Sandra Chastain.

Cader Sisters.

Sunshine And Satin.

Prologue.

Calabozo Prison, New Orleans, March 1793.

la trick McLendon thought he'd experienced heat. He hadn't--not until now.

In this place, even the walls dripped. His clothes, what was left ofthem, stuck to his lean body as perspiration trickled down his brow andstung his eyes. But the physical discomfort was little more than an annoyance. He'd suffered worse.

It was the anguish of losing his ship and his good name that tore athis soul, of not keeping his promise to Catherine and being unable totell her why.

Everything had changed. Even he. With his flowing beard and unkempthair, Catherine wouldn't even want him now. Patrick McLendon was no longer the well- to-do Irish adventurer who'd promised to return to thewoman he loved.

Fourteen months earlier, his ship, the Savannah Lady, loaded with goodsfor trade, had been swept off course by a hurricane. He'd soughtrefuge on a small island and been thrust into the midst of a slaveuprising. Frightened plantation owners had commandeered his ship. WhenPatrick protested leaving his goods behind, they'd imprisoned him inthe hold and sailed his ship to New Orleans.

Before reaching the city, they were stopped by the Spanish portofficial commissioned to collect tariffs from all foreign ships. One plantation owner paid his tariff but resisted paying the additionalbribe demanded by the greedy official. When he was later found dead,Patrick, already a prisoner, was falsely blamed for his murder.

Captain Lopaz, the military officer on duty, followed his superior'sorders and confiscated Patrick's ship.

To make certain they'd covered their larceny the official had Patrickbeaten and left for dead in the holding cell where other rebelliousslaves were imprisoned. Later, a barely conscious Patrick, andPharoah, an old slave who'd come to his rescue, were transported to theSpanish hellhole called the Calabozo.

But Patrick hadn't died as they'd planned.

With every day that passed in the squalid cell, his pain and angerfestered, growing into a need for revenge so strong that Patrick sworehe'd find a way to make the Spanish pay for what he lost to them.

Months later they were joined by a Natchez Indian boy called Jillico,who had been arrested and beaten for accidentally splashing mud on theboots of a prominent New Orleans businessman.

When, at last, members of the boy's tribe managed to signal theirpresence beyond the prison, Jillico had found a broken piece of metaland made a small crack in the wall through which they couldcommunicate.

Nightly, for months thereafter, the prisoners dug at the mortar betweenthe bricks with the broken sliver of an old manacle while they learned each other's language. Time passed in a haze of heat, damp anddarkness.

But time didn't matter. Freedom did.

Freedom, and revenge.

"Shhh..." Jillico's hand touched Patrick's, bringing tonight's diggingto a stop. Only the sound of raspy breathing and the constant plop ofmoisture falling from the wattle-and-sand ceiling could be heard.

Moments later the hand slipped away and Patrick returned to his task.

So dark was their prison and so seldom were they allowed out of theircells that they were in little danger of discovery from the drunkenjailers, who normally ventured into the cells below only once a day tobring tepid water and the thin gruel they called food. Nevertheless,discovery would have meant instant death.

The last block would be removed tonight. On the other side of the cubicle, Pharaoh, too weak now to help with the escape, waited in thefetid darkness.

"Are you sure they'll be outside?" Patrick whispered.

"Yes. Hurry now."

The block was removed from its place and stacked on the spongy groundbeyond the wall. The call of a night bird sounded from deep inside thedark swamp.

"The signal," the slim youth said. He stepped outside, stopped andwaited. The eerie sound came again. Jillico turned back.

"Come, quickly."

But Patrick paused. He couldn't leave Pharaoh.

Jillico looked over his shoulder, understood Patrick's dilemma and heldout his hand to the old man.

"Come with us, my friend. I will take you to heaven."

Patrick helped Pharaoh to his feet and Jillico guided him out theopening and into the murky night. They might have made it withoutincident if the slave hadn't fallen and cried out.

