The Firebrand (24 page)

Maggie's little hand crept out and covered her knee. The furtive movement caught the governess's eye.

"Sir," said Miss Lowell, "I believe your daughter has something to tell you, don't you, Maggie?"

Maggie took a deep, nervous breath. "I'm sorry." "Sorry for what?"

She moved her hand to reveal a grass-stained tear in her dress.

"I caught her climbing a tree in the garden, can you imagine?" Miss Lowell sounded incredulous.

"If you would let me wear dungarees instead of dresses, it wouldn't catch on things," Maggie said.

"She has the most inexcusable habit of answering back, doesn't she?" Miss Lowell said. "We shall work on it, won't we, Maggie?"

"Yes, Miss Lowell."

Rand said, "Take some time for yourself, Miss Lowell. I shall visit with my daughter." When the governess hesitated, he said, "Please, I insist."

"I really am sorry about my dress," Maggie said earnestly, once Miss Lowell was gone.

He sat on an upholstered bench beside her, feeling as out of place as the

mastiff. He had an urge to take Maggie into his lap, but despite their nightly Emperor's Waltz, he still felt awkward around her. He patted her on the head. "Don't give it a thought."

"Miss Lowell said it is a sign of disrespect to destroy something given to me." "You haven't destroyed a thing. It's just a little tear." Rand didn't like to see her

fret over such a trivial matter. He handed her a packet wrapped in parchment and

tied with string. "I've brought you something to look at." Her eyes lit up. "What is it?"

"See for yourself."

With eager fingers she untied the string and pulled away the parchment. "Oh!" she said. "Photographs. I love looking at photographs."

"I thought you'd like to see some pictures of yourself when you were tiny.

And your family."

"I would! I surely would!" She studied the first picture. "This is me, isn't it?

What a funny little baby I was." She laughed at the wide eyes and fat cheeks. "We were very proud of you," Rand said.

She took out another picture. He could see her tongue poking thoughtfully at the gap in her mouth where she'd lost her tooth.

"Who do you think that could be?" "A beautiful bride and groom."

Rand had been deeply proud on his wedding day. All his life, his father had aimed him toward this event. The time had come for him to shoulder the mantle of tradition and responsibility. He'd been filled with a feeling of solemn purpose—to offer the world the next Higgins generation.

"That's your mother," he said.

Maggie studied the image of Diana, who looked as perfect as a marble icon, her cheeks flawless, her hair lacquered beneath a jeweled tiara holding a ghostly veil in place. She looked eerily like one of the painted dolls lined up on the shelf.

"She's pretty," Maggie said. "That's a fancy dress, isn't it?"

"Yes. There was a great fuss over it. She and her mother went to Paris, France, to buy her entire trousseau."

"What's a trousseau?"

"A lot of ladies' clothes and things. I'm not exactly sure. No one has ever explained it to me. The man just gets to pay for it all."

"They went all the way to France to buy clothes?" Maggie's eyebrows shot up. "Didn't they know you can buy ready-to-wear at Haver Brothers over on Mercer Street?"

"I suppose they wanted certain special clothes. It was a fancy wedding." "I've never been to a wedding."

"You'd probably find it boring, sitting still and listening to a lot of reading and vows, but you might like it when the bride and groom kiss, and the music plays, and the bride carries a fine bouquet of flowers."

"I'd like to see that. Can we have a wedding, Papa? Can we?" "I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"There's no bride. No groom. No one who wants to get married."

She sat quietly for a few seconds. "What's a bastard, Papa?" she asked suddenly, the question popping out of her like a champagne cork.

"Where did you learn a word like that?"

"Sally Saltonstall—she's my best friend on account of I play with her every Wednesday—says I'm a bastard because my mama and papa ain't married."

"Aren't married. And your friend is full of sh—succotash." He rubbed his jaw, silently resolving to have a word with the Saltonstalls.

Maggie mouthed the word "succotash," and seemed satisfied. Then she went back to studying the picture. He watched her face to see if she had any reaction at all to the image of her mother.

She poked a finger at the image. "Who is that man?"

For a moment, Rand froze. He could not even take the next breath as he stared at the picture, trying to see what she saw. A clear-eyed young man with very little character stamped on his face. Sculpted features, a firm mouth, his hair groomed to the last strand.

