GABRIELLE had been dreaming. The sharp rap of her father�s knuckles on the door of her narrow cabin tumbled her back into reality with a painful start. With her eyes still tightly closed, she listened to the gentle slapping of the Mississippi River against the sides of the showboat and groaned. It couldn�t be three in the morning yet; it absolutely couldn�t. Yet above the rhythm of the current she heard morning sounds, muffled voices calling outside, and feet scraping along the decks of the Levee Princess. Within minutes she was supposed to be dressed and down in the galley to help Flossie McGregor fix coffee and breakfast for the other crew members before they untied the boat and started her on downstream.

Since her dream was fading too fast as it was, Gabrielle didn�t even light the lamp.

Instead, she opened her window in the dark and let down her bucket on a rope. The bucket hit the river and filled swiftly, tightening the rope in her hands.

She pulled the bucket up and hesitated only a moment before pouring some of the water into her wash basin. If any silly little minnow had swum into her wash bucket, that was its hard luck, not hers. She washed her face and hands, and, after dumping the soapy water back into the river, she tugged on her pantaloons. Like all the cabins on her father�s showboat, the room was narrow with only her bed, a shelf for her books, a washstand with pitcher and basin, and a row of shelves on the wall for her clothes. She had to twist carefully in the narrow space to reach the buttons down the back of her dress.

The memory of the dream was still more real than the darkness of her cabin. Her dress in the dream hadn�t been ordinary blue gingham, but rose-colored taffeta, a deep, warm rose that flattered the vivid coloring she had inherited from her dead French mother: pale skin, hair as black as the wing of a crow, and brilliant blue eyes. The skirt of that dream dress had stood out like the flaring petals of a magnolia blossom as she bowed to a roar of applause filling the auditorium of her father�s showboat.

And Stephen DuBois had been the first to rise to his feet, clapping. Stephen, who made a point of always having a job to do somewhere else on the boat when she came on stage to do her part in the show, would leap to his feet to start a standing ovation, a thundering ovation as she bent to the floor in one deep, graceful bow after another.

She stood motionless, thinking. If she could only talk her father into letting her try an act like that, her wonderful dream might really come true.

The rap came again at the door. "Coming, Father," she called. She lit the lamp a brief moment to brush her hair back and tie it with a ribbon. Then, before blowing the lamp out, she looked again at the poster someone had handed her at a landing near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She had studied the poster so much that by now the paper was ragged around the edge. The rude handbill, just like the ones the Levee Princess distributed along the river, showed a girl walking a tightrope above the heads of the staring audience.

COUNTESS ESMERELDA, it read, PERFORMING HER DEATH-DEFYING WALK BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES. She folded it into her pocket with an excited intake of breath. Her father had to at least let her try!

Out on deck, her breath formed a cloud of mist in the cold predawn air. There would be more warm days as they wended downriver between Illinois and Missouri, but this morning felt more like October than early September. Although birds were twittering in the willow trees along the bank where they were moored, it was as black as midnight . out there. Aside from the glow of the lamp from the galley, the only lights anywhere were stars.

Gabrielle stamped a little on the stairway down to the galley. All right, she thought. So she was feeling sorry for herself, but she had a perfect right to. Nobody even knew what made that silly cook Jake Harwell mad enough to go packing off the boat at Hannibal, Missouri, without so much as a "fare thee well." One day he was whistling in the galley, and the next he was marching down the gangplank with his suitcase, leaving the galley full of dirty dishes for Flossie and her to clean up.

But showboat cooks were famous for being temperamental. Jake himself was the third cook her father had hired on since they started the trip in Cincinnati in April. If Jake had been there, she could have slept a few minutes more and brought the dream to its triumphant end.

But, then, that wasn�t the only if. If she had been born to land people and lived in a regular house instead of on this boat, she could have slept for hours more. No other sixteen-year-old along the Mississippi River had to be up at three in the morning the way she did, especially after working a three-hour show that ended at ten o�clock. Even the round-eyed farm girls who came with their families and boyfriends to exclaim at the evening performances could lie in their beds until the sun was up!

Some day, she promised herself, some day I am going to sleep in, too, and in a proper bed on land, not in a narrow cot fitted against the wall of a showboat cabin.

The galley air was fragrant with the rich scent of coffee boiling in the big blue-flecked enamel pot. "There you are," Flossie called over her shoulder. "The oven�s heated up; you can get warm in here."

Gabrielle grabbed Flossie around the waist in a quick hug before getting down the coffee mugs. Flossie was not only wonderful, she was the closest thing Gabrielle could remember to a mother. She was also Gabrielle�s only real friend.

Soon there would be biscuits to make, and bacon and eggs and potatoes to cook for the crew of nine who ate their regular breakfast later. Gabrielle couldn�t wait that long. She split a leftover biscuit, buttered it, and stuck it into the oven to warm.

Flossie�s husband Lance played leading man in all the showboat productions, and probably was handsome to people who could stand him. Gabrielle couldn�t. She considered Lance a conceited dandy not worth the salt on his breakfast eggs. While Lance pranced around talking about acting and the theater as if he were Shakespeare himself, Flossie was the world�s best sport. Even though she wasn�t a day older than Lance, she was perfectly willing to play any role they needed, even if it meant powdering her beautiful red hair and making her voice creak like that of an old woman. Flossie had a wonderful singing voice, but never complained at only getting to sing the old people�s favorites, like "The Blue Alsatian Mountains" or Stephen Foster�s "Old Folks . at Home."

Gabrielle had been mad enough to spit when the cook had left. Flossie had only shrugged and said, "Gabrielle and I can manage until the captain can find us another." To see Flossie like this, with a gauze cap half covering her flaming red hair and her slim body hidden under a giant apron, no one would guess what a beautiful, talented woman she was. Now she hummed at her work, the snappiest sort of tune, as if to keep time with her hands.

Naturally Stephen DuBois had to come into the galley just as Flossie spoke. He poured himself a mug of coffee and blew away the steam, his dark, insolent eyes on Gabrielle. He turned to Flossie with a pained face. "I hope she isn�t planning to make the breakfast biscuits. My stomach is still churning from the ones she made yesterday."

Gabrielle flushed and set two more mugs down hard on the table. You�d think an eighteen-year-old newcomer to the boat would have better sense than to pick on the captain�s daughter. But Stephen seemed to know that Captain Prentice, appearing in the doorway, was too genial to take offense at anything that could be treated as a joke. He laughed at Stephen and patted his daughter on the shoulder in passing.

"Don�t knock my girl�s biscuits, DuBois," he warned. "I don�t have my crew keeping guns handy by accident. More than one showboat has been attacked by ruffians along this river. Who knows? We could run out of ammunition and have to defend the Levee Princess by throwing Gabrielle�s biscuits."

Gabrielle knew Stephen was watching her, gloating over her embarrassment. She didn�t have to glance at him to know how smug and arrogant he looked, his smile strangely lopsided as if he was never more than half amused. How anybody that good-looking could be such a complete disaster totally astounded her.

A lot of her distaste for Stephen was just old-fashioned disappointment. She had been the only young person on board for a long time, which meant she didn�t really have any friends near her age. It wasn�t possible to get to know the young people along the river, even when the boat was tied up at the same place for a long time. The land people didn�t see her as a real girl at all, but as an actress and singer. Then after the boat�s dancer and acrobat left to take a job working on a Kentucky tobacco plantation, her father hired Stephen in Paducah. She had been really excited, thinking she would have somebody like herself on board the boat at last.

Had she ever been wrong!

Stephen was different, and better than most of the performers her father had hired on. He was not only a good gymnast and dancer, but could do an amazing number of other things. When the channel of the river was deep and straight, her father sometimes even let Stephen take the pilot�s wheel.

And he was handsome, Gabrielle had to admit that. Most of the Frenchmen Gabrielle had seen in New Orleans and along the river were slender like Stephen, but not much taller than she was. Stephen was even taller than her father. His eyes, dark under black lashes, seemed to hide forbidden secrets. But she could certainly do without his smart mouth and his supercilious smiles!

When all nine of the coffee mugs had been handed out, Gabrielle took hers outside to join her father on the Texas deck. It was silly to call a deck after a state, but all showboats did it and the Texas deck was always the top deck with only the pilot house above it. Gabrielle settled herself at her father�s feet as he and Pud Swallow watched the first glimmer of daylight come up above the Illinois shore and shudder across the face of the swift river moving toward them. Birds flew low over the face of the water, piping ' and crying. Now and then a bird went by standing on one leg to ride on the exposed surface of a racing log. From the darkness of the woods behind them, Gabrielle heard the barking of a coyote.

"They�ve had a real storm somewhere north of us," Pud said soberly. "Look at that current."

Although Pud was the funniest clown on the river and the best comedy dancer anywhere, he was a strangely solemn man. Gabrielle liked him as well as anyone she had ever known, except for her father and Flossie. He had prominent cheekbones, a large beak nose, and eyes set too close together. Without makeup he looked rather peculiar, but when he became a clown he was so perfectly right that she laughed before he even did anything. And like her father, Pud had worked on the river ever since the end of the War Between the States, and knew it as well as any man.

Her father nodded. "Maybe it�s just as well it comes now. Those loose logs that struck us when we were tied up north of Hannibal left some weak places in our hull on the port side. The sooner we fix them, the easier the job will be. And you�re right about the current, Pud. It looks downright hazardous. And it�s not like we�re rushed, either. We only need to make it downriver to St. Louis by the first of October."

As he spoke, a long row of barges pushed by the tug Mandy Sue passed them going south along the river. The quiet was broken by the greeting from the tug�s engineer: one long whistle followed by a short one. The crew of the Levee Princess waved back from the deck.

"Griz is taking a chance even with that load he�s pushing," Pud commented, lifting his hand. Gabrielle waved, too. All the regulars along the river knew each other, as if the water itself were a moving town.

Gabrielle had recognized Stephen�s distinctive light step coming up the stairs, but she ignored him. Of course, she thought, he didn�t even have manners enough to stay out of a conversation between his older-and-betters.

"How long do you generally have to stay in at shore when the river runs high like this ?" he asked. He had only worked on boats on the Ohio River before joining the Levee Princess, and the Ohio River was a bathtub compared to the turbulent Mississippi.

"It depends," her father said. "There�s no sense in taking risks that will lose us more time in the long run. The flood stage could pass in a day or keep rampaging for a week. But as I was telling Pud, we won�t waste the time we spend tied up here. We have maintenance on the boat to do, and maybe we could even work on some new acts for the show."

New acts. This would have been a perfect chance for Gabrielle to talk to her father about what she wanted to try, if only Stephen had taken his coffee into the dining room with the others instead of coming out on deck where he wasn�t wanted.

"New acts ?" Stephen asked. "That sounds interesting. Anything special in mind ?"

I have something special in mind, she wanted to shout. Only Stephen, there in the darkness behind her father, kept her silent.

"I�ve been watching you, DuBois," Pud Swallow told him. "I like the way you handle yourself. I bet we could work up a comedy dance routine that would tip them into the aisles."

"Hey, Mr. Swallow," Stephen said, sounding very young suddenly, "I�d sure like that." Gabrielle stirred. He had better be impressed. Pud was the best comic on the river. Anyone who got a chance to work with Pud was privileged.

"Sounds good to me, too," her father said. "What about you, Gabrielle?" He touched her hair gently as he spoke. "Got any bright new ideas brewing? You added a lot to the band this year by learning to play that banjo."

"I do have an idea," she admitted, "but if you don�t mind, I�ll tell you later." As she spoke, she rose and took his coffee mug as well as her own. "I need to go help Flossie clean up."

"You and Flossie are a wonder," her father said gratefully. "Maybe we�ll luck onto a new cook to hire at the next stop."

After taking Pud�s mug, Gabrielle passed Stephen leaning in the doorway. She pretended not to see the empty mug he held out to her. Who did he think she was anyway, his personal maid? She might as well have taken it. He laughed in a low, teasing way that brought a furious flush to her cheeks.

Flossie was elbow-deep in hot dishwater when Gabrielle entered the galley. "Any sign of shoving off?" she asked, looking up.

Gabrielle shook her head as she slid the soiled mugs into the soapy water. "Father and Pud don�t like the way the river is rising. They are talking about settling in for a while and fixing that place where the logs hit the hull up north."

