The Firebrand. Susan Wiggs

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      Lucy took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and walked into the shop. The bell over the door chimed, drawing the attention of Willa Jean.

      “Good morning,” Lucy said cheerfully. No matter what her troubles, the very sensation of being in the middle of the bookstore, her bookstore, lifted her heart. There was something about books. The smell of leather and ink. The neat, solid rows of volumes, carefully catalogued spine-out on the shelves. The lemony scent of furniture oil on the tables and the friendly creak of the pine plank floor. The gentle hiss of gaslight, the scratching of Willa Jean’s pencil. Most of all, Lucy supposed, she loved the sense that she stood in the middle of something she’d built, all on her own. She’d spun it out of a dream, dug it out of disaster and lavished her love upon it the way many women did when building a home.

      This was her home. And if, from time to time, she felt an ache of loneliness that not even Maggie could fill, she still told herself she had more than most women could expect in a lifetime, and she should be grateful. Those secret yearnings shamed her. She was supposed to be a New Woman, fulfilled by her own industry.

      The one thing she couldn’t figure out was how a New Woman dealt with needs as old as time. In certain quiet moments, the old loneliness stole over her. With veiled envy she watched young couples strolling together or stealing kisses when they thought no one was watching. Too often, she caught herself yearning to know a man’s touch, his affectionate regard and his passion. The one drawback to free love, she’d discovered, was that with so many choices available, no man seemed likely to choose her.

      “’Bout time you got yourself down here.” Willa Jean peered accusingly from beneath the green bill of her bookkeeper’s cap. “We got to go over the figures for the bank.”

      A cold clutch of apprehension took hold of Lucy’s gut. She’d had the entire weekend to prepare for this, but in fact she’d tried not to think about it. Perhaps that was a bit of her mother coming out in her. If she didn’t think about troubles then they didn’t exist.

      But here was a problem she couldn’t wish away.

      “All right,” she said. “Show me the books, and tell me exactly what I should say to the bank.”

      Willa Jean flopped open a tall ledger on the desk in front of her. Willa Jean was as clever with numbers as her sister Patience was with scripture. Willa Jean was gruff, blunt and usually right.

      This morning, her bluntness was particularly apparent. “If you don’t get an extension on your loan, you’ll default and lose the shop,” she concluded.

      Lucy pushed her hand against her chest, trying to still the wing beats of panic there. “I don’t expect the bank to cooperate. Our loan was sold to the Union Trust three months ago.”

      “All banks are the same, girl. They want to make money off you. Your job is to prove you’re a good risk.”

      “Am I a good risk, Willa Jean?”

      A bark of laughter escaped the older woman. “A bookseller? Honey, it ain’t like you’re selling grain futures here.” She gestured around the shop. “These are books, see? People don’t eat them, they don’t manufacture furniture out of them, they don’t keep them to increase in value. They read them. And who has time to read? Everyone’s so all-fired busy trying to make a living, they don’t read anymore.”

      “So my job is to convince a strange man that I can make a profit in a dying enterprise.”

      “Uh-huh.”

      “Remind me. Why did I get up this morning?”

      Willa Jean held out an appointment card. “There’s the name of the person you’re to see. It’s the bank president, girl. At least that’s something.”

      Lucy glanced at the card, then froze in amazement. She was looking at a name she hadn’t seen in a very long time, but one she had never forgotten. Mr. Randolph B. Higgins.

      Chapter Seven

      “Mr. Higgins?”

      Rand glanced up from his desk to see his secretary in the doorway to the office. “Yes, Mr. Crowe?”

      The earnest young man crossed the room and held out a small note. “A message from Mrs. Higgins, sir.”

      “Thank you, Mr. Crowe. Do I have any other appointments this afternoon?”

      “One more, sir. It’s about a loan extension.” He set down a flat cardstock file, bound with a brown satin ribbon. “One of those loans in the batch you acquired from Commonwealth Securities.”

      “Thank you,” Rand said again, keeping his expression impassive. He never betrayed his opinion about a professional matter, even to his secretary. It was this fierce discretion that had secured his reputation in the banking business, and he wasn’t about to compromise that.

      In the years since the fire, Rand had discovered within himself not just a talent for banking, but a passion for it. He welcomed the responsibility of looking after people’s money and embraced the task of lending to those who demonstrated a brilliant idea, an acute need or a promising enterprise. Sometimes he thought his love of banking was the only reason he’d carried on following those shadowy, pain-filled months after the fire.

      When Crowe left, Rand opened the note, written in a fine, spiderweb hand on cream stock imported from England. At the top was the Higgins crest, a pretentious little vanity created by his great-grandfather decades ago. The gold embossed emblem of an eagle winked in the strong sunlight of late afternoon. Rand stood by the window to read the note.

      Another invitation, of course. She was constantly trying to broaden his social horizons, trolling the elite gatherings of the city like fishermen trolled Lake Michigan for pike, and setting her netted catch before Rand.

      The trouble was, he thought wryly, that after a while the catch began to stink. It wasn’t that he had no interest in social advancement—he knew as well as anyone that, in his business, connections mattered. It was just that he found them tedious and, deep down, hurtful.

      This evening’s soiree was a reception for a popular politician, arranged by Jasper Lamott, who also happened to be on the board of the Union Trust. Lamott’s group, a conservative organization called the Brethren of Orderly Righteousness, was raising funds to oppose a bill before the legislature giving women dangerously broad rights to file suit against their own husbands. Like all decent men, Rand was alarmed by the rapid spread of the women’s suffrage movement, which was causing families to break apart all across the country. He believed women were best suited to their place as keepers of hearth and home, with men serving as providers and protectors. Perhaps he would attend the event after all. He would most certainly make a generous donation to the cause. The fact that women no longer knew or respected their place had brought him no end of trouble, and he supported those who labored to correct the situation for society in general.

      Taking advantage of a rare lull in the day’s activities, he turned to the picture window, with its leaded fanlights. Resting his hands on the cool marble windowsill, he looked out.

      It was a dazzling spring afternoon, the sunlight shimmering across the lake and illuminating the neatly laid-out streets of the business district. Across from the bank was a park surrounded by a handsome wrought-iron fence. In the center, a larger-than-life statue of Colonel Hiram B. Hathaway СКАЧАТЬ