"Tell me that isn't Chantz!" Her head shook and a rip of sound worked up her throat. "Tell me that isn't Chantz hanging from a pole with his back-"

"I tol' you, Miss Julie. I tol' you what would happen if you didn't leave him alone."

She stumbled back. Oh my God. Oh my God...

"Nothin' you can do here, so git on back afore Maxwell find out-"

Shoving Liza aside, Juliette moved toward the dreadful image, her legs like water suddenly and her heartbeat sinking. Only then did she notice Louis at Chantz's side. His dark face turned toward hers, eyes full of firelight. His tears stopped her cold.

Tylor paced the length of the drawing room, the coiled whip in one hand, his shirt smeared with blood and his brown hair plastered to his brow by sweat. His face shone with the heat of his excitement. His smile, however, appeared as painted and mirthless as a marionette's as he turned his eyes on Maxwell.

"Are you satisfied, Daddy?" he demanded. "Are you proud of me? I do believe I handled the situation in a manner that would make a Hollinsworth proud."

Maxwell turned away from Tylor and looked off into the dark toward the river. The moon was high and reflected off the wide brown water. A breeze touched his face, cooling the sweat from his brow.

Tylor moved up behind him, close enough so his smell of sweat and bourbon made Maxwell frown. Tylor slapped one hand on Max's shoulder, and Max glanced down at his son's blood-stained fingers. He forced himself to look harder at the river.

"You should have waited-" he began.

"Waited? Why ever for, Daddy? Am I not a Hollinsworth? Am I not your son and therefore in charge of this plantation in your absence? Let me refresh your memory. Just recently, on the veranda outside my bedroom, you said that I was to act like a Hollinsworth. Were those not your exact words? You want me to act like a Hollinsworth, and I have. Was I to look the other way once I discovered the young lady being handled by that piece of trash?

"Shall I describe to you in detail what he was doing to her? He was making her moan and move her hips like she was one of Meesha's girls. Hell, he was buried so far inside her it would've taken a pair of strong mules to drag them apart.

"What's wrong, Daddy? You're white as a sheet. I'm wondering if you're looking sick as an old dog because somebody has got to her before you or because I just laid open the back of a man whose existence in your life you supposedly tolerate out of some twisted sense of responsibility."

Closer, so his breath brushed Max's cheek and his lips moved against his ear. "Guess what else I did, Daddy. I told the bastard that he was finished at Holly. Told him to clear out and take his sorry ass old lady with him."

Max turned his head and looked down into Tylor's eyes. "You did what?"

"I already talked to Boris Wilcox and he'll come to work for Holly for half of what you've paid Boudreaux."

"Boris Wilcox? That goddamn paddy runner who practically drove his last planter to bankruptcy?"

Maxwell wrapped his fingers around Tylor's throat. "In case you haven't paid close attention, there is only one thing keeping Holly from sinking into that goddamn river and that's Chantz. If he walks away from this farm that's the end of me. Do you understand, Tylor? There isn't another overseer in this state who grows the kind of cane he does or who gets the kind of respect and cooperation out of his slaves as Chantz."

His face white, Tylor clutched at Max's hand and tore himself away, stumbled back, gulping for air. He gagged hard enough so his body convulsed, then he turned on Maxwell with his teeth bared.

"Just what the hell do you want, Daddy? You want your sugarcane or do you want Belle Jarod? Because you're not gonna get both. Juliette's never gonna give up Belle to either of us as long as Chantz is around. Sorry to tell you this, but she won't spread herself for you like Maureen did."

Juliette stood in the open French door, her fingers gripping a willow switch. She looked past Tylor into Maxwell's eyes.

"It was you," she whispered. "Of course. It all makes sense now, why my father grieved so. He not only lost his wife, but his best friend as well. It was you he found with my mother, wasn't it?"

She moved into the room. "All this time I wondered why my father would bury me away in that remote, dreary, and detestable old convent- I thought it was because he hated me- he was simply trying to protect me, wasn't he? To hide me. From you."

Tylor dropped into a chair and began laughing.

"Because of you my family is dead and my home is in ruins. I'm orphaned and penniless-"

"It doesn't have to be that way," Maxwell declared in a flat tone.

She slashed his face with the willow switch. He didn't flinch, just stared down at her as emotionless as a corpse, a thread of blood rising to the surface of his pale cheek.

Again, and again, tears blinding her, fury beating in her chest and mind like frantic bats. "Detestable, hateful creature! Fiend! I would blow out my own brains before I allow you to set foot on Belle grounds again much less own it!"

The switch cut into his face and neck until blood soaked his shirt collar, turning it dark and glistening wet. Tylor's laughter reverberated in the air, driving her fury to a maddened fever pitch, washing her reality into a surreal haze as horrifyingly crimson as Chantz's open bloody wounds.

