The Mistress

He was showing her, in this single, perfect crystal of a moment, all that she wanted, and all she could never have.

She surrendered to him utterly, softening and growing pliant in his arms. Here was a man who had probably held royal princesses in his embrace, handled blooded horses and business deals worth a staggering fortune.

In one single moment she wanted it all. She wanted to experience his life of bold, glittering excess. She imagined awakening in an airy, light-filled chamber with a gentle swish of organdy curtains. Breakfast would be served on bone china by white-gloved servants, and they would spend the day surveying their beautiful estate. In the evening they would attend a musicale, visiting with friends who laughed easily, made lighthearted conversation and admired the famous Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy.

Long after he stopped kissing her, she kept her eyes closed and her face angled toward his. Only the silken rustle of his laughter startled her back to reality. She blinked like a dreamer, awakening to find him laughing down at her.

“Where the devil are you, Kate?” he asked.

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because I want to go there.”

Feeling sheepish, she stepped away from him. He tilted his head, peering shamelessly down her bodice. She smacked him on the shoulder.

“Sorry,” he said, though he didn’t sound at all contrite. “I was just checking.”

“Checking what?”

“To see where that blush of yours starts. I’m having all sorts of ideas.”

This was how wealthy, privileged people behaved. This delicious flirtation with an edge of the forbidden. And she wanted it. Oh, how she wanted it.

A spark drifted past, alighting on her bare arm, and she brushed away the hot sting. A frisson of fear touched her like the ember. “I don’t think that strayed from a chimney pot,” she said.

“Could be a leftover from last night’s blaze at Conley’s Patch,” he remarked.

She frowned. Conley’s Patch was known as the devil’s acre, a lowly ramshackle neighborhood of saloons and brothels on the south side. How would a man like Dylan Kennedy know the first thing about the Patch?

Disconcerted, she turned to look out at the city. The sun had set hours before, but an orange glow painted the sky to the west.

“I think the fire’s spreading fast,” she said, worried.

At that same moment, the French door banged open. The wind slapped it against the building and one of the panes shattered. Lucy blustered forward and grabbed Kathleen’s arm.

“We’ve got to go,” she said. “We must get back to Miss Boylan’s before the bridges get too clogged with traffic.”

Kathleen pulled her arm away, and the cord of her reticule slid off her shoulder. “But—”

“There are rumors of a fire.”

“The fires aren’t just rumors,” Dylan said calmly. “There’ve been six a day and more because of the drought.”

Lucy regarded Dylan with narrowed eyes.

“Don’t worry, Miss Hathaway,” he said smoothly. “I was not behaving offensively.”

“Why not?” she asked. “All men do.”

Kathleen guessed she’d had a run-in with Mr. Higgins. “We really must go,” she said, reluctantly agreeing with Lucy.

“Yes, we must be getting back. Miss Boylan was quite insistent,” Lucy said. “Our curfew is ten o’clock.”

Even Cinderella had her midnight, Kathleen thought. But Cinderella was nothing but a story in a book, a dream of a magical evening that could never come true. Kathleen lived in Chicago, fires were troubling the city and it was foolish to cling to the masquerade any longer.

But she did have her private fantasies. She wanted Dylan Kennedy to think back on this night and remember the mysterious, sophisticated young woman who had kissed him with forbidden intimacy.

And so, in full view of Lucy, she wound her arms around his neck and planted a long, impassioned kiss on his mouth.

Chapter Three

Just like that, she was gone.

But Dylan could still taste the phantom sweetness of her, lingering on his lips. He could still detect the pliant warmth of her mouth pressed to his.

He could still feel the hard heat of the passion she inspired, and he was compelled to wait out on the balcony until he was fit for mixed company. Blowing out a breath of exasperation, he ran his finger around his collar, yearning to loosen his cravat. He couldn’t, of course. A gentleman never appeared with a less than perfectly tied cravat.

It was a great burden, being the most eligible bachelor in Chicago. If he’d realized the ruse was going to be this much trouble, he might have chosen something else—a divine prophet, perhaps, or a blind man. The guises had worked for him before.

