"Little wh.o.r.es, the both of you," a man"s voice blacker than coal croaked. "Look at you. You"ve let men fill your bellies with their seed-men who work for me, men who take my money and then betray me behind my back. But what should I have expected, with a harlot mother as abominable as yours? We must not suffer harlots to live..."

Collier clenched his teeth.

Don"t listen! Just get down to business!

A young girl: "Please, Father, no!"

"Oh, no, I won"t kill you. I"ll let the earth do it..."

The voices seemed to come from everywhere in the room.

Then he heard the sound of shovels biting into dirt.

Don"t listen!

Then m.u.f.fled children"s screams...

He looked up again, and this time, saw Jiff standing in the doorway: naked, aroused. Then, he, too, climbed onto the bed...

Just as Mrs. Butler, Lottie, and Jiff"s hands all began to caress him, Collier grabbed his robe and lurched for the door.

"Where you goin"!" Mrs. Butler yelled.

"Aw, come on, Mr. Collier," Jiff complained. "We can have us a four-way the right way..."

Collier ran out as if fleeing a blaze. Without a candle now, he stumbled in the nearly lightless hall. He blindly got his robe back on and felt his way to the atrium. What"s happening to me?

Then the answer came to him.

Not me. It"s the house.

He stopped when he found himself in the middle of the atrium. The storm seemed to be dying off now, the lightning less intense. But in each diminishing flash, he caught himself looking up at the portrait of Gast.

The house...

Was it merely suggestion, or had Harwood Gast changed his posture and expression? The plantation baron seemed to be grimacing now, and instead of looking out at the tree, he was looking to his left...

Collier looked left.

And saw the old writing table...and the smaller portrait of Penelope.

Slow steps took him over, his eyes widening. The next throb of lightning was all he needed to discern the small painting"s only necessary detail.

The oil painting only showed a landscape of trees in the background-the image of Penelope Gast wasn"t to be seen, as though her likeness had never been painted in it.

Was the rich Southern accent in Collier"s head?

"It"s not the house," it whispered from everywhere.

Collier stumbled for the stairs.

"It"s me..."

Both of his hands let the banister guide him up. His eyes had barely adjusted-after feeling his way through more grainy darkness, he found his room.

He closed the door and leaned against it. I"ve really had enough of this place, he thought, almost hyperventilating, but in only a moment, he sensed something wrong.

The candles...

There"d been two lit candles when he"d left the room earlier. Now there was one.

He grabbed it, dipped it toward the bed.

Dominique wasn"t there.

Collier cursed himself. d.a.m.n it! The storm probably woke her up; then she saw that I wasn"t here so she got scared and left!

But- Her work slacks and blouse were draped over the chair. Then he noticed with more alarm that her silver cross was hanging off the bedpost.

And so were her bra and panties.

Collier made the cold, unbelievable deduction. She"s not here but all her clothes are. Which means she"s somewhere in the house...naked.

The storm had faded. Collier tried to think- Then he heard something like a long splash, like a bucket of water being emptied.

Collier had heard that sound before.

It came from the room to the left. The bath closet...

By now, Collier knew the drill.

When he blew out his candle, he wasn"t surprised to notice a dot of light on the wall: the peephole. He got to his knees and looked in.

Candlelight flickered, not much, but enough. Dominique"s beautiful pubis appeared, the triangle of dark thatch ever apparent. She lowered herself into the hip bath.

Collier watched, his eye frozen open on the hole.

It wasn"t a bar of soap that she held in her hand, it was Collier"s can of Edge Gel. Her finger squirted a few curls into the plot of hair; then she began to ma.s.sage it into a thick white froth.

She"s going to shave her crotch, came the slow acknowledgment. That was fine with Collier but...

Why shave your crotch in a G.o.dd.a.m.n Civil War hip bath, during a power failure!

Another sound he"d heard came to his ear next.

scritch-scritch-scritch But it wasn"t Collier"s disposable razor she was using. It was an old-fashioned straight razor.

When the task was complete, she got out and patted herself dry with a towel.

Even in the candlelight, the clean, hairless crotch seemed to radiate its fresh whiteness, but...

What"s she doing...now?

Now something else occupied her fingers, a small flat box that she quickly snapped open.

It was eyeliner.

Collier could bear no more. What"s she doing NOW?