"I should kill you," she hissed through her teeth, into his eyes. "But I intend to watch you suffer, you and your despicably cruel son. I'll see you despair every day for the remainder of your sorry, miserable existence on this earth- just like my father despaired, driven to absolute madness by his heartbreak. If it's the last thing I ever do, Maxwell Hollinsworth, I'll see you driven to your knees and everything you hold priceless devastated."

"And how do you propose to do that?" he said. "I'm a well-respected planter in this state, Juliette. There won't be another man of any consequence who will touch you, regardless of your inheritance, should I inform them of your promiscuity with my overseer."

"I hear Meesha is in need of a few good whores," Tylor blurted with another howl of laughter. "Even better, I noted a camp of mud daubers down the river a ways. Considering the glimpse I got under your skirts this afternoon, I suspect there would be plenty of daubers willing to offer you a blanket on which to sleep."

With a whirl of her skirt around her ankles, Juliette turned on Tylor and lashed out with the willow switch, slicing his face as keenly as with a razor edge, turning his laughter into a screech of pain that jolted him out of his chair and onto the floor, clutching his cheek and nose and staring up at her like one who had just witnessed a portent of his own demise.

Again, she struck, and again as he curled his knees to his chest and covered the back of his head with his hands that were fast becoming bloody. "This is for Chantz," she declared. "This is for every slice in his back, for every horrible fiery mind-shattering bolt of pain he endured at your hands. For his humiliation of being strapped by his wrists. For your sending him into that water so he was nearly killed by that gator."

"For the love of God, Daddy, make her stop!"

"Chantz didn't beg, Tylor," she declared, striking harder and faster until the switch whistled and the back of his shirt became thin stripes of dark red. "He made not so much as a whimper, Louis said. Is that why you beat him so mercilessly? Were you trying to break him? Drive him to your level, a whimpering miserable excuse for a man? Chantz Boudreaux could be driven to crawl on his knees begging for mercy and still not be so weak and unmanned as you."

The switch snapped in two at last, one end partially wrapped around the back of Tylor's neck, the other jutting from her fist like a stob.

Maxwell caught her wrist. His fingers bit into her skin like the steel jaws of a trap sending pain splintering up her arm.

"While your anger is justified, Juliette, cold-blooded murder is not. You're far too pretty to hang, and besides... I'm certain you wouldn't risk Belle Jarod falling into the hands of the courts upon your death. No telling who would get their hands on Belle... ultimately."

He released her and she backed away.

"I refuse to spend one more night in this house."

"That's up to you, of course."

Maxwell glanced down at Tylor who looked up at Juliette through his bloody fingers covering his face. "I'll remind you that you had nothing upon coming to Holly House, nothing, that is, except the few pitiful rags you wore at the convent. You have no money. You should think prudently before rushing to any rash decisions."

"I would die of starvation before I take another crumb of bread from you." She tore the combs from her hair and threw them at his feet. "I would spend the rest of my life burning in hellfire rather than breathe the same air as you."

She exited the house the way she had entered, through the French doors and along the gallery, down the steps, one hand clutching the balustrade while the other curled against her stomach as if that would stop the fury and disgust churning there.

In the distance shanty-row lights sparkled and lightning bugs pulsed like tiny torches in the darkness. Juliette ran along the path, her skirts sweeping the short hedges and flower clusters of lavender and primroses, her focus on Chantz's house and the crowd converged on his porch, all straining to see into the room in which Louis had carried Chantz in his arms like a baby.

Liza moved out of the dark, into her path. Her hands reached out and closed around Juliette's arms, gripping her, forcing her to look into Liza's face.

"Listen to me," came Liza's words that sounded little more than a hum behind the roar of blood in her head. "You don't wants to be goin' there now, Miss Julie. Emmaline done takin' care of it all. Just leave it alone right now, hear me?" Forcing a smile, Liza softened her voice. "He a strong man, Miss Julie, but he don't wants you to see him like this. Understand what I'm sayin'?"

She backed away, pushed Liza's hands away, and walked off into the dark. The oppressive night settled upon her skin in a warm film of moisture that beaded upon her breasts and ran down her sides beneath her clothing.

Away from the house and the press of anxious bodies, the night sounds began to hum and pulsate. Night birds cried out, like a woman screaming. The cacophony of frogs became a chorus that given any other circumstance might have sounded like music. Tonight, however, with every nerve raw and sensitive, the sounds scratched painfully at her. Running down the path, she covered her ears with her hands and forced herself to keep moving. Her need for revenge felt as vast as there were stars in heaven and she realized that only one other time in her nineteen years had she felt so overwhelmed by a compulsion beyond her means to control it.