"That's—" He cleared his throat. "That was me."

She pulled back to look from him to the photograph. "Oh! It doesn't look at all like you."

In a single night he'd changed from a promising young man with the world at his feet to a desperate, grieving monster scarred inside and out. He tried to remember what it had been like to look into a mirror and see that face. What did that handsome, arrogant man used to think about, dream about? What were his hopes and his fears? He'd wanted a storybook life—a wife and child, a prosperous career, the admiration of society. He'd thought that having such things would fulfill him. But he'd been wrong. He'd achieved all that and he had not been happy. Satisfied, perhaps. Proud, even. But happy? Had he ever really known what that was? After the fire he'd known only its lack, a loneliness so acute that he felt hollowed out by a sharp object. Now, with Maggie, he glimpsed occasional flashes of happiness, like sunlight filtering down through a dark forest. She
was
the sunlight... but the darkness was still there.

He mentally shook himself and gave his attention back to her. "I've changed," he said. "I'm older, and in the fire, the night I lost you, I was burned. The scars make me look different."

"They do."

"Does that bother you?" "Bother me?"

"Does it worry you or...frighten you?" He forced out the words. He had learned to pretend not to notice that women averted their eyes from him or that neighborhood children played a game of running from "the beast," diving for cover when they saw him coming.

Maggie did something most unexpected. She laughed. "No, silly.
Spiders
frighten me." Still laughing, she jumped up and went to the door. "Hello, Mr. Nichol. Do you want to come and play?"

The usually unflappable butler stood in the doorway, his cheeks red with pleasure. "Perhaps later, miss, and thank you for the invitation. Mr. Mosher is waiting for you both in the garden."

"Who's Mr. Mosher?"

"A photographer." Rand took her hand and led her downstairs. "I asked him to come and make a picture of us."

"Hurrah!"

Charles Mosher and his assistant had set up their camera and tented darkroom. The photographer grinned when he saw Maggie. "No one told me I'd be photographing a real live princess," he said.

"And my papa," she said, looking at the lone stool. "You must put him in the photograph, too."

Rand clenched his jaw. He had not been photographed since before the fire and never intended to again. "Sweetheart, I was planning on a picture of you all by yourself."

She folded her arms across her chest. "I won't. I won't. I won't." Her voice crescendoed with each
won't.

Rand remembered what Viola had said about tantrums. He turned from his daughter, pretending great interest in the assistant's strong-smelling chemical brews of collodion and nitrate of silver.

Mosher pulled on a pair of white gloves for handling the plates. "Sir, if I may say so, she might sit more still in your lap."

Rand wanted to object, but the truth was, his looks didn't matter. The whole point of today's exercise was to produce a photograph to send to Diana. "All right," he said. "Tell me where to sit."

A few minutes later, he held Maggie in his lap. She squirmed, still cross with him. Mosher positioned himself behind the camera. "You have to sit still for the count of three," he said.

"That goopy stuff smells," Maggie complained.

"It's a mixture of ether and alcohol," Mosher explained. "And guncotton. I use

it to keep the plates wet." He framed his view. "You don't have to smile, miss." "Good. I don't feel like smiling."

"Suit yourself."

He exposed a few plates, then promised to bring the prints first thing in the morning. Maggie sat on the grass, her knees drawn up to her chin. When the photographer left, Rand squatted down beside her. "Maybe you'll smile for the camera next time."

She lifted her shoulders in a shrug.

Though he knew the answer, he felt compelled to ask, "What's the matter, sweetheart?"

"I want my mama," she stated. "And Silky. And Grammy Vi." "I know you miss them, but—"

"Why can't we all be together? Isn't that what a family is?"

Simple questions, but they made him feel as though he had dived into deep water and couldn't find the surface. "Sometimes, yes. But there are different types of families. In this one, the parents live in separate houses."

"I wish my mama was right here at the house, all the time. You have lots and lots of room."

The thought of Lucy, living in his house, seized him with unexpected heat. "She would never agree to live here. She likes being on her own, independent." All those lovers she boasted of so shamelessly would miss her if she moved to a respectable household, he reflected peevishly. "Even if she did, people would think it...strange."