"Do you know where we are?" Flossie asked.

Gabrielle shook her head. "Not exactly. I have a rough idea only because I looked at Father�s river map yesterday. We�re three days south of Hannibal on the Missouri side, but I don�t know what town we�re near."

"Probably not any," Flossie said. "There are more boat landings than towns along this stretch of the Mississippi. I was just wondering if there was a little town close or if we could find a farmhouse. We need to buy some salted side meat. I don�t really have enough left to fix breakfast today."

"I�d be happy to go ashore and look for some as soon as it�s light," Gabrielle told her.

Flossie grinned at her. "My goodness, child. I never knew a showboat person who liked going ashore as much as you do."

Flossie was right. Gabrielle did love going ashore. She especially loved going there in the early morning when the shrubbery along the bank gleamed with dew, and birds called from every bush. But this time it wasn�t just being on land that made Gabrielle�s heart leap. She would have to get money from her father. This would give her a perfect chance to talk to him about her planned act. She might even be able to start practicing on it this very day!

"I�ll get some money from Father," she said, trying to hide her delight at the thought of an hour off the boat.

GABRIELLE went back for her woolen shawl against the cool morning air. The gangplank of the showboat was suspended a couple of feet above the sticky Missouri clay of the river bank. Once up north by Red Wing, Minnesota, the gangplank had been left down because some of the crew weren�t back on board by bedtime. A young bear had wandered onto the boat in the middle of the night and scared everybody half to death banging around in the galley looking for food before they�d been able to run it off. Since then, Gabrielle�s father ordered the gangplank hoisted off the ground a little at night, even if some of the crew had gone on land after the show was over.

She leaped down, landing with a soft thud. The yellowish mud of the bank bore the footprints of animals who had come for water.

She recognized the handprints of raccoons and sharp, triangular hoofprints of wild pigs. The woods were still awfully dark. The willow trees that blazed a clear gold in the spring light now had leaves as dark as the oaks and elms. The underbrush was thick and damp against her stockings. A deep-throated frog croaked before leaping into the edge of the river with a loud splash. When a bird she couldn�t see screamed suddenly above her, she felt for the bowie knife at her waist, wishing her heart wouldn�t thump like that at every noise.

Several rough paths led off from the dock area into the trees. She chose the one to the left because it looked more commonly traveled with fewer overhanging shrubs.

The woods were alive with the songs of birds. She always loved leaning on the deck rail and watching everything along the river-bank, but she loved the birds best. She only wished she could tell them apart, maybe even know one song from another. They hid so cleverly among the leafy greenery that she seldom saw more of them than a swift flash of color.

The woods gave way to an open pasture with mounds of drying hay here and there on the prickly golden stubble. Getting under the fence was easy, since it was only rude logs supported now and then by a brace. She located the closest farmhouse by a trailing wisp of blue smoke rising above another stand of trees. She had heard many stories, most of them supposed to be funny, about bulls. Since the stories had sounded more scary than funny to her, she looked carefully to see that the pasture was empty before she cut across it to reach the house.

A dog barked as she drew near, and a woman appeared at the door, shading her eyes against the sunrise behind the approaching figure. Gabrielle paused at the gate until the woman shouted the dog to her side, then she walked across the barren yard in swift graceful steps.

"Goodness," the woman said, smiling with delight. "You�re the little actress from the Levee Princess. My, we did so enjoy that show last night." She paused. "Come on in, dearie." She led Gabrielle into the house without ever stopping to catch her breath. "That was an exciting play. For a minute there I thought my husband was going to take after that man with the mustache when he started mistreating you."

Gabrielle laughed. "It was only a play."

The woman paused and looked at Gabrielle, then reached out and lifted a strand of the waving black hair that had escaped Gabrielle�s ribbon. "My! How pretty you are. They never seem like plays when they�re going on. And the way he threatened you!"

Gabrielle smiled at her. "His name is Judd Harper and he�s really a very nice man as well as being my friend."

"He didn�t come off as very nice last night. My heart was pumping until the hero came and got rid of him."

A dark-haired baby slept in a wooden cradle by the fire, and the warm kitchen smelled like cinnamon. So this is how it would be to live on land, Gabrielle thought wistfully.

The woman stood beside the cradle, too, staring at her child. "He�s a boy," she told Gabrielle. "The fourth one in a row. I keep hoping I�ll have myself a girl. Like you."

At the woman�s insistence, Gabrielle sat on the kitchen bench and ate a cookie still warm from the oven. "I do my baking early, before it gets too hot," the woman explained. "I�m surprised the showboat isn�t gone already. Usually they are off and downriver before we get up in the morning."

"The river is running high with lots of loose logs being carried along," Gabrielle explained. "It would be dangerous to leave while it�s that way. Is there a town near here, in case we need more supplies?"

The woman nodded. "Only a few miles west. It�s really a nice place, one of the nicer towns around, I guess." She smiled hopefully. "You might think of calling up another show if you stay over. I, for one, would pay to see it again. Sometimes it�s a year or more between entertainments that my mister and I think are suitable for the boys. I like those songs singing in my head when I work."

GABRIELLE�S father grinned as she ran up the gangplank. "There for a minute I thought I was going to have to send somebody to find you. I was even thinking of having Tom Luce signal you with a few bars on that calliope."

Gabrielle laughed, knowing he was kidding. No calliope player ever dared touch the keys of his steam piano unless the boat was going to put on a show. Calliope music carried for miles and the minute the farmers heard it, they began putting their tools down to come to the river.

Her father started for the pilot house, ducking his head to miss the line of wet clothing pinned on the lines strung across the deck. Gabrielle felt a rush of guilt. She should have been here to help Floss get the washing done. But it was too late to worry about that now. "Listen, Father," she said, skipping to catch up with him. "I thought you told Pud we were leaving tomorrow. I need to show you before we leave here. I�m ready, I really am."

For a horrified moment she feared he was going to ask her what she wanted to show him. He couldn�t have forgotten. When he turned to her with a sober face, she knew he remembered about the tightrope walking. He was only putting it off because he was afraid for her. "We�ll find a time for that, Gabrielle, but we�ve got to get into the current and try to work our way to the other side before another rain sets this river to boiling again."

She stared at him as he shouted the order for the tug to fire away. Why was she worrying? He never broke promises, at least he never had yet.

The throbbing of the engine in the Katie M grew stronger as she pressed her power against the Levee Princess. The larger boat lurched as it was nudged toward the center of the river. Wrinkles fanned out against the current. The trees on the Illinois side of the river seemed to rise and fall in a ragged line of green. The woods they had just left shimmered in the light, the call of song birds still audible above the pulse of the tug. Gabrielle stared back into that secret green. He was in there somewhere, that strangely attractive young man who called himself David Wesley. She could still hear his voice pleading, "Come back. Come back." She shivered from the memory of the mingled terror and excitement she felt as she had fallen into his arms.

THAT next morning Gabrielle shivered awake in the dark cabin with a sense of unreality. Getting up, she lit the lamp and studied her face in the hand mirror that had been her mother�s. The same old wide-set blue eyes stared back at her; the familiar nose that tilted up just a little at the end; the same cloud of dark, shining hair, spilling ringlets over her forehead.

"I haven�t changed," she told herself. "I�m the very same person I always was. So why do I feel so strange, as if I were suspended, as if�as if time had slipped and wasn�t working right?"

She seemed to hear David�s voice, back in the woods, saying, "I have been waiting for just this moment my whole life."

That was it. She was waiting, but for what? To be startled again into that unaccountable mixture of joy and confusion that had now happened twice; once in her dreamlike experience with David Wesley, and then again with the stunned reaction of the audience to her mother�s song?

Her fingers fumbled with the buttons down the back of her yellow-checked dress. She wanted to cry.

Twice that morning she went up into the pilot house, hoping to talk to her father about her new act. The first time he simply told her it wasn�t a good time to discuss it. The second time that she whipped up her courage to go talk to him, Judd Harper was there talking about the way the river looked. She stopped at the door without even going in.

Strangely, Flossie gave her little or no sympathy. "Maybe you shouldn�t be so secretive about it," Flossie suggested. "Perhaps if you just came out and talked about your plans in front of the other members of the cast, they could help you convince the captain."

"You don�t understand," Gabrielle told her.

"Maybe I do and maybe I don�t," Flossie said, turning away. Gabrielle studied her friend. It wasn�t like Flossie to state things halfway like that. Had Flossie noticed how she was avoiding Stephen DuBois? Did she realize how humiliating it was to have those black eyes either laughing at her or staring coal-hard with anger?

Gabrielle didn�t dare press Flossie to explain her words for fear she would have to come out and say how she felt about Stephen. Everyone else on board seemed to like him fine, and he had certainly proved his value to the cast all over again by his performance in the new act with Pud.

The day was hot. Black clouds of insects hovered above the shallows of the muddy stream and the bird songs from the passing shore sounded listless and uninspired. It was even hotter in the galley where Flossie sat sewing ruffles on a costume for her husband while keeping the stove going until it was time to start breakfast.

Gabrielle sat across the table from her, watching her needle flash in and out of the silken material. Flossie looked up at her in alarm as the boat suddenly lurched beneath them, rattling the pans hung along the wooden wall. "What�s that?" Flossie asked, glancing at the clock. "It�s only a little after nine, way too early to put into shore."

"Maybe we struck a sand reef," Gabrielle replied. "I heard Judd asking Father about a peculiar pattern the wind was making on the water."

"Oh, glory," Flossie said. "I hope nothing�s gone wrong with this boat again!"

Gabrielle slid off the bench and ran up on deck. She saw the ruffles on the water that revealed a sand reef just beneath the surface. But they hadn�t struck it. Instead, the Katie M was nudging the Levee Princess toward the Missouri shore, where a rough wooden dock stood on piles between a couple of beached rafts. There were tying posts on the dock, which meant the boat could be fastened close to it. She wriggled her nose at the faint scent of skunk that hung in the moist, hot air, and went into the pilot house. Sometimes strange smells blew along the river, but none of them made her eyes water the way skunks and muskrats did. She waited behind her father until he had a free moment. "Why are we stopping?"

He looked over his shoulder at her and laughed. A band of sweat shone on his fine, high forehead and his shirt was open at the neck. "Because we�re so popular. I should have reminded you this stop was only a few miles downstream. We won�t have anything like last night�s crowd�maybe twenty-five at most�but I promised them here that we wouldn�t miss them on the way back downriver."

"Flossie and I haven�t even started breakfast," she told him.

"No hurry," he said. "We�ll have Tom fire up the calliope a little before eleven, then get off and play some music for the folks." That made sense. At such small landings along the river they didn�t really put on parades, but just played some lively tunes on the beach, saving the real concerts for the towns that would produce larger crowds.

Gabrielle studied him a minute. "Father, since we have this extra time, maybe you can come ashore with me and see my act."

"Gabrielle," he said, a hint of irritation changing his tone, "it�s not like you to nag. The right time will come for that, you�ll see."

"But maybe I�ll forget how to do it," she wailed.

He looked at her steadily. "If you don�t have the act any better under control than that, we�d better forget the whole thing." Outside the men were shouting at each other as the rope was thrown, missed the post, pulled back, and thrown again. "Hey, cowboy, that�s the ticket," somebody shouted as the loop of rope caught the post on the second try. The boat lurched as the rope tightened in place. Her father stood up. "Run on down and pour me a mug of coffee, please," he told Gabrielle. "I�ll join you right away."

Gabrielle heard a thud as she passed into the galley, and wondered momentarily which of the crew had dropped something.

"Who�s shouting out there now?" Flossie asked when Gabrielle had set her father�s filled mug and her own on the long trestle table in the kitchen and slid onto the bench to wait for him.

"Some boy who was throwing rocks at the boat," Stephen DuBois replied, coming in as she spoke. "As soon as we got the boat tied he began yelling for the captain to put down the gangplank so he could come aboard."

"What�s his business?" Flossie asked.

Stephen shrugged. "The captain went ashore to talk to him."

"He had to be watching for us to put to shore, because we sure haven�t announced ourselves," Flossie pointed out.

Stephen nodded as he filled his own mug. "From what I heard, he was trying to talk the captain into giving him some work. I could have told him we were filled up."