"Who goes there?"

The prison guard on the platform above started down the stairway, hispistol drawn. Too late now to escape detection. Patrick plantedhimself between Jillico and the guard. He didn't see the second guard,the one whose bayonet sliced through his damp clothes into hisshoulder. Neither did Patrick see the dark-skinned men who droppedfrom the moss-hung cypress trees overhead and made quick work of theSpanish jailers, then assisted the prisoners into the small boats thatslid through the brackish waters of the bayou like shadows.

Only Patrick's hatred for his Spanish captors kept him alive, that andthe memory of another body of water and the laughter of a young woman with hazel eyes who'd begged him to love her. He hovered between the dark netherworld of what he recognized as hell and a consciousness that was too filled with pain to be welcome.

Yet even in his shadow world of half life, Patrick felt the memory of Catherine's bright spirit, felt it and struggled to reach the sunshine of her smile.

And then one morning he felt the return of warmth.Patrick opened his eyes and closed them just as quickly. A second tryconfirmed his first impression. He was lying on a pink satin bed,draped with filmy pink hangings. His body was absolutely nude, and the woman bending over him was a golden-haired angel with lips the color of strawberries.

"I'm alive?" he asked, his voice hoarse and so scratchy as to sound

less like a man's and more like that of one of hell's agents.

"You're alive."

"Where am I?"

"You're in heaven."

"Who are...?"

"I'm called Isabella Angel."

"Angel? Of course," he whispered.

"I knew you would be...."

Chapter One.

Spanish territory along the Mississippi River July 1794 1 omorrow was to be Catherine Caden's wedding day.

Tomorrow she was to marry the wrong man.

If the wedding had taken place immediately on Charles's arrival atWeatherby's Trading Post she might have gotten through it. But it hadn't, and now the night hours loomed ahead, filled with doubt andregret.

Bats darted across the midsummer night sky, swooping between the glowof the campfire burning beside the river and the trading post whereCatherine stood at the window of her tiny loft room. She stared out at the Mississippi River where the Spanish boat her future husband hadhired passage on was moored, and tried to remember why she'd everthought she could marry Charles Forrest.

The dark, lazy water slapped at the riverhoat, pushing it against thesmaller pirogue as if trying to nudge it away from the bank. At feeding time she'd seen the horses back on Cadenhill, her familyplantation in Georgia, do the same thing.

Catherine let out a deep sigh, wishing that she were back home. She wished that it were 1791 again and she were still sixteen, boldlyfalling in love with a laughing, golden-haired Irishman who refused hernaughty advances and teased her about her taking liberties with his person.

That long-ago morning, on her way into Petersburg, she'd become caughtup in a herd of pigs being driven to market. The pigs had spooked herhorse and she'd been thrown. In the melee that followed, she'dexpected to be killed by pigs' feet. Instead, she'd been caught inmidair by a stranger with sun-streaked hair and teasing blue eyes, themost beautiful blue eyes she'd ever seen.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she'd finally managed to say.

"I truly do thank you for saving me. You can put me down now."

"Begorra, lass! I don't think you want me to put you down right here,"he'd answered.

"No bigger than you are, little darling, the mud would likely cover youand not even the little people would find you in that muck."

"I'm Catherine Caden," she'd said with no attempt to keep thebemusement from her voice.

"And I'm sixteen. What's your name, Irishman?"

"Patrick McLendon, darling. And I'm thirty. Do you always travel withsuch an unusual entourage?"

"Entourage? Oh, the pigs. Certainly not. I don't know where those dreadful things came from."

Later Patrick said he'd thought her small and pert, with impish eyes that were neither green nor brown, but somewhere between, and strawberry-colored hair that shone like ahalo of silk in the sun.

She'd decided in that moment that he was the man she would marry, andshe'd seen no reason to conceal that fact. In the middle of Petersburgshe'd proposed, and quickly, before Patrick had known what she wasdoing, she'd closed her eyes and pursed her lips.

