"Do you know what you've done to us, Tylor?" Max sat down on the bed and, removing the cigar from his mouth, studied its smoldering tip. "I don't think you do. Because you're stupid, Tylor. You are and always have been, too stupid to walk straight. You're a lot like your mother. She was a stupid woman. Good for little more than spending my money and swooning from the heat. She wasn't even pretty. There was as much character in her face as a gator pod. But she came with a decent dowry- decent enough to pay for the draining of the back three hundred acres and the purchase of fifty decent slaves.

"Hell, she couldn't even deliver me a decent crop of children. First one died, you know. Premature. I put another one in her right away and that one died too when she was only four months gone. Then came you, and I had such high expectations. I needed a strong, brilliant son, but what I got was a tiny, mewling, and sickly runt that squalled day in and day out until I was forced to move to the old garconniere in order to sleep."

He smoked and regarded Tylor's face, slack and tear-streaked, his eyes glazed by bourbon. "I was determined, of course, to get me a decent boy, but your mama wouldn't have it again. Put a lock on the door and wouldn't receive me. Said she'd done her damn duty- given me an heir and that was enough. She sat in her room month after month, rocking you in her arms, singing the same damn song over and over, 'Jesus Is the Light and My Salvation.' Is it any wonder I turned to Maureen?"

Smoking, puffing so hard the tip of his cigar shone red-gold as a flame in the dim light, Maxwell looked around the room, his thoughts scattering over the last many years. "It didn't help," he finally said, "that Emmaline had planted herself out yonder, reminding me every minute that I had undoubtedly made the biggest mistake of my life. Oh, I don't mean that I made the mistake of lying down with her- though I'm not proud of the deed. Men will be men.

"No, I'm talking about Chantz. But what could I do, really? I briefly considered taking the boy, but what would that have accomplished? Nothing, really. He wasn't legitimate, you see. I could have adopted him, but there was you to contend with. You were the legitimate heir, Tylor. No getting around that issue. Why, do you know I actually considered a time or two stuffing you in a tow sack and tossing you in the river, right along with your mama.

"But then there was Maureen, and God help me I actually got all caught up in the fantasy that perhaps one day she would leave Jack for me. I imagined she would give me the kind of son I wanted and needed for Holly House. I imagined she would lift this sorry plantation out of mediocrity and turn it into something as grand as Belle Jarod. For a while, I even imagined murdering Jack to get my hands on them both. My God, what thoughts desperation encourages in a rational man's mind and heart. It's frightening as hell, Tylor. But I digress..."

Turning his head, he looked into Tylor's eyes that were wet and gold with lamplight. "Every day of the last twenty-seven years I've looked into your eyes and felt the bitter bite of disappointment because you weren't more like Chantz. One has to wonder what it is that can make one son a fighter, handsome, strong, possessed of a spirit that raises him to a level of excellence, and the other a weakling of mind, body, and character. I suppose there's no need to dwell on it now. What's done is done, alas."

"What the hell are you trying to say to me, Daddy?"

"Only that you're a damn fool, Tylor. Not only have you possibly destroyed Chantz, but you've destroyed me as well. Not just me, but us. This plantation. Now I ask you, should Chantz quit me, what the hell am I supposed to do about my sugarcane?"

"I'll see to it." Tylor's voice sounded dry and hoarse. His soft shoulders slumped as he looked into Maxwell's eyes. "I can do it, Daddy. I just need you to believe in me for once in your life."

"Believe in you?" Maxwell frowned and left the bed, walked to the open French door and looked out on the dark Holly grounds. "Believe in you," he repeated without turning. "Hell, Tylor. The idea of setting eyes on you again makes me want to vomit. Believe in you? I doubt it."

?Thirteen.

The pain was ceaseless. How many hours had he lain there in his sweat-sodden sheets, sliding into blessed sleep only to experience again his reaching for Tylor who stared down at him with his face still and smooth and emotionless as a china doll's, and realizing in that instant that he was damned... and dead. Then the blast of pain and heat, his last desperate gulp of air as he was dragged under. It was that moment's fear and pain that continued to awaken him over and over, heart slamming in his throat and fresh torture spearing through his body.

Then there was his mother.

Emmaline sat rigidly in a ladder-back chair near the open window, her thin weathered hands clasped in her lap. She appeared to have aged years- her body wraithlike, too thin and ashen- her eyes too large for her sunken face. In his rational moments, he stared at her- the stranger he thought he knew for nearly thirty years. Tylor's words turned over and over in his mind, cutting as sharply and brutally as the bull's teeth into his leg.

"I know what she told you... she was nothing more than a mud dauber Daddy happened upon when he was drunk..."