"Except for a cook," Flossie corrected him.

"That guy is no cook," Stephen scoffed. "He�s just a big, blond hayseed with a yen to get out of the cowshed."

Gabrielle picked up her father�s coffee and started up on deck. Even if the coffee cooled before he came back to drink it, it gave her an excuse to get away from Stephen�s scathing talk. Except for his obvious hero worship of her father and Pud Swallow, that fellow couldn�t say a good word about anybody.

When she looked toward the beach from the Texas deck, she jumped, splashing hot coffee over the back of her hand. Her father was down on shore, standing near the end of the dock in conversation with a tall, blond young man.

David. David Wesley.

Without thinking, she pulled back into the shadow of the pilot house. Her heart pounded as if she had been running while she watched the two men. David was clearly talking a mile a minute, doing everything he could to convince her father. But her father shook his head firmly, and turned to come back on board.

As her father�s feet sounded on the gangplank, Gabrielle stepped back into the pilot�s cabin for fear David or her father would see her watching them.

For one breathless moment she got a full view of David�s face looking up after her father. She caught at the edge of the door with her free hand. How tall and solid and fair he looked, standing there with his blue shirt open against tanned skin. The sun lit his fair hair like a candle. He was more than good-looking; he was handsome. But the disappointment in his expression made something hard and painful press against her throat.

"Your coffee�s in here," she called when she heard her father�s footsteps approaching. "What was all that about?"

"Good. Thank you," he said, taking the mug with a smile. "Just a nice country kid feeling the lure of the river. These kids don�t understand there�s more to working a showboat than being big and strong and willing."

"Everybody must have started somewhere," she told him.

He nodded. "But with an act. He�s willing enough, offered to come along for nothing but bed and board. It wasn�t easy to explain to him that a man has to pull his weight in the show as well as on board."

"Flossie hoped he would be a cook," Gabrielle suggested.

"I thought of that, but his answer wasn�t satisfactory. I would guess he�s got a mama out there who�s never let him turn a hand in her kitchen."

He lifted his mug to his lips and smiled at her. "I will say he�s willing. But I had to swallow a chuckle when he said cooking looked easy enough for a child to learn."

Gabrielle knew her smile was a little weak as she left. She paused by the pilot house, hoping to see David still on shore. But he was gone and Flossie was calling her to come help with breakfast.

WHEN Gabrielle went down the next morning to give Flossie a hand with early coffee, her friend looked at her curiously. "I thought your father was making excuses for you, but I guess he could be right."

"Right about what?" Gabrielle asked.

"You do look mighty peaked. When you didn�t come join us all for the late snack after the show last night, he said you might be coming down with the shakes."

Gabrielle reached for the mugs and set them on the table. "That�s ridiculous. I�ve never gotten that river fever in my life and you both know it."

When Flossie only shrugged, Gabrielle went on. "Quit acting so innocent. You know I didn�t come down because of that silly scene Stephen DuBois started after the show."

Flossie�s pale, delicate eyebrows rose. "Stephen started?"

Gabrielle flushed. "He could have minded his own business."

"One thing about a showboat crew," Flossie said genially. "If they think one of their number is in trouble, they take it as their own business. I have been personally glad of that a few times."

"Oh, Flossie, stop it!" Gabrielle said crossly. "You know this wasn�t like that at all. David is a boy I met on shore. I liked him and he must have liked me because he followed the boat down here to see me again. We were talking privately when Stephen broke in and started that fight. Father wouldn�t even have noticed David except for Stephen. And now Father has told David to stay away from me forever." For a dreadful moment she was afraid she was going to cry. She pressed her palms against her face to hold back the tears. Flossie�s arms were tight about her at once.

"Then you really like this boy?"

Gabrielle nodded, clinging to Flossie tightly.

"That�s a different kettle of fish altogether," she said briskly. "Splash a little cold water on that face and we�ll put our heads together on it."

Gabrielle stared at her in disbelief. "Flossie! You mean it?"

Flossie grinned at her, the mischievous grin that was all it took to remind Gabrielle of how much she had always loved Flossie McGregor.

"Hey!" Flossie said. "I was a girl once myself, a little schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhouse just out of Nashville in Tennessee. I met Lance when the showboat stopped on the river. It was like a bolt of lightning for both of us. You know Lance. I knew what my brothers were going to think of him, but I would have him in spite of all."

"So what did you do?"

Flossie tightened her shoulders and giggled. "I borrowed my brother Smoky�s fastest horse and followed the boat downriver to the next stop. I had my head wound with flowers and the captain was performing the wedding ceremony when Smoky and my little brother Lem came storming onto the boat with loaded guns. That stopped the wedding, you better believe. They took me back home and watched me like a burning fuse on a dynamite cap. You see, with my mother and father both gone, Smoky thought it was his duty to raise me up right."

"But you did marry Lance, finally!"

"It didn�t take all that long," Flossie said airily. "After they brought me back I wouldn�t do anything. I wouldn�t teach school or even get dressed to go try. I just sat in a chair in my room and wouldn�t eat or sleep or talk to either of them. Neither did I cook for them, I might add. They threatened and shouted and called Lance a dandy and a fop and puppet and every other ugly thing they could think of."

Gabrielle swallowed a smile. In truth she had thought the same words about Lance McGregor herself.

"Men are short on patience," Flossie went on. "My brothers soon got fed up, hitched a buggy, and tracked the boat to a landing. Smoky gave me away and swore he had never made a better bargain in his life." Flossie stopped and covered her mouth with her hand. "Glory!" she breathed in a stunned tone.

"What�s the matter?" Gabrielle asked.

"What am I doing, telling you all this? You mustn�t try any such tricks. Your father would kill me."

"My father?" Gabrielle challenged her.

"Well, he�d make me wish I was dead, anyway. But just hold tight. We�ll work this out, you�ll see!"

IN payment for his trip to the local post office, Bony collected a dime from every cast member who received mail. Gabrielle usually paid no attention to what he picked up from general delivery addressed to the Levee Princess because no one ever wrote her a letter, anyway. That changed when she learned about her father�s letter to Mrs. Wesley, inviting David to travel with him. In fact, she had difficulty concealing her eagerness until he could reasonably expect an answer.

"But how will she know where to write to Father?" Gabrielle asked Flossie.

"He probably gave her a list of the places on the Missouri side that he means to stop at," Flossie told her.

After the next performance on the Illinois side, they wakened to a deep river fog. No matter how hard she strained, Gabrielle couldn�t even see the silhouettes of the trees along the shore. Her father called such a fog "a peasouper." An eerie silence fell. With the boat traffic stopped by the fog, the familiar melodic whistles stopped, too. The boat seemed to rock in its private cloud, the silence broken only by the occasional splash of a leaping fish or a chorus of grumbling bullfrogs along the shore.

There was nothing to do but wait. It was silly to wash clothes because they wouldn�t dry in the wet air. Flossie, unable to get fresh supplies, prepared strange meals of whatever she found in the pantry. Up on deck the men whiled away the time playing cards and talking about what they�d seen and done. Pud Swallow had actually seen Jesse James at a landing in Missouri, and Tom Luce had a friend in Northfield, Minnesota, who had gone to see the Younger brothers when they were jailed after a murderous bank robbery there. Gabrielle fled back to her cabin, knowing that such stories would give her nightmares.

BY six o�clock, a full hour before the show would begin, the beach was already crowded with people waiting to get onto the boat.

"It�s that tightrope-walking business of yours," Flossie told Gabrielle crossly. "I wish I had never encouraged you to do it."

Gabrielle stared at her in amazement. "I would have done it, anyway."

Flossie caught her lip in her teeth and shook her head. "Glory! You�re right. You probably would have done it, anyway, but I didn�t have to make it easier for you to kill yourself. I keep forgetting how much you are like your mother!"

"How can you say that? You didn�t know my mother," Gabrielle reminded her.

"I�ve heard enough stories to feel that I did," Flossie replied. "Bony says when she got some idea in her head, you might as well just stand back. She would go straight through a brick wall, if that was what it took."

"That�s not a very nice thing to say about anybody," Gabrielle told her.

"It depends on whether the thing really needed doing or not," Flossie replied. She rose and went to look at the gathering on the beach again. "There�s no way your father can fit all those people in this boat."

"Oh, but he has to."

Flossie shook her head. "Sooner or later, but he doesn�t have to do it tonight. He can always promise to stay over another night to accommodate them. He�ll probably pass out marked handbills to be sure the people who waited out there tonight are the first ones to be let in tomorrow."

Gabrielle looked thoughtfully at the crowd waiting on shore. "You know, Flossie, it always amazes me that people will stop their work, hitch a buggy, and drive all this way to pay good money for only three hours of entertainment."

"That�s just because you�ve never lived like they do. Some night you should go on the beach where they are and look out at a showboat from the land. The darkness out there stretches as far as they can see in every direction. Even the face of the river flows dark except when the moon is full. Then a showboat comes in and lights up the world like Christmas, and spangles the water with light. The music of that calliope sets their hearts to thumping a new beat. There�s color and excitement as long as the show lasts, and the twang of banjos and jokes and songs to remember when they go back to cows that need milking, plows that have to be pushed, and long dark evenings when they can�t even read because they need to save the kerosene."

"Is that how you grew up, Flossie?"

She nodded. "I remember living for special things�a wedding, even a funeral. Oh, sometimes we had a barn dance or some of us young people got together to make taffy or play games. But deep inside I was always waiting, restless and hungering, for something glittering that I knew was out there somewhere. I didn�t even know where it was until I walked up the gangplank and saw my first show on the river."

"And that�s when you fell in love with Lance?"

"I think I fell in love with the magic of the showboat first. Lance was the part of it that loved me back and offered me a way into his world. We were married better than a year before I could even think of him as an ordinary man, like my brothers or the boys I grew up with."

Gabrielle fell silent. She wanted to ask Flossie if David could possibly see her like that�not as a real girl, but as a glittering part of a world more exciting than his own. Oh, but he couldn�t. Not the way they had met. There had only been the two of them.

He hadn�t even known at first that she was a part of the showboat.

Her father called from the door of the auditorium. "Cast in place for opening act."

"If you are the least bit scared, you don�t have to do this," Flossie said swiftly.

"Quit putting fears in my head," Gabrielle told her.

Usually by the time the band started, the beach was dark and empty, with the people already settled in their seats in the auditorium, waiting in silence for the opening strains of music. That night was different. Voices filtered into the auditorium from outside. Some of the sounds were angry. Gabrielle glanced around the stage. What in the world was going on? Two of the men were missing from the band: Pud Swallow and Stephen DuBois. Her father lifted the baton and the music began, drowning out the angry fighting sounds with the lively strains of "Turkey in the Straw." By the time the band filed off to leave the stage free for her father�s magic act, Stephen and Pud were back in their places, in costume for their act, which was to follow.

Her father had scheduled Gabrielle�s new act as the last event before the grand finale. When the time for her act came, she was shivering inside. Too many people had told her to be careful. She had had too much time to look along that thick rope stretched above the benches and rows of seats filled with staring strangers. At the highest point of the rope she would be so far above the heads of the people that if she fell�

"Stop that," she told herself fiercely. All her life she had heard show people talk about having "butterflies in their stomachs" on opening night. Whatever flopped under her tightly cinched belt felt more like turkey buzzards. She was hot and cold by turns, and had trouble making her breath come regularly.

But it was time.

Her father had chosen an old Robert Burns ballad as the music for her act. Flossie had first said she would play the accompaniment on the dulcimer, but later decided she was nervous enough for Gabrielle�s safety without having to think about the notes, too. Judd Harper executed a brisk roll on the drums. Bony, his fiddle under his chin, nodded to Gabrielle and pulled the bow across the strings.

The tempo of the music was perfect. As the first strains filled the room, Gabrielle stepped onto the taut rope, whirled the small scarlet parasol, and began her slow ascent.

She deliberately shut the audience from her mind. She concentrated on the song, its tender melody, and touching words:

"Flow gently, Sweet Afton, among thy green braes. Flow gently, I�ll sing thee a song in thy praise."

Bony had never played so beautifully. And never had he played to a room so silent. When Gabrielle reached the high point of the rope, pivoted, and slowly turned, low gasps came from the openmouthed faces below.

