"I won't mince words with you, Maxwell. We're all adults here. Or most of us. We know the ways of men and women." Fred shot a glance at Juliette.

"For heaven's sakes get on with it, Frederick," Hazel blurted without looking up from her needlework.

"Very well," Fred declared. "I fear Andrew has become involved with the woman."

Juliette moved slowly, almost cautiously behind Max and walked again to the window. The nerves along her spine felt raw and the air in her lungs suddenly felt thick as the humidity. The image to rise in her mind's eyes of Liza slumped and weeping into her hands caused a chill of dread to sink to the pit of her stomach.

"Andrew is a robust, healthy young man, Fred. And Liza is exceptionally beautiful." Max focused his gaze on the coils of dark red hair lying against the pale skin of Juliette's exposed shoulders. He drank again before adding, "Andrew would hardly be the first to succumb to his base urges when it comes to finding his sexual gratification along shanty row, would he?"

"Agreed. However, my concern rests not in the physical relationship that he shares with the woman. Our concern is for the emotional relationship that might have developed between them." Fred dropped his feet to the floor and sat forward. "Rumors have reached me that Andrew has become overly fond of the woman."

"And who would be spreading such a rumor, I wonder?"

"Horace Carrington, that's who," Hazel announced, coming out of her chair and spilling her hoop and skeins of thread to the floor. "He's seen them together. At that dreadful little shanty your overseer occupies on his days off. Where Tylor found Chantz Boudreaux with her."

She thrust a finger at Juliette. "Do you think we don't know what sort of wickedness goes on there? Why, Juliette's own mother carried on dalliances with her lovers in that house. I won't have my precious son corrupted by the likes of that insidious woman. Such a relationship will ruin him. We won't be able to show our faces in town. In this entire state, for that matter."

"The way I see it," Fred said, "we've both got an unseemly situation that must be nipped in the bud. First, your overseer is obviously turning a blind eye to Liza's wanderings. I would venture to say that he's in fact encouraging this relationship between Liza and Andrew. The fact that he would allow the coming and going of your slaves willy nilly is outrageous and sets a dangerous precedent."

"He deserves to be whipped right along with Liza," Hazel declared in her most self-righteous voice. She lifted her chin and stomped her foot. "I want her gone, Maxwell. As soon as possible. Before this sordid attraction they have for each other grows completely out of control."

Juliette rounded on Max so fast her heavy coils of hair spilled like a wave of red water over her shoulders. "You wouldn't dare. Tell me you wouldn't sell Liza, Maxwell. Swear it!"

"What on earth is going on in here?"

Phyllis entered the room. Her eyes appeared red and swollen and she gripped a lacy kerchief in one hand. She flashed Juliette a telling look before gliding to her mother, dropping to the floor in a mushroom of bird's-egg blue taffeta and crinoline and began collecting Hazel's sewing.

"Mama, you've over excited yourself again. You're flushed as a plum. Shall I call Rosie to fetch you a lemonade?"

"I don't want a damn lemonade," Hazel barked, and snatched the tambour from Phyllis. "I want Maxwell to take care of his responsibilities."

Phyllis slowly stood. What little color had touched her cheeks when entering the room drained from her face. "What are you talking about, Mama?"

"Your brother's relationship with Liza."

Phyllis walked to the open French doors- looked out in the darkness toward the distant twinkling lights scattered through shanty row. "Andrew is a grown man. Why don't you leave him alone? He's happy. Is that so bad?"

"Andrew has responsibilities, for heaven's sake. Time has come for him to settle down with a respectable young woman and get about the business of raising cane and children. Your father isn't exactly a young man any longer."

"And God forbid that anyone in our family actually marry out of love instead of financial convenience."

With a thin smile, she turned to her mother. "Would you prefer that he marry that drab little mouse of a woman- let me see, what is her name? Myra Howell? Looks a bit like yonder fence-post with the intelligence of a catawba worm? I suspect their children would have resembled opossums. Not that any of that would have mattered, of course. Ralph Howell has no sons and therefore Myra's husband will eventually inherit every one of Ralph's thirteen thousand acres. Why don't the two of you leave Andrew alone? He's an intelligent man. He knows what his responsibilities are... as do I."