"I'd like you to kiss me, please, Patrick McLen- don," she'd said andwaited.

Caught up in the spirit of the moment, Patrick had joined in the game."You wish to be kissed? Never let it be said that an Irishman refused to kiss a beautiful woman."

Afterward it had taken her weeks to convince him that she was serious,and in the end he hadn't been able to refuse. He'd spoken to herbrother-in-law, Rushton Randolph, head of the family, and promised tocome back for her.

Now, almost three years later, she was in the Louisiana Territory,about to marry a man she barely knew.

Around the trading post, stately cypress trees dressed in hanging wispsof gray Spanish moss stood like sentries keeping out the marshy swampand wild animals that prowled its wilderness. There was somethingwonderful about this new land, something challenging and alive--likePatrick.

If only she were seeing it with Patrick.

If Catherine's life had gone according to plan she'd be Mrs. Patrick McLendon, experiencing the most exciting time of her life with a boldadventurer. But that was not to be; Patrick was gone, and Charles washere.

Charles. During the few short weeks that Charles had stayed atCadenhill, Catherine had come to, enjoy his company. She'd thought tocontinue those pleasant feelings, expecting them to grow. But yesterday, when he stepped off the flatboat and made his way up fromthe dock to meet her, she had realized that he was little more than afancy-dressed stranger. She'd begun to have second thoughts.

"You needn't worry, Catherine," Mrs. Weatherby was saying now as shelaid the wedding gown across the rope bed.

"It's not unexpected. Every young bride has an attack of the vapors onthe night before her wedding. You're only nineteen and away from yourmother. It's normal."

" Where's Charles?" Catherine turned away from the window. She'd known that he was disappointed when, after supper, she'd refused hisinvitation to walk along the river. But she'd listened to him complainabout the humidity, about the muddy water, about the danger of meetingthe pirate, Stone, as he made his way upriver from New Orleans, untilshe couldn't listen anymore. She'd pleaded a headache and retired.

"He and the flatboat captain are having a drop of spirits with the minister and Mr. Weatherby," Mrs. Weatherby answered.

"They're full of the tales about that river pirate. I told them theydon't have to worry. He only robs the Spanish and their friends--afterthey've completed their business with the folks along the river. Stone is very careful that none of the little people suffer."

"He sounds like an odd pirate," Catherine commented, wishing that he'dcome sailing up the river and steal her away. That would solve her problem and she wouldn't be responsible. A pirate's life sounded likea grand adventure.

"Your Mr. Forrest wants to wait until another boat comes down the river. Traveling in a group is safer."

"Yes." She sighed.

"Charles is conscientious. He was personally selected by PresidentWashington to come to New Orleans and deal with the problems over rivertrade. He has a bright future."

Catherine couldn't decide whether she was trying to convince Mrs.

Weatherby, or herself. Conscientious was certainly not a word anybodywould ever have used in describing Patrick, and Catherine would havegone with him anywhere.

"He said that you'd met the President. Imagine that," Mrs. Weatherbywent on.

"Yes, I met him three years ago in Augusta when he was visiting each ofthe new states."

Three years ago, Catherine thought, when she and Patrick had danced atthe festivities honoring the President, and when, in order to protectCadenhill, her sister, Amanda, had surprised everyone by marrying a manshe barely knew, a man she said she didn't love.

But Amanda had been wrong. She'd been in love with her new husband.

Rush, even then; she just hadn't known it. As Catherine waited for Patrick to send word from New Orleans, she'd watched their love grow.

Patrick had promised to come back for her, but he hadn't. Then, thereport had come that Patrick had been accused of murder by Spanishofficials, who confiscated and sold his ship. Some time later she received the terrible news: Patrick was dead.

Catherine wondered if she would learn to love Charles. She knew little about love, only that she didn't feel about Charles the way she hadabout Patrick.