She "was doing it. It "was working!

A swift curl of exhilaration ran up her spine and she smiled with delight. First a bow to the left foot, and then a bow to the right. As the final notes of the song ended, she ran swiftly down the rope into her father�s waiting arms.

The tumult of the shouting, stamping, cheering crowd made her ears vibrate. People were out of their seats, pressing toward her. Her father clasped both hands about her waist and lifted her onto his shoulders. "Smile," he whispered up to her. "Smile at them and wave!"

Before she met David she had dreamed of a triumph on stage, a triumph that would even bring applause from Stephen DuBois. From her father�s shoulders, as she threw kisses to the crowd and smiled until her face hurt, she looked for Stephen. She finally saw him at the back of the room, leaning against the wall, not even clapping. He seemed sad�sad and different. As she looked at him he turned, his hand over his right eye, and slipped out the door.

The audience finally settled down enough for the cast to come out for the grand finale. When Gabrielle came forward to bow, the wild cheers and stamping began all over again.

"What did I tell you, child?" Her father whispered with delight. "You are a star!"

The people filed out noisily, their voices lively with praise and excitement. Flossie�s stage makeup was streaked with tears, and even Lance, who passed out compliments as rarely as if they were hundred-dollar gold pieces, bowed over Gabrielle�s hand and said, "A vision of loveliness. My tribute!"

Then she heard the sounds of angry voices again and realized the audience was still milling on the deck instead of filing off down the gangplank. Gabrielle�s father strode swiftly from the room with Judd Harper right at his heels.

"You again." She heard her father�s voice raised in fury. "We had more of you than we mean to take. Lend a hand there, men."

"What�s going on?" Gabrielle asked.

Lance shrugged. "Some farm kid tried to fight his way onto the boat before the show. They threw him off but he can�t seem to understand the word no."

Farm kid. Gabrielle stared at him and rushed to the stairs to fight her way through the crowd to the upper deck. When the customers saw who she was, they stepped back to let her through. She reached the top of the gangplank just as Judd Harper, along with Stephen and Pud, dragged a shouting figure down the gangplank and onto the beach.

"David!" she screamed.

He turned at the sound of her voice and would have tried to fight his way back to her if the men had not held him by both arms.

"David," Gabrielle moaned to Flossie, who had followed right behind her. "Why are they treating him like that?"

Flossie caught her arm. "I didn�t want to bother you before the show, but he raised an awful ruckus trying to get in after the seats were sold out. The minute they put down the gangplank again, he was trying to bully his way up here."

Gabrielle stared at her. They were all against her, every one of them. Her father, even Flossie, who knew how much she cared. Gabrielle pulled free of Flossie�s grasp and ran into her cabin, slamming the door behind her. As hot as her mass of clothing was, she threw herself across the bed, not even caring if she cried her eyes red and her face all puffy. To her astonishment, no tears came. Her eyes felt hot and dry, and the trembling came back.

Maybe she was too angry and hurt to cry. Maybe crying was something you could only do about unimportant things. This was important. She had been betrayed by the very people she loved and trusted the most.

She lay in the darkness, numbly listening to the sounds of the boat being shut down for the night. When it was time for the late supper, she heard her father call her name softly outside the door. When she didn�t reply, he opened it just a little. She kept her face turned away as a slender shaft of light fell across her bed. She hoped he would think she was asleep. He stood there a long moment, then closed the door and went away.

Flossie came and sat on the bed, her hand warm through the back of Gabrielle�s blouse. "Your father did what he thought was best," she whispered. "Try to realize that the captain only did what he thought was best."

Gabrielle struggled to keep her breathing even. She didn�t open her eyes until Flossie sighed, rose, and went away.

Gabrielle couldn�t remember ever lying and listening so long after everyone was asleep. Some of the sounds were the same as during the day: the soft slap of water against the ship�s side, the creak of the tying rope as the boat fretted against its mooring. Other boats signaled in passing, one with a low, sorrowful whistle that hung and wavered in the air. From the land came the living night sounds: the plop of a diving animal, the hum and screech and racket of a night insect chorus.

But sleep didn�t come. She undressed in the dark, stacking the petticoats on her single chair. Wearing only a light wrapper over her gown, she walked up to the Texas deck, setting her bare feet down carefully to keep the old boards from creaking under her weight.

At the rail, she leaned to stare at the shore where David had waited, then tried to come to her only to be fought back�not once but twice. How could the people who said they loved her be so cruel to someone they knew was important to her? She hugged her arms tight and, for the second time in a single evening, actually wished she could cry.

The sound of footsteps startled her for a brief moment. She tugged her wrapper closer and turned toward the figure emerging from the shadow of the pilot house. It was her father. He took only a few steps more before stopping.

"It looks as if neither of us could sleep," he said, his tone wary. "I would very much like to talk to you."

How strange that he should be almost asking permission to come to the rail with her. When she nodded, he walked closer, taking a position just out of her reach. He didn�t look at her, but at the shore. His voice sounded older and broke a little with his first words. "I couldn�t sleep because of my guilt," he said quietly, formally. "I have done you an injustice that I fear you might never forgive."

She turned, wishing his face was not hidden in shadow.

"I can only ask that you try to see my great error as a mistaken act of love."

His tone made her ache. "I know that," she said. "But it seems so cruel that you couldn�t�"

He shook his head. "I�m not talking about what happened tonight, Gabrielle. My guilt is worse than that. When I wrote to invite David Wesley to travel with us, I hoped he would refuse. He did, as I told you. What I didn�t tell you was that his mother�s letter extended an invitation for you to come to visit at her home on land."

She gasped in disbelief.

"I know," he said, his tone dull. "But please try to imagine what was going through my mind. I was afraid, Gabrielle, afraid you would go to them, afraid you might choose that life over ours and be lost to me."

She stood silent and suddenly cold. What could she say to this that he didn�t already know?

"I was sorry from the first day," he went on. "I saw your grief and it turned in me like a knife in a wound. I tried to think of something, anything, to make you happy. As much as I was afraid you would get hurt with that tightrope-walking act, I went along with it, hoping that might distract you from this other thing. I was wrong, Gabrielle. Now I don�t even know how to ask your forgiveness."

Out in the woods he had talked about the tug-of-war within himself about her tightrope-walking, how he had feared it as a father, but praised it as a showman. Hers was a different tug-of-war. As a person she fiercely resented his interference in her life, his standing between her and the man she couldn�t forget. As a daughter, she ached for him, knowing that he had only done this thing because he loved her so much.

"It may be too late to make amends," he said. "But tonight I made the only effort I could think of. I came to tell you earlier, but you were sleeping. I have written to Mrs. Wesley accepting her invitation for you to visit on her farm for a few days. Bony will take the letter to be posted in the morning."

Even if she had known what words to say, she could not have spoken them. Instead, she turned and flew against him, burying her head against his chest. He stroked her hair and then lifted her chin to look into her face. "I love you, my child."

PRESENTING the same show for the second night in a single town along the river was not unheard of. But when the second performance of the Levee Princess�s new show, "Featuring Mademoiselle Gabrielle in her Death-Defying Rope Walk," still left as many eager show customers on the beach as had been fitted into the boat�s auditorium, Gabrielle�s father had no choice. He kept the boat tied up at the town dock for a third night to repeat the show again.

Stephen DuBois had been the world�s worst pest before the night of Gabrielle�s first performance. From that night on he avoided both her and her acts. Even at meals he was careful to sit where their eyes wouldn�t meet. But, then, Gabrielle thought with wicked satisfaction, he didn�t look at much of anything that first day after his fight with David Wesley on the gangplank. His right eye, which had only been swollen that evening, turned a fierce dark blue ringed by ugly yellow. Was it possible that he was afraid she might mention that her "mama�s boy" had been enough of a man that it took three of the showboat crew to throw him off the boat?

But again she found herself restless with waiting. And so many questions spun in her head. Would Mrs. Wesley regret her invitation to have Gabrielle in her home, and not even answer her father�s letter? She certainly had every right to be angry after not getting a prompt reply to her invitation, and then having her son so roughly treated by the men of the Levee Princess. Then there was the question she could hardly bear to ask herself: Did she really want to go even if the invitation was repeated?

Flossie acted strangely when Gabrielle tried to talk about visiting David and his mother. "You know the woman as well as I do," Flossie reminded her. "How can I give you advice about going to her home?"

"You said she was excitable," Gabrielle reminded her. "Surely she wouldn�t have asked me if she didn�t want to give me a fair chance."

Flossie raised her delicate eyebrows and lowered them again without comment.

But the other members of the staff who hadn�t even met Mrs. Wesley treated Gabrielle strangely, too, after Bony took her father�s letter off to town. One by one each of them had come to Gabrielle privately with praise and congratulations on her new act. But their manner was different. Instead of treating her as one of the close-knit circle of the cast, they acted almost as if she had become an outsider, as if she had ceased to be a showboat person merely by planning to make a brief visit on land.

Only her father seemed unchanged, warm, loving:, and jovial whenever she was with him. After the parade on the third day she looked for him on the shady side of the deck where he usually sat reading. When he wasn�t there, she went to the pilot house. He was sitting at his desk which was buried under blueprints and drawings of the newer, bigger boat he had always dreamed of having built. Gabrielle had heard its dimensions so many times she knew them by heart. She knew what color he wanted the curtain to be, a grand curtain that would be weighted to pull shut between acts.

She approached her father and put her arm across his shoulder. He hastily folded the plans and turned toward her.

"Thinking about starting the Levee Queen?" she asked. He had long ago chosen that grander name for the new craft.

"Heavens no," he said. "You know how I fool around with these blueprints whenever I have idle time."

She perched on the edge of his bunk and grinned at him. "On a hot day like this with the only breeze out there on deck? My guess is that the full house the last few days has given you hope that you will finally have enough money to get the boat built."

He nodded. "The money has been good here, I can�t deny it. But I�m not making any plans."

The meaning behind his words struck her with a shock. How could he make plans? It was no secret that her new act was what would bring in the extra crowds�and the money along with them. Once she was gone, there would be no new act or extra money. "Father," she breathed, "I hadn�t even thought of what it would do to the show if I left for almost a week. How will you manage?"

"Here," he said, turning to pat her hand lightly. "None of that. Sure, we�ll have to shift things around a little, but that�s no problem. If�when you hear from the Wesleys, you are not to give it a second thought." She glanced at the half-covered blueprints. "Tell me true. If we kept making extra money like this, could you afford to have the boat built when we reach the Louisiana bayous for Christmas time?"

"I�m a magician, not a fortune-teller." He laughed and rose. "Let�s go up on deck and take in a little of that cool breeze you were telling me about."

"I�ve never seen you get those plans out except when the money was coming in well," she told him, rising to follow.

It was cooler on deck. Gabrielle dozed in a chair, listening to her father and Judd Harper talk about the election coming up in the fall. Women in Wyoming had the right to vote. Maybe, she reflected, if she could vote, too, she would care more about who was going to be President.

Just as they were getting up to go down to the dining room for dinner, a half-grown boy came running down the path to the beach. His face was hidden under a ragged wide-brimmed straw hat as he came to the end of the dock and shouted for "the captain."

Gabrielle gathered with the others at the rail and heard the boy shout, "Message for Captain Prentice."

"The rest of you go on below and start dinner," her father said. "I�ll be along when I see what this is about."

Gabrielle didn�t move. Maybe she was more fortune-teller than magician. She knew as her father handed the boy a coin and took the envelope that the reply had finally come from Mrs. Wesley. She pressed the palms of her hands together tightly to stop her trembling.

Her father�s face was expressionless as he slit the envelope, read the contents, then handed the letter to Gabrielle:

Underneath she had written:

Gabrielle looked up at her father.

"Do you find the arrangements acceptable?" he asked.

"Yes, but�" she began.

"You might need more time to prepare yourself, to pack clothing," he suggested.

She shook her head. "It�s not that, Father. I�m scared to death. If I put it off one minute, I�ll never have the nerve." More than anything she wanted him to tell her she didn�t have to accept at all. He didn�t. He only waited.

"What does that last line mean?" she asked.

"I�d guess it was just the lady�s way of telling us what her husband�s name is."

"David never mentioned his father to me."

"Maybe you and David haven�t had enough time together to do much talking. How long did you figure to stay?"