Dylan Francis Kennedy, known in various other venues as the marquis de Bontemps, Sir Percival Blake, the Prophet Jephtha, and Dirk Steele—Man of the Comstock, used to consider himself the luckiest fellow in the whole U.S. of A. He breezed through life, donning different identities with the same ease as trying on a new chapeau. With his affable grin, his unusual physical abilities and his flamboyant style, he had fleeced a living from the smug, the self-satisfied, the richer-than-God, and he made no apologies for it.

But unfortunately, he’d arrived in Chicago with the notorious Vincent Costello dogging his heels. Under normal circumstances, Dylan would have the means to dodge his former partner. The smell of money never failed to put Vince off the scent. But this time, things were complicated.

This time, Dylan was flat broke.

Worse, Costello was flat broke, too. That made him cranky and unpredictable.

Dylan had arrived “from the Continent”—that always impressed the right people—with less than two bits to his name. The very notion grated. There had been times when he had stood poised just inches from total success, only to have a deal go bad or a mark wise up. He usually had a knack for salvaging something from the ashes.

Not this time. This time, escape had cost him everything, including the clothes on his back. He had wanted a change from the life of burlesque performing and carnival tricks that had kept him and Costello in the money. He’d grown tired of thrilling the crowds with his daredevil tricks while Vince picked pockets and collected wager markers from the onlookers. Most of all, he’d needed to escape Costello’s daughter Faith, who had imprisoned him with the mistaken belief that he would marry her.

During a stint in Buffalo, Dylan decided the time had come to disappear. He had to get away from them, for they were getting too close in ways that made him hot under the collar. He didn’t know how to be close to people, and he didn’t want to know.

And so, on a bet, the famous marquis de Bontemps was to walk a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Dylan had done the stunt several times, curiously unperturbed by the violence of the raging cataract that lured so many tourists and daredevils from around the world. He studied the odds, chose his spot, measured his chances and then, while hundreds watched one evening, he had done the unthinkable. He had fallen. He’d gone over Niagara Falls. The horrified people who had watched him plunge to his death, who had wept to see a fine young man cut down in his prime, had forgotten all about the wager. And Dylan, who had carefully practiced the maneuver of falling, clinging to the underside of a boulder, then pulling himself along a cable to the Canadian side, had fought his way to shore in the dark. He had stolen away to the west, leaving his partner behind.

Or so he had thought. Costello probably grew suspicious when no body was recovered. Dylan should have known Costello would hunt him down like a bloodhound. Bleed him dry like a stuck pig. Or worse, make him marry Faith like a decent man.

Dylan needed a big touch, and he needed it soon.

Pressing his fist on the carved concrete rail of the balcony, he cursed the timing of the fire. And here of all places. He and all his aliases were unknown in Chicago, so he’d considered the city fertile ground for reinventing himself. He had finagled a spot on every elite guest list in town, but the masquerade would be over if someone discovered his serious cash flow problems. He didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to keep up the illusion of being the man of the hour.

The woman in the green silk gown had fluttered into his life like a petal on a breeze. No, he corrected himself, like a guardian angel. When he had met the heiress, who let him address her by the delightful nickname “Kate,” he thought his prayers had been answered. Her gown was Worth, her diamonds were genuine and her looks and personality enchanting.

She was clearly loaded with a fortune that needed a bit of lightening—preferably by Dylan. Pushing his face into the swirling hot tempest, he rotated his shoulders and glared out at the distant horizon, shimmering now with a fire in the west. It was going to be a long night.

“Damn,” he said, letting the howling wind snatch the curse away. And again, “Damn.”

He had been so close to winning her over. Even when he thought he’d have to work to earn her kisses, she had simply given him one. Given him a kiss and left, a spark on the wind.

If only he’d had a little more time, he would have succeeded with her. He could sense the opening bud of her interest. He almost dared to think he’d actually enjoy stealing from her. Generally, spoiled heiresses were a tough lot. They required a great deal of maintenance: cosseting, flattery, heartfelt pronouncements of utter devotion, promises from the bottom of his heart. Not this one. She was beautiful and merry. He would have had fun taking a fortune from her. She would have loved being taken by him.

Sadly for him, she had disappeared before he could learn more about her, capture her heart and steal her money. Perhaps he could track her down at…whose house were they going to? Miss Boylan? Who the hell was Miss Boylan?

