"There you go bringing up his name again." Julie searched Liza's face, a startling suspicion suddenly biting at her. The sharp pang made her press her hand to her bosom and catch her breath. "Are you... enamored with him, Liza?"

"With Chantz?" Liza's head fell back and she laughed, a full, deep sound of genuine humor. "Me and Chantz? Lord, girl, you gots that wrong. Real wrong. I gots me a man, but it ain't Chantz."

Julie turned and grinned up at Liza. "Who is it?" she teased. "You can tell me. We're friends. You said so. I shan't tell another living soul, I swear it!"

"I'm not tellin'." She winked. "But I'll say this. Aside from Chantz Boudreaux, he be the finest lookin' man God ever created. Kind and gentle, with kisses warm and sweet as new cane syrup."

Her hands falling still, Liza looked away, toward the open French doors leading to the gallery. The pleasure that had briefly touched her cheeks with color turned into something else, a yearning that reached into Juliette's own heart and squeezed. Watching the emotion roll over Liza's face brought tears to Juliette's eyes and she waited breathlessly for Liza to continue.

Liza spoke softly, with a catch in her voice. "I loves that man so deep, Miss Julie, I sometimes think I gonna die from the pain of it. I thinks about him mornin', noon, and night. I feel crazy with it sometime. He just fill up my head and heart so fierce that I wants to scream."

"That's wonderful," Juliette said breathlessly. "Who is he, Liza? Tell me, please."

Frowning, Liza pulled out of her dreamy state and shook her head. "I can't. I'm sorry."

"Will you be married?"

Stiffening her back and setting her chin, Liza took Juliette's shoulders and forced her to turn back toward the looking glass. She began brushing again, harder, her expression intense and almost angry.

"Won't be no marriage. Not for us. Now I don't wants to talk about it no more. Tonight we're gonna talk about you. We gonna put your hair up just so with those pretty pearl combs that Max give you. Emmaline gonna be up here soon with a pretty dress that she been alterin' to fit you these last days. That peach silk gown with the bib of Cluny lace? And the lovely green silk petticoat she was hemmin'. You're gonna look like an angel, I declare."

Judging by the distressed expression on Liza's face, Juliette mused that prying out further information of Liza's sweetheart wouldn't be easy or wise.

"Emmaline doesn't care for me." Juliette winced as Liza accidently pulled her hair.

"Emmaline don't care for most folks, Miss Julie. And when it come to Chantz..." She lowered her voice and met Juliette's gaze in the mirror. "She fiercely protective of him. You should know that."

Averting her eyes, her face warming again, Juliette sat straighter in her chair and clasped her hands in her lap. They felt damp and unsteady. Once again the mere mention of Chantz's name vibrated along her nerve endings, making her feel edgy.

"You don't gots to deny what you're feelin' over Chantz. Not to me. You wouldn't be female if you didn't feel rattled by him. Can't rightly put my finger on what it is that bothers women so. He be sweet on the eyes, for sure. But then they is lots of nice lookin' men, I guess. None so hard as he is, though. He a hard man. Body and soul. He love hard and hate hard and fight hard. Got a way of makin' a woman feel like a woman. Understand what I'm tryin' to say?"

"Yes." Juliette shivered as a drop of sweat slid between her breasts. The taste of him returned, and his scent, curling through her body like slow smoke. "Extreme masculinity," she said in a tight voice, "makes us aware of our own femininity. Our own frailty."

Liza reached for the combs on the table. "He be reckless. Aside from his pride and temper it be his only shortcomin'. He see somethin' he want and he takes it."

Her finger lifted Juliette's chin and Liza gave her a troubled smile. "He a man who been told no too often in his life. He ain't much got the patience for it no more. Here now, you're lookin' a little pale."

Liza lightly pinched Juliette's cheeks so they bloomed with color.

"Just so you know, Chantz be havin' supper with you all tonight." She chuckled. "There you go again, lookin' all aflutter. Once a week Max bring him into the big house. They have a meal and talk business. Most prob'ly be about the levee and the impact the flood will have on the crops. Tylor will sit there and mope and snarl an occasional insult at Chantz. Chantz will do his best to ignore him, then eventually he'll start to get mad. They exchange words and Chantz will leave before he finally breaks down and murders Tylor."

Liza stepped away as she admired Juliette's hair, swept up and back from her face by pearl-encrusted combs. Loose wisps curled at her temples and around her nape. Long coils hung over her shoulders- ribbons of fire against her pale skin.

A slow smile curved Liza's lips. "Men gonna have a hard time talkin' business tonight, I 'spect."

"Did I hear my name mentioned?"

Tylor stood in the open French door, his hands tucked into his trouser pockets. Juliette gasped and covered her thinly clad breasts with her hands. Liza stepped between them, blocking Tylor's view.

"Git outta here, Tylor Hollinsworth. What you thinkin' by saunterin' into a lady's room?"

His mouth curved and his eyes narrowed, giving him the look of a fox in a hen house. "There hasn't been a lady on these premises since my mama died, you know that. Hell, Daddy don't blink twice at a woman

unless she's a whore. And speaking of whores..."

