"Then I'm stayin' too."

"No. You have to go, Liza. There's the baby to think about. Besides, Little Clara and Simon need you.

Louis needs you."

"He ain't comin' back and you know it. Just like I know I ain't ever gonna see my Andrew again."

"I won't give up. Not yet. You mustn't either."

She sat on the rafter in the nursery, sat at the window and peered down on the dark green pond. The

fires, little by little, had dwindled now that Louis and the others were no longer there to stoke them. The smoke had cleared, inviting the rush of smells to return, and she didn't realize until that moment how much she had missed them. Yet, with their resurrection came memories that made her chest ache and the tears rise.

"Please, God, please," she whispered with her eyes closed. "Please let him come home. Chantz. My darling Chantz. I'll give anything. My dreams. My home. My life if only you will bring him back."

Then she prayed silently, willing the impossible with every seed of faith that the old Reverend Mother had planted in her soul over the years. Please God. She recited all the prayers she could remember, but they sounded to her immensely loud in the silence. Please God.

Rising, she ran down the stairs and stood on the gallery, her gaze fixed on the long alley. Please God.

Nothing moved. No stirring of air. No birdsong. No wild rabbit scurrying through the brush. No Little Clara begging for ho'hound. No Simon with bullfrog. No Rosie fussing about burning their supper. No

Jasper or Gaius carrying on lengthy conversations with a scrawny old chicken. No Liza dreamy with pleasure over her baby moving.

No Chantz.

Only the silence and the milky sky, lit by a thin sun and diffused by banked pale clouds dusted by a hint

of impending rain.

She rode Snapper to Holly, right up to the gallery floor where a blue-tick hound lay sprawled on its side

in the shade, barely lifting its head to look up at her with droopy eyes. Solemnly, she looked around, over the wide flat grounds stretching toward the river, remembering that a short while ago the grass had been lush and kept. Guinea hens scratched at the dirt and roosted on the lounges in the gallery shade, scattering feathers everywhere.

Upon sliding from Snapper's back, Juliette moved into the open threshold, into the foyer, and stood looking up the curving staircase, listening to the quiet clicking of the guinea hens as they strutted over the gallery planks, the excessively loud case clock ticking away the seconds of the dying day.

"Hello!" she shouted.

The hound moved to the doorway and stood silhouetted against the bright light pouring over the threshold. His head held flat, his eyes somber, he stared at Juliette while a thread of drool drained from his lip and pooled on the floor.

She made her way slowly up the staircase, the sense of dread pressing more heavily on her chest with each passing minute. On the landing above, she paused, listened, watched the dog move to the bottom stair and sit, panting as he watched her, then she continued, walking on the balls of her feet, caution expanding with her every breath, until she stopped at Maxwell's bedroom door.

The door of the room was partially open. She eased it back. The shadows were deep, and there were no candles burning. Beyond fear, Juliette stepped into the room, immediately assailed by heat and smells that took her breath away and stung her eyes and nostrils. The pungency of it all coiled in her stomach, forcing her to fight her need to retch. She had experienced the stink before. Soon after her arrival to the convent, her first assigned chore was to assist Sister Margaret in the preparation of a body for burial. The old woman had lingered for months with her illness. The stench of death and decay had permeated the walls of her sickroom and as Juliette had stood there staring down at her parchment thin skin, at first refusing to touch it, hating her father for abandoning her to such an existence, certain she would never smell anything again but that dreadful scent of... dust.

Here it was again, wrapping around her, so repellent she was forced to set her heels to stop herself from fleeing. She heard his breathing- a wheezing rasp of air, animal-like sounds, an attempt to communicate.

In the rays of the late sun coming in through the shutters, she saw Maxwell in his bed, naked, his body shaking, his flesh flushed and sweating. His head turned and his glazed eyes stared at her. The pain that twisted his features momentarily eased, and his mouth curved into a grotesque smile.

"Maureen? Honey, is that you?" He lifted his hand toward Juliette. "Oh my sweet lady. My darlin'. Look at you, pretty as a rosebud. I've been praying you would come for me."