A hail of flying embers suddenly blew through the area. With another curse, Dylan jumped back, brushing at his sleeves. The silk frock coat, from Savile Row via an unwary gentleman’s closet, was the last decent thing he owned, and he’d best not burn a hole in it.

As he turned to reenter the salon, he heard a crunching sound under his heel. With a frown, he stooped and picked up some forgotten object, bringing it inside with him. It was a green silk evening bag, crusted with beads that perfectly matched his lady-love’s dress.

With rising hope, Dylan parted the opening of the bag and looked inside. A burning whiff of ammonia nearly knocked him on his ass. Damned smelling salts. He had broken the bottle when he’d stepped on the bag. Within seconds, tears were running down his face. He was about to cast aside the silk bag when he noticed something else secreted within the emerald folds, under a soaked handkerchief.

A card of some sort? Frowning, he extracted it, hoping it was a calling card. If it was, then his task would be far easier.

But it was not a calling card. It was…a holy card, the one she had dropped when she’d lost her earring.

Odd. He hadn’t seen one of those in years, not since he had shown up at Gerry Carmichael’s funeral in Boston, claiming to be his sole heir.

This one depicted Saint Bridget looking both very Irish and very virtuous. The overly sentimental artwork touched a chord in Dylan, and for a fleeting moment, a wave of sadness surged through him. As it often did, his heart kept trying to remember a past he had vowed to forget. Memories strained to break into his consciousness, but he resisted them, knowing they held nothing but darkness for him. He had spent a lifetime fleeing the past, and he wasn’t about to lose the race now. Through sheer force of will, he banished the phantom feeling, convincing himself that he had only imagined the sudden, searing pain.

Impatient with himself, he turned the card over and read the printed prayer. And there, at the very bottom, was the name of the deceased being honored: Bridget Cavanaugh. Beloved wife, mother, grandmother. The sponsor of the card was St. Brendan’s, just a few blocks away, according to the address given.

Dylan palmed the card and slid it into the flat front pocket of his trousers—appropriately enough, next to the part of him that wanted Kate the most. He grinned at his own crude wit. Suddenly his luck was about to change.

But first, of course, he had to figure out where she had gone. Donning his best smile, he breezed into the main salon. The crowd had thinned somewhat. Apparently others were also worried about the fire that had sent Lucy and Kate speeding on their way.

Dylan found a tray of champagne glasses and helped himself to two, lifting them in the direction of Mr. Pullman in a salute. Then, when Pullman turned away, he knocked them back like water.

Lately Dylan had a new sense of weariness, an ennui. The exhilaration of a narrow escape had lacked its former heady sweetness. Running for his life was becoming too routine, and for the first time ever, Dylan began to wonder what it would be like to settle down, go straight.

With a rueful half grin into his champagne glass, he drained the last drop. How on earth would he know? His earliest memory, one he couldn’t forget no matter how hard he tried, had been of a deception.

Just wait right there, my boy, and Mam will come back for you. He had tried to sit very still and quiet, hoping his good behavior would bring her back sooner. The steamy train station had seemed as big as a witch’s castle to him, with its gleaming marble floors, soaring ceilings, gritty air and skylights glittering high overhead. Mam had once told him that the plump naked creatures were supposed to be cherubs—little babies with wings—but to him they looked evil, their carved stone mouths puckered, their fat hands clutching at clouds and clusters of grapes, their curling hair frozen in stone.

The smells of steam and cinders had choked him as he watched passengers hurrying zigzag across the marble, heels clicking, black-faced porters whistling smartly and wheeling groaning carts of baggage out to the trains. Destinations were shouted down the terminals: Philadelphia. Saratoga. Buffalo. New Haven. Boston. He encountered a boy his own age who had boasted, “We have a first-class berth all the way to Boston,” before a governess grabbed him by the upper arm and hauled him off with a whack to the backside and the warning, Don’t consort with riffraff. You’ll catch a disease.

Much later, a man dressed in a black gown had taken him by the hand and brought him to a church that echoed with whispers and eerie songs. He had dug in his heels, not wanting to face what the priest had brought him to see—a plain pine box, candles burning low. Look at her, boy. Tell us her name. He had run away as quick as ever he could, slipping out the door and passing crooked headstones in the churchyard. He skirted a freshly dug grave that reeked of damp earth and broken lilies, and the dewy grass wet the toes of his scuffed shoes as he ran.