With that, she twirled on her heels and exited through the French doors.

Hazel huffed and glared at Fred. "You've spoiled them rotten, Frederick. They're disrespectful, spiteful, and disobedient, thanks to your molly-coddling them all their lives. You've allowed Andrew to socialize with that sorry, no-account white-trash riffraff Chantz Boudreaux, and now it's come right back to bite you in the behind." Wagging her finger at him, she said, "If you don't do something to stop it now-"

"Hush!" he shouted.

Hazel's mouth snapped shut and her eyes widened.

"For the love of God Almighty, woman, you squawk like a damn crow. I'm doing all I can. Your harping on isn't going to help our situation."

With a furious flurry of skirt and petticoat and squeak of her corset, Hazel flung the tambour and threads on the floor and stormed from the room.

Fred shook his head and tamped out his cigar, stood and adjusted his coat as he appeared to contemplate his next words.

"You and I have been friends a great many years, Maxwell. We've helped each other out in bad times. I once took your family in when the flood waters were so high they washed these furnishings right out through those doors and down the river. And believe me, I understand your hesitancy where Liza is concerned. But Andrew is my only son. I want him married and settled with a respectable and acceptable young lady. That won't happen as long as he's emotionally tied to that woman."

Max finished his bourbon and put down his glass. He did not look at Fred directly, just licked the bourbon from his lips and nodded. "I understand completely. I'll speak to Liza first thing in the morning."

As Fred left the room, Max shifted his attention to Juliette. The night breeze through the open window flirted with her hair, and the heat from the globe lamp beside her torched her cheeks with hot color. The outrage she felt boiling up inside made her shake.

"You needn't look so shocked and outraged," he told her as he stood, swayed, bumped against the table causing the crystal prisms on the lamp globes to tinkle musically. "Business is business. Fred is an old and valued friend."

"I'll speak with her." Juliette did her best to keep the nervous desperation from her voice as well as her escalating fury. Judging by the look on Max's face and the tone of his voice, antagonizing the situation would undoubtedly make matters much worse. "I'll tell her that her relationship with Andrew must stop. I'll explain the consequences."

"She knows the consequences."

He walked from the room, onto the gallery.

Max stood with his hands on his hips, looking down toward shanty row. Juliette's petticoats rustled softly as she moved up behind him, watched as he breathed in deeply and slowly released his breath.

"You look like your mother tonight, Juliette. All full of fire and ready for the devil. Jack always swore that if there was any human who could stand toe-to-toe with Lucifer and make him back down, it would be Maureen."

"I don't care to talk about my mother tonight. We're discussing a woman's life and happiness."

He turned unsteadily and looked down into her eyes, his own little more than blue slits. The smell of bourbon from his sweating skin made her stomach turn.

"Your hair a riot of curls and blaze. Smelling like flowers- jasmine tonight, not magnolia. You have the flushed look of a woman who would slink through the dark to meet a forbidden lover. What's this?" He touched her cheek and regarded his fingertips. Lips curving in an emotionless smile, he said without meeting her eyes, "Night jasmine. I do believe it cascades over Chantz's bedroom window... doesn't it?"

He lifted his head. The smile slid from his mouth. "No doubt you find it all rather romantic."

Juliette backed away, her hands clenched. "We're talking about Liza. We're talking about a human being whom you intend to send down the river like she's an oak barrel of cane syrup."

Drawing back her shoulders, she added, "You're her father. How could you behave so inhumanely to your own flesh and blood?"

He rocked, as if struck by her words. "While I welcome and encourage your involvement in Holly business, there are certain matters which should never concern you. The disposition of my slaves is one of them."

"Disposition? Dear God, you are heartless. No wonder Tylor has the conscience of a snake. You're as cold-blooded and mean as a viper."

His hand struck her face with enough force to snap her head back and electrify the night with blinding spears of pain; she stumbled against the column, her mind at first refusing to acknowledge what had just taken place. Tears rose. She forced them back, along with the emotion choking her breathless.

