The Hostage

“Come on, then,” she said. The dog hesitated until a coal dray clattered past, nearly crushing it beneath an iron-banded wheel. Then the mongrel sprang back into Deborah’s arms. It was a smelly, scruffy thing, but she savored its lively warmth as she struggled on through the street. She had gone a full block before she became aware that somewhere along the way she had lost her shawl. She’d probably dropped it after breaking the window.

She cast about furtively, looking for the wild man, and to her relief she did not see him. She pushed on, still holding the little dog. Nothing felt real to her. It was a night out of hell. It was what she had imagined war to be. Terror and wounded refugees and the sense that the world was being ripped to pieces. Only the hope that she might find a way to her father and their home on the lake kept her going.

At last she reached the rockbound shore of Lake Michigan. The water stretched out endlessly before her, a churning field of ink. The howling wind whipped up wavelets that reflected the towering fire. The water itself resembled a sea of flame. The lake bristled with ships’ masts and the smokestacks of steamers. Hundreds of vessels had gathered to witness the spectacle. Boats plied back and forth between the lighthouse and the pier, rescuing people and belongings.

For as far as the eye could see, the lakeshore teemed with refugees and conveyances, barnyard animals and pets running willy nilly through the night. People had waded out into the water to escape the blizzard of sparks and flying brands of flame. Deborah had no idea what to do. She tried to press northward, but it was a struggle hampered by the crush of humanity, the chilly water sloshing at the shore and various landings and piers jutting out into the lake. At last she could go no farther, for the way was blocked by a jetty of sharp black rocks.

She simply stood still, hemmed in by family groups clinging together amidst an outer circle of coaches, carts and barrows. She hugged the small mongrel dog to her chest, then, lifting her face, observed the burning city with a solemn sense of shock and awe. The flames formed a vast inverted bowl of unnatural light over a huge area. There was something mystical and magnificent about the conflagration. Others around her seemed to share her hushed awe, her openmouthed silence. There was simply nothing to say. There were no words to speak in the face of a disaster so vast and so all-consuming.

What had become of her father? His beautiful mansion? His business offices in the city? What had become of the only world she had ever known?

Shaking free of the spell cast by the giant fire, she looked around, scanning the crowd for a familiar face and keeping an eye out for the murderer. She wondered who these people were, where they all came from. Chicago was a city of three hundred thousand souls. Most of them had probably lost everything. Would they simply pick up and go on? How would they ever sift through the rubble of the fallen city and find their former lives?

Like phoenixes rising from the ashes, survivors would emerge from the wreckage of the burned-out city. Criminals awaiting hanging might run free. Wives who hated their husbands might escape their torment. Rich men would find themselves suddenly penniless. A poor man might come into wealth he never imagined. In the face of a fire, everyone was equal. It put her on the same level as the criminal who had abducted her, she thought with a shudder.

A tantalizing notion came to her, subtle as a whispered suggestion. What if Philip Ascot never found her again? What if she was lost forever to Arthur Sinclair? Then she would never have to battle her father over marrying Philip.

Deborah tried to imagine what it would be like to be nothing, nobody, to belong to no one. Immediately a wave of resentment washed over her. In running and hiding from an unwanted marriage, she would forfeit her father. Her friends. Her life. No man should have the power to do that to her. Yet still the fantasy held a bizarre appeal. If she were to simply disappear, would she even be missed? What would it do to her father? She honestly didn’t know. She had the sense that he valued her as a commodity, but as a daughter? She remembered back to their moment of connection in the study and thought perhaps he loved her in his blustering, bombastic fashion. Even so, losing her would not change the shape and color of his world. Her father would grieve for a time, then give himself over to business ventures. Philip would find some other heiress to marry. Her friends might honor her memory, but they would find paths of their own to follow.

The fact was, she was not a necessary cog in the wheel of anyone’s life. Remove her, and everything would go on uninterrupted. She wondered what it would be like to be needed in the way this small lost dog needed her. To be the single element necessary for its survival was an awesome thought. She quite doubted that she was equal to the task.

She shivered, feeling a chill wind off the lake, and pulled the dog closer. She thought about her friends, Lucy and Phoebe and Kathleen. It seemed a lifetime ago that they had been getting ready for the evening’s entertainment. Where were they now? she wondered. She prayed they had survived, that unlike her they had realized the danger of the fire and stayed safe away from the city.

Somewhere in the crowd, a baby cried and a woman’s voice spoke in soothing tones. Gradually people began talking, planning, worrying aloud. Prayer and speculation. Arguments and accusations. The babble of voices crescendoed, became deafening. With no one to talk to, Deborah felt more alone than ever. Still holding the dog, she picked her way up and over the rock and rubble jetty, wondering how far she would be able to walk before exhaustion claimed her.

Her clothes were tattered, her feet sore, her hands bleeding. Every part of her ached, right down to the roots of her hair. She wondered when the dawn would come, and what the day would bring. Staggering along the shore, she had to make a wide bow around the mob. She found herself wading into the surf and felt lake water swamp her, swirling around her ankles, stinging and then numbing her raw and wounded flesh.

