Lawless (36 page)

Weariness sapped his anger and the last of his strength. He was barely aware of Julia reaching his side. She took his hand and led him back across the kitchen, and out. He was too exhausted to say a word.

When he was himself again, he found he was sprawled on a lounge in a bedroom on the north side of the house. Julia’s bedroom? he wondered with a twinge of embarrassment. But he wasn’t so embarrassed that he moved; he was still too damn tired.

French windows opened onto a spacious balcony. Beyond Courtleigh’s rooftop he saw the panorama of the flame-filled sky. Somewhere a small clock chimed four. He made a good deal of noise as he sat up.

Julia appeared on the balcony, which extended beyond the left-hand window. “Gideon? Ah, you’re awake—”

He rubbed his throbbing head.

“Would you like a little brandy?”

He nodded. She swirled past him, the robe belling back from bare calves. The walls and ceiling shimmered with firelight. He realized no lamps were lit because they weren’t needed.

With some effort, he got to his feet. She handed him a goblet. He sipped. Raked fingers through his cinder-filled hair. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

“I failed, Julia. In everything I tried to do tonight—saving Ericsson—saving his boy—getting the doctor—I failed. And for a finale, I had to lose my temper in front of your help.”

“Please don’t talk that way. You did the best you could. No sane person would expect everything to come out right on a night like this.”

The disgusted growl in his throat said the excuse didn’t satisfy him. He stalked past her to the balcony. He leaned against the rail of heavy sculptured stone. She followed. He didn’t see her raise her hand near his back, then hesitate.

At last she touched him. He stiffened a little. Once he’d gotten over his surprise and self-consciousness, he relaxed. She rested her palm lightly against his shirt between his shoulder blades. It felt wonderfully soothing somehow.

She nodded toward the northern sector of the sky. “I think the courthouse has fallen. It’s hard to be absolutely sure with so much flame and smoke. Unless they can stop the advance of the fire, the whole business district will go. You can barely see the eighth story of Mr. Palmer’s new hotel—it’s going to be wiped out, too.” A small shake of her head as she took her hand away. “It certainly teaches you not to put too much reliance on the things of this world. They never last.”

He hardly heard. “I should have tried locating a doctor in Ericsson’s neighborhood—”

“Gideon, stop!”
She came around to his side, standing on tiptoe. “Unless of course you enjoy the pose of the martyr.”

Her face turned up toward his. The brief anger he saw in her eyes jolted him from the mood of self-pity. Her hair blew against his cheek, driven by a puff of hot wind. Sympathetic again, she touched his chin. “There’s no need to torture yourself.”

He stood gazing down at her as the wind caught the skirt of her robe and brushed it aside. A bare thigh glimmered red. Her hand moved up his cheek, stroking. She felt the sudden excitement of physical contact and so did he. Her voice broke as she said, “You tried. No man or woman can do more than that.”

Later, looking back to that moment, he wondered whether he could have walked away and thus prevented everything that happened as a consequence. Yes—if he’d been less tired, less angry with Courtleigh, less aware of his own fallibility. In short, more of a paragon and less of a man.

Perhaps the excitement of the night contributed, too. During the war he’d heard fellow officers say that thoughts of the perils of combat stimulated their sweethearts and made them less cautious. He recalled a lonely cabin in the Virginia woodlands where he’d saved a young widow from being molested by two marauding Yanks. Quite unexpectedly, he’d spent the night in her bed, and he remembered how passionate she was in the aftermath of danger.

And perhaps he was worn out and needed simple human warmth, and she did too.

Whatever the reason, he found himself staring down at Julia Sedgwick and wanting her.

He put his fingers on her shoulders. She reached up with both hands, clasping her wrists around his neck. He had to bend. He did so—quickly—because her blue eyes suddenly spoke of her desire.

They were standing on the open balcony. People were still fleeing along South State. But they paid no attention to the fine houses they were passing. Gideon didn’t care one way or another. He swept his arms around Julia’s waist. Lifted her off the marble balcony so her mouth would meet his.

