The Firebrand (14 page)

appeared and he requested a pitcher of lemonade. "On the side porch," he added,

then led the way through a parlor, opening a set of French doors.

The parlor was silent and spotless, with an ormolu clock, fringed drapes and furniture, tufted silk carpets and cut crystal chimneys on the gaslights. Lucy paused to study the portrait that hung over the mantel. The hairs on the back of her neck lifted. The painting depicted Diana Higgins seated upon a draped stool, holding a beautiful baby in her arms. Rendered in rich, shadowy oils the style of a Dutch master, the picture captured the cool perfection of Diana's features, the precise grooming of her fingernails and hair, the dreamy, soft innocence of the baby.

The baby had Maggie's face. The resemblance was so uncanny that Lucy couldn't believe Mr. Higgins didn't see it. I can't do this, Lucy thought, panic knocking in her chest.

"It's a very beautiful portrait," she said, clutching her bag a bit closer. "Thank you."

She tried to imagine what he and his wife thought about each day when they

saw the picture of their child. Swallowing hard, she went through the French doors to a porch that faced the lake. A velvety green swath of lawn, sectioned by tree-lined walkways, connected the elegant neighborhood to the beach, crossing over Lakeside Drive. The crisp beauty and intense light of the view filled her with nostalgic memories of long walks along the shore with her father.

Lucy cleared her throat. "I would like for Mrs. Higgins to join us." "My grandmother is quite content to entertain your daughter, I think." The maid arrived with a tray of lemonade in a crystal pitcher.

"I was speaking of the other Mrs. Higgins," Lucy said, smiling anxiously at the mixup. "Your wife."

Crystal clinked nervously, and the maid's hand trembled as she poured.

Cutting quick glances at Lucy, she finished her task and scuttled away.

Randolph Higgins seemed to grow even taller. "What the hell is this all about?" he demanded.

She blinked, then thrust up her chin, defensive at his bluster. "It's a simple request. I would like to speak to you about a matter of importance, and your wife should be present."

A strange stillness gripped him. He tilted his head slightly, as if she'd spoken in a foreign tongue.

Discomfited, Lucy shifted in the wicker chair, causing it to creak in the unnatural silence. Out on the broad side lawn, three figures appeared—Maggie racing along with Ivan the dog, followed by Grace Higgins, looking like a large black crow in a dark bonnet and shawl, holding her cane in one hand and a fringed black parasol in the other.

"Well," she prodded Mr. Higgins. "Will you send for your wife?"

"Miss Hathaway, your attempt to gain my sympathy in the matter of your loan has gone too far—"

"This is not about the cursed loan," she snapped, nervousness sharpening her tone.

"Then what other business could we possibly have?" His brows lowered in suspicion. "Let me guess. You're hoping to convert one more bitter, frustrated woman to your cause of social chaos and French paramours."

She planted her hands on her hips. "Is your wife bitter and frustrated, sir?" "Not anymore," he said softly, his lips thin with a fury she didn't understand. Lucy wasn't certain she'd heard correctly. "I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing," he said.

"Why are you being so disagreeable and difficult?" "Why are you being so meddlesome and annoying?"

"Because I have every right to be." Lucy grabbed a chilled glass of lemonade with a mint leaf garnish and took a long drink, letting the cool liquid soothe her

throat. Clearly this was going to take all the patience she possessed. "Now," she said, setting down the glass. "Please send for your wife. I want to discuss this with both of you."

"I'm afraid that's not possible." His icy hostility leached the warmth from the bright spring day. "I do not have a wife, Miss Hathaway."

This man had the unique ability to render her speechless. He was the only one capable of it. Her heart ached for him and her hand heated with the uncanny urge to touch him. It was not enough that he'd lost a daughter. His wife was dead, too.

When she found her voice, she could only manage to say, "I'm so sorry. I didn't know. You have my condolences, Mr. Higgins."

He hissed a breath through his teeth. "You don't understand. My wife is not dead. She has divorced me."

Divorce.

