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PROLOGUE

Memphis, Tennessee

December 1892

SHE DRESSED CAREFULLY, attending to the details of her appearance as she hadn't done for months Her personal maid had run off weeks before, and she had neither the wit nor the will to hire another So she spent an hour with the curling rods herself - as she had in the years before she'd been kept so lavishly -her freshly rinsed hair

It had lost its bright gold luster over the long, bleary autu back its shine, what pots of paint to select to put false color in her cheeks, on her lips

She knew all the tricks of the trade How else could she have caught the eye of a inald Harper? How else had she seduced hi her his mistress?

She would use theht, to seduce hi that must be done

He hadn't come, in all this time, in all these months, he hadn't come to her So she'd been forced to send notes to his businesses, begging hinored

Ignored after all she had done, all she had been, all she had lost

What choice had she had but to send rand Harper House where his pale wife reigned Where a mistress could never walk

Hadn't she given him all he could ask, all he could want? She'd traded her body for the comfort of this house, the convenience of servants, for the baubles, like the pearl drops she fixed on her ears now

Small prices to pay for a man of his stature and wealth, and such had been the liive her But he'd given her ained for The loss of it was more than she could bear

Why had he not corieve with her?

Had she complained, ever? Had she ever turned him from her bed? Or mentioned even once the other women he kept?

She had given him her youth, and her beauty And, it seemed, her health