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shifted inside Sonia. Her grandmother, her mother’s mother, had been her hope, her one chancefor refuge. Her letter, delivered when the steam packet docked, had held the precious offer of shelter with her.
    Mémère had never cared for the man her daughter, Sonia’s mother, had married, had opposed the alliance when it was proposed, but been overridden by Sonia’s grandfather. She blamed Simon Bonneval for her daughter’s death. He had never cared for her properly, she said, had expected her to recover within mere days from the miscarriages that had plagued her so he could get her with child again. He had been disappointed at the birth of a daughter instead of the son he craved, and shown it too clearly. He had been an autocratic, judgmental husband, always finding fault, never able to see what had been done for pointing out what had not. He had taken the joy of life from her mother, so Mémère had told Sonia, and when she had lost yet another baby son, the sixth in the twelve years following Sonia’s birth, she simply let go of living.
    Sonia, who had taken her mother’s place as her father’s housekeeper in the past few years, thought the things her grandmother said might well be true. She had seldom, in all that time, managed to please him.
    â€œMonsieur Wallace, I beg you,” she whispered, her voice a mere rasp in her throat.
    His stride broke for a bare second; she was sure of it. He didn’t stop, however, gave no other sign he heard.
    Her anger of moments before was nothing to the rage that consumed her now. She bitterly regretted her moment of weakness. This Kaintuck was a monster, a heartless, ignorant barbarian; she’d been a fool to imagineotherwise. For what he was doing, she would make him pay a hundredfold. This she swore on her mother’s grave.
    They reached the open area of the Place d’Armes, which fronted the cathedral and the Cabildo, or government house. Kerr Wallace turned there, making toward the levee. It was then she knew just where he was taking her.
    A few minutes more and they were at the dock where the Lime Rock lay quiet and peaceful at its moorings. Her captor came to a halt. Bending forward, he set her on her feet but grasped her forearms for a second while she gained her balance. Giddiness assailed her as the blood pooled in her skull drained away, but she refused to show it, glaring up at him in half-blind defiance.
    The levee was just coming to life at this predawn hour. Stretching away from them on either side, the long, curved embankment was lined with steamboats and sailing ships as far as the eye could see. Their signal lanterns gleamed like some earthbound Milky Way, bobbing with the wash of the river current, reflecting in its sliding surface. Stacks of merchandise, boxes and barrels and acres of baled cotton, sat ready to be loaded come good daylight.
    Behind them lay the town in its orderly arrangement of streets marked by lamps at the corners, where cats and dogs slinked, pigs snuffled along and men walked with every sense alert for those who preyed on the unwary. From that direction, faint on the dawn wind, came the tinny and melancholy sound of a barrel organ.
    They were so alone there in the dimness, she and theKentuckian. The knowledge brought an odd flutter in the pit of her stomach. His hold on her was not hurtful, but its firm pressure suggested that it could become so at the least sign of resistance. The power of it affected her like a drug, so she swayed a little where she stood.
    It was maddening, that febrile awareness, when she wanted nothing more than to get away from him. Far, far away.
    â€œWe’re going aboard the steamer, you and I,” he said in tones like a sledge being dragged over gravel. “We can do it nice and easy or we can do it hard—you can walk up the gangway on your own two feet or I can carry you. Your choice, Mademoiselle Bonneval.”
    Refusal hovered on her lips. She longed to