The word hung almost visibly in the air between them. To Lucy's ears, the term possessed the energy of something rare and bold. As a member of the Women's Suffrage Movement, she lent her support to the option of divorce. No woman should be forced to endure a man who mistreated or abandoned her. But she'd never imagined that a divorce would happen to the handsome, golden Higginses who had glowed so brightly that long-ago night.

Her first thought was that tragedy had torn them apart. The laughing, clever young man she'd met that night had been transformed by loss; perhaps his beautiful wife could not abide the changes. "I don't know what to say," she finally blurted out.

"You needn't say anything. My private life is none of your affair. It is something that happened in the past, and it is over."

Was it? Although Diana was no longer his wife, she would always be the woman who had given birth to Maggie. How powerful was the bond of sharing blood and breath and food? Lucy was terrified of finding out the answer, yet she knew she had to. "This complicates things, then," she forced herself to say, "for I feel I should speak to your w—your former wife as well."

"Believe me, she subscribes lock, stock and barrel to your infernal cause. However, you won't be able to enlist her." He glared out at the elegant expanse of lawn. "She lives in San Francisco now."

"I see." Lucy sipped her drink, trying to reorganize her thoughts. What if the former Mrs. Higgins decided to take Maggie off to California?

"Let me be plain, Miss Hathaway," Mr. Higgins said. "For reasons you refuse to disclose, you are prying into my private affairs. Would I not be well within my rights to show you the door? To make you put your sweet little backside on that bicycle and leave the premises?"

She nearly choked on a mint leaf. How dare he comment on her backside? How dare he call it sweet? She tried to summon indignation, but mingling with

her worry about Maggie was a fierce interest in this man. With inappropriate, shameful curiosity, she wanted to know every last detail of the divorce. She deserved to know, she assured herself. What had become of Maggie's natural mother? Why had she left? Could she hand Maggie over to a broken family?

Impulsively she reached out and covered his hand with hers. His skin was taut and waxy with scars. "Believe me, Mr. Higgins," she said, "you do not want to send me away."

He reacted swiftly, yanking his hand away. "Yes, I do," he stated.

What if the divorce was his fault? Lucy wondered, hearing hostility in his voice. Was he cruel? Neglectful? Autocratic?

"Please. I know it's painful to speak of, but I must learn more about your— Mrs.— Why you divorced."

"Since you have taken such an inexplicable interest in the matter, you should be able to guess what happened," he said with a clipped detachment that chilled her. "Thanks to radical groups like your Suffrage Movement, the laws of Illinois are particularly favorable to divorce. Chicago is crammed with lawyers who make it easy."

"Was it?" Lucy asked softly. "Was it easy for you?"

He looked at her for a long time, and she lost herself in the vivid clarity of his eyes. A thousand stories lurked inside him, and she found herself wanting to know them all. At last he spoke. "No one's ever asked me that before."

"Maybe someone should have."

Another pause. He took a gulp of his lemonade and stared into the blue distance. "We were very young when we wed. Full of dreams." He cleared his throat. "Full of...a terrible hope. We had a good life in Philadelphia, but Diana wanted more."

"More what?" asked Lucy.

His eyes flickered. "No one's ever asked me that, either. She always seemed to be looking for something that lay just beyond the horizon. I thought once the baby came along, she would be content."

Lucy was struck by the idea that he'd come halfway across the country to find a better life for Diana. Was it a blessing or a burden, she wondered, to have one's happiness matter so much to a man?

A humorless half smile lifted his mouth. "But here's the irony of that. I was the one who found contentment when Christine was born, not Diana. They say it is the woman whose nesting instincts are aroused. In my case it was being a father. It seemed to fulfill every dream I ever had."

His candor amazed her. The blunt, probing questions she'd asked had opened a floodgate of confessions. Perhaps he'd never had anyone to tell this to before. Lucy didn't dare speak, hoping he'd continue. She felt torn, admiring his honesty even as a part of her wished he'd prove himself an unfit father so she could keep

her secret.

"We came west because I thought Diana might enjoy the excitement of a new city and the challenge of building a new home for our family. I intended to establish myself at the bank, and she would build a grand new house. The one thing we never could have anticipated was the fire." He leaned forward, resting his lanky wrists on his knees and staring at the ground, seeing things Lucy didn't dare to imagine.