Her legs trembling, Juliette moved closer, fear and sickness rising up her throat as the man's blue eyes held her. His raw, blackened tongue protruded from his mouth slightly. Yet, something drew her closer- her gaze shifting from his mad eyes to his hand outstretched to her.

"Maureen... darlin', pretty as the day I first saw you. Like an angel. Lord God, I've missed you."

She reached for his hand. It radiated with heat and curled around her own with a fierceness that made her gasp and struggle.

"I've suffered, darlin'. Suffered every day of my life for what happened. I tried to stop him. He was like a madman." His eyes drifted closed, yet he continued to hold her. His grip sent cold, crushing pain up her arm and her panic mounted. A scream worked up her throat, cutting like a sliver of bone. "I tried to warn him. I tried to tell him that you were lonely, that you desired love more than you desired cane. I wanted to thrash him for his blindness. God, oh God, if you had only been mine..."

He gasped for air and his body twisted in pain. His lips pulled back, exposing his teeth and bleeding gums. For an instant his eyes appeared to clear and he stared up at her with an insight and horror that made the scream slice more sharply, expanding and closing off her ability to swallow.

"Chantz," he growled. "Chantz, where are you?"

"He's not here," she heard herself reply through her teeth. The pain in her arm had become like burning ice.

"Ashamed... so ashamed. Should have done right by you. Holly... is yours. Don't let Tylor destroy it. You hear me, boy? Do what you've got to do to save her." Suddenly his ferocity melted into despair and his eyes filled with tears. His body relaxed and sank into the bed as if boneless, releasing his grip on her arm.

"Maureen, darlin'... hold me."

She backed away, toward the door, her legs shaking and her heart beating frantically.

The bed began shaking, tapping on the floor as Maxwell's body trembled with the fever. She tried to turn, to run, yet as she stood there a feeling of realization washed over her. Suddenly it wasn't simply Maxwell Hollinsworth lying there, twisted in his death sheets, but Chantz. How easily she could see him now, his face strong and intelligent and handsome in a sharp, forbidding sort of way. Was Chantz lying helplessly sick and alone somewhere?

Was he, perhaps, dead already?

Her shoulders sinking and her chest constricting, Juliette returned to the bed, untangled the sheet from his shivering legs, and gently laid it over his hips. She sat on the bed beside him, stroked his wet hair back from his brow.

"Maureen?" he called weakly, staring at some point beyond Juliette. "Honey, is that you?"

"Yes," she replied softly, and pressed a kiss to his hot forehead.

The rain began at just before twilight. Juliette drove the stubborn old mule through the downpour, whacking his haunches with a willow switch when he stopped, hoping the rain would wash the stench of sickness from her skin. As a chill ran through her she whipped the mule harder, desperate to reach Belle Jarod before nightfall, before the waters turned the road into a mire. The river churned, a certain sign that there were heavy rains further north, driving high waters toward the Gulf.

Dear God, she was tired. Her arms felt like lead and her head throbbed deeply from crying. She didn't want to think of Maxwell's last hours- of his awful suffering. Yet, it was there, the memory burning behind her eyes and filling her up with a fear that made her want to flee with a desperation that caused her to lash at the plodding animal beneath her and curse.

At long last, Belle Jarod materialized through the rain and night shadows. A light beamed from her bedroom window.

A light. A light! Someone was there.

Chantz?

She saw a horse then, near the front gallery, standing with his head down as rain pummeled it. Upon sliding from the mule, Juliette ran along the alley of live oaks, hands clutching her sodden skirts, her toes catching on the exposed roots of the fallen trees she and India's family had labored to haul away.

The front door hung open.

Her muddy feet slipped on the gallery planks as she ran into the house, first to the salon that was empty,

then back into the corridor, paused to catch her breath- a sound from up the stairs, a clattering.

Running to the staircase, she looked up toward the dim light, excitement squeezing her breathless.

"Chantz! Husband, is that you?" She ascended, her feet feeling oddly as if they were weighted. "Chantz?"

