The Mistress. Сьюзен Виггс

she saw the reason they had made no progress.

      “Our driver has fled,” she told the others. She dropped her cultured manner of speaking and unknowingly echoed the thick brogue of her mother. “Sweet heaven, preserve us, we have no driver.”

      “Don’t be ridicu—” Phoebe half stood, her hand on the door handle.

      At the same moment, an explosion split the air. The fire had reached a store of gunpowder somewhere. The coach jerked forward with such force that Phoebe was slammed against the seat. With a scream, she plopped down. Kathleen felt her head snap back with the motion. The driverless horses scrambled ahead in full panic. Not only did they draw the coach around the abandoned horse car, they headed in a new direction entirely.

      “We are going directly toward the fire,” Lucy said. Her voice was thick with fear.

      “We’re going to die,” Phoebe wailed. “Dear God, we’re going to die and I never even had the chance to marry a duke. And I never saw Pompeii. And I’ve never eaten an oyster. And I’m still a virgin—”

      “Can you shut her up?” Kathleen asked Lucy.

      Lucy clutched at Phoebe’s shoulders and shouted “Shut up!” in her face.

      Kathleen battled the rocking, lurching motion of the uncontrolled coach as she yanked the expensive silk skirts up between her legs and tied the fabric to fit like bulky trousers.

      “Do be careful,” Lucy shouted, realizing her intent. “Please, be careful.”

      Kathleen nodded grimly. She unhooked the stiff leather windshield of the coach. Immediately smoke and blowing sparks streaked into the interior. Phoebe started to scream again, but Kathleen ignored her and climbed. She was able to grasp the underside of the high seat where the cowardly driver had perched.

      The hot wind roared over her face, carrying the scent of the terrified, sweating horses. By the age of eight, Kathleen had learned to drive her mother’s milk wagon and she was determined to control these beasts. “Ho there,” she shouted, hoping they would respond to a verbal command. “Ho!” Then she yelled, “Please, ho!” and finally, “Ho, damn it!”

      The team ignored her. They churned along a broad avenue flanked by burning buildings. Their long manes streaked out behind them. Straining every muscle in her body, Kathleen managed to hoist herself through the windshield to the driver’s perch. The speed was dizzying, terrifying. So was the knowledge that the crazed horses were drawing them deeper and deeper into the heart of the fire.

      The reins. She had to get hold of the reins. The trouble was, the driver had dropped them and they now snaked uselessly along the street.

      She kept shouting Ho and they kept ignoring her. She spied a length of leather that had not come entirely loose, but had become fouled around part of the undercarriage. Perhaps she could reach that. Holding the seat with one hand, she stretched down and forward with the other.

      A groan came from her throat. She couldn’t reach. Kathleen wanted to sob in frustration, but she had never been one to cry and saw no point in starting now. She kept reaching. Stretching. The leather slapped tantalizingly against her hand again and again. She finally grabbed hold and gave a shout of triumph. With all her might she hauled back on the single rein.

      At first the horses fought her control, but eventually responded to the desperate tugging.

      Another explosion sounded. It was terrifyingly close, the heat of it sucking the air from her lungs. With the force of a blow, the blast knocked Kathleen from her seat. She was slammed against the pine block roadway, stunned, unable to draw a breath. People rushing toward the lakefront veered to avoid the racing coach. The horses turned sharply in the middle of the street. The tongue of the coach unbalanced the vehicle and it went over on its side. While she watched in helpless horror, the horses reared, protesting the resistance, struggling to free themselves.

      The impact of her fall reverberated through Kathleen’s teeth and bones. With slow determination she hauled herself to her feet and hurried over to the coach. The straining horses were dragging it on its side, but the big rockaway barely moved. Kathleen grabbed for the half door just as it banged open.

      “We’re all right,” Lucy said, hiking back her skirts to clamber out.

      “Thank God.” Kathleen took her hand, helping her, then reached for Phoebe. White-faced and clearly shaken, Phoebe was battling tears. “Hurry,” Kathleen said. “The whole neighborhood is burning around us.”

      Phoebe’s beaded gown tore on the door latch as she scrambled out. “Help,” she shrieked to a man and woman hurrying past. “You must help us!” The passersby clutched their bundles closer and ignored her. She exhorted a man on a horse for assistance, and shouted to a hose cart driver, but no one stopped.

      “Help me free the horses,” Kathleen said.

      “No, we must get the coach up. It’s our only hope of escaping,” Phoebe wailed. “Sir,” she yelled at a huge man in fringed buckskins. “We need help with the coach—”

      He said nothing but took out a gleaming knife. Phoebe shrank back as he pushed past her. With two easy slices, he cut the traces. Then he slapped the horses on the rumps and they raced away.

      “He…he…the horses!” Phoebe yelled.

      “At least they have a chance now,” Lucy said.

      Kathleen fixed her gaze on the hose cart crew. On the side of the conveyance she could make out the number 342. Her blood chilled, for that was the fire district that encompassed her parents’ home. Suddenly the rushing crowd, the blinding heat, the bellowing roar of the fire all faded away. She stumbled on the broken pavement and lurched around a light post, approaching the crew.

      “Have you come from the West Division?” she shouted.

      One of the men kept the hose stream aimed at the building that had exploded. “You bet. Nothing left there to save, miss.”

      A whistle sounded and the hose cart crew drew away. Sick with fear, Kathleen stumbled back to rejoin her friends.

      Lucy grabbed Phoebe’s hand. “This way. We’ll go on foot.”

      “I’ll do nothing of the sort,” Phoebe objected.

      “We’ve wasted enough time squabbling already. Come along, Kathleen.”

      As it turned out, Phoebe had her way. By trading a ruby brooch, Lucy found seats for the three of them on the back of an express wagon. The vehicle, laden with rugs and furnishings from a law firm, lumbered along Washington Street, heading toward the Sands at the edge of the lake. Kathleen felt dazed, unable to think or speak. Her legs dangled off the back of the wagon, and she realized she was facing west.

       Nothing left there to save.

      She wondered dully how long the area had been burning. Had flames consumed her parents’ house while she was laughing and flirting with Dylan Kennedy? Had her little sister Mary and baby brother James fled in terror while she was drinking champagne at the Hotel Royale?

      The knot of guilt in her stomach tightened. She clutched at her middle, only vaguely aware of her friends’ anxious discourse as they sifted through the rumors that sped through the night. Field and Leiter’s six-storey retail emporium was in flames. The gasworks and numerous substations stood directly in the path of the fire. The waterworks was threatened. If it failed, there would be no water for the hose crews.

      None of it mattered to Kathleen. She couldn’t bear to think of anything but her family and what might have become of them.

      And then she acted without thinking, doing exactly what instinct told her to do. Without looking left or right, she jumped off the back of the cart. Through the steady roar of the fire and the howl of the wind, she could hear her friends calling her name but she didn’t turn, didn’t pause, didn’t flag in her determination. In seconds, a wall of smoke and flame swallowed the retreating express wagon. It occurred to her that she might