She murmured his name, then kissed him, her lips opening. Her tongue stole out and touched his with an ardor he’d never experienced before, not with the widow in the woodland cabin, and certainly not with Margaret. For an instant he was afraid he might not be competent enough for someone so experienced.

Then that didn’t seem to matter either. She pressed against him, the belt of the robe de chambre loosening as they kissed. The robe came open. She wore only a light chemise beneath. She was moaning as she kissed his throat, his cheek, his lips. Moaning and reaching for him.

“We’d better go inside to the bed, Julia—”

“No, no, there isn’t time—hurry, Gideon—hurry!”

Somehow she helped him free of his trousers. Somehow he left them behind as they stumbled from the red-lit balcony to the deeper shadow of her room. She clasped her legs around him and then they were magically together, she hanging back with her wrists locked around his neck while he braced against the wall.

At the end, clinging to him in exhaustion, she said, “Oh, my dearest. Oh, Gideon darling—that was shameless of me.”

“Why—why do you—say that?” He was out of breath. So was she.

“Because—we shouldn’t have. It seems that—in a very short time—I’ve grown hopelessly fond of you. But this is—one of the few times in my life when I’m—a little ashamed of getting what I wanted.”

“Don’t.” He kissed her closed eyes.

“Well”—a small, pained laugh—“you see that I wasn’t so ashamed that I stopped, or am willing to stop now. Make love to me again.”

Margaret’s face flashed into mind. He thought of the night she’d first banished him from her room. Of how he’d come home to Yorkville, hurt, and three times tried to draw her out of her unhappy mood by touching her in an affectionate, tender way. Three times she’d recoiled from him.

“Please, Gideon. On the bed this time.”

The memories faded. “Yes,” he said, and crushed his mouth against hers.

T
HEY MADE LOVE
twice more that night, each time with greater ferocity and yet greater tenderness than before.

Margaret had never been excessively inhibited in the marriage bed—at least not during the first two or three years—but she’d always insisted on total darkness. Julia did not. Both times he took her by the shimmering light of the sky and watched the gasping delight sweep over her face. The last time, just at the end, someone detonated more powder far off in the blazing city. It seemed a fitting capstone to the incredible experience.

Moments later, when they separated, he was so drowsy he could barely speak. “That was—Julia, that was—”

“What?”

A chagrined chuckle. “I don’t know. Beyond words.”

She smiled. “I’m glad.” She snuggled her small, firm breasts against his naked back as he yawned, then apologized for it. In a moment his eyes shut. He began to snore.

The sound made her laugh softly. She drew back and rubbed his shoulders until she felt him relax. Then her gaze drifted to the open windows. She’d asked the servants to summon her in the event the fire crossed Twelfth Street. So far, no one had knocked.

She stared at the smoke and flame in the heavens but didn’t really see any of it. She was pondering the surprising and incredible joy of what had just happened—what she had
wanted
to happen since he first called, she realized. He was a person of principle and determination. A person to whom failure was unbearable, and whose ambition to change society in a positive way was as powerful as her own. He was, in short, a man—in a way poor Louis had never been.

Yes, she’d wanted him from the beginning. And she’d gone out of her way to arrange the circumstances so the want could be satisfied. She’d brought him to her bedroom when another room would have served equally well as a place for him to rest. She’d gone to his side when he stood on the balcony, touched and caressed him.

She could admit all that and be both happy they’d made love and disappointed in herself. There was a streak of selfishness left in her from her younger days. She had learned to suppress and channel it, but she would never completely conquer it.

What bothered her most—for his sake, really—was the fact that he was married. When the overwrought state that had brought them together had cooled, he would feel regret and guilt and pain. Above all, she didn’t want him to feel pain. His happiness and his hurts were far more important than hers, and she couldn’t recall ever having felt that way about another human being except her son. Thus Julia came to realize she was in love with Gideon.

There was a melancholy expression on her face as she lay staring at the fiery sky, sleepless and wondering what she could do to ease his inevitable guilt for which she held herself responsible.

As it turned out, she could do nothing. The instant he awoke around nine o’clock, Margaret’s face intruded in his memory. This time he found it impossible to banish.