Tilting his head to one side, causing a thin dark thread of hair to spill over one blue eye, he directed his gaze from Liza to Juliette, who glared at him around Liza's hip.

"I hear the Buleys will be arriving tomorrow. They'll be wanting to meet our Juliette. I suspect they'll have a great deal in common."

"And what might that be?" Juliette demanded with a lift of her eyebrows.

Liza stalked toward Tylor. "I said git. I'll be callin' your daddy if you don't. You got somethin' to say to Miss Julie, you can say it over supper."

"I suspect I'll be hard pressed to get Miss Julie's attention, what with Chantz being there."

"Out!" Liza flapped her arms at Tylor and he raised his eyebrows, set his heels.

"You never know, Andrew Buley is just liable to fall in love with Juliette. I'm sure Fred would welcome

the prospect of getting his hands on Belle Jarod."

Liza grabbed the doors and closed them in Tylor's face. She snatched the curtains across them, stood with her back to Juliette and her hands fisted full of the chintz material.

Juliette watched Liza closely as she turned from the door. For a long moment Liza didn't meet her eyes,

and when she did there swam a shadow of something like fear in their dark depths. Not just fear, but anger. They assessed Juliette in a manner that made her flush with discomposure.

"Tylor's a jackass," Juliette pointed out with a dry laugh.

Liza nodded, rubbed her palms up and down her skirt, then headed for the bedroom door.

Juliette jumped from the ottoman and grabbed her arm. "What's wrong, Liza?"

"Nothin'." Liza shook her head and forced a smile. "Nothin' at all. Tylor just git on my nerves is all."

There came a knock at the door.

Emmaline entered, her arms full of the peach silk dress and green petticoat. She stopped short at the sight of Juliette, hair upswept and body clad in nothing more than shift and corset.

Liza tugged her arm away from Juliette, and as she walked by Emmaline, her step slowing, she said,

"What's wrong, Emmaline? You look like you just seen a ghost."

Juliette thought of chasing after Liza with some flimsy excuse to detain her. The emotions glittering in Emmaline's eyes as they assessed her sent a shiver of nervous anger through her. Merciful heaven. It was enough that she would be forced to face Chantz over supper.

Taking a fortifying breath, she faced Emmaline, her shoulders squared and chin set. "It's time we clear the air, Emmaline. Obviously, you don't like me. Would you care to tell me why?"

If Emma felt fazed over Juliette's directness, she didn't show it. Without a flicker of emotion, she replied, "You're going to be trouble for my boy. That's why. It's written all over you. You're the kind of woman who makes men stupid."

"That's ridiculous."

"You have that look in your eye. That tilt of your head. The way of looking at a man from under your lashes. The way of holding yourself, shoulders back and head up as if presenting your body like it was God's gift to mankind."

"Nothing happened between Chantz and me, regardless of what you choose to believe."

"Nothing?"

The heat in the room pulsated as intensely as the drone of the night insects whirring in the dark beyond the house as Emmaline's gray gaze drifted down over Juliette's body, making Juliette feel naked and embarrassed. She could deny to the world that anything had happened between her and Chantz, but she knew in her heart that it could have. Almost did. Something about the man had crawled into her blood in the instant he kissed her.

"Something has my son restless, Juliette. And bothered. Very bothered. And a mother's instinct tells me it's got nothing to do with broken levees or lost crops or the catastrophic consequences that Max will face over this flood."

Emma tossed the dress over the back of a chair, then proceeded to help Juliette into the petticoat. Her hard, rough hands slid down the seams, though Juliette sensed Emmaline's attention was focused more on her than on the garment. Next came the dress- soft peach silk that draped low on the curve of her shoulders and fit snugly through her small waist that was accentuated with a wide band of green satin the same shade as her eyes. The skirt, trimmed with quillings of green silk, had a cut-away hem which revealed the petticoat ruffles beneath.

Her eyes softening somewhat, Emmaline regarded Juliette with a wistfulness that extinguished the hot anger that had been building in Juliette. The woman looked haggard, suddenly, her thin shoulders burdened.

"You're a beautiful young woman," Emma said. "I know you can't help being what and who you are. I only pray that God gave you the conscience that he never gave your mother."

Her cold hand reached out and took Juliette's in a painful grip. "Leave my son alone, Juliette. He's been hurt too damn much. More than you could ever know. Planters in these parts wouldn't think twice about hiring Chantz if Max let him go. They'd fight over him, if the truth be known. But not if the reason Max let him go was over you. Planters are funny that way. They'll tolerate their overseer drinking, lazing, lying, cheating, thieving, but they won't tolerate him messing with their wives and daughters. While the lot of immoral bastards might keep their mistresses, they don't want to think if they ride away from that house their overseer is gonna slip in through the back door and into their bed. A man with that reputation would never find work in Louisiana again, I don't care how good he is at growing cane."

Emma stepped closer, and the grip on Juliette's hand sent a spear of dull pain up her arm.