He returned to the steamy, oily train station, because his mam had told him to wait there. The black-gowned man came looking for him again, but he’d huddled under a bench in the waiting room until the man left. Hours or maybe days later, a kindly porter had asked him if he was lost. He had shaken his head and mimicked the well-dressed boy’s voice: I have a first-class berth all the way to Boston.

That had been the beginning. He had been nine years old, and he’d learned his lesson well. People didn’t keep their promises. And more important, folks believed what they wanted to believe.

Dylan was tempted to drink away the bitter taste of the unwelcome memory, but he couldn’t afford the indulgence. Things were looking bad for him and he had work to do.

“Shame on you, Mr. Kennedy,” scolded an annoying voice. “You’ve been hiding yourself from us.”

He put on a smile designed to disarm and turned to greet Alice and Mabel Moss, nieces of the mayor of Chicago. The smile worked. They giggled and put up fans to hide their prominent teeth.

“Ouch,” he said, “that accusation stings even worse coming from your beautiful mouth.” While they giggled even harder, he said, “I was out watching the progress of the fire. Looks to be a bad one.”

Mabel waved her fan with nonchalant grace. “Oh, dear, yes,” she said. “Uncle has gone to the courthouse to see that the alarm system is alerting the West Division.”

“But never worry,” Alice enjoined. “Chicago has a perfectly grand fire department. Steam engines, hose carts, alarms everywhere you’d care to look.”

“I do hope the fire’s not in the vicinity of Field and Leiter’s store,” Mabel said with a worried pout. “I’m expecting an order of silk from Bombay. I declare, it’s impossible to hire a decent dressmaker these days. The city’s positively overrun by—” she shuddered visibly “—immigrants and foreigners.”

“Can’t abide them myself,” Dylan said earnestly. “Especially the Visigoths.”

She frowned in confusion, completely unaware that while she’d spoken, Dylan had relieved her of her little reticule. He hoped it contained something more useful than Kate’s smelling salts.

He palmed the small bag as he bowed to the young ladies. “It has been a distinct privilege,” he assured them. “And now I must be going. Perhaps I’ll make myself useful in battling the fire.”

As he walked away, he heard one of them whisper, “He’s so brave.”

He resisted the urge to add a swagger to his step. He wasn’t being brave at all, but practical. Fires could be useful in appropriating a bit of short-term gain. He considered looting to be the sport of commoners, beneath him, but the occasional snatched jewelry or cash would not come amiss.

He stopped at the cloak room and sweetly convinced the matron in charge that the Italian silk opera cape and sleek Canadian beaver top hat belonged to him. Then he went outside and stood beneath the awning, studying the terrain. The edge of the canvas flapped in a high wind, though no evidence of fire had reached the area. He pressed down the new hat to keep it in place.

“I ordered my phaeton half an hour ago,” snapped an angry voice. “Why the devil hasn’t it been brought round?”

Recognizing Philip Ascot IV, Dylan tipped his hat. He had always disliked the type: bland, vacuous, with just enough education from the right places to give him the sense that anything he wanted was his for the taking. Ascot possessed nothing but a venerable family name to recommend him. Sadly, in some circles that was more than enough. It was said that Ascot was engaged to marry Arthur Sinclair’s beauteous daughter, Deborah, who came with a dowry in excess of a million.

If Dylan needed another reason to dislike Ascot, there it was. He had gotten to the wealthy Deborah first.

No matter, he decided, pacing the pine block sidewalk, trying to make up his mind where to go. The red-haired heiress would do just fine for his purposes. He might even marry her if need be. It wouldn’t be the first time he had wed out of financial necessity.

But he didn’t want to think about past mistakes now. Regrets were always so inconvenient.

Instead, he thought about Kate some more. God, that hair, those lips. The swiftest route to her dowry would be to seduce her so she’d be forced to marry him. He found himself wishing for the luxury of time with a woman like that. Time to coax laughter and sighs from her, time to learn what her favorite color was and what she liked to eat for breakfast. Under the circumstances, however, he had to act fast. He considered the holy card in his pocket and wondered if it would provide some clue so he could find her again.