When she shook her head helplessly, he took the letter and folded it into his pocket. "I had suggested to Mrs. Wesley I could spare you almost a week. If that sounds fair to you, I could send a buggy up to bring you back down to the boat next Sunday."

"Father," she cried, not really knowing what she wanted to say.

He waited a minute, then put his arm around her shoulder. "You don�t have to make up your mind this moment. Think about it through dinner and dressing. I�m sure Flossie will help you get your things together." He steered her toward the passageway, which rang with the clatter of serving dishes and the cheerful voices of the rest of the cast starting their afternoon meal.

Tom Luce had caught an immense catfish which Flossie had baked in a breading of browned buttered crumbs. Tom stood up to fillet the fish, expertly laying back the fine white flesh on the plate Flossie held for him. Gabrielle let herself be served the fish along with a helping of tiny red potatoes whose skins had burst to let in the melted butter. She kept her eyes on her plate and tried to make the food go down past the lump of terror in her throat.

"Message from the governor?" Judd Harper teased. "Are he and his missus driving over from Jeff City to come to our shindig tonight? The way people are coining out from under logs to see our lady here, I wouldn�t be surprised."

Gabrielle looked up to see her father�s eyes on her. She knew he expected her to take this chance to tell the rest of the cast about her plans, but she wasn�t sure she could get the words out.

"Close to that," her father finally said. "Gabrielle�s friend from upriver is escorting his mother to the show tonight." When he paused, Gabrielle forced herself to speak in a voice she barely recognized.

"Then afterward," she said carefully, "I am going back to their home with them for a brief visit."

Bony�s fork fell, striking a musical note from his plate. He stared at Gabrielle, his eyes wide with disbelief. "Whatever for?" When no answer came, he turned to the captain. "What sort of folderol is this? Who ever heard of a showboat person going to stay on land except when they were in jail?"

"Bony," Flossie said softly, "it�s a visit and it�s the captain�s business."

"Of course it�s the captain�s business," Lance said sullenly. "But a cast member doesn�t just go off during season for no cause. What about the show?"

"Hold up there, all of you," Judd Harper said quietly. "We did shows on this river when Gabrielle there couldn�t yet stand on her feet and walk. We can do them again."

Gabrielle knew that only kindness lay behind Judd�s words. If she hadn�t been sure of that, she could have read it in the warm expression on his face. But Judd couldn�t know how it hurt to have him almost say that they had gotten along without her before, they could do it again.

Pud Swallow leaned to touch her hand. "You just go and have a nice time, Gabrielle. Aside from missing you like sun on a cloudy day, we�ll just get along fine."

Any other time a babble of questions would have boiled around the table. Captain Prentice�s silence stopped all that. After a quiet, uncomfortable moment, Flossie cried, "Glory!" and leaped to her feet to run for the kitchen. "I forgot about those peach pies in the oven," she called back from the door. "Come along, Gabrielle, help me serve them up before they burn to a crisp."

Out of sight of the table, Flossie hugged Gabrielle close. "Don�t you worry about your packing, lovie, I�ve got that all thought out. And don�t be scared. That woman is going to end up proud to have you a guest in her house."

Gabrielle clung to her until Flossie pulled loose and thrust a stack of pie plates into her hands.

As usual, Gabrielle wakened before dawn. She had slept only fitfully in Mistress Barnes' soft brass bed. The Levee Princess creaked and rattled and rocked all the time against the incessant pressure of the river�s movement. The Barnes house not only stayed perfectly still, but it was also eerily silent. If that weren�t enough, the room was stuffy and hot. The breeze that almost always fanned along the river after sundown did not reach the tree-lined brick street where Mistress Barnes lived.

With the coming of the first pale ribbons of dawn, the silence at least was dispersed. Gabrielle could not have gone back to sleep if she had wanted to. The birds didn�t even wait for the sun to come up before beginning to argue and squawk in the trees outside her window. A horse and cart clattered along in front of the house with dogs following, barking frantically.

Was it too late to change her mind? Did she dare to tell Mrs. Wesley that she had made a mistake in accepting her invitation? Mrs. Wesley had plainly hinted that the trip downriver had already caused an interruption in a busy season at her farm. Surely having a stranger in her house would only waste more valuable time.

Gabrielle sat up abruptly. Mrs. Wesley�

Mrs. Wesley� Mrs. Wesley� That woman was all she thought about. It was David she was coming to see, not his mother. And David wanted her there. Why was she giving his mother the satisfaction of almost driving her away from David?

And she had no doubts at all when she was actually with David. Her doubts even disappeared at the thought of him. She had felt a strange plunging feeling every time her eyes had met his during the evening just past.

"I have to go through with it," she whispered aloud to herself. "If I don�t go now, I will never have a chance to get to know him. I will never know if I really love him." She couldn�t bear going on just thinking about him all the time without even knowing why he affected her this way. He was so sure about love at first sight, but she didn�t know that much about love. Yet what, besides being in love with him, would make her heart thump strangely and change her breathing when he was around?

The pitcher on the washstand had been filled the night before. The water was warm from the hot room. This made it pleasant to wash with, but impossible to drink. Long before she heard the first sounds from the household below, she was dressed and ready for the day, with her face washed and her hair carefully arranged with a ribbon that matched the deep green dress she had chosen to travel in.

David had already hitched the horse to the buggy when Gabrielle came down for breakfast. As always, his smile of greeting wiped away all doubt for a wonderful moment.

Mrs. Barnes had set the table with a bewildering number of small dishes. A white pitcher filled with fresh nasturtiums decorated the center of the table. David was wonderfully gallant, seating both of the older women before holding Gabrielle�s chair. His mother�s expression brought Gabrielle�s doubt back in a painful rush. Between Mrs. Wesley�s eagle eyes and David�s tender glances every minute he thought she was looking away, Gabrielle found it hard to swallow her breakfast. She was greatly relieved when Mrs. Wesley rose, counted out a number of coins to their hostess, and declared it was time to start home.

The horse, its flesh gleaming with sweat, trotted along briskly under David�s reins as he drove out of town and into the countryside. Mrs. Wesley, beside Gabrielle in the backseat of the buggy, rode mostly in silence, scenery. It was wonderful to be so near the things she usually only saw fleetingly from the river: woods, fruit orchards fragrant with ripening fruit, and now and then a farmhouse flanked by barns and stables.

Wild flowers bloomed along the fence rows: blue asters, clumps of black-eyed daisies, and Queen Anne�s lace that looked like tiny white bridal bouquets. Gabrielle thought nothing could be more satisfying than to be able to walk out the door and pick fresh flowers for your table!

The livestock in the fields were the most astonishing. The animals who came to water at the river�s edge were mostly small: raccoons trailed by their young, sharp-nosed opossums, and boldly marked skunks who swaggered under their plumed tails. Once in a while deer came to the river�s edge, but even they seemed delicate and fragile compared to the cattle and horses in the fields they passed. The hogs rooting in a muddy stream bed were bigger and more solid than they looked from the rail of a boat. When they passed a flock of dirty white sheep with black heads, Gabrielle leaned to stare at them with astonishment.

"A different world, isn�t it?" Mrs. Wesley asked.

"Indeed it is," Gabrielle agreed. "The animals are so big."

From his seat in front, David laughed.

"Surely you ride horseback," Mrs. Wesley said.

Gabrielle shook her head. "I have had no reason to learn."

Mrs. Wesley�s lips closed in a thin line and she fell silent again.

At noon they stopped at the edge of a grove. Mrs. Wesley spread out a checked tablecloth and unpacked a picnic of ham sandwiches, purple plums, and a tin of ginger cookies. When David finished unhitching the horse to lead it off into the woods for water, his mother seated herself stiffly on a fallen tree trunk and fixed Gabrielle with a solemn stare.

"This is a good time for us to talk," she said. "I didn�t want to embarrass David by talking to you about him in his presence, but there are some things you need to understand. David Wesley is not just an ordinary young man. He was born and has been raised to be a respected member of our community. I was a Harper, you know, one of the pioneer families in Pike County. The Harpers have a position to maintain."

Gabrielle waited, not knowing how to respond to this. How little she really knew about David! Mrs. Wesley stared off into the trees as if gathering her thoughts.

"I can�t think of any way to tell you this, except to say it right out straight. We Harpers don�t let ourselves be puffed up by our position, but neither can we afford scandal. You must realize that for a Harper to entertain a show person is� highly irregular, if not unheard of."

Gabrielle dropped her eyes, fearful that Mrs. Wesley would see her rising annoyance. Why had this woman asked her to visit if she felt so much above her?

"In deference to the family reputation, you are not to mention to anyone that you are just a show girl. I think it�s little to ask considering you are my guest and how severe the consequences would be."

Gabrielle tightened her hands in her lap. There was no shame in working as a show girl, but she wasn�t "just a show girl." She was an actress and a singer. She even played the banjo and was studying the dulcimer with Flossie�s help whenever she had time. How many times had people told her she was talented? Now, instead of taking pride in her work, she was suddenly expected to be ashamed of it.

Gabrielle heard David coming through the trees, talking quietly to his horse. Mrs. Wesley spoke again, quickly, her voice firm and a little threatening. "We do understand each other on this, don�t we, Miss Prentice?"

Gabrielle nodded and murmured, "Yes, ma�am."

That, at least, was the truth. She understood entirely too well. The woman was not only a snob about her hateful Harper name, but she was also willing to do the same as lie to her friends about her guest.

Then David was smiling at her from the edge of the clearing and she remembered with a dazzling rush of excitement why she was putting herself through all this.

GABRIELLE had never thought of the schedule on the Levee Princess as being particularly easy and graceful. Everyone worked, most of them at two jobs or more, but she never felt pushed. It was as if the workdays flowed with the simple rhythm of the river that bore the boat along. She was not at all prepared for the harried schedule of the Wesley household.

While it was true that none of the humans on the farm got up as early as three in the morning, the animals didn�t miss it by much.

Before the first glint of dawn, a huge bronze-colored rooster flapped up onto a fence post and began crowing as if he were paid by the squawk. The hens came spilling out of the chicken coop to cluck and squabble. Not long after that the cows began to bellow to be milked. This wakened the black dog, whose name was Nappie. His steady barking roused other dogs all over the area. This chorus of yapping even managed to drown out the constant twittering of the songbirds outside Gabrielle�s window.

But the animals ran the people on a farm, anyway, Gabrielle decided. From her window she saw David going through the gate toward the barn before she had finished dressing. As she finished making her bed, she heard the clatter of his return. He was whistling and swinging two full milk pails, a cluster of spotted kittens running along behind him. He had no sooner disappeared into the house before his mother came out and started for the chicken coop with a basket of grain. Gabrielle pulled back as Mrs. Wesley glanced toward her window, embarrassed at being caught watching.

Grandma Harper was alone in the kitchen when Gabrielle entered. "Look who�s here!" the old woman said with a smile. "What�s got you up so bright and early?"

The line of poetry came to Gabrielle�a mind automatically: "The cock, that is the trumpet of the morn."

Grandma Harper put down the plate she was carrying and stared at her. "I recognize that line," she said. "That�s Shakespeare. My goodness, child, you do have some learning! But then I guess with the plays�"

Mrs. Wesley stopped her from the door. "Mother," she said sternly, "have you already forgotten what I said?"

"Sorry," her mother said tartly. "I was carried away by having the joy of hearing Hamlet quoted before breakfast."

"Good morning, Mrs. Wesley," Gabrielle said. "Have you a job for me? I�d be happy to help."

Mrs. Wesley dismissed her offer with a shrug. "Daisie will be along any minute now. That�s what we pay her for. You just stay out of everyone�s way and we�ll all be fine."

Grandma Harper glared at her daughter. "What a way to talk to this child! Come along with me, Gabrielle. I want to show you my private garden."

Before Grandma Harper wiped her hands to join Gabrielle, Daisie Keeler came in through the back door, wearing a ragged calico apron. She was a round-faced young woman with a generous spattering of freckles across her button nose. She looked away and mumbled a shy greeting when Gabrielle was introduced.

Outside, Grandma Harper took Gabrielle�s arm and looked up at her with a look of mischief. "You don�t have to look at my garden unless you want to. I just wanted to get you out of range of my daughter�s tongue. If you judge a mother by her daughter�s manners, I�m not much of a success. But I take no blame in her case. Her father spoiled her as badly as she is spoiling that David of hers."

