"She's paced the length of the gallery a hundred times since supper." Juliette peeked out her door, toward

Phyllis's shadowed figure at the far end of the upper gallery. "I've never seen such blatant emotion on a

woman's face as when she looked into Chantz's eyes this afternoon. It was positively indecent."

Liza, looking at her own reflection in the mirror, shrugged as she pulled her hair up and fixed it with Juliette's pearl-backed combs. "I has, Miss Julie."

Juliette looked at her, her brows drawing together.

"You get that same expression ever'time you look at him."

"There you go again." Juliette frowned harder, her nervousness beating at her stomach like butterflies.

"You tellin me you ain't a little jealous over Miss Phyllis and Chantz?"

"Then you admit there's something between them."

Liza removed the combs and reached for a hair brush.

"Was somethin' between them and you didn't answer my question."

"Is he in love with her?" She held her breath as a knot of emotion formed in her chest. What, dear

heavens, would she do if Liza confirmed her suspicions?

"I suppose he had some kind of feelin's for her. He ain't the type of man to waste his energy on women he don't care for."

"Were they intimate?"

Liza shrugged. "You tell me. Would a woman with nothin' more than an occasional flirtation with a man

be stalkin' in the dark like a cat in heat?"

She repeated, "Is he in love with Phyllis?"

Liza appeared to consider her choice of words before responding. "Don't matter if he was, do it? She be

marryin' Horace Carrington in a few months."

"I have to know, Liza."

Liza's head slowly turned and her eyes narrowed, not just with speculation, but realization. Something akin to panic ignited in her features.

"Lord have mercy," she said cautiously. "I can't believe it. Chantz Boudreaux might be tomcat enough to mess with the likes of a woman like Phyllis, but it ain't like him to bother no innocent. There's been plenty who tried. Come Sundays at church they flock like sparrows, titterin' and flappin' their pretty fans and battin' their eyelashes anytime he glances their way. He don't pay them no mind. Then here you come and suddenly Chantz ain't Chantz no more. Short tempered. Surly. Restless. And stupid. Lord have mercy, he done gone and got stupid."

Juliette averted her eyes. Her face burned.

"Somethin' done happened between you," Liza said. "What has that man gone and done?"

"Nothing." Juliette shook her head. "Only a kiss..."

"Only? Kissin' don't make a body shake like you is shakin' right now. He be puttin' his hands on you, Miss Julie?" Liza dropped onto the ottoman as if her legs had turned to water. "He ain't-"

"No!"

Exhaustion overwhelmed her. She wanted to pound her head against the wall- knock some sense back into it. She could deny it all she wanted- to herself, to Liza- but she'd known the very moment she'd looked into Phyllis's star-struck eyes and felt the bitter, biting teeth of jealousy; she had become infatuated with Chantz Boudreaux.

No, not simply infatuated. The emotions rolling over and over in her chest were far more disturbing than a simple infatuation.

Slumping against the wall, Juliette closed her eyes. "He kissed me and I liked it. God help me, it's all I think about any longer. I toss and turn in my bed all night counting the minutes until daylight, thinking of excuses to see him again."

She sighed and shook her head. "I've become my mother, Liza. I've become the very woman I loathed all these years for her despicable behavior. I don't know what came over me. The urges... my mind screamed one thing and my body did another."

Liza shook her head. "Lord knows I ain't one to preach, but, Miss Julie, you can't be foolin' with him. You'll get him whupped, or worse."

Liza's voice turned rough, the tone slightly bitter. "You gots a whole lotta problems to deal with now. Like the hungers that's gonna take you over, Miss Julie. The needs that make you do things that a rational woman wouldn't even consider."

Arms crossed tightly over her bosom as if holding her emotions in check, Liza rocked forward and back. Her dark eyes reflected the lamplight like glowing coals. "You think if Phyllis Buley could control herself she'd be riskin' her reputation by foolin' with Chantz?" She gave a harsh laugh and shook her head. "You can tell yourself a hundred times a day that it's gonna stop. But it don't ever stop, Miss Julie, once it starts.

"Look at you, your face flushed and your body sweatin' and your eyes full of sufferin' cause you is thinkin' of him with another woman. What you gonna do if he find someone else he loves more? Someone prettier..."

With a soft whimper, Liza covered her face with her hands.

Juliette ran to her. "Liza! Liza, whatever is wrong with you?" On her knees, Juliette tugged Liza's hands from her face. Tears smeared her cheeks and her lips quivered. Her entire body appeared to convulse in an attempt to hold in her distress.

Turning her face away, Liza shook her head. "Don't you be botherin' with me now, Miss Julie. You gots enough to worry 'bout, what with you all in a tizzy over Chantz and Maxwell grumblin' 'bout you not hostessin' proper." Liza swiped her hand over her sweating brow. "Lord, it's hot."

Juliette rushed to the basin of water and dampened a cloth. As she gently placed it on Liza's forehead, Liza's dark, troubled eyes watched her.