Covering her eyes with her fists, she wondered what was happening to her. She felt raw with emotion, helpless with an inability to control her thoughts and actions. Her body had become a stranger to herself, as if possessed. Yes oh yes. The Reverend Mother's demons most assuredly had, at long last, taken her over. They were lust and hatred, and as she stood there in that darkness amid tall weeds and brush, her heart pounding in her ears, she felt as wild as the creatures that no doubt stared out at her from the black shadows and tangled lairs.

A confusion of memories flashed behind her eyes- all images of Chantz Boudreaux- as if she had not existed until that stormy afternoon when she opened her eyes and saw his face beside hers on the pillow. In a spellbinding instant her world had narrowed into a painful pinpoint- a universe of sensations that expanded inside her as she drew in the scent of his skin that had been intoxicating to her blood, as she touched her trembling fingertips to dark coils of hair that lay upon his broad tanned brow.

She realized now that she truly had not lived until that moment, had not known the true essence of desire. What she had experienced during her secret forays into the village to watch cockfights with smelly, drunken farmers and their gangly sons with black teeth and ravaged complexions had been foolish adolescent curiosity. True desire, once ignited, could not be extinguished. It could not be ignored. Despite all that had transpired the last hours, the heat burned yet. If she allowed herself to succumb to its lure, even as she stood there sweating with fear and fury, the fire would consume her as it had at Belle Jarod.

She swallowed and lowered her fists from her eyes, recalling the very instant that she realized that what she felt for Chantz was more than some forbidden attraction. The emotion vibrated inside her and filled her with new desperation.

At last she came to the water- the wide still strand of swamp thick with reeds and lily pads that reflected the moon like mirrors. She stood in the dark, shaking, sweating, listening to the drone of mosquitoes and feeling them light upon her bare skin to draw blood, their bites like stinging thorns on her arms and shoulders, yet she did nothing but tremble in the deep shadows of the broad oak tree and stare through the streams of Spanish moss at a dilapidated shanty in the near distance.

Chantz. His arms around her, his mouth kissing her, his body inside her. What sweet sublimity.

The musty scent of the moss and swamp mud made the air nearly impossible to breathe. Then she realized, 'twas fear, not the bayou smells- the stink of rot- that made her lungs feel as if they were being gripped by cruel hands.

Dear God, she ached to hold him again. To kiss away his pain. She had brought this upon him. Her inability to deny her own desires.

Is this what drowning feels like? she wondered. This desperate need to draw in a breath- so desperate her head felt as if she'd been caught up in a whirlwind and spun and spun until the world had become a blur of movement so she could hardly stand without falling.

She moved on trembling legs, drawn by some inexplicable force toward the shanty with its weathered and warped wood shimmering in the moonlight. The streamers of moss trailed over her shoulder, scratching like fingernails and tangling in her hair that adhered to her face and neck by sweat.

At long last she reached the steps. In the moonlight they looked steep and rotten. There were no banisters to grip and as she focused on the black, weed-infested space beneath the house her mind raced with thoughts of what might lie hidden there; what, should the rickety old lumber give beneath her weight as she climbed to the door, might wait there in the murk and dampness.

As if in response to her thoughts, the low grunt of the bull gator resonated from the swamp.

The night sounds bombarded. Something moved in the nearby rushes, and spinning around she fled, fast, with the high weeds stinging her arms like tiny whiplashes. Her foot caught on a tree root and she fell, hit the ground hard so pain streaked through her face and the moment Maxwell struck her flashed again through her mind as did fresh disbelief and panic. Tears rose, hot and stinging, and for an instant she felt too sad to move. Perhaps this would prove to be a nightmare- just another dream like so many others over the years that would, thankfully, dissipate the moment she opened her eyes to find sunlight pouring in through the tiny clerestory near her cell's ceiling.

But as some insect crawled over her face, she slapped it away and pushed herself up. The world careened; stars and earth collided momentarily. More carefully, she moved up the path until she reached shanty row. All doors remained open spilling light down the steps where children continued to huddle, staring out at her sleepily.

Suddenly Little Clara came out of nowhere and threw herself against Juliette. Her frail arms clutched fiercely- so fiercely Juliette's ribs felt as if they might shatter. Her head, with its odd spikes of plaited hair, fell back and the child's dark damp eyes looked up into hers, face streaked with tears and her full brown lips pulled down at the corners.

"He gonna die?" she cried, fingers clutching at Juliette's dress.

Juliette took Little Clara's face between her hands and did her best to steady her voice. "No," she declared, stunned by her resoluteness.

Burying her face against Juliette, Little Clara wailed all the harder, and Juliette felt more arms encircle her, more small hands fisting upon her skirts. Suddenly there were a half-dozen faces peering up at her, all eager for reassurance.

She moved clumsily to the nearest shanty, climbed partly up the stairs before allowing the weight of the little bodies to pull her down. They climbed onto her lap. They wrapped themselves around her shoulders and on her knees. She wanted to be strong, for them, yet she felt the fear inside, welling, clawing at her throat and slamming against the back of her eyes.