Lord de Vere and his entourage exited the Hotel Royale. Their inbred, aristocratic faces were pale and pinched. Lord Kim’s bewigged attendants sniffed the air like hounds on the scent. Dylan decided a bit of ingratiation was in order.

He flung back the edge of his cloak and tipped his new hat. “My lord,” he said, mimicking the courtly manners he had observed while gambling aboard a French steamship one year. “I thought you were a guest at the hotel.”

“Ah, Kennedy. So I was. We deemed it prudent to ficher le camp, what with this fire and the winds so unpredictable.”

“So where will you be ficher-ing to?” Dylan asked, trying his best not to mock the mincing attitude. But he couldn’t help himself. The English lord was a two-legged joke.

“Mr. Cornelius King was kind enough to offer his summer house on the north shore.”

“Indeed.” Dylan winked. “And did he offer anything else? His eldest daughter, perhaps?” Everyone knew the weak-chinned Englishman was in the States to find a rich wife. An admirable pursuit, thought Dylan. Though they’d never speak of it, they had something in common.

Lord Kim worked his mouth, fishlike, in soundless outrage. He sputtered, then found his voice. “I’m sure I don’t have the slightest interest in the young lady.”

Clearly the man had no sense of humor. Dylan laughed to show he meant no offense. “Then it’s a pity about your plan to marry money,” he quipped.

Again the codfish look from the Englishman.

“Well, the fortune generally comes with a woman attached,” Dylan concluded.

De Vere’s face froze. Then, while his attendants braced themselves for a flood of fury, he surprised them all by flinging back his head and braying with laughter. “You are a caution, sir. I should not like you at all, yet I find that I do. Ah, here is the coach.” A boxy coach and four came around from the livery. The team was spirited, probably jumpy from the heavy, smoky smell of the air and the occasional flying spark.

“Join us, Mr. Kennedy?” Lord Kim offered.

It was on the tip of Dylan’s tongue to accept. Then the oddest thing happened. The courthouse alarm bell, a couple of blocks distant, drowned out his “Yes, thank you.”

“Eh? Sorry, dear chap, I didn’t hear what you said,” the Englishman prompted.

“I said,” Dylan heard a stranger’s voice intone, “I had best stay in the city and lend a hand fighting the fire.”

“We’ll leave the heroics to you Yanks,” said the Englishman. “They say fools rush in…” Laughing at his own wit, he entered the coach.

As he watched the big, roomy vehicle roll away up Clark Street, Dylan gritted his teeth and cursed. What kind of fool stayed in the city, after all? What was he thinking? Within an hour he could be at some millionaire’s country place in Lake View, sipping sherry and making up stories about his Harvard days.

The courthouse alarm sounded again. Dylan ducked his head into the wind, held his tall hat in place and started walking. People milled about in the streets. No one seemed unduly alarmed, and neither was Dylan. Fires had been a nightly event of late because the weather was so unseasonably dry. He decided to make an early night of it, then begin his hunt for the delectable Miss Kate in the morning.

Though no one in Chicago knew it, his pied-à-terre was actually a pied-à-l’eau—a broken-down cabin boat moored under the Rush Street Bridge. He had found the leaky, listing vessel moldering in the river, and had claimed squatter’s rights. It was cramped, smelly and depressing, but he endured the conditions because he knew they were only temporary. He just had to figure out a new angle and he’d be back in the game.

Things grew more chaotic as he headed toward the lake. Crowds surged along the Van Buren Street rail line, fleeing from the West Division. Dylan hurried, his long strides putting ten city blocks behind him as he made for the bridge that spanned the mouth of the river near Lake Michigan.

On the sloping bank under the bridge, he stood still for a few moments, reluctant to seek shelter in the miserable boat. The wind held the shrieking promise of a tornado, somewhere out on the prairie beyond the stockyards. Horses in the roadway shied as their drivers laid into them with whips.

Dylan tried to decide whether or not he was afraid, and realized with no surprise that he was not. Things like firestorms and waterfalls didn’t scare him. Never had, which was probably why he had done a brisk business performing daredevil acts. He had a knack for learning tricks and a flare for the dramatic. His first stunt had taken place right in the train station where his mother had abandoned him.