He almost wished the gator had killed him. Existing in Maxwell's vacuum of denial for thirty years had been bad enough. At least he could rally his dignity by reminding himself that he walked the earth because, however briefly, Emma and Maxwell had shared a common fondness. He could have felt pride over the fact that Emma had come from a respectable mother and father.

What an idiot he'd been. And blind. Of course, it all made sense now. Even in his fever state and overwhelming pain, the truth glittered as pure as gold... why Maxwell turned his back on Emma- and on Chantz. There had been no fondness between them. No mutual respect. No nothing. No doubt Max had awakened the morning after with little, if any, recollection of Emmaline Boudreaux at all. Chantz wondered whether to despise Max or to pity him.

Chantz stared out the window. The hot summer air shimmered off the waxen green leaves of the magnolia tree. The heavy blooms were starting to die- browning around the creamy petal edges. Yet, their perfume wafted sweetly. He felt intoxicated by the sensuality of the fragrance, and of the memories it evoked.

Juliette. Juliette. Juliette.

The moist sweetly scented pulse of her throat against his mouth. Her hair wrapping around him, brushing his cheek, exciting his senses with its smell. Midnight Magnolia. Her body heat had radiated with it as he slowly moved his hand up her leg, and he recalled thinking that the soft skin of her inside thigh was as smooth and pale as a magnolia petal.

Juliette.

What irony that the greatest experience of his manhood had been spent in her arms in that cane field- was she a last gift from God? Or was she the reason for this tragedy? Was this agony in his leg God's punishment for his succumbing to the seduction in her magnificent eyes and lips?

Dear God, even now the ache for her was as sweltering as the summer heat. He felt maddened by it.

The pulsating whir of the cicadas had a way of intensifying the heat and the silence that fell heavily when the insects ceased their mating calls. Yet there was no silence today. Just as well. The chorus was as soothing as a lullaby.

He floated on images of Juliette interspersed with those of vast flats of high green cane and the rattle of their leaves in the wind. He imagined himself walking down the long furrows, encouraging the women and children who plucked the grass from the base of the stalks, tignons dark with sweat, their voices harmonizing as they sang, "Onward Christian Soldiers."

Voices drifted to him: Juliette's and, more rarely, Maxwell's- the sorry bastard- more concerned over when Chantz would be up and around again... then Liza's, Rosie's, Little Clara's... and Andrew's.

Andrew and Juliette... together. Andrew holding Juliette. Her smiling up into his eyes.

When he awakened, the air felt cooler on his body. How long had he slept? The sun that had earlier splashed in golden pools over the oaken floor faded to gray shadows that slowly crept toward his bed.

His mother turned her head and looked at him. She left her chair and came to the bed, peeled the bandage back from his leg and nodded, apparently satisfied by what she saw. "Thank God for your boot. You'll hurt awhile, but you'll heal. Maybe now you'll listen to me, son. You'll listen when I tell you that dwelling on thoughts of that woman-"

"Who are you?" he said, cutting off her words and bringing a sudden flush of color to her wan cheeks. "Or rather... what are you?"

Her shoulders stiffened. Her gaze touched his briefly before she turned away- walked again to the window and looked out. "Maxwell and the Buleys rode over to the Fairchilds' this morning after church. You'd think with his overseer, not to mention his son, lying up in a bed with his leg-"

"Maxwell doesn't give a damn about me and I'm beginning to understand why at long last." Clenching his teeth, he pushed himself up on his elbows and glared at her back. "All these years we've lived a lie, haven't we, Mama? Your parents weren't from Carolina. Were they? Who was your mother? More importantly, who was your father? Or don't you know?"

She wheeled around and stared at him, her eyes straining with anger. Her mouth opened and closed, saying nothing.

"Tylor told me," he said. "Now I want to hear it from your own mouth. And I want the truth."

"He's a filthy liar," she cried, and fled the house, knocking over the old ladder-back chair in the process. Falling back on the bed with a groan, Chantz stared at the ceiling, reason and pain a swirl of confusion in his mind.

Hands touched his brow and he opened his eyes to look up into Louis's face, marred by deep lines of distress. "Best you keep quiet now, Boss. Can't be havin' that leg bleed agin. Doc say you gonna be just fine long as you lay quiet for a few days." He smiled broadly and shook his head. "Reckon that ol' gator thought he done met his match when I go jumpin' in that water. Give him a good jab in the throat with my knife. Thought I done had me that bounty money for sure." He chuckled.

Chantz searched his friend's eyes. "Where is Juliette?"

"Gone with Mistah Drew. Out to the Belle. Left soon as Massa Maxwell and the Buleys took off to church. Now you rest. Rosie done got supper nearly done. Sooner you gits food in your belly the better, Doc says. More food and less rum. You be back on your two legs in no time."

Closing his eyes, Chantz said nothing as Louis left the house. He listened to the man's footsteps ring down the porch steps, listened to the rise of voices singing church hymns in the distance. "Swing low sweet chariot coming for to carry me home."