At last, she looked into his face, thought she saw a flash of some emotion in his eyes. Shock? Regret? Anger? Whatever it was, it swam behind a red, watery curtain of inebriation.

Like a wooden puppet, his movements jerky and disjointed, Max stumbled away and covered his face with his hands. "I told you to stay away from him, Juliette, yet I see you out there in the darkness... here you stand bathed in night jasmine and looking for all the world like a woman who has just fled the arms of a lover."

Voice dropping, trembling, slurring, he stressed, "I'm concerned only for your reputation, you understand. A woman like you can't be found with a man like him. You simply cannot continue to behave in such a way, Maureen."

"My name is Juliette."And I am not my mother! She wanted to shout, but the sobering realization struck her as fiercely as Max's hand across her cheek. She had become her mother with the touch of Chantz's hands on her body and she was too damn tired to fight it any longer.

Max closed his eyes briefly, shook his head; his shoulders drooped. "Of course. Of course you're Juliette."

As he reached out to her, she backed away, returned his look with all the defiance and outrage she could muster.

"What can I do to make it up to you, Juliette?" The words were raspy.

"Leave Liza alone. Allow me to help with the situation before you act so extreme as to send her away."

Maxwell nodded wearily. Without another word, he turned on his heels and entered the house, leaving her slumped against the column, her face numb and the sickening copper taste of blood in her mouth. Her eyes burned and her throat convulsed. Dear God in heaven, could this day get any worse?

"I admire your tenacity," came the feminine voice from the shadows, then Phyllis moved into view.

Juliette blinked and swallowed her emotions. Drawing herself up, she lifted her chin and did her best to ignore the tendrils of fire working down the side of her neck.

Phyllis moved closer, extended a kerchief. "Your lip is bleeding. There at the corner of your mouth." She pointed to her own mouth and her gaze softened. "There'll be swelling. Slight bruising. I have some rice powder that will hide it well enough."

Pressing the cambric to her lip, Juliette frowned. "You act like this deplorable brutality is commonplace."

"Are you surprised that a man who would whip a child would think twice about slapping a woman? Our skin may be white and we might live in the big house but that is where the differences end between us and them."

She nodded toward the distant shanties. "We're all chattel, Juliette. Oh, they dress us in pretty clothes and parade us up and down the boulevards like we're fine warm bloods, but our one purpose in life is little more than providing them with sons they can lavish with attention, impressive educations, and ultimately bestow on them mostly undeserved prosperity."

Tipping her head, she looked at Juliette askance. "Can you imagine what will happen to Holly Plantation when Maxwell dies and leaves it all to Tylor? Although Maxwell would never admit it, I'm quite certain he shakes in his bed at night, imagining what will happen to all this after he's gone. Everything he and his father worked to build will crumble into that damn river or rot in the fields."

"Chantz won't allow-"

"Chantz will be long gone from here by then." Her voice softened as she moved down the gallery, into the dark. "I'm surprised he's stayed at Holly this long. He's biding his time is all. Saving every hard-earned coin he's made all these years, dreaming of buying his own land. He'll succeed, too, knowing Chantz. He never starts anything that he can't finish... one way or another."

Her step paused. She looked down at her hands and her shoulders rose and fell with a heavy sigh. "He's so very passionate about his dreams."

"You're very fond of him."

"I admire him. Most everyone along this river admires Chantz Boudreaux."

"You're in love with him."

Silence. Slowly, Phyllis turned and looked hard into her eyes. "I'm marrying Horace Carrington in three months."

"But you don't love Horace Carrington. Do you?"

"No." She lifted her chin. "I despise him."

The pressure around her heart began to squeeze again. As it had the first time she had witnessed the longing in Phyllis's eyes when she stood on the gallery next to Juliette and watched Chantz ride up the drive on his lathered bay horse.

Phyllis stepped closer. "If I were a stronger woman and hadn't a family to consider I would risk everything I am and ever hoped to be to spend the remainder of my life with Chantz Boudreaux." She swallowed and took a fortifying breath. "There's nothing a strong woman couldn't accomplish with him at her side. And if he loved her... dear God, he would move heaven and earth to see that her dreams were realized."