"I hope I'm wrong about you, Juliette. I hope we're all wrong. For your sake as well as ours. For my son's sake. I hope when Maureen Jarod Broussard was buried, her wanton, wicked, deceitful heart and spirit were buried with her."

Juliette woodenly turned toward the cheval, regarded the reflected image that made her body flush.

Pray, what had become of the drab mouse of a young woman she had been a few short weeks ago? As she stared at the scandalously low decolletage that exposed most of her breasts that shimmered pale as milk glass in the lamplight, Chantz's words flashed through her memory- the ones with which he had so spitefully described her mother that stormy night in his cabin- her dresses cut so low the whole of Louisiana held its breath when she walked.

"I won't wear it," she heard herself declare in a dry voice.

"It's... disgraceful."

"You'll wear it. Because Maxwell wants you to wear it." Emma touched the wisp of hair coiling around Juliette's nape. "Maxwell always gets what he wants... eventually."

Her gray eyes meeting Juliette's in the glass, Emma said, "Only one thing I know of that he never got that he wanted with a desperation that has nearly broken him. Then again... he might get it yet. Time will tell, I guess."

Juliette stared after Emma as she left the room. She felt desperate for air. Desperate to tear the indecent gown from her body and burn it. Yet, as she focused again on her reflection, how the cut of the gown accentuated the smallness of her waist and cupped her breasts in a way that flaunted her femininity, a rush of hot thrill raced through her. Not just from the sudden self-awareness that in a manner of a few short weeks she had grown from a naive child into a woman, but from the idea of presenting herself in such a way to Chantz.

With an angry cry, she ran from the room and onto the gallery, leaned against the balcony rail and turned her hot face toward the night sky and its vast panoply of stars that glistened like diamonds on black velvet. But even here she could find no respite from the unnerving emotions that were rushing their way into her mind and heart. Emmaline's words rolled over and over in her thoughts: "For my son's sake, I hope when Maureen Jarod Broussard was buried, her wanton, wicked, deceitful heart and spirit were buried with her."

Dear God, how many lives had Maureen Broussard destroyed? How was she to live down the reputation of a woman who apparently had the soul of a she-devil?

But worse than that, and what frightened her most: How else could she explain the scandalous emotions and physical reactions that took hold of her body every time she so much as heard Chantz Boudreaux's name? Even now they were there- racing wildly through her, making her breathless, trembling, flushed- had been there since the moment Liza had told her that Chantz would be joining them for supper.

Suddenly she did care if her hair was coiffed and her dress was pretty. She wanted him to look at her appreciatively with those burning, oddly haunting eyes. She wanted him to desire her. She craved it with every fiber of her being.

The memory of the Reverend Mother came back, not for the first time, of course; she often thought she could hear the woman's susurrant chanting as she lay in the dark, awakened from her troubled dreams of burning.

Perhaps those dreams were simply her mind's way of preparing her for the eventuality of her soul burning in Hell. Perhaps there were times when the prayers and exorcisms murmured by priests and obsessive nuns could actually prove futile. Perhaps there were times when the wickedness ran too deeply, corrupting the very heart of the soul beyond redemption.

Surely, if her soul could have been cleansed of her mother's legacy, the years spent under the Reverend Mother's ceaseless barrage would have done it.

Obviously, it had all been for nothing. Because something had roused inside her the last days- something strong and dark and pulsing... and uncontrollable. And growing more so by the hour.

Closing her eyes, she took a deep, unsteady breath. That's when she heard the hounds howling.

They ululated like mourning souls in the night. A dozen of them, heads turned to the sky, filling up the stillness with a moan that sent a coldness through Juliette's veins. Odd how the sound intensified the stillness and heaviness of the air that seemed to crawl over her exposed skin like claws.

"Miss Julie?"

Startled, Juliette jumped and turned.

Standing in the doorway, Little Clara, Rosie's nine-year-old granddaughter, bestowed on her a wide, mostly toothless smile. Her hair jutted from her head in spikelike braids, each tied with a sliver of pink ribbon Julie had given her when she discovered the child admiring them in her armoire.

"Granny say you gots to come to suppa now. Boss Chantz be here and food 'most ready." Her smile widening, Little Clara shook her head. "You 'bouts the fanciest lady I ever seen. Massa Max gonna pop his eyeballs clean outta his face. I reckon Boss Chantz gonna be all amudlycockle agin when he see you."

"Amudlycockle?" Juliette smiled and lowered herself until eye level with the mischievously grinning child. The stiff skirts and petticoats mushroomed around her. "What is amudlycockle, Little Clara?"

"You know. Fidgety. Granny say he got a piss ant in his britches. Git that way ever' time he see you. Go sore as a boar in a patch of high thistle. That what my granny say and granny, she ain't ever wrong 'bout nothin'."

?Six.

The day had been hellish, what with the repairs to the levee and the waters still standing ankle deep, making the hauling of timbers and bricks and the trenching of mud enough to drive even Louis to his knees. The last thing Chantz wanted or needed tonight was to be subjected to Max's drunken tantrums and Tylor's insults. Then, of course, there was Juliette.