Gabrielle was almost too astonished by the woman�s frankness to make any reply. "I�d really love to see your garden," she finally stammered.

Grandma Harper laughed. "I should have warned you that I�m not much for polite social lies."

"Neither am I," Gabrielle admitted.

The old woman paused and studied Gabrielle thoughtfully. "Then why in tarnation did you agree to keep it a secret where you came from?"

"I didn�t really agree," Gabrielle told her. "Your daughter said that�s what I had to do, and I said I would."

Grandma Harper sniffed. "You�d think she would have learned by now that the truth always comes out in the end, in spite of all."

The outside air was alive with sound. Bees hummed in the honeysuckle climbing against the side of the chicken coop, and a pair of crows rose screeching from a tree at the back of what looked like a huge family garden. Dead corn stalks, sagging tomato vines, and the ruins of bean rows ran the length of the huge fenced lot. Only the pumpkins and some crookneck squash still flourished among green leaves.

Grandma Harper�s garden was only a small patch behind the larger garden. Grandma Harper peered at her own neat rows of bushes and asked Gabrielle if she knew what they were.

Gabrielle kneeled. "This looks like the rosemary that Flossie uses when she cooks chicken."

"Very good," the old woman nodded. "The next one is sage, and then summer savory. Catch a handful of that big, untidy bush with the flowers on it at the end and see what it smells like."

"Oh," Gabrielle sighed, crushing the silvery leaves in her hand. "How beautiful and fresh. What is it?"

"Lavender. I dry it and put it with clothes and linen. I�ll fix some of it for you if you�d like."

As Gabrielle smiled and rose, the old woman touched her arm as if she were pleading. "Don�t let Bertha�s sharp tongue drive you off. She�s been bitter ever since David�s father walked off and left her. She acts like that because she�s afraid."

"Afraid?" Gabrielle asked. What possible harm could she do to the strong, forceful Mrs. Wesley?

"Because of David," the older woman went on. "He�s all she has now. But David needs someone with spunk like you. It would be the making of him."

"Did I hear my name being mentioned?" David asked, coming down the row along the garden. His eyes were bright on Gabrielle, and that wonderful smile was like a second sun. The fine sheen of sweat on his face made his skin glow like polished metal.

"Eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves," his grandmother said, taking his arm. "I must say, though, your little lady is all you said she was, plus a lot more."

The sudden angry clanging of the bell by the kitchen door drowned out her words. Gabrielle looked up to see Mrs. Wesley clinging to the rope, glaring at David. "What do you think you are doing out there? You know breakfast is on the table."

"I just wanted to say good morning to Gabrielle," he said, stepping past her to hold the door open.

"That�s all very well for people of leisure. Jim is already out there harnessing the horses. There�s hay to be brought in from the north forty today."

"Does it have to be done today?" he asked. "I wanted to take Gabrielle�"

Grandma Harper silenced him by laying her hand on his arm. "Come eat, David. The quicker into the field, the quicker out."

TIME, which passed so swiftly on the Levee Princess, slowed to a crawl during that week on the Wesley farm. To Gabrielle, accustomed to the constantly changing scenery along the river, the monotony of the land was unbelievable. Every day she walked under the same whispering trees and through the stubble of dusty pastures humming with insects. Even the sun rising in a blaze of heat seemed to toil across the sky with a dogged persistence, like Mrs. Wesley brought to the endless treadmill of her daily work.

She found that even when a change in the routine promised possible excitement, the result managed to bring her pain or unhappiness.

There was the morning that David hitched a single horse to a flat-bed wagon and drove his mother and Gabrielle to gather apples.

This was a part of the farm she hadn�t seen before. The farther the wagon traveled from the farmhouse, the wilder and more interesting she found her surroundings. They passed through an endless series of wooden gates; past lines of ancient trees; and along a dry creek bed lined with smooth, silver-colored stones. Birds new to Gabrielle were everywhere, scarlet cardinals flashing and calling, quail skimming through the grass as if they had wheels. When the wagon finally stopped at a broken-down fence, brown rabbits bolted away in panic.

David had told her that the orchard was old, dating from Grandpa Harper�s early days. Wild oats and matted weeds grew ragged and untended between the trees. Here and there rose clumps of wild flowers; chicory with blossoms the same clear blue color as the sky; clumps of giant clover with rounded, rosy heads as big as Gabrielle�s thumbs; and the black-eyed daisies that David called "Susans." Everywhere red apples gleamed brightly from among green leaves, and a furious blue jay screamed angrily at the intrusion of humans.

Gabrielle slid to the ground and drew in a deep, delicious breath. The air smelled like cider from the windfall apples in the grass. David smiled as he pulled down a low branch to choose a perfect apple. After polishing it on his shirttail, he handed it to her. She had grown accustomed to his silence when his mother was with them. In a way, it was almost more romantic to try to read his thoughts as his hand brushed hers and he smiled into her eyes.

Mrs. Wesley made it clear at once that they were there for work, not "idle amusement."

David was allowed to climb the trees, but Gabrielle didn�t dare ask if she could. She and Mrs. Wesley picked the fruit from the low branches, putting the perfect apples in one basket and the ones the birds had eaten from or which were overripe in another.

As they worked, Mrs. Wesley talked about what she did with this glowing harvest of apples. "We sell them, and make cider and sell that. We dry them, and bake them into pies." She glanced at a basket almost full of imperfect fruit. "And we cook those down into apple butter."

"Don�t forget bobbing for them in tubs of water on Halloween," David called from the top of the tree above them.

Mrs. Wesley only mumbled and emptied her apronful of apples into the basket.

By the time the first brimming baskets of scarlet fruit were loaded into the wagon, Gabrielle had begun to itch. She glanced at her ankles in dismay. There were mosquitoes and willow beetles on the river, but she had never heard of a bug that could bite clear through a pair of cotton stockings. But something had to be getting her. She felt a sharp sting, then a burning that grew steadily worse with every minute. She yearned to scratch, but didn�t dare. Not content with only her legs, the insects moved steadily up her body. When the itching and burning reached the tender flesh under her belt, she was desperate for relief. She watched the wagon being loaded with full baskets, hoping against hope that every one would be the last.

Since it wasn�t any more ladylike to scratch than it was to spit or whistle, she tightened her lips together and suffered silently. The sun stood high in the sky, signaling noon, before Mrs. Wesley announced that they had picked enough to start back home.

The fragrance of Daisie�s stew filled Gabrielle�s senses as they entered the kitchen. "We�ll clean up and be right down," Mrs. Wesley told her. "You might polish up a bowl of that fruit for the table."

Gabrielle fled to her room and pulled off her stockings to examine herself. It hadn�t been her imagination! Tiny red spots dotted her ankles and the warm flesh on the back of her knees. A perfect band of spots circled her slender waist where her sash had held the fabric close to her skin. She sat on the edge of her bed near tears. Just insects couldn�t have done all that! Maybe she had come down with a fever that just happened to break out while she was in the orchard. Maybe she was going to be dreadfully sick away from her father and Flossie and the river. Maybe she even had something she could give to the Wesley family and make them sick, too. At the thought, she slid her feet back into her shoes, tiptoed down the hall to Grandma Harper�s room, and rapped on the door.

"Whatever is the matter, child?" Grandma Harper asked, looking in dismay at Gabrielle�s face.

Gabrielle spilled out her fears in a tumble of words and raised her skirt to display the welts on her ankles. The old woman caught her in a hug.

"For heaven�s sake, child, those are chiggers. Who would have thought you didn�t know about chiggers? You get right back to your room and wash every one of those bites with heavy soapsuds and water. And don�t put your clothes back on until I get there."

By the time Gabrielle finished washing, Grandma Harper had been downstairs and was back with a bowl of whitish powder.

The old woman chatted sympathetically as she moistened the bites with fresh water and dusted them with baking soda. "Missouri grass is thick with those little spiders, and they itch like thunder," she told Gabrielle. "There�s no way to stop that burning except with soda. But don�t worry. No harm comes from them unless you scratch up an infection."

"There," she said at last, dabbing the last of the bites and smiling up at Gabrielle. "You are one little lady," she said quietly. "Coming in here afire with chigger bites and only worrying that you might have some fever to pass on to us. I fault David for a lot of things, but he sure knew his business when he picked you. Now we better get downstairs. I told Bertha not to clang that blasted bell, that we�d be to lunch when we were full ready."

The rest of the family had almost finished eating. David�s expression showed just enough amusement in it to make Gabrielle so furious that she wouldn�t return his glance. She was relieved when Mrs. Wesley excused herself to have David set a fire for the apple butter before he left for the field work.

That afternoon nap was Gabrielle�s own idea. She slept between sheets that Grandma Harper had generously dusted with soda.

She wakened to air scented with cinnamon and apple, and to the sound of voices wafting up from the shady porch. The apple butter had been set to simmer, and David�s old girl friend, Mollie, had come with her mother to call.

Mollie was introduced to Gabrielle as if they had never seen each other before. Her mother, Mrs. Thompson, was so extremely polite to Gabrielle that her exaggerated good manners smacked of rudeness.

Gabrielle studied Mollie secretly as Mrs. Wesley served refreshments. No wonder David�s mother looked at the girl as if she was made of sugar; she looked as if she really was. All of Mollie�s coloring was as pale and fluffy as the spun candy Gabrielle bought in paper cones at the circus. If a person could judge by freckles, Mollie Thompson�s face had never seen the light of sun.

Her golden curls, shaped exactly like the Cajun sausages one bought down in the bayous and ate with red beans and rice, grew from a scalp so white that it looked bloodless. Her dimity dress was exactly the same shade of pink as her round cheeks.

Gabrielle sighed to herself. She could go on forever saying nasty things to herself about this girl without dulling the sharp pangs of her envy. This was the girl David had been engaged to until he met Gabrielle and "knew he had made a mistake." But Mollie looked like anything but a mistake with her ankles neatly crossed and her hands folded in her lap. She was perfectly delicious to look at, despite the fact that her clear blue eyes showed no flash of intelligence. Like Gabrielle herself, she sat quietly with a half smile on her face as the women talked.

"The Thompsons, like the Harpers, were pioneers here in this county," Mrs. Wesley told Gabrielle. "What year did your husband�s family first settle in here?"

Mrs. Thompson shrugged in a satisfied manner. "A few years before Missouri became a state in the early eighteen hundreds." Three could play at that game as well as two, Gabrielle thought crossly. She knew her history, too. Her own mother�s French family had settled in Louisiana in the 1600s. In fact, this part of the country had all been French until the Louisiana Purchase, which had been way back in 1803, eighteen years before Missouri was admitted into the union as a state. She held back her words more from pride than virtue.

At least the tea was delicious�minted tea�and wonderfully refreshing, with rich oatmeal cookies studded with black walnuts.

By sitting very carefully on the edge of her chair, Gabrielle kept down the itching at the backs of her legs. She could do nothing about the pain under her belt except try to keep from wriggling.

Grandma Harper had brought down a basket of quilt pieces she was sewing together into squares. Gabrielle shut her mind to Mrs. Wesley�s snobbish talk and watched Grandma Harper�s swift fingers join the colored patches into separate stars. Then Mrs. Wesley spoiled it all by suggesting that "the girls," Mollie and Gabrielle, walk out to see how the apple butter was coming along.

David had laid the fire inside a ring of flat stones in a barren space between the back door and the smokehouse. A three-legged black pot filled with the fragrant, spicy mass of ground apples and spices bubbled gently above the glowing coals. Daisie, her freckles practically melting and running from the heat, stood well back from the fire, stirring the rich brown mixture with a long-handled wooden paddle that looked almost like an oar from a boat.

"Are you enjoying your little visit with the Wesleys and Mrs. Harper?" Mollie asked, standing carefully out of the path of the wavering smoke.

Gabrielle nodded. "It is very pleasant here."

"And it must be very different from the style of life you are used to."

Mollie�s pale eyes peered at her from under the ruffled rim of her pink bonnet. What did this fluffy creature know about life on the river? More to the point, what style of life did she think river people had?

"Very different," Gabrielle agreed. Now that they had looked at the apple butter, surely they could go back with the others.