?Ten.

The kitchen walls were of bousillage, a mixture of moss and mud that, unlike wood that would too easily burn, absorbed the heat- a good thing on winter days, but on a day like this one, Juliette suspected that hell's fire wouldn't have felt as hot.

The fact that she hadn't slept a wink didn't help. The side of her face where Maxwell had struck her had throbbed all night. The cut inside her mouth had frequently bled. She had been relieved, come dawn, to see in the mirror that the swelling was minimal and the mark upon her skin little more than a vague shadow. Briefly, she had considered running to Chantz and warning him that Maxwell suspected...

Suspected what?

That she cared more for Max's overseer than she should? How did one do that without confessing to him that her feelings ran deeper than just fascination over the forbidden?

Furthermore, she had boldly asked him if he felt love for Phyllis, and he'd refused to answer. What could be worse: knowing that he loved Phyllis or knowing nothing at all?

So as the sun had crept up over the eastern horizon, she'd waited impatiently for Liza- needing her confidante. Together they would determine a way out of their predicaments and it all came back to one blaring reality.

Belle Jarod.

Juliette's sore mood and anxiety only surged all the hotter when Rosie, arriving with her breakfast tray, had informed her that Liza had been sent to the fields to work.

Considering how poorly Liza had been feeling, toiling in the boiling sun would only worsen her sorry situation. Then Julie reasoned that the fields would be better for Liza than the slave market. At least until Juliette could devise a plan to help her- help them both.

Somehow she had to speak with Andrew. Alone.

As heat poured from the open hearth and radiated from the bousillage walls, Juliette, dress drenched with sweat, eyes stinging, nostrils feeling as if they were being singed, stood over the big copper pot and stirred the thick, bubbling praline concoction of butter and sugar. Rosie poured a stream of bourbon into it. Little Clara waited for Rosie's nod then dumped in a bowl of pecan pieces.

Her eyes closing, Rosie inhaled, smile growing in her round face as she shook her head. "Chantz be one happy man tonight. Yassa, that man love his prawlins."

"He be moanin' with a bellyache agin," Little Clara said, shaking her head and causing her numerous braids to bob.

"Dat man just don't know when to quits when it come to prawlins."

Rosie waved Juliette away. "Best you git yonda, Miss Julie, whiles we move this pot to the table. If you wants, put them onions in that turtle soup and check on my corn bread. Fred Buley don't like his corn bread brown. Ain't ever hearda such a thang. That man be mule headed and mean."

Juliette dumped the cut onions into the simmering caldron of cooking turtle as Rosie and Little Clara hefted the pot off the fire and placed it on the big square table greased with butter and sprinkled with sugar and pecan chips.

Moving to the open doorway, hoping for a breath of air to cool her, Juliette watched as Rosie grabbed a ladle and proceeded to spoon the thick liquid confection into mounds that spread into golden discs. She tried to imagine Chantz eating la cuite until he got a bellyache. Hard to imagine him as a child. Hard to imagine him any way other than hard and dark and turbulent, capable of making her body hurt.

She looked down the cart road toward the fields. Excitement over the night's hunt electrified the air today. Throughout the morning timber for bonfires had been built near the swamps. Boats had been moved into place and weapons prepared.

Little Clara waved a praline under Juliette's nose and grinned. "Dat's some fine prawlin, Miss Julie. You done good. Have a bite. Gonna make Chantz's eyeballs roll right back in his head."

Juliette grinned and took the candy that was warm and soft. She nibbled it, her eyebrows lifting and her smile stretching.

"Tolds ya." Little Clara beamed. "Ain't nobody 'tween here and N'awlins gots prawlins like dat."

Rosie pointed to the massive sugared ham on another table. "Clara, you be cuttin' that hock. Hurry now. Chantz be up soon and wantin' food. Lawd, that man can eat. Wonder he ain't big as a house. Hurry now. I ain't gots all day. Child is slow as cold molasses."