come home, Mam, but there was no getting through the city,” she said. “Near midnight, we took shelter in St. Brendan’s, but we had to leave when the steeple burned.” She recounted the terror and thrill of watching Dylan on the roof, the drama of racing for the safety of the courthouse.

  “There was a priest,” she continued. “A Father Michael McCoughy.”

  “Ah, the new young priest,” her mother said. “I recognize the name though I’ve never seen him say Mass.”

  “There was a judge present as well.” She went on to describe Kirby Lane, the clerk, and the escaped convict called Bull. Her mother gasped aloud when she admitted the mayor himself had attended her wedding.

  “Think of it, then, the most important nobs in the city at my own daughter’s wedding.”

  If things had been left at that, just the swift, terrifying ceremony and then they’d gone their separate ways, Kathleen could have endured. She might even have cherished the memory of the drama, told her grandchildren of it one day. But the story didn’t end there.

  “After we managed to escape,” Kathleen said, leaning forward and lowering her voice so the little ones wouldn’t hear, “we found shelter.”

  “Ah, that’s lucky then, that is.”

  Kathleen swallowed and forced herself to go on. “It was a Pullman car, Mam, all tricked out like the finest room in the Hotel Royale.”

  Her mother made a lightning sign of the cross. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, he tupped you.”

  Repeatedly.

  Kathleen heated with a fever, remembering all the ways he had loved her, all the ways she had let him, all the ways she had learned to love him. She did not have to respond to her mother’s statement. The truth was written all over her flushed face.

  “Tell me this, colleen,” her mother said. “Do you love him?”

  Kathleen shut her eyes as her heart trembled. “You saw him, Mam.”

  “Aye, the angel Gabriel come to earth, he is. Ah, but I do admire those black Irish looks, I do.” Her mother took her hands, and Kathleen opened her eyes. “Colleen,” her mother persisted, “the face of an angel can’t soothe the soul or soften the advancing years. Only love can do that. So I’ll ask again. Do you love the man?”

  “I thought he was everything I ever wanted. I thought what I was feeling was love.”

  “No wonder you—” She seemed to remember herself and shut her mouth.

  Kathleen was proud of herself for not breaking down as she tried to explain. “When I went through with the wedding, it didn’t matter whether I loved him or not. I thought I was going to die with him. I thought that served as reason enough. Later, after we survived, I truly did believe it was love. He made me feel—Ah, Mam, he made me feel like a born princess, he did.”

  “Just what you wanted all your life,” her mother said quietly.

  Filled with shame, Kathleen stood abruptly and went to the window, gazing out across the burned yard. A thick length of chain and part of the ruined wagon lay amid the ashes. Other than that, she did not recognize the place. She hung her head. “I didn’t think you knew, Mam.”

  “A mother always knows. Always.”

  Kathleen despised herself in those black moments. What had it been like for her mother, working so hard every day just to get by, knowing that all her efforts would never give her eldest daughter what she yearned for?

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I should have known there was a penalty for reaching for something beyond my grasp.”

  “Sorry, is it?” her mother blustered. “Is that all you have to say?”

  “I don’t know what else—” Kathleen stopped and looked closely at her mother. Sure enough, she detected a gleam in her eye. “Mam?” she asked. “What are you thinking?”

  “We’re left with nary a thing. The roof over our head is all, but that won’t keep our bellies full.”

  “I could never go back to work for Miss Sinclair, not after all that’s happened,” Kathleen said. “She probably wouldn’t trust me, anyway, nor would Miss Boylan. But I’ll find work somewhere else.”

  “Whatever for, colleen? You’re married to a rich nob of a fellow. Why in heaven’s name would you do a servant’s work?”

  Kathleen realized her mother’s intent. “Ah, no, Mam, you saw what happened just now. I dared to hope the same thing—that once he met you, he would be only too glad to look after the lot of us. I didn’t believe such things would matter if the love was strong enough. I was wrong, though. He walked away from me. I’ll never see him again.”

  “He’s your husband, for pity’s sake.”

  “I don’t even know if the marriage was lawful.”

  “Sanctified by a priest.” She clasped her hands. “Witnessed by the mayor himself and performed by a judge. If that ain’t lawful, then what is?”

  “I don’t even think there’s a record of it.”

  “No papers signed, sealed?”

  “Well, yes, since we were in the courthouse, we had a document—”

  “Where is it?” Her mother waited tensely.

  Kathleen closed her eyes, trying to recall. “I can’t remember. It was signed all around, and notarized, and then…Mr. Lane took a turn for the worse, and…I’ve no idea who took charge of the certificate.”

  “Then it might be found. Good. You’ll need that.”

  “For what, Mam?”

  “Why, for proof, you goose.”

  “Ah,
no. I’ll not go tearing after a man who can’t abide the sight of me.”

  “Where is your pride, girl? Where is your pluck?” Her mother bustled around the cabin, seizing the green silk dress and shaking it out, critically eyeing the damage. “You were that close to having what you always wanted,” she said, measuring an inch between thumb and forefinger.

  “But Mam—” Even as she tried to frame a protest, a righteous indignation took hold of Kathleen’s heart. She knew then that it wasn’t broken at all, but strong with determination and resolve. “You’re absolutely right, Mam. I’ve a duty to my family and myself. I must claim my place as Dylan Kennedy’s lawfully wedded wife.”

  THE MARK

  What female heart can gold despise?

  What cat’s averse to fish?

  Thomas Gray,

  On the Death of a Favorite Cat

  ELEVEN

  As Dylan loitered in the rail yard by the lake and drank from a stolen bottle of whiskey, he tried to remember how many times he had been married, and which of the unions had been legitimate. But for the moment, all he could think about was his latest wife.

  “To Kathleen O’Leary.” He lifted his bottle in mock salute. It still felt strange, saying her real name. Kate or even Katie had suited the bright, clever, beautiful young woman who had captivated him with a blink of her emerald eyes.

  She had been all freshness and innocence, refinement and privilege. She’d possessed the sort of unconventional and unabashed sexuality men usually only dreamed about. She’d been everything he desired in a woman, neatly presented in one delectable package. A fantasy made of diamonds and silk, perfumed with a floral opiate that robbed him of his reason. Who could have known she concealed the cold, indifferent conscience of a con artist?

  Dylan was furious—at himself, not her, though he could probably whip himself into a fury over her if he slowed down on the whiskey. He had spent his life creating illusions and should have seen right through her ruse. But she’d been so damned good. She’d given a flawless performance. Her accent and mannerisms had been dead-on in her portrayal of the perfect little heiress on an adventure.