"But you must spend some time on land," Mollie pressed on. "David met you on land. In the woods, I believe?"

Either the heat from the fire or Mollie�s intent questioning was making the chigger bites itch again. The way Mollie had said "in the woods" made her meeting with David sound secretive and somehow evil. Gabrielle tried to keep her tone casual.

"Yes. Our boat was kept tied to shore for several days until the current went down."

Mollie laughed. "My goodness. We never think of the current except when the river reaches flood stage. I can see how David could find your strange life-style interesting. Don�t you think David has an inquiring mind?"

Gabrielle fought back her rising anger. Did this Creature think David was only attracted to her because she was "strange"?

"David and I liked each other at once," Gabrielle said.

Then Mollie really smiled. Two faint dimples appeared in her cheeks and her eyes became wonderfully bright. "But of course. David has always been irresistible to girls, just as his father was before him. And he does like getting to know different people. My parents think his easy way of making everyone feel important to him will make him successful in politics someday. Don�t you agree?"

"I know nothing about his political aspirations," Gabrielle said, wishing her voice didn�t sound so stilted and stiff.

"Oh, he has none," Mollie assured her. "But David goes through phases where he seizes on new people and new things with great enthusiasm."

This was too much.

"Are you suggesting that David�s interest in me is only a passing phase?" Gabrielle asked.

Mollie raised her pale eyebrows and dropped them again, just as Mrs. Wesley often did. "Don�t you?" she asked sweetly.

Then, before Gabrielle could reply, she took her skirt daintily in both hands and stepped past the smoke to start back to the house. "We probably should go back. This is our regular calling day and Mother and I still have several stops to make."

THE second night of Gabrielle�s stay at the Wesleys', David had mentioned driving into town before supper. He had mentioned it more than once without anything coming of it. They had not gone that time, nor any day or night since. She was mostly disappointed because she had hoped to be able to buy some trinket or memento for her father and for Flossie. But she also was curious to see David�s hometown, which he claimed was really great, "a classy little town."

"Is it anything like Quincy?" she asked. "Or Hannibal, or St. Louis, or Memphis?"

David flushed and mumbled something about all towns being pretty much alike. She looked at him, startled by such a ridiculous statement. Why, the river towns were as different from each other as people were.

Was it possible that he had never been in any of the other towns along the river? Or in any other town at all, as a matter of fact, except the little village where they had met in that awful confrontation in the ice-cream parlor? To Gabrielle, this was unbelievable. The boat always made several stops going south between Hannibal, Missouri, and this place. Hannibal itself was only a hundred miles north of St. Louis by land (although much farther when you followed the winding course of the river.)

She thought of the towns along this stretch of the river. The towering cliffs and up-and-down streets of Quincy, Illinois; the endless winding caves at Hannibal, where it was said that a young girl was embalmed in copper. St. Louis was bustling and very citylike, although not anything near as charming as New Orleans or even Baton Rouge. The busy wharves at Memphis were always piled high with bulging bales of cotton by the time the Levee Princess got there, with banjo music thrumming in the hot muggy air. Then there was Natchez, Mississippi, with its caves along the river that used to harbor the "Under the Hill Gang" of murderers and thieves.

She only glanced away and dropped the subject, hoping that David would manage to take her to his town before her visit was over.

GABRIELLE looked over her clothes a half dozen times before going to Grandma Harper�s room to ask for her help.

"You couldn�t put on anything you wouldn�t be pretty in," Grandma Harper told her, smiling.

"But I haven�t the faintest idea what anybody wears to a barn dance," Gabrielle wailed. "I�ve never even watched one, much less been to one."

Grandma Harper rose and put her work back into the quilting basket beside her rocking chair. "Then let�s go along to your room and have a look at your things. My gracious, this is like the old times when my friends and I tried on everything but the kitchen curtains before we could decide what to sashay out in."

Grandma Harper settled in the ladder-backed chair in the guest room and watched Gabrielle lay out her dresses one by one. From outside came the clear, sweet trill of a meadowlark calling from the pasture fence.

"That deep green is mighty pretty and rich-looking," she said thoughtfully. "But as a girl I always leaned to wearing light colors to dances like this. The lights aren�t that good in a barn, you know. There�s no point in being there if you aren�t going to be looked at."

When Gabrielle giggled in spite of herself, Grandma Harper chuckled, too. "I didn�t marry me the best-looking, nicest man in this county by hanging back and getting lost in the shadows. Pull that white one out again so I can look at it better."

Gabrielle held up the dress for her inspection. The dress was one of her own favorites. The sleeves fit her slender arms to the elbow before falling in deep, loose, lace-trimmed flounces to the wrist. The bodice was trim and tailored close to her body, too, with a neckline cut straight across to barely catch on the points of her shoulders. The skirt fell in three deep tiers, each one fuller than the last and all trimmed in fine pointed lace that matched the sleeves.

"Someone stitched a lot of love into these goods," Grandma Harper said thoughtfully as she lifted the flounces and studied the small careful stitches.

"Flossie," Gabrielle told her. "She taught me to sew when I was about ten, but she only lets me make petticoats and aprons. I�ve never made a dress for myself. She says she dearly loves making them, and I dearly love how she does it."

"This is the one you need to wear," Grandma Harper nodded. "Now, what can we do to add a touch of color?"

"I have sashes," Gabrielle told her, "mostly with ribbons to match." She laid them out on the bedspread: pale blue, a bright clear red, and the gold that went with the green dress.

"You don�t happen to have any colored petticoats, do you?" the old woman asked thoughtfully. "It�s mighty attractive to see a quick peek of color when your partner swings you around."

Gabrielle had been astonished to find that Flossie had packed her bright red petticoat in with the other things. Flossie had made it for a Fourth of July show in which Gabrielle had worn all red, white, and flag blue. Gabrielle hesitated as she laid it out. "If you don�t think it would be too shocking, I have this."

Grandma Harper wriggled her shoulders with delight. "Oh, my, to have such a petticoat. Does it match with that nice red sash?"

"Perfectly," Gabrielle said, holding the sash next to it. "But are you sure it would be proper to wear it?"

Grandma stiffened in her chair. "Of course I�m sure. Just because you wear a petticoat doesn�t mean you�re inviting anybody to look at it. But I do think red ribbons in your hair would be a touch too much. The white ones will show off those black curls better, anyway."

Gabrielle pushed the petticoat aside and slumped on the bed across from the older woman, fighting against her long training in good manners. Before she found the words for what she needed to say, Grandma Harper leaned over and put her hand on Gabrielle�s knee.

"I know what�s in your mind, child, and I appreciate your hesitation. You�re thinking that Bertha hates you already, and wearing such a stylish outfit would only give her cause to hate you more. Forget if! You couldn�t please Bertha if you went with a potato sack over your head. Nothing you do or say is ever going to change how she feels. It isn�t you she hates, it�s the fear of losing David to someone she can�t control, of being put to shame again in her neighbors' eyes. A woman whose man walks away carries a scar that never heals. There�s nothing shameful about a red petticoat. I would give a pretty penny to be able to wear one myself. Wear it for me and for David, and forget what can�t be mended with that daughter of mine."

Gabrielle dropped to her knees beside the chair and hugged the old woman hard, just the way she hugged Flossie when her heart was too full of love for words. Grandma Harper patted her softly on the back with her thin, strong hands.

ALTHOUGH Gabrielle had no idea what time the buggy would arrive to take her home, she woke well before the first crow of the bronze-colored rooster. She forced herself to lie still in bed for a long time. She was already dying of impatience. Being up and dressed could only make her more restless to leave.

Yet, as eager as she was to go home, she felt a strange sadness. Even if David were an easier person to deal with, even if his mother had welcomed her as warmly as Grandma Harper had, she had still lost her childhood dream. She wasn�t a land person and never could be.

Thinking about that childhood dream brought a line of poetry into her mind. She struggled to remember where it came from. She had never realized until this trip how many words from plays and songs and poems she had memorized without even meaning to.

Suddenly it came back to her. She could see Flossie on stage reciting the poem with her hands clasped tightly before her. The poem was called "Love and Duty" and was very popular at the patches along the Tennessee River.

One line of the poem asked a question: "Was my dream, then, a shadowy lie?"

Gabrielle sat up and pulled the sheet around her shoulders. Her own dream had been exactly that! Flossie had told her about falling in love with the showboat first, and then with Lance because he was part of it. Could Gabrielle have done the same thing with David ? Had all those years of dreaming about living on land prepared her to respond to David in that wildly emotional way when she didn�t love him at all, except for the fact that he was a land person who swept her away with his reckless courting?

She clutched the sheets tightly. How lucky she had been to discover her mistakes before she made any promises she would be forced to keep. She knew what her father thought of people who failed to keep their pledges. Then she remembered that, according to David�s own testimony, he had made promises to Mollie that he later broke.

She thought of David�s family sleeping in the quiet house.

Poor Mrs. Wesley dreamed that by saying David was like his famous grandfather, she could keep him from being a weak man like his own father had been.

And David himself dreamed of having both a butterfly of his own and what he called "a proper life" at the same time.

Grandma Harper was different. She alone was not fooled by dreams that were shadowy lies. Instead of dreaming, she had only hoped that Gabrielle would stay and be a changing force for David. But more than that, she had been wise and generous in accepting Gabrielle�s decision.

Thinking about Grandma Harper hurt the most. How awful it was to think she might never see that wonderful old woman again. Just thinking about it made her so restless that she shoved back the sheets and got up. If only her father could know Grandma Harper. They would love each other, she knew they would.

After she finished dressing, Gabrielle set her packed trunk inside the door of her room. Carrying her shoes, she tiptoed carefully down the stairs in her stockinged feet and let herself out the front door. The black dog was sleeping in a bare spot under the black walnut tree. He raised his head to blink sleepily and thump the earth with his tail before settling down again. The rooster began to crow groggily as she stared down the lane where the buggy would come.

What if something happened to the boat and her father couldn�t get away to come get her? David had driven all day to get them from Mistress Barnes' house to the farm when she came. The boat would be even farther downriver now. What if a buggy couldn�t get here in a day, or if they couldn�t find the right lane even when they were close?

As she had every day since David had shown her the way, she walked toward the bend of the path where she could catch that small glimpse of the Mississippi River. As she stood staring at the glinting, changeable face of that distant water, she heard the sleepy stamp of a horse�s hoof, very near.

She jumped, startled. Then she remembered that David never let the horses into the pasture behind this row of trees. But who could be passing along the road at this hour of the morning?

For a long moment she stared down the dusky lane, half afraid. Then, gathering up her courage, she walked only a few steps more and saw a solitary horse standing in the traces of a black buggy. The horse turned its head at her approach and nickered softly. At the sound, a woman�s bonnet appeared around the hood of the buggy. Gabrielle cried out in joy and ran toward the buggy as fast as she could.

Flossie!

After several ecstatic hugs, Gabrielle drew back. "But how early you are! This is wonderful."

"Whoever sleeps after three?" Flossie asked with a laugh. "And, anyway, we stayed a night over on the way. We wanted to get an early enough start to get back to the Levee Princess by sundown."

The other half of the "we" was Stephen DuBois. "I came along to drive," he said with that familiar half smile. Gabrielle smiled back at him, but quickly looked away, remembering again David�s ridiculous comment that Stephen was in love with her.

"It�s a very good thing he did," Flossie told her, smiling at Stephen. "I must say he�s managed to impress me. I�ve been a showboat person so long that these contraptions scare me to death."

Gabrielle giggled. "You should have heard these people when they found out I didn�t even know how to ride a horse."

Flossie sniffed. "I wager nothing was said about the many things you can do that they don�t even know half about!"

Gabrielle had barely caught up on the news from home before the morning sounds made it apparent that the people of the farm were up, starting their day. "Why don�t you bring your horse up to the barn?" she asked Stephen. "I know Mrs. Wesley will offer you breakfast. You could unhitch him for hay and water while we are eating."

Stephen exchanged an amused glance with Flossie and laughed genially. "Listen to that! In only a week she has learned to talk like a farmer."

Gabrielle was amazed that in spite of his teasing words, his tone held none of that biting sarcasm she had always resented so much.