What the blazes was Andrew doing? He'd specifically forbidden Andrew to take her to Belle. If Maxwell found out...

You one of those bees, Drew?

Stay rational.

Hell, he should be focusing his thoughts on the son of a bitch who'd tried to kill him. More than that... what was he supposed to do now? Close his eyes to the fact that his half-brother had attempted to murder him? Was he to simply go on pretending that nothing had changed?

Sensing a movement, he looked around into Little Clara's big eyes. She held a praline in each hand, one of which she slid into Chantz's mouth. The sweet candy momentarily replaced his pain with pleasure.

"Why aren't you at the sermon?" he asked.

"Done had my Bible readin', Boss Chantz. Miss Julie read me verses ever chance she have. In the mo'nin when she gits up. Aftanoon when she suppose to be nappin'. She read all us young'uns Bible verses." She dashed to his chest of drawers and collected his tattered lambskin Bible and brought it to the bed, flipped it open and held it in her hands as she squinted to study the words. A braid tied with a dark blue ribbon bobbed over her forehead.

"And the Lord said... let there be light..." Turning her face up, her smile stretching, she said, "Ain't that somethin', Boss Chantz? 'Cept you can't be tellin' Rosie I can read 'cause she gits all to flappin' like an old mad hen."

Chantz reached for the Bible, tugged it from her hands as her smile faded and her face became somber, as if she'd just been caught filching pralines without Rosie's approval. "It's against the law for you to be learning to read, Little Clara. You know that."

Her lower lip pouted and she shrugged. "Miss Julie say that what stupid folk don't know don't hurt 'em none."

Throwing the Bible as hard as he could toward the end of the bed, Chantz declared, "If Miss Julie isn't careful she's gonna find herself hanged. Same for you. The law doesn't abide slaves learning to read, Clara. The first one of you I find with your head over a book I'm gonna lock in the hot-house for a week. You hear me?"

She nodded and her lower lip protruded further.

He reached and caught one of her braids, gently tugged her closer, lowered his voice, and did his best to muster a smile, despite his mounting irritation and frustration and the throbbing heat in his leg. "I love you, Little Clara. And I love Simon. And Louis. And Liza. And Rosie. And I would rather have both my legs and arms cut off and my eyes plucked out than have any of you punished for reading. Understand me?"

She nodded again and started to smile.

Pushing up on one elbow, he said, "Now I want you to get me a pair of pants. And my pair of old boots out by the back stoop. Then I want you to go down to the stables and have my horse saddled."

Her eyes widening, Little Clara said, "What you think you gonna do, Boss Chantz? Can't be gittin' outta bed. Your leg gonna fall right off."

"Just do it," he said, and fell back on the pillow.

"Come away from here, Juliette. If Maxwell doesn't shoot me then Chantz will. In case you aren't aware, he forbid me to bring you here. I don't mind telling you, I'm feeling a bit like a traitor- we're friends, after all. Hell, had I realized you were sincere about exhuming Belle Jarod I would have refused to bring you here. Besides, I thought the true point of this jaunt was to discuss privately my situation with Liza."

"We'll get to that," she declared over her shoulder before focusing again on the tangle of wild vines and trees forming a dense green wall before her. "Surely there's some mistake, Andrew. You've brought me to the wrong place. There's nothing here. Nothing at all but wilderness."

Turning on her heels, her frustration mounting, Juliette regarded Andrew where he remained by the buggy, straw hat in his hand and his buff-colored broadcloth jacket sprinkled by dust and dandelion fluff. The whir of the cicadas punctuated his silence as he focused on the lair beyond her, his frown response enough.

Some distance below, the river glistened like a ribbon in the sun. Evidence of the recent high water was scattered along the banks, splintered trees and dead river grass, the carcass of a deer that had become caught in the tow and drowned. It was the relic of rotting timbers jutting up out of the water that caught her eye and held it, made an ache settle deep in her chest so she couldn't breathe. Ghost memories roused: wide verandas over the water where paddleboats with gingerbread adornments docked, women and men in gay-colored clothes laughing, musicians greeting guests with lively tunes that added to the festive air.

No mistaking, she realized with sinking despair... Andrew had brought her home, to Belle Jarod. Except, there seemed to be no Belle Jarod any longer.

Her face sweating, her hands and arms scratched and beaded with blood, Juliette struggled for a breath in the still air. Behind her, Andrew fought through the copse, his mild curses muted by the increasingly loud whir of the cicadas and the shriek of crows that moved in a black cloud from tree top to tree top. Panic set in. Perhaps there was nothing left, nothing at all. Perhaps all that remained of Belle Jarod was buried beneath the humus of rotting leaves beneath her feet, humus that smelled like the fresh, upturned earth of a grave.

