The Hostage. Сьюзен Виггс
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Praise for the novels of Susan Wiggs
“Susan Wiggs paints the details of human relationships with the finesse of a master.”
—Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author
“Once more, Ms. Wiggs demonstrates her ability to bring readers a story to savor that has them impatiently awaiting each new novel.”
—RT Book Reviews on The Hostage
“A thrilling blend of adventure and romance…Wiggs provides a delicious story for us to savor.”
—Oakland Press on The Mistress
“Susan Wiggs delves deeply into her characters’ hearts and motivations to touch our own.”
—RT Book Reviews on The Mistress
“A quiet page-turner that will hold readers spellbound as the relationships, characters and story unfold. Fans of historical romances will naturally flock to this skillfully executed trilogy, and general women’s fiction readers should find this story enchanting as well.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Firebrand
“Wiggs is one of our best observers of stories of the heart. Maybe that is because she knows how to capture emotion on virtually every page of every book.”
—Salem Statesman-Journal
“Susan Wiggs writes with bright assurance, humor and compassion.”
—Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author
The Hostage
Susan Wiggs
The Chicago Fire Trilogy
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
For Lisa and Bruce, with love
Part One
And the wind raging, and the fire burning, and London and Paris and Portland outdone, and no Milton and no Dante on earth to put the words together.
—Chicago Tribune
(burned before distribution)
Prologue
Chicago
8 October 1871
It was the hottest October anyone could remember. Less than an inch of rain had fallen in three months. Livestock died of thirst, their bloated carcasses splayed beside sunbaked mudholes. The unseasonable warmth made women regard baking day with special loathing and small children cranky with prickly heat. Laboring men paused in their work, looked up at the sky and remarked to each other that they’d surely welcome a breath of winter.
Drought and dry windstorms kept the fire companies frantically busy; engineers and pipemen were called on to put out as many as six fires a day, battling the flames that fed on unpainted frame cottages, rickety shanties with roofs of tar and shake, and the endless supply of woodchips from Chicago’s lumber mills.
Into the restless stream of hot prairie wind floated a single spark.
Later, some would say the spark came from a stove chimney. Many believed the gossip that the unfortunate placement of a lantern near a cow in Mrs. O’Leary’s barn had caused the mayhem. Others would swear, in the terrible aftermath, that the hand of God himself started it all, while still others accused the Devil. Some even blamed a hail of comets that rained from the night sky. In the great charred ruin of the city, fingers would point and recriminations would echo across courtrooms, in the city hall and at hearings before the Board of Fire.
But the fact was, a single spark, dipping and swirling like a drunken ballerina, rode an updraft of wind that night. It sailed high over a neighborhood of wood frame houses, barns packed with timothy hay, sheds full of coal and wood shavings for tinder, sidewalks constructed of knotty spruce and pine-block roadways.
The West Division neighborhood was a rabbit warren of narrow, miserable alleys and makeshift shanties, a place no respectable person would ever visit. But it was home to day laborers and women with too many babies, to shopkeepers and immigrants, to drunks and dreamers, loose women and strict Catholics. And in the tacked-together neighborhood they bore their children, worshiped, ate, drank, fought, loved and buried their dead.
The dry, blowing heat prompted some folks to find their beds early, while others tried to drown their discomfort in drink and song. The thin, lively whine of fiddle music and the thump of hobnail boots on plank floors emanated from some of the cottages. Noise flooded through open windows and caused flimsy walls to reverberate with the hectic celebration.
And high in the wild night sky, the spark looped and changed direction, pushed along by the wind blowing in from the broad and empty Illinois prairie.
The spark entered a barn where five milk cows and a horse stood tethered with their heads lowered, and a calf lay curled on a bed of straw.
The tiny ember dropped onto a store of musty hay, and when the wind breathed on it, a small circle of orange appeared.
No one saw the pool of flame spread like spilled water, dripping down and over the stacked hay, igniting the crisp, dry wood shavings from Bateham’s Planing Mill. No one saw the river of fire flowing along the worn plank floor. No one noticed the horse’s nostrils dilate in fear or heard the animal emit a high-pitched whistle of alarm.
Finally, a drayman with a wooden leg, who happened to be loitering across the street, noticed the deep-toned, unnatural light and headed clumsily for the barn. The cows, tied by their halters, stood unmoving even when Pegleg Sullivan came crashing into the barn and untied them. The calf, with its hide on fire and its tether hanging in the wood shavings, plowed into Pegleg and half dragged him