She suddenly wanted him to stop talking, for she didn't wish to share his pain.

Yet for Maggie's sake, Lucy knew she had to hear everything.

"This will sound odd to you, Mr. Higgins, but I truly do wish to know what your life has been like."

"Why?" he demanded. "Why would you care? Have you another sexual proposition?"

She chose not to dignify him with an answer, but responded with another question, one she hoped would shift the mood from bitterness to honesty. "What happened after the fire?" She pictured them that night, handsome and golden, standing in the glow of everyone's admiration. After her idiotic blunder, she'd stood back and watched, thinking them the most romantic, luckiest couple in the world.

And an unholy envy had burned in her heart.

"After we lost Christine, I couldn't even be present to comfort Diana," he admitted. "I lay unconscious while she made a full recovery. Her wounds were fortunately superficial—or so I was told. But something broke the night we lost Christina. In the worst moment of our lives I failed to console her. Perhaps that is why she left." His face flushed. "Though on the legal decree she gave quite a different reason."

Lucy couldn't bring herself to ask what that reason was. Not yet. His former wife had a side to this story, too, Lucy reminded herself. "A great tragedy can change the very fabric of life," she said, thinking of her mother.

He steepled his fingers together and held her gaze with his. "I had this house built for her, but it was an act of futility. With Christine gone, Diana and I had nothing to hold us together."

Lucy didn't comprehend how love could simply stop in the face of adversity, yet she held her tongue, troubled by the idea that he had no wife. She'd come here today thinking to find a loving family. If she made her great revelation now, she would be making it to a bitter, wounded man who had lost the ability to love.

Without a mother in the picture, she must proceed with care. Perhaps, she thought, this was a test of her true convictions. She had always claimed women and men to be equal. She had to believe a man could be every bit as good a parent as a woman.

Agitated, she stood and went to the porch rail, standing with her back to him.

It wasn't too late to change her mind. He still didn't know. He might never know. Oh, how she wanted to run away and never tell him.

Silence hung between them as the moments passed, the lemonade glasses sweating and forgotten, the breeze scented with the blue freshness of the lake. Lucy tried to imagine how he'd felt, having lost his daughter and then his wife as he lay wounded.

In the distance, Maggie and the dog skipped along the beach. The little girl waved at them, then ran in circles around Grace Higgins, who sat on a painted bench, watching Maggie's antics from beneath the fringed parasol.

Turning, Lucy contemplated Mr. Higgins and wondered why his sadness hurt her.

He was too damaged, she thought in apprehension. Even learning the truth about Maggie would not banish the pain in his eyes.

Then a thought struck her. Perhaps he and his former wife would reconcile if they realized they hadn't lost their daughter after all.

"She is quite a lively child," he said at length, and she realized he'd been watching Maggie, too.

Gathering her courage, she asked, "Do you disapprove of liveliness in a child?"

His face closed. "It is not for me to approve or disapprove. My knowledge of child rearing is extremely limited."

"Maggie is the greatest blessing of my life." In anguish, Lucy sat down and braced her hands on the arms of the chair. "Do you understand that? The greatest and most precious part of me. She is all my heart and soul."

He looked startled, then his expression softened. "Actually, Miss Hathaway, I do understand."

She caught her lower lip in her teeth, trying to keep in the request she knew she must make. And then she made herself say it. "Tell me about your child. Not how you lost her, but...how you loved her."

He fell still, and she sensed his hesitation. He turned his glass around and around in his hand. "Did you really come here to ask me these things? Surely you have better things to do with your time than to poke around in my past."

Lucy took a chance. "Can it make you feel any worse to speak of it?"

He glared at her, and she feared she'd lost him. But then he began to speak. "The day Christine was born, I bought two dozen bottles of Sire de Gaucourt champagne. I drank an entire bottle myself in celebration, but I put the rest aside. I thought what a fine thing it would be to serve that champagne on the day she married."

Lucy felt the depth of his loss in each softly spoken word. "Do you still have the champagne?"

He nodded. "After the fire, it was shipped from Philadelphia with the rest of