Stale, smoky air tainted the bedroom. Julia was awake and lying beneath the light coverlet she’d pulled over them. She read his expression at once, and unerringly.

“Gideon, it wasn’t your fault.”

“It most certainly was. I’m a married man. The father of children—”

“And do you still love your wife? I’d be much surprised if you said yes.”

Her directness and candor stunned him. He didn’t really know how to answer her question. The love he’d once felt for Margaret could never be wiped out as if it hadn’t existed; a residue of that love would always remain part of him. So in that sense he did love her. But not with the ardor of their first years of marriage.

Was it possible for a man to care for
two
women? One passionately, and one out of a sense of responsibility? He didn’t know that, either, so he evaded.

“That’s beside the point, Julia. What I did was wrong.”

“Let me accept the blame! I led you to it. I could have pulled back—stopped it—half a dozen times. I didn’t because I—because I’ve fallen in love with you.” He caught his breath as she went on. “I know that isn’t permissible in our situation. But I wanted you to make love to me, and I arranged things so it would happen. You mustn’t take the blame on yourself.”

“I must take half of it. I wanted you, too, and I wouldn’t admit it until the very last moment. What the hell are we going to do, Julia?” Louder, then, almost angrily: “What the hell are we going to do?”

She kissed the scraped knuckles of his right hand. Then the palm, and the flesh below the thumb. He was astonished to see tears in her eyes.

Tears from one so sophisticated? That struck him as improbable. But he felt them on his skin as she pressed his hand to her lips and murmured, “I can’t tell you, my dearest. We can’t change last night.”

“I know.”

“And it may well happen again.”

“I know that, too.”

“So I can’t answer the question. My conscience wants to reply one way, my feelings another. Whichever answer I give, don’t you see—it will be wrong.”

What they did was thrust the whole matter aside and let the events of the next hours carry them along, divert them from the dilemma they knew they must eventually resolve. Gideon concentrated on Thomas Courtleigh, and on what could be done to make the railroad man pay for the death of Torvald Ericsson.

From the moment he began to think about that—on Monday, when the fire was sweeping the north side after having razed the business district—he knew the Chicago police and the Chicago courts would be of no help to him. Even if the police were willing to investigate the boy’s death, he felt and Julia agreed that Courtleigh’s influence would prevent the investigation from reaching a conclusion.

But he intended to do
something
before he left the city. He brooded about the problem for hours, occasionally falling into such a rage that he entertained thoughts of finding Courtleigh and attacking him. Only when he remembered that Strelnik had cynically predicted he’d do exactly that did he put the fantasies out of his mind.

By Monday night the city’s exhausted fire companies had brought the conflagration under control except for a few pockets still burning at the northern city limits. In many areas there was nothing left to burn. On the entire north side, a returning servant reported, only two houses had been spared by a whim of wind.

Toward midnight a drizzling rain began to fall. When Gideon woke beside Julia on Tuesday morning, the vista from the balcony was an incredible one. A smoky pall still darkened the sky. To the north, shells of burned-out buildings stretched away like graveyard monuments. The ruins smoldered and so did the paving blocks of the main streets. A charred odor permeated furniture, clothing—even Gideon’s hair and pores.

On Tuesday Chicago’s mayor, R. B. Mason, convened the city council and issued a proclamation fixing the price of bread at eight cents per twelve-ounce loaf. To prevent profiteering, the price was to remain stabilized for the next ten days. Gideon and Julia learned that earlier proclamations had suspended the sale of liquor and appointed special police to help control looting. Little Phil Sheridan, the general who commanded the Department of the Missouri from its Chicago headquarters, had telegraphed for two companies of infantry from Fort Omaha.

That same day Gideon and all of Julia’s male servants tramped to the smoking ruin of the west side to search for Ericsson’s sister Sigrid, and for the body of the man himself. Neither could be found. When Gideon and the servants returned late in the afternoon, dirty and dispirited, they passed the Courtleigh mansion. Gideon noted a couple of derby-hatted men loitering in the drive. One turned his back when he saw Gideon studying him. Gideon couldn’t be positive but he thought the man had been in Florian’s group Sunday night.