Her foot caught on a root and she went down hard. Lethargy stole through her and she closed her eyes, welcoming the coolness of the earth that embraced her damp body and made her shiver. Suddenly she didn't want to go on. She wanted to curl up with her knees to her chest and sleep. And dream.

"Juliette." Andrew took her arm.

"Chantz was right. It's hopeless," she spoke against a dry oak leaf.

"Get up. Last thing I need is for you to get snake bit. Come on, now. Rosie is going to have a mess of a time cleaning that dress."

Wearily, she lifted her head.

There, through the break in the tangle of blackberry vines dotted with green berry nubs and ground ferns with violin-shaped fronds, Doric columns shimmered in a swath of sunlight. The ache that had tightened her chest rushed through her body with unbearable lightness.

Taking Andrew's hand, she struggled to her feet and pushed her way through the mire, distantly aware of the briars and twigs clawing at her exposed skin. Nettles bit at her ankles and sent tendrils of heat up her legs. Grass-hoppers sprang in flurries and birds burst from their roosts with popping flaps of their wings.

The remains of Belle Jarod gaped like a bleached skull in the dim light, her walls eroded by weather and chewed away by flora crawling up the columns and into the glassless windows. The front door hung from its hinges.

Cautiously, she moved up the cypress steps, weathered but rock hard, to the gallery littered by leaves and mildew and moss that had formed a dense green covering over the shaded planks.

She paused at the doorway, looking into the cave of dark ruined rooms, then moved into the shadows. The heavy scent of rich humus permeated the air, along with the underlying stench of damp, old ash.

Her skirt hem flurried the scattering of dry leaves on the floor as she wandered first into the salle de compagnie, slippers leaving imprints in the settled dust. The disconcerting sense of abandonment hung over the room like a pall.

Everything remained just as it had been the evening her father had returned from New Orleans unexpectedly to find his wife with another man: The once fine furnishings, faded by years of dust and leaves, plush satin and velvet cushions ravaged by burrowing animals. The settee sat at an angle to the marble-manteled fireplace where the rusted iron grate held logs. Mirrors hung lopsided on the walls.

Juliette ran her hand over the back of the settee. "Well." She sighed brokenly. "I'm not sure what I expected. It wasn't this, I assure you."

She managed a dry laugh and gave a slap to the settee, sending a cloud of dust into the air. "He simply walked away, didn't he? Too painful for him to even return for the furnishings."

Turning, she collected herself enough to square her shoulders and lift her chin. Forcing a smile, she looked into Andrew's eyes, her own swimming with emotion. "It must have been very beautiful, once."

"It was." He glanced around, his look nervous. "I don't think it's a good idea our being here like this. I shouldn't have brought you. Maxwell, not to mention Chantz, will have my hide, I'm afraid."

Between the dark green patches of lichen on the dining room walls were glimpses of fading frescoes, images of France again. She might have been looking out the clerestories at the convent at green hills dotted with sheep. Her exploration carried through the butler's pantry, again down the central hallway and into the ballroom. Slowly, slowly, she turned around while looking up through the open charred rafters crowded by tree limbs and cascading moss. A pair of ruby throated hummingbirds darted from one gable to the next, feeding on the blooms of honeysuckle.

The tears rose at long last. She couldn't stop them. They trickled down her cheeks, burning like scratches.

"Julie," Andrew said with a gentleness that only exacerbated the pain in her chest. "Don't do this to yourself. Best you can do is just walk away. Chantz is right. No amount of wishing and dreaming is going to bring back Belle Jarod."

"Funny what love can do to people, isn't it, Andrew? Lately I've been thinking I was happier in that dreary old convent with Reverend Mother barking with every other breath that my soul was doomed to perdition. I don't know what I was thinking, believing there was actually something here for me." Frowning, she knuckled a tear away and focused on her friend who remained in the foyer, his hat in one hand, the other slid into his trouser pocket.

"Love is supposed to be gentle, isn't it?" she asked. "Well? Isn't it?"

He nodded, his frown deepening.

"Love is supposed to be the giving of one's heart and soul. The ultimate sacrifice of self. Isn't it?"

Shifting from one foot to the other, Andrew swallowed and said, "Yes."

"Then tell me why the hell it hurts so badly. Why does it appear to cause more suffering than war and

disease? Why does it crumble dignity and shatter hearts and bring hope and faith down into ashes?'

"I don't know." He shook his head.

Drawing back her shoulders, she said, "Emmaline was right. My presence at Belle Jarod has been

nothing more than a bother for Chantz. Now he's lying in that bed suffering because-"

"Because of Tylor. Not you."

"They all warned me. Liza and Rosie and Maxwell. Stay away from Chantz. Leave him alone. Yet I