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formed the shape of a T, with the tail of the T made of pressed cypress and the whole structure painted to conceal the marriage of brick and wood. Twelve imposing Doric columns soared past the second-story 28

    gallery to the elaborately carved eaves. Their majesty was complemented by the long flight of steps that fronted the drive and led to the upper portico.
    Jessie stopped Firefly and sat back in the saddle, drinking in the familiar sights of home. She loved Mimosa, loved it with a fierceness that she was just now discovering. The plantation had belonged to her mother's family, the Hodges, for generations. When her mother, Elizabeth Hodge, an only child, had married Thomas Lindsay of Virginia, there had apparently never been any question as to where the newlyweds would live. Mimosa would in the natural course of things belong to Elizabeth one day, and the ensuing years would give Josiah Hodge plenty of time to teach his new son-in-law the intricacies of managing an operation that consisted in part of over ten thousand acres of planted cotton, a sawmill, a gristmill, a blacksmithy, and nine hundred and ninety-two adult slaves.
    What no one could have foreseen was that Elizabeth Hodge Lindsay would outlive her parents by no more than two years. Thomas Lindsay had remarried a scant year after that—Celia Bradshaw was a pretty little miss he met on a trip to New Orleans— and had died little more than a year later. Still infatuated with his child bride, Thomas had written a will that left Mimosa lock, stock, and barrel to Celia with two provisos: first, that his daughter by Elizabeth, Jessica, be provided with a home for life there if she chose to make use of it; and second, that none of the slaves who belonged to the place at the time of his death be sold.
    Jessie had been only nine when her father died, so the leaving of Mimosa to Celia had not bothered her particularly. Mimosa was her home, had always been, would always be, and no legal 29

    technicalities about ownership could change that. It had taken the shock of Celia's announcement that afternoon to make clear to Jessie just how uncertain her position was. Somehow she had never foreseen that Celia would remarry—though she should have. Of course she should have. But she'd never really thought about it. Even if she had, she probably would have concluded that Celia liked men, a wide variety of men, too much to settle on one. Like an ostrich with its head in the sand, Jessie had refused to see anything unpleasant. What a fool she had been! And what a fool she had been, upon hearing Celia's news, to even hope for a moment that remarriage might mean that Celia would be leaving.
    Of course Celia was not going to leave Mimosa. She owned it. She could bring in a husband or lover or whomever else she chose with impunity, and turn over to him the plantation that should by right of blood and devotion belong to Jessie. Could Celia sell the place? The horrifying idea occurred to Jessie, along with the realization that she didn't know the answer. She'd never thought to inquire. With the blind trust of youth she'd believed that life would go on the way it always had forever. She'd never even considered that things might change until the notion was thrust beneath her nose. Now she was faced with a shattering sense of loss. Mimosa, her home, belonged to Celia, and that was a fact that she was powerless to do anything about. If Celia and her Stuart wed and had children, those children would almost certainly inherit, not she. The thought was agonizing, immobilizing, and not to be borne. Indeed, Jessie didn't mean to bear it. Whatever else she was, Jessica Lindsay was no namby-pamby miss. She was a born fighter, and she meant to fight tooth and nail for her home.
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    Whatever it took, Jessie had decided during the course of the afternoon, she would prevent this marriage, if she had to run Firefly over the top of the prospective groom to do it. The thought of Edwards' immaculate