"What people?"

"Neighbors. Clients at the bank. People at church."

"Mama says if you worry too much about other people's opinions you'll forget to think for yourself."

Lucy's wisdom, coming from this little girl, always surprised him. "I know what I think," he said.

"What?"

"That I would like to take Ivan to the beach and throw sticks for him. Want to come?"

"Hurrah!" Jumping up, she kissed him on the nose. "I love Ivan, and I love you." She scampered toward the esplanade.

He couldn't get over the wonder of her. She was as capricious as the lake wind, and totally nonjudgmental. Totally accepting of him.

It struck him then that someone had taught her to be this way—open-minded and bighearted, unconcerned with appearances and more concerned with the things that matter, like a maid's sore foot, his grandmother's misplaced spectacles, a blooming rosebush in the garden.

He knew exactly who had taught his daughter to be like this, full of love, free of pretensions or unreasonable fears.

Lucy Hathaway.

Lucy clutched the summons from Randolph Higgins to her bosom and shut her eyes in an ecstasy of relief. "I knew it," she whispered. "I knew he couldn't manage without me."

"Are you sure that's what this means, dear?" Viola Hathaway held the rail of the horse trolley as it lurched up the avenue.

Lucy opened the note and read the words again.
Mrs. Hathaway and Miss Hathaway are cordially invited to call...
When the message had arrived at the shop an hour earlier, she'd sent for her mother and rushed to catch the horsecar.

"I can't imagine what else," she said with her first genuine smile since Maggie had left. She tried not to think about how empty her life felt, how lonely and meaningless without Maggie around. Without her daughter's lively chatter, her constant presence, Lucy had felt half alive.

Before Maggie had come into her life, Lucy had held an idealized notion of independence. She thought a woman should be self-sufficient and not dependent on anyone for anything. Maggie had proven her wrong. There were some things even a modern, independent woman could not live without, such as the abiding love of a child. Maggie had taught her more about the nature of justice and independence than all her readings and rallies.

And just like that, with the stroke of a pen, she'd lost her.

Self-pity was never a pleasant sensation, and Lucy battled it with a will. She stayed busy with the shop and planning the upcoming Centennial March. But a part of her lived each moment with Maggie. What was she doing right now? Was she eating right, remembering to clean her teeth and say her prayers?

"Such a cryptic message could mean several things," her mother said. "Your official visiting days are Saturday and Sunday, isn't that so?"

"I've already ruled out some emergency with Maggie. I made him promise to summon me by wire for that." Lucy eyed a prosperous-looking family walking along State Street, a lively little boy clutching his parents' hands and swinging between them. "The sudden appearance of a child was bound to be a disruption in Mr. Higgins's well-ordered life. I believe he's found the rigors and challenges of fatherhood unexpectedly harsh. Men think child rearing is such a simple matter

—which it is, so long as they have wives to do the real work."

"Don't be smug, dear. You could be wrong, just this once."

Lucy noticed that her mother had put on her best blue serge dress and matching bonnet, the gloves she usually saved for church and an expression of almost heartbreaking eagerness. Viola loved visiting; when the Colonel was alive it had been the center of her life. After the fire, widowhood and poverty had taken their toll, robbing her of the privileges she used to enjoy. Invitations to the polished drawing rooms of Chicago's fashionable neighborhoods had evaporated with cruel swiftness.

Viola's eyes shone as they entered the gentrified area of turreted mansions, splendid greystones and trim esplanades between Bellevue and Burton Place. Stepping out of the trolley on the corner, they walked along the lakeside promenade, their steps quickening as they neared the Higgins's house.

The massive door opened and Lucy stepped inside. Immediately she heard a squeal of delight followed by the patter of running feet. Shrieking "Mama! Mama!" Maggie raced along the railed upper gallery and down the stairs. Behind her, the large dog galloped. Lucy opened her arms and scooped up her daughter. The thin wiry legs wrapped around Lucy as she inhaled the little-girl smell and rubbed her chin on the top of Maggie's head. Emotion overwhelmed Lucy. She lived and breathed for this child. How in heaven's name could she abide being apart from her? Finally she found her voice. "Hello, sweetheart. I've missed you so."