Then- thunk!

The power snapped back on; the room blared in light. Reason returned. Collier bolted out of the bedroom and turned right into the bath closet.

"Dominique, what the h.e.l.l are you-"

She stood facing him but with her head pitched down; she hadn"t noticed him enter.

But Collier was too taken aback by the shock of seeing her naked. All he could do was stare, his mouth drawn open.

The bright lights brought out every detail of her curves and feminine features, the sleek legs, wide hips joined by a flat white stomach. Plump white b.r.e.a.s.t.s jutted outward firmly as implants.

And what was she doing?

Two fingers wielded the tiny eyeliner brush, dabbed it into the circle of dark makeup, then very daintily left one single tiny dot on her pubis, about an inch above the c.l.i.toris.

She dropped the plastic box and looked right at him.

Collier-thick in the throat-got the effect. Shaved pubis? With one tiny freckle above the opening?

The daguerreotype glared in his mind.

She made herself look like her...

"Who are you?" she asked as if put off.

Dominique didn"t have a Southern accent, yet the voice that came out of her mouth did.

"I asked you a question, sir. Who the blazes are you, standin" in my house uninvited?"

"Come on!" he gruffed and shoved her out of the small room.

"This is no way to treat the lady of this house, and you can be a.s.sured-"

"Shut up and get in there!"

Collier hauled her back into his room. "We"re getting out of here-" He grabbed her clothes and heaved them into her arms. "Put those on!"

"These are not my clothes, sir! And if you"re one"a my husband"s workers, you can wager that he"ll hear about this unmitigated intrusion!" She dropped the clothes. "In fact, I am going to tell him right now! And where is Jessa, d.a.m.n her? Did she let you in the house?"

She brushed past him, stark in her nudity, but when her hand landed on the doork.n.o.b...

"Oh, dear, well now...maybe I am being hasty." She turned back around. When she leaned against the door and straightened her posture, her bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s stood even more erect.

Holy moly...

Her eyes drilled right into him. "And, if I may be so forward, you are a handsome man. I"m sorry we haven"t previously met. Are you one of my husband"s foremen?"

Collier could have wept when he forced himself to look away from her magnificent body. "Dominique, we have to leave."

She raised a delicate finger. "You must work for Mr. Cutton, am I right?" She p.r.o.nounced "right" as "rat." "Or perhaps you work over him. He is a marvelous man, I must say..." She slowly traipsed over, her innocent expression shifting into something sly. "So tell me, sir. How marvelous are you? And by what manner?"

Collier cringed when her warm hand slipped into his robe and slid up his chest. Her touch electrified him, and next she was kissing him...

The voice of his id returned, Looks like you gonna get a slice of the celibate weirdo after all...

Her mouth sucked his tongue.

It"s not her, it"s not her, he insisted to himself.

You better haul this one"s ashes right now...

But Collier knew he couldn"t.

Just then her hands slid down to his groin.

"Mmmm, yes," she murmured. "You"re clearly a man who senses the needs of a lady." Then she opened the robe and pressed against him. Her nipples felt like hot coins.

"But this is my daughters" room-and G.o.d knows where they are at this hour. Out being little girls, I suppose, with that annoying dog of theirs. But we had to get them the dog. They don"t have any friends to speak of, and don"t mix well with the other children in town, due to our elevated social standing."

Collier shivered with his eyes closed as her hand kept playing with him.

"Oh, but I"ve digressed," she whispered into his neck. "Let"s retreat to the next room, shall we? It"s my...secret room, reserved for my pleasures alone." She tried to pull him toward the door.

"No," Collier said through gritted teeth.

She paused through a sigh. "You might be a bit nervous, which I understand-many of my men are at first. But you needn"t be worrying about my husband. He"s halfway to Maxon right now, and only comes back every month or so."

Now she pressed harder against him.

He could sense the outrage of his darker self.

Listen to me, buddy boy. If you don"t ball the daylights out of this hunk of angel food cake, you"ll be a disgrace to all of masculinity- "Put your clothes on," he told her, pushing her back. "We have to leave..."

"All right." She ignored him. "If you don"t want to go into the next room, we"ll do it here," she said, then started to take off his robe.

Collier whipped her hands away. "We"re leaving!" he tried yelling at her. "Now!"

What a loser, his id conceded. I give up...