Then, through the babble of German, Polish and Norwegian, through the brogues of Irish immigrants and the flat accents of native Chicagoans, she heard her name being called in a clipped, educated voice. “Deborah! Deborah, is that you? Deborah Sinclair!”

Her head snapped up and she scanned the lakeshore drive. A tall sleek coach was parked amid the drays and farm carts. A slender man in disheveled evening wear stood on the box, a long quirt in one gloved hand, the other hand cupped around his mouth. The wind stirred his blond hair and in the sky behind him, fire blossoms glowed.

Philip.

Chapter Five

The moment Deborah recognized her fiancé, everything seemed to be sucked out of her. She stood unmoving, so wracked by dull astonishment that she had frozen solid. Unable to reason. Unwilling to feel anything. There was Philip, looking as handsome and commanding as he had—was it only Saturday night? Now he was calling to her again, ordering her to come to him.

Only seconds earlier she had been thinking of a new life, a new start, unencumbered by expectations, promises and obligations, and her own sense that she had no purpose in life other than fulfilling her father’s intentions for her. Now she conceded, with a humble sense of defeat, that she had no idea how to make a life on her own.

As if in a trance, she picked her way toward Philip, her thoughts dissolving into a confused muddle. Shock and fatigue pushed her toward him, the only familiar face in a world gone mad. She felt as helpless as the dog had been, trapped behind the glass in a burning building, at the mercy of the only person willing to rescue her. The brief fantasy about disappearing swirled away; it had no more substance than the wisps of smoke hovering over the lake. It was time to go back to the life she had planned and to the man who would direct it for the rest of her days.

Chill gusts of lake-cooled wind chased after her as she moved slowly up the steep bank to the place where Philip waited, perched on the running board of a carriage. Numbing exhaustion closed over her. Lines began to blur. Resignation dulled her thoughts. Anything, she told herself, anything was preferable to the hellish night she had just endured.

At last Deborah reached him, reached this man she was scheduled to marry. This man who was regarded by polite society as the American version of royalty. This man who would give Arthur Sinclair grandchildren who would be accepted in the same circles as the Guggenheims and Vanderbilts.

Philip’s handsome face, so refined it was beautiful in the firelight, was her beacon. He extended a gloved hand. “Thank God I found you, darling.” He spoke in the mellifluous lazy drawl of a Harvard Porcellian clubman. “What a stroke of luck!”

She stared at the black leather hand reaching for her.

The long, elegant fingers twitched with impatience. “Come along, then,” he said. “I don’t intend to sit among riffraff all ni—damn!”

The small dog snapped at him. He glared at the creature, then at Deborah. “Where the devil did you get that?”

“From a shop. A burning shop…” Her mind was a screaming jumble. Disjointed thoughts flew past and disappeared before she could grasp them. She felt numb; she could barely speak.

“Never mind,” Philip said. “Just get rid of the filthy creature and take my hand. There’s a girl.”

The screaming in her head grew louder, yet like a sleepwalker, she obeyed. This was Philip, for heaven’s sake. Philip, whom she’d known since she was tiny. Who had suffered through ballroom dancing lessons with her, who had sat stiffly in her father’s study and promised to offer Deborah entree into the highest circles of society in exchange for her hand in marriage—and a staggering dowry.

She thrust aside the instinctual resistance that held her back. At Miss Boylan’s she had learned to dread scandal over all else—bodily injury, personal insult, wounds to the soul. Only the lowliest of breeds would make a scene. This lesson had been hammered into Deborah, so she set down the little dog. It danced about her feet and scrabbled its paws desperately at the hem of her skirts, but she ignored it, refused to look down.

Philip gave another expert flick of the whip. The dog yelped and scurried away, scampering under the carriage. Finally coming to her senses, she tried to go after the mongrel, bending low to peer beneath the conveyance. Philip reached for her, and his gloved hand closed around hers, tugging upward.

“Not so fast,” said a rough and terrible voice behind her. “She’s coming with me.”

The madman. Wild dark hair, battle in his eyes, he towered over the crowd gathered in the roadway.

Philip dropped her hand. “Clearly you’re mistaken,” he said with an incredulous bark of laughter. “Stand down, man. You’re in the way, and I’m in a hurry.”

“Philip, this man is a menace,” Deborah babbled. “He tried to murder my father!”

When the buckskin-clad man moved in closer, Philip swore and brandished the whip. The braided leather lashed out, but unlike the dog, the outlaw didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink. He merely put up a fist the size of a joint of roast beef and caught the whip in midstrike.

He hauled back with the motion of a seasoned fisherman, reeling Philip in like a trout. Philip spat a curse even as he fell forward off the carriage box. It was hard to tell if he collided by accident with the other man’s fist, or if the man actually threw the punch that knocked him cold. All Deborah knew for certain was that Philip Ascot IV gave an unhealthy groan and crumpled to the ground like a dropped sack of feed corn.

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 frerè,” 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 place, 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.