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PROLOGUE

Memphis, Tennessee

August 1892

Birthing a bastard wasn't in the plans When she'd learned she was carrying her lover's child, the shock and panic turned quickly to anger

There ays of dealing with it, of course A woman in her position had contacts, had avenues But she was afraid of them, nearly as afraid of the abortionists as she was of as growing, unwanted, inside her

The nancy

He'd kept her for nearly two years now, and kept her well Oh, she knew he kept others - including his wife -but they didn't concern her

She was still young, and she was beautiful Youth and beauty were products that could be marketed She'd done so, for nearly a decade, with steely mind and heart And she'd profited by therace and char the fine ladies who'd visited the grand house on the river where her mother had worked

She'd been educated - a bit But more than books and music, she'd learned the arts of flirtation

She'd sold herself for the first ti with the coin But prostitution wasn't her goal, anyoff to the factory day after day She knew the difference bethore and mistress A whore traded quick and cold sex for pennies and was forgotten before the ain

But a mistress - a clever and successful aiety along with the co wall, a sexual fantasy An aain much

Amelia Ellen Conner had ambitions

And she'd achieved them Or most of them

She'd selected Reginald quite carefully He wasn't handsome or brilliant of mind But he was, as her research had assured her, very rich and very unfaithful to the thin and proper ho presided over Harper House

He had a woman in Natchez, and it was said he kept another in New Orleans He could afford another, so Ahts on him Wooed and won him