www.mirabooks.co.uk

      To my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Marge Green,

      who taught me cursive writing

      and told me the story of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.

      Acknowledgments

      Thanks to Joyce, Betty and Barb, for favors too numerous to count; to friends near and far, including Jamie for brainstorming a trading scam, and Jodi for therapeutic e-mail conversations; thanks to Jill for the Bunco book, and to the wonderful Martha Keenan, who always edits above and beyond the call of duty.

      Special thanks to the Chicago Historical Society, one of the richest resources ever to make itself available to a writer.

      Also by Susan Wiggs

       Contemporary Romances

      HOME BEFORE DARK

      THE OCEAN BETWEEN US

      SUMMER BY THE SEA

      TABLE FOR FIVE

      LAKESIDE COTTAGE

      JUST BREATHE

       The Lakeshore Chronicles

      SUMMER AT WILLOW LAKE

      THE WINTER LODGE

      DOCKSIDE

      SNOWFALL AT WILLOW LAKE

      FIRESIDE

      LAKESHORE CHRISTMAS

      THE SUMMER HIDEAWAY

       Historical Romances

      THE LIGHTKEEPER

      THE DRIFTER

       The Tudor Rose Trilogy

      AT THE KING’S COMMAND

      THE MAIDEN’S HAND

      AT THE QUEEN’S SUMMONS

       Chicago Fire Trilogy

      THE HOSTAGE

      THE MISTRESS

      THE FIREBRAND

       Calhoun Chronicles

      THE CHARM SCHOOL

      THE HORSEMASTER’S DAUGHTER

      HALFWAY TO HEAVEN

      ENCHANTED AFTERNOON

      A SUMMER AFFAIR

      One dark night,—

      when people were in bed,

      Old Mrs. Leary lit a lantern in her shed;

      The cow kicked it over, winked its eye and

      said”There’ll be a hot time

      in the old town tonight.”

      ~Anon.,

      quoted in the Chicago Evening Post

       The Contact

      What is the chief end of man?

      —to get rich.

      In what way?

      —dishonestly if we can;

      honestly if we must.

      Mark Twain, 1871

      The Setup

      It was beautiful and simple

      as all truly great swindles are.

      ~O. Henry

      Annual income twenty pounds,

      annual expenditure nineteen six,

      result happiness.

      ~Charles Dickens

      Prologue

       Chicago

       October 8, 1871

      She looked older than her years from a lifetime of toil. The routine struggles of making her way in the world wore on her like the fading dye of her dimity dress. Up at dawn for the milking, feeding the hungry mouths that depended on her for every breath they took, keeping house, seeing to the livestock and navigating the unseen reefs and rocky shoals of everyday living had stolen her youth.

      On a hot October night following a hot October day, Catherine O’Leary put the children down early. She washed up after supper, plunging her chapped and chafed hands into the tepid water. A high prairie wind roared through the shantytown that comprised her small world, across the river from the quiet, stately mansions of the grain barons and merchant princes. Her children had learned to sleep despite the boisterous, frequent celebrations of the McLaughlins next door. The neighbors were welcoming a cousin newly arrived from Ireland, and the thin, lively whine of fiddle music flooded through the open windows, causing the walls to vibrate. As she washed, Catherine tapped her sore, bare foot to match the rhythm of hobnail boots on plank floors emanating from the adjacent cottage.

      Shadows deepened across the beaten-earth yard leading to the cow barn that housed the source of the family’s livelihood. Her husband was out back now, feeding and watering the animals. The dry, blowing heat caused brown leaves to erupt in restless swirls through the air. The wind picked up, sounding like the chug of a locomotive coming on fast.

      Catherine dried her hands