Don't think of Belle Jarod and the awful emptiness and disappointment she'd experienced as she stepped through the wild tangle of shrubs and weeds and stared up at the charred skeletal remains of her hopes and dreams. Don't think about her father's pain of discovering his wife in the arms of his best friend. Don't think that her own inability to contain her need for Chantz might well have destroyed his future, and his life.

Small, cool hands bracketed her face, lightly pressed upon her cheeks. She opened her eyes and Little Clara smiled at her. There were tears in her eyes and her pug nose was running. One of her heavy braids, tied with a tiny blue ribbon, bobbed over her forehead and between her eyes.

"I'm thinkin' you needs to rest, Miss Julie. You looks white as Rosie's cone stach."

"No." She shook her head and attempted to stand- she must help with Chantz if Emma would allow her- she must put her thoughts in order and think what she would do now, where she would go and what she would do to survive.

Yet, there was no strength in her legs.

The children surrounded her. Their hands grasped her clothes and in unison they gave a collected grunt and lifted her to her feet. They pushed and pulled her into the shanty that was lit by two lanterns. The room was small. There was a fireplace on one wall; its glowing embers intensified the oppressive heat of the night.

The ceiling was high with exposed rafters where hung drying garments and herbs and a meager collection of cooking utensils. There were no beds, just makeshift mattresses stuffed with Spanish moss strewn over the floor. When Juliette moved over the floor it seemed the entire house swayed and her footsteps resonated like thumps on a goatskin drum.

A child, she recollected her name was Sally, ran ahead and busily plumped a mattress. Her shoulder blades protruded under her gingham nightgown unnaturally. But her smile stretched broadly and when she looked up, her eyes sparkled. As Juliette dropped onto the bed another child hurried to unbuckle her shoes while another then briskly rubbed her bare feet, kneading them with adept little fingers as she lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling.

She tried not to think about Chantz and the horrible pain he had endured- all because of her, again. But the effort was useless. As useless as denying the emotion that filled up the entirety of her soul when she thought of him.

She wondered what she would do- what she would become if she never held him again.

?Sixteen.

Dust hung in the air, kicked up by an occasional hot wind that rattled the oak leaves and caused the hanging moss to dance like shapeless green marionettes. For the last two days, rain had threatened.

Something shameful, deep in Juliette's soul, prayed to God Almighty to bring another fierce flood and wipe away Holly House completely and forever. She imagined Maxwell's precious home tumbling end over end down the river, wrenched apart plank by plank by the roaring force. She imagined him on his knees, weeping into his hands, as her father must have wept upon burying his wife. Upon watching his beloved home, all that he had toiled to build over the years, go up in flames, his dreams and life incinerated. With each rumble of thunder and spit of rain, Juliette visualized the driving wave of water leveling every last stalk of cane from Holly soil, and leaving in its wake a desolation of mud.

She prayed that lightning would strike Maxwell Hollinsworth and his worthless son.

But no. That end would come too swiftly. Maxwell must know the sting of her retaliation. It would cut as deeply as the whip into Chantz's back. It would bury as deeply and devastatingly into Maxwell's heart as a bullet had buried into her father's brain.

But how? How?

But for the meager roof over her head and the sagging, rotting old settee beneath her, there was nothing with which to strike but the certain satisfaction that Maxwell Hollinsworth would never get his hands on Belle Jarod.

Or would he?

Here she lay with hunger gnawing at her insides, thirst raking at her throat, and she felt like one on some precipice of death.

For the last days since fleeing Holly House and coming home, to Belle Jarod, she had feasted on pecans that had lain buried beneath debris, the meat as dry as old leather or so rancid it was all she could do to chew it. She had tasted the bitter green berries that cramped her stomach so cruelly she screamed profanities into the dark.

To her mounting dismay, Juliette realized that she had become as wild as the animals that moved about her in the night, that burrowed in nests within the fireplace hearth and scratched inside the chimney. She no longer felt... human.

Her senses expanded so she detected the tiniest rustle amid the brush, the chattering of field mice and, occasionally, the rumble of the old bull gator. At twilight she smelled the ash smoke drifting from the planters' shanty rows, the damp moss crawling along the north sides of the deeply shaded trees, and the pungent scent of rotting marsh grass.

The sun had become a vibration of heat waves that reflected off the leaves and water and dark earth. She caught the slightest movement of a twig from the corner of her eye. The clouds were no longer simply white and dark billows, but swirling, creeping outstretched hands of sunlight and shadow.

Taste had become a mixture of tantalization and repulsion.

If she died, Maxwell would win. If she died he would know the satisfaction of profit at the cost of all her father had worshiped.

Therefore she would fight until her last breath to witness the final blur of defeat in Max's eyes as all he had ached for was swept from his life.