"Reckon I'm more tired than I thought. I declare but Hazel Buley have me runnin' from sunup to bedtime. Liza, fetch my slippers. Liza, fetch another lump of sugar for my coffee. Liza, I hear a gnat buzzin'. How am I suppose to sleep when there's a gnat hummin' in my ear? Liza, my feet are dreadful hot. Fan them for me." Liza managed a dry chuckle. "Her damn feet smell like skunk. It's no wonda I spent half the last three days bent over a chamber pot."

Juliette bathed the sweat from Liza's brow and forced a smile. "Have you told Andrew you're with child?" she asked softly.

Liza sat up straight and pushed the cloth away. Fear flared in her eyes and her face contorted. "What you talkin' 'bout? Tell Mr. Andrew what? Soon as I get the Buleys tucked in for the night Rosie gonna ply me with her curatives. I'll be right as rain come mornin'."

Juliette caught Liza's hand and squeezed it. "Liza, I think you should-"

"I gets this way every summer. Neva could tolerate the heat much, even as a child. Rosie give me somethin' to thin my blood a touch and I'll be just fine. Just fine. Now I don't want to be talkin' 'bout me no more. Understand what I be tellin' you, Miss Julie?" Liza stared at Juliette hard, her face tense and her fingers curled around Juliette's hand so tightly it throbbed.

Juliette nodded.

"Good." Standing, Liza took a deep breath and blotted the tears from her cheeks. "There now. All better. Won't be no more talk 'bout Mr. Andrew-"

"I would never take him from you, Liza."

Liza's head snapped around and she regarded Juliette so fiercely, her body so rigid she appeared honed from mahogany.

"That's why you've been acting so strangely since the Buleys arrived, isn't it? You've been jealous."

"I seen the way the men look at you and I can't blame them. Man would have to be blind not to think you is the prettiest woman in Louisiana." She smoothed her hands down over her limp skirt. "I ain't exactly precious, am I?"

A smile touching Juliette's mouth, she took Liza's face between her hands. "I told you already. You're one of the prettiest women I've ever seen. Only difference between us is all these fancy clothes Maxwell forces me to wear."

"Case you ain't looked lately..." Liza grinned. "They is more different between us than clothes." More softly, she said, "How come you know 'bout me and Andrew?"

"Your adoration for the man might not have been so blatant as Phyllis's for Chantz, but any woman with eyes could see the two of you adore each other. His every glance at you was a caress, Liza."

Liza's shoulders slumped. "I try to keep it from my face when he's near," she said with a shadow of sad resignation in her voice. "It's just so hard."

She turned her dark eyes back to Juliette's. "I know what it's like to crave the touch of the forbidden, Miss Julie. I know the look a woman gets when the need fills her up, and the frustration gets so hard to hold back you wants to explode. I see it in my eyes ever' time I looks in the glass. You spend half your life cussin' him for doin' that to you, the other half thankin' Almighty God that you be fortunate to experience the kind of passion that most women won't ever have the pleasure of knowin'."

She laughed to herself. "For all her high and mighty airs, I can't help but pity poor Miss Phyllis. She no better off than me. Both in love with a man we can't have. The kind of man who gets in the blood and won't ever leave. The kind of man who fill up your head with crazy thoughts so you can't reason no more."

Liza took hard hold of Juliette's shoulders. "You know what I'm sayin'. You feelin' it too. Rosie call it a fever. And it is. Right down deep in the pit of my belly. Sometimes I feel like I'm just gonna go right up in a lick of smoke. Don't tell me it all in my head like Rosie do. You got it yourself for Chantz."

She felt weary of denying it to herself. "I'm afraid," she admitted, her voice little more than a whisper. "I don't know myself any longer, Liza. I can't control my thoughts, or my body. I lie here at night listening to those hounds bay and the night birds cry and thoughts of Chantz start a slow undulation here." Pressing her hand low on her belly, Juliette closed her eyes. "I'm ashamed to say I liked it when he kissed me. I hadn't meant to. I didn't expect it. Sometimes I think if he doesn't kiss me again I'll simply fade away."

Forcing a smile to her lips, she sat back on her heels. "Aren't we the pair? Both all tangled up over men-"

"'Cept you don't gots no baby in you." Liza looked at her hands in her lap. "I heard what they say today, the Buleys, 'bout that dressmakin' man marryin' color. Can't happen. Can't be spoilin' things for Andrew. Don't know what I was thinkin' to go fallin' in love with that man."

Her shoulders shrugged and she sniffed, grinned, and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "I just so happy when I'm with him, Miss Julie. I don't think nothin' 'bout nothin' 'cept how good it feel for his arms to be around me."

Juliette stood and reached for the hair brush on the dresser. She began to brush Liza's soft hair, sweeping it up and holding it with the seedpearl combs. She met Liza's eyes in the mirror.

"You want to look especially pretty tonight, I think. The sky is bright with starlight. The air heavy with the scent of magnolias." Juliette reached for the tiny pearl earbobs on the dresser, then held them up to Liza's ears.

Liza's eyes widened. "Oh, Miss Julie, I couldn't!"