She hurried to the bedroom, shouldered open the door, her smile fading as her gaze swept the room.

Empty. "Chantz?" she called softly.

Nothing.

Slowly, confusion mounting, Juliette turned, searching, her eyes aching as they focused on the night

shadows. She reached for the burning lamp, held it high as she slowly moved toward the stairs and allowed its light to spill to the lower landing.

"Where is she?" came the deep, rough words behind her.

Wheeling, causing the light to sputter, she stared toward the shadowed figure. Little by little Horace Carrington materialized from the dark. The whites of his eyes, like Maxwell's, were blood red. His skin shone with oily sweat, and the same repulsing stench washed over her: fever and death.

"Answer me, goddamn you!" he shouted, making her jump and back away. "Where is my goddamn fiancee? How dare she leave me. I know she's here. I found her hat yonder. Where are you hiding her-"

"She's gone," Juliette said, backing again as he stumbled toward her, tottered like a drunk before drawing

himself up and blotting his cheek with his filthy coat sleeve. "She left with the others-"

"You're a lying bitch." His tearing eyes assessed her. His lips parted, exposing his black tongue. "A damn shame that a piece of trash like Chantz Boudreaux got you. Son of a bitch. Thought he could stop me from crossing that barricade-"

Her heart leaped. "Chantz? You've seen Chantz?"

"Thought they were going to keep me from going home." He moved toward her. "Like I was going to remain in that death pit, people dying everywhere, corpses stacked like firewood along the streets."

Knees suddenly weak with relief, Juliette sagged against the wall. Dear merciful God. Chantz was alive...

Her eyes shifted downward momentarily to Horace's hands that were fisted and shaking, then back to his eyes that were like two pits of fire.

He lunged. She screamed and jumped, a sharp, brief awareness falling on her too late as she realized that the stairs dropped away beneath her.

?Twenty-Two.

The rain beat furiously against his shoulders as Chantz rode the bay hard down the river road. In the last few hours the river had risen, driving timber along the banks where the fallen trunks with their low-sweeping limbs festooned with Spanish moss left deep ruts in the mud. Word had arrived just hours ago. It was every man for himself. Married men were encouraged to return home as quickly as possible. The yellow death had somehow made its way beyond the quarantine and was spreading like wildfire and Baton Rouge lay directly in its path.

None too soon. He'd long since grown weary and sickened by the job- forced to keep men from their families by threat of death, burying women and children found dead by the side of the road. The last days had been a blur of sulfur-smelling smoke, death, and putridity. Every young woman he had placed in a pit and covered with dirt had filled him with a desperate ache to climb on his horse and go home, to hold his wife and kiss her sweet mouth. To convince her that he loved her more than life.

He smelled the smoke before the red-gold glow of fire shimmered through the trees. As the horse tucked its haunches and slid to a stop, Chantz hit the ground running, his heart climbing his throat as the long tongues of fire lapped at Belle's windows. Black smoke billowed through the open doorway, fueled by the old lumber and the rain driving through the new rafters.

"Juliette!" he shouted, his panic mounting. Where the hell was everyone? Shielding his face from the heat, he edged along the trail of flames toward the staircase. He saw her then, at the bottom of the stairs, lying face up, her face reflecting the advancing flamelight.

Diving through the line of fire, he fell to his knees and scooped her up in his arms.

Shouts arose. Louis came barreling through the smoke and flames, pounding the fire with wet flour sacks, while behind him came others- strangers, with rusty buckets of water and whatever else they could use to douse the fire.

Chantz carried Juliette out of the house and partially down the alley where the trees formed a cathedral over their heads against the rain. Falling to his knees, her limp body clutched to his chest, he closed his eyes, afraid to look, afraid she would be dead- Liza fell down beside him, choked by sobs. She grabbed Juliette's hand and pressed it to her cheek. "Shouldna gone," she cried, and rocked on her knees. "Shouldna gone and left her."

"What the hell are you saying?" Chantz stared at her.