Susan Wiggs - The Firebrand

“You’re looking at me like a cat in the creamery,” he whispered. “Why is that?”

She snapped her head around and faced front, appalled by her own intoxicating fantasy. “You’re imagining things, sir. You do not know me at all.”

The lecture started up again, a boring recitation about the ancient founders—male, of course—of the Christian faith. She tilted her chin up and fixed an expression of tolerant interest on her face. She’d promised Miss Boylan not to argue with the preacher; her radical views often got her in trouble, tainting the reputation of Miss Boylan’s school. Instead she kept thinking about the stranger beside her. What wonderful hands he had—large and strong, beautifully made for hard work or the most delicate of tasks.

Lucy tried to push her attraction away to the hidden place in her heart where she kept all her shameful secrets.

Men were trouble. No one knew this better than Lucy Hathaway. She was that most awkward of creatures, the social misfit. Maligned, mocked, misunderstood. At dancing lessons when she was younger, the boys used to draw straws in order to determine who would have the ill luck to partner the tall, dark, intense girl whose only asset was her father’s fortune. At the debutante balls and soirees she attended in later years, young men would place wagers on how many feet she would trample while waltzing, how many people she would embarrass with her blunt questions and how many times her poor mother would disappear behind her fan to hide the blush of shame her daughter induced.

In a last-ditch effort to find their daughter a proper place in the world, Colonel and Mrs. Hathaway had sent her away to be “finished.” Like a wedding cake in need of icing, she was dispatched to the limestone bastion called the Emma Wade Boylan School for Young Ladies, and expected to come out adorned in feminine virtues.

Women whose well-heeled papas could afford the exorbitant tuition attended the lakeside institution. There they hoped to attain the bright polish of refinement that would attract a husband. Even those who were pocked by imperfection might eventually acquire the necessary veneer. Lucy found it bizarre that a young woman’s adolescence could end with instructions on how best to arrange one’s bustle for sitting, or all the possible shades of meaning created by a crease in a calling card, yet she’d sat through lengthy lectures on precisely those topics. To her parents’ dismay, she was like the wedding cake that had crumbled while being carried from oven to table. No amount of sugar coating could cover up her flaws.

Whenever possible, Lucy buried her social shortcomings between the delicious, diverting pages of a book. She adored books. Ever since she was small, books had been her greatest treasures and constant companions, offering comfort for her loneliness and escape from a world she didn’t fit into. She lived deeply in the stories she read; caught up in the pages of a book, she became an adventuress, an explorer, a warrior, an object of adoration.

And ironically, her many failures at Miss Boylan’s had endeared her to some of the other young women. There, she’d made friends she would cherish all her life. The masters at the school had long given up on Lucy, which gave her vast stretches of free time. While others were learning the proper use of salt cellars and fish forks, Lucy had discovered the cause that would direct and give meaning to her life—the cause of equal rights for women.

She certainly didn’t need a man for that.

“We stray too far from the virtues our church founders commanded us to preserve and uphold,” boomed the Reverend Moody, intruding into Lucy’s thoughts. She stifled a surge of annoyance at the preacher’s words and pressed her teeth down on her tongue. She mustn’t speak out; she’d promised. “The task is ours to embrace tradition…”

Lucy had a secret. Deep in the darkest, loneliest corner of her heart, she yearned to know what it was like to have a man look at her the way men looked at her friend Deborah Sinclair, who was as golden and radiant as an angel. She wanted to know what it was like to laugh and flirt with careless abandon, as Deborah’s maid, Kathleen O’Leary, was wont to do belowstairs with tradesmen and footmen. She wanted to know what it was like to be certain, with every fiber of her being, that her sole purpose in life was to make a spectacular marriage, the way Phoebe Palmer knew it.

She wanted to know what it would be like to lean her head on a man’s solid shoulder, to feel those large, capable hands on her—

Exasperated with herself, she tried to focus on the mind-numbing lecture.

“Consider the teachings of St. Sylvius,” the preacher said, “who taught that ‘Woman is the gate of the devil, the path of wickedness, the sting of the serpent, in a word a perilous object.’ And yet, my friends, it has been proposed that in some congregations women be allowed to hold office. Imagine, a perilous object holding office in church—”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Lucy shot up as if her chair had suddenly caught fire.

Moody stopped. “Is there some discussion, Miss Hathaway?”

Unable to suppress her opinions any longer, she girded herself for battle. She’d promised Miss Boylan she wouldn’t make waves, but he’d pushed her too far. She gripped the back of the empty chair in front of her. “As a matter of fact, we might discuss why our beliefs are dictated by men like St. Sylvius, who kept paramours under the age of fourteen and sired children concurrently with three different women.”

Scandalized gasps and a few titters swept through the audience. Lucy was accustomed to being ridiculed and often told herself that all visionaries were misunderstood. Still, that didn’t take the sting out of it.

“How do you know that?” a man in the front row demanded.

Well-practiced in the art of airing unpopular views, she stated, “I read it in a book.”

“I’d wager you just made it up,” Higgins accused, muttering under his breath.

She swung to face him, her bustle knocking against the row of chairs in front of her. Someone snickered, but she ignored the derisive sound. “Are you opposed to women having ideas of their own, Mr. Higgins?”

Half his mouth curved upward in a smile of wicked insolence. He was enjoying this, damn his emerald-green eyes. “So long as those ideas revolve around hearth and home and family, I applaud them. A woman should take pride in her femininity rather than pretend to be the crude equal of a man.”

“Hear, hear,” several voices called approvingly.

“That’s a tired argument,” she snapped. “A husband and children do not necessarily constitute the sum total of a woman’s life, no matter how convenient the arrangement is for a man.”

“I reckon I can guess your opinion of men,” he said, aiming a bold wink at her. “But don’t you like children, Miss Hathaway?”

She didn’t, truth be told. She didn’t even know any children. She had always considered babies to be demanding and incomprehensible, and older children to be silly and nonsensical.

“Do you?” she challenged, and didn’t bother waiting for a reply. “Would you ever judge a man by that standard? Of course you wouldn’t. Then why judge a woman by it?”

He made the picture of masculine ease and confidence as he stood and bowed to Reverend Moody. “Shall we remove this discussion to a more appropriate locale?” he inquired. “A sparring ring, perhaps?”

Laughing, Moody stepped back from the podium. “On the contrary, we are fascinated. I yield the floor to open discussion.”

Fine, thought Lucy. They all expected her to disgrace herself. She could manage that with very little effort. She swept the room with her gaze, noting the presence of several prominent guests—Mr. Cyrus McCormick and Mr. George Pullman, whose enterprises had made them nearly as wealthy as Lucy’s own father, Colonel Hathaway, hero of the War Between the States. She spied Mr. Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the late great Emancipator and one of the leading social lights of the city. Jasper Lamott, head of the Brethren of Orderly Righteousness, sat in smug superiority. Watching them, she felt an ugly little stab of envy. How simple it was for men to stand around discussing great matters, secure in the knowledge that the world was theirs for the taking.