"Of course you could." She applied the jewelry to Liza's ears, then she hurried to her wardrobe and rummaged through it, pulled out a pale blue gown trimmed in white eyelet lace. "You'll look absolutely fetching in this gown, Liza, and he'll-"

"No!" She jumped up, one hand over her mouth and her eyes huge. "I couldn't possibly-"

"It doesn't suit me, Liza. Since Maxwell gave me these clothes I can do anything at all I want with them. I'm thinking you need a fine dress like this."

Liza stared at her, her hand still covering her mouth.

Juliette smiled. "You're going to look so pretty in this dress that Andrew might never leave."

"Juliette is quite a woman." Andrew poured whiskey into a glass and flashed Chantz a smile. "I don't remember Maureen clearly, but clearly enough that the moment I saw Juliette I felt as if I'd seen a ghost."

Drowsy from his warm bath, Rosie's ham and beans and hot water cornbread, not to mention his second two-finger portion of bourbon in the last half hour, Chantz stretched out on his bed, his back propped against the headboard.

The last thing he wanted to do in that moment was talk about Juliette Broussard. Hell, he had enough on his mind the last days. His workers were frying in the heat and suffocating from the humidity. Max rode him constantly about money- then comes Phyllis finding every excuse possible to present herself in his line of vision. Once he might have actually given a damn. Now- "Baton Rouge is all abuzz about Juliette," came Andrew's voice. "Soon Holly House will be swarming like a beehive with men callers. She won't last long, not with her looks. Then, of course, there is the prospect of latching on to Belle Jarod."

"I really don't care to talk about Juliette."

Andrew dropped into the only chair in the room and took a deep drink of bourbon before adding, "I suspect whoever sets his sights on Juliette will have a hell of a time of it, however. By the expression on Maxwell's face when he looks at her, any man who thinks he's going to walk hand in hand into the sunset with Miss Julie will do it over Maxwell's dead body. Just a friendly warning, Chantz... as if you didn't know already that your daddy has ulterior motives for the young lady."

Laughing, he added, "And they haven't got a damn thing to do with Tylor. Why, I suspect Tylor would rather crawl into bed with that bull gator than with Juliette Broussard... or with any woman for that matter."

Chantz smoked the fine cigar Andrew had given him and regarded his friend closely. "You one of those bees, Drew?" he asked with a curl of his lips.

Andrew frowned and drank again. "I suspect my daddy wouldn't mind my getting my hooks into Belle Jarod. Hell, I wasn't born yesterday. There was more to this visit than my mother and father simply desiring to idle away the days discoursing on gators. Despite Juliette's less than illustrious parentage, most mamas would welcome such a woman into the fold if it meant their son came into fifteen thousand of the finest acres in Louisiana, not to mention a palace that, with a little work, could be restored to its former grandeur."

His eyes turning dark and troubled, Andrew ran his hand through his hair and sank deeper into the chair. "But we both know that isn't going to happen, and we both know why."

"Because you're in love with my sister."

"I don't know how I can keep this up, Chantz." Andrew shook his head. "I'm thirty years old. I should be married by now with a passel of children. Instead I'm still sneaking around to shanties in the woods, to my best friend's house at midnight like some wet-behind-the-ears adolescent up to mischief." Andrew left his chair and paced. "What the hell am I supposed to do?"

"Leave Louisiana and take her with you. Marry her."

"You think I haven't thought of that? You think I wouldn't like to? Can you imagine my mother's reaction? Oh by the way, Mama, I'm getting married. To a slave. But never mind that, Maxwell Hollinsworth is her daddy so you need only be half horrified."

Chantz watched his friend through a stream of cigar smoke. "We both know that if your daddy discovers your relationship with Liza there's gonna be problems, regardless. While he might applaud your skirt sniffing at Liza as a recreational pastime, if actual emotions enter in he's gonna demand that Maxwell haul Liza to the market."

"Don't I know it? There isn't a night goes by that I don't wake up from that nightmare. Always me watching her dragged across that platform, ankles shackled, presented like a damn broodmare to ham-fisted animals like Boris Wilcox."

There came a knock at the door. Chantz rolled from the bed and answered it.

Liza smiled up at him, then shouldered him aside and rushed into the house. Andrew stared as she twirled on the balls of her feet so the skirt of the blue dress billowed around her ankles.

Laughing, she glanced at Chantz. "I'd say the cat got his tongue, Chantz. What do you think? Do I look as pretty as I feel?"

"Prettier," Andrew declared, his voice tight with breathlessness. "My God, Liza, you're about the prettiest woman I ever saw. Honey, where did you get that dress?"

"Juliette give it to me." She twirled again, her eyes sparkling. "She let me borrow these earbobs, too." She gave her head a shake, causing the pearls to rattle. "And will you look at these combs? You like my hair up like this, Andrew? Do I look sophisticated? Do I look pretty enough to walk arm in arm with you down Chartres Street in New Orleans?"

Chantz slammed the door. Suddenly the bourbon he'd imbibed the last hour and the heat that had baked his body all day felt as if it had settled into a hot core in his belly. He glared at Liza with his jaw working and his teeth clenched.