Mrs. Wesley�s cordial greeting to Flossie and Stephen telegraphed her relief that Gabrielle was leaving. David shook hands with Flossie and tipped a curt nod to Stephen, but Grandma Harper made no secret of her delight at meeting the new. arrivals.

"I can�t tell you how much I have enjoyed this young lady," she told Flossie. "And I have her own testimony that she owes her good education and grace to you." Flossie gave Gabrielle a flustered glance. "I told her about you," Gabrielle explained, "and how like a mother you had been to me." Flossie grinned at the older woman. "Now mind you, I claim only the good things she has learned."

"And you, Mr. DuBois," Grandma Harper asked. "Are you a member of the show cast, too?"

Mrs. Wesley interrupted with a strained smile. "Mother, I�m sure these travelers would rather have breakfast and be on their way than spend time in social chatter."

Gabrielle enjoyed that last breakfast better than any meal she had eaten on the farm. She knew where the ham hung in the smokehouse that produced the delicious round slices of meat sizzling in the big iron skillet. She had heard the chickens brag about laying the very eggs that Mrs. Wesley broke into the red fat around the ham. Best of all, she liked eating the rosy sauce from the giant rhubarb plants that lined the garden fence.

But in spite of Mrs. Wesley�s disapproval, a steady current of social chatter flowed between Flossie and Grandma Harper. Ignoring the stiff silence between the two young men, Grandma Harper forgot her food to lean forward, bright-eyed, and fire questions at Flossie about the seasons of the year on the Levee Princess. "Are the other rivers you travel different from the Mississippi?" the old woman asked.

Flossie laughed. "Like night and day. The Ohio River is like a rocking chair next to this one. The only river harder to navigate is the Missouri, and we don�t even try that one."

"So you leave Cincinnati in the early spring and travel until late winter?"

Flossie nodded. "We go up the Kanawha River and the Monongahela. That�s mining country and the people live in little patches or settlements along the river, so the wet spring mud doesn�t keep them from coming to the shows. Then we play Pittsburgh. That city is famous among showboat people as being the worst town to work on all the rivers, yet we seldom give a showboat performance anywhere without using at least one song by Pittsburgh�s native son, Stephen Foster."

"Then you come back up the same way?" Grandma Harper asked.

"Oh no, we come down the Ohio and just dip into the other rivers along there�the Kentucky, the Wabash, the Tennessee, and the Green River�before reaching the Mississippi again."

Gabrielle felt Mrs. Wesley�s disapproving glance on her, but she didn�t care. "Then we change directions," she told Grandma Harper. "After working up and down the Illinois River, we go clear north to Minneapolis and work our way back down south like we are doing now."

"We always plan to finish the year in Louisiana in the bayous, or Baton Rouge, where there is no danger from river ice," Flossie explained.

The old woman sighed. "What a waste that I was born here and shall die without traveling more than fifty miles from this place. Even the names of your rivers are like music."

"You have no cause to regret a virtuous and proper life, Mother," her daughter rebuked her.

All this while Stephen and David had eaten in surly silence, not exchanging so much as a word. When Grandma Harper realized that everyone else was through eating, she lay her napkin by her plate. "My gracious, I�m keeping you ail." She rose. "Come, Gabrielle, I want to send some fresh herbs home with you from my garden."

Gabrielle found it strange to walk that familiar path and know she was doing it for the last time. But everything seemed unchanged since she came. The hollyhocks still bloomed on their giant stalks; the dusty chickens still scratched and scolded in the coop; and hidden locusts droned in the yard trees. A shift in the wind carried the acrid stench of the barnyard their way, and a horse raised its head from the water trough to stare at them.

Once away from the house, Grandma Harper slid her hand in under Gabrielle�s arm. "I grieve to see you go, my child," she said quietly. "I grieve for myself, but most of all for David. I saw you at once as the girl who could be the making of him. But at what a cost to you! He is too like his father for my taste. But even if he were to change and be faithful and loyal to you, you would always hunger for those rivers. And who�s to blame you? Your place is on that water. Tell me something about that dark-eyed young man who watches you with such loving eyes."

Gabrielle, caught off guard, didn�t know what to say. "He�s very talented but you are mistaken about the loving eyes. He really can�t stand me, and makes no secret of it."

The old woman�s laugh was merry. "How can you be so wise and still so innocent? There is no better testament to his love than that he sat all through breakfast wishing my grandson would drop dead."

At Gabrielle�s shocked expression, Grandma Harper patted her arm. "Time will loosen his tongue. And I am sure he will not make of you what David�s father made of my daughter�a bitter, lonely woman thrown on the charity of her own family."

Her voice changed as she handed Gabrielle a pair of shears from her pocket. "Now cut a little of that first bush and tie it with this string. This is rosemary� which is also for remembrance." Gabrielle was startled to see Grandma Harper�s eyes moist with tears.

AS Gabrielle turned to look back at Flossie, the road they were following emerged from the deep shade of the woods to pass into brilliant sunshine. When Flossie had settled herself for her nap, she had untied her bonnet strings. The bonnet had fallen back on her shoulders, exposing her hair. The sun struck the soft curls that had fallen over her forehead, adding golden glints to their already marvelous fire. Her bonnet strings, the same sea green color as her dress, spilled in a delicious tumble over the wide white collar that framed her smooth throat. Gabrielle smiled tenderly at her friend. Flossie looked like a carefully posed picture there in the backseat of the buggy. The pose was perfect even to the way her graceful hands were placed on the seat to brace her body against the swaying of the buggy.

But the words Gabrielle had meant to say stuck in her throat. She could not believe her eyes. Pressed onto the seat of the buggy under Flossie�s hand lay a handbill, the kind of show program Bony carefully printed out on his little press in the corner by the dining room. Gabrielle stared at the handbill in horror a moment before managing to speak. She made a special effort to keep the trembling she felt out of her voice. "May I see that, Flossie?" she asked carefully.

Flossie yawned a little as she leaned to hand the piece of slightly crumpled paper to Gabrielle.

Gabrielle could not control the shaking of her hands as she read the handbill carefully. Her eyes had not deceived her. The handbill was just like the ones Bony had printed for her great act, except for two very important details.

The figure walking the tightrope across the top of the handbill was now that of a man carrying a baton instead of a parasol.

And the line of bold letters read:

Etienne was the French spelling for Stephen!

Gabrielle knew exactly what she had to do.

She turned to Stephen, her voice uneven with fury. "Stop this buggy." When he only frowned at her in confusion, she repeated her words, this time in a genuine shout. "Stop this buggy this minute! I want out! I won�t ride another mile�"

He heard her all right, he couldn�t help it. But instead of obeying her command, he paid no attention. He slapped the reins briskly across the horse�s back so that it picked up speed.

"Gabrielle," Flossie called from the backseat. "What on earth is the matter? What are you shouting about?"

"As if you didn�t know!" Gabrielle cried as she gathered her skirts in her hands and slid along the seat toward the buggy door. "If you two can�t figure this out, you are as stupid as you are traitorous. Whichever way it is, I�m not riding another mile with either one of you."

The buggy careened rapidly along the rutted road as she summoned her courage to jump out. The nerve of that Stephen DuBois! It was bad enough that he had stolen her act, now he was trying to keep her a prisoner against her will.

Never mind how scared she was. Never mind that the masses of flowering shrubs along the wayside could easily hide rocks, or snakes, or any number of other dangerous things. She clapped one hand on her bonnet, clutched her full skirt with the other, and slid to the end of the buggy seat, braced and ready to jump.

"No," Stephen cried frantically, realizing what she was planning. "No, Gabrielle, no!"

He jerked the horse�s reins too quickly. The animal panicked. As Gabrielle jumped free, she heard the horse neigh crazily as it reared in the traces. Stephen was trying to speak soothingly to it, using all his strength to get the frantic animal under control while Flossie squealed in terror from the backseat.

Gabrielle, free of the buggy, tumbled into a clump of fading asters and rolled a few feet before she could stop herself. While Stephen still fought to subdue the horse, she leaped to her feet and began to run. She was glad to hear the horse still whinnying wildly behind her. That only gave her a better head start in getting away. Her very teeth were jolted by the fall, but she was too mad to care. Maybe she had grown past crying with unhappiness, but fury still brought a wild rush of tears to her eyes.

She hadn�t stopped running when she heard the buggy shudder to a rattling stop. Then Stephen came crashing through the brush behind her. He caught up with her at once and seized her by the shoulders.

"Let me go, you snake," she shouted, trying to wriggle free of his grasp. "Men! You�re all alike�all alike and all sickening."

"Shut up," he said fiercely, shaking her. "Shut up just one minute and listen."

Listen. She was flooded with shame at all the listening she had done already. Oh, the humiliation of those wonderful, brief miles when she had been stupid enough to listen to his confidences, to believe they could ever be friends. And all that time she had been hanging on his words with sympathy and trust, he had been hiding the miserable fact that he had gone behind her back and stolen her act on her father�s own boat!

"Thief," she told him angrily. "You�re a thief and a low life and you�ve taken advantage of my father as well as me." As she spoke, she struggled in his arms. He was strong, but she wasn�t a dancer for nothing. She bent swiftly and twisted herself free of his grasp. She plunged away, fighting to keep her balance. Almost at once she was through the woods and facing an open fenced field. She dropped to the ground, rolled under the fence, and stood up, gasping, on the other side. Then she turned to face him, horrified to realize that her eyes were streaming tears in spite of herself.

"Now," she told him, "get back to that buggy and go home, both of you."

The last thing she expected was for him to obey her. Yet for a moment, he seemed to be doing just that. He stopped at the edge of the trees where she left him and stood looking at her with the strangest, almost fearful look on his face.

"Gabrielle," he said quietly, almost in a whisper.

"Leave!" she told him angrily. "Go on. Get back to the boat and river. I can take care of myself!"

"Gabrielle," he whispered again, his tone full of warning. "Gabrielle, listen to me. Don�t look around and don�t shout. Just move very slowly and come back under that fence again. But do it quickly, Gabrielle. Quickly!"

A blue jay squawked wildly in a willow nearby as she heard the other sound for the first time. She felt the vibration of heavy hoofbeats drumming on the earth at almost the same second. She turned to see an immense black bull, its head lowered, snorting as it pounded its way toward her from across the pasture.

For a moment she couldn�t even move. Pure terror turned her legs into something quivering and helpless. Stephen must have sensed her panic, for he ran to the fence and vaulted it to land at her side. He grabbed her as if she were a rag doll and pushed her down on the ground and under the fence. In a minute he was outside the fence with her, pulling her to her feet, brushing the dirt and leaves from her face and hair, whispering her name over and over.

The bull stopped a few feet short of the fence with an infuriated roar. It pawed the earth, ripping grass with its sharp hooves. It backed off a few feet and lowered its head again, snorting with anger.

Stephen put both arms around Gabrielle and began to walk slowly backward away from the fence. She had the sense that Stephen was holding his breath as they moved into the shadows at the edge of the woods.

"There�s no point in testing the old wood in those fence rails," he whispered. "Easy now. Keep coming! Back up!"

The bull raised its head, looked at them one way and then another before turning to walk away. A few yards off, it turned to look their way again, snorting a little. Stephen held her very close and very still. "It�s hard for it to see us in this shadow unless we move," he whispered. He must have been right, because in a moment the animal pawed the ground, snorted a few times, walked away a few yards, and dropped its head to begin grazing.

"Whew," Stephen said, dropping his arms.

"I hate cows," she said, wishing her voice wouldn�t squeak like that. "And bulls," she added after a minute. "And horses, and pigs, and chickens, especially roosters."

Stephen was smiling down at her in that lopsided way that she shouldn�t still find attractive after the way he had treated her.

"Thank you for that," she said after a minute. "But nothing has changed. You�re still a thief and a low life who took advantage of me the minute I turned my back."

Flossie was coming through the woods, calling.

"She wants you to get back in the buggy," Stephen told her calmly.

"And I want you to give me one reason why I should. It was bad enough that before I even left that boat everybody was telling me how they would get along just fine without me. But I had no idea that the minute I got off, you would grab my act and take top billing."

Flossie, her bonnet now hanging halfway down her back, stopped a few feet away from them.

"Wait right there, Gabrielle Prentice," she said firmly. "You want one reason why you should quit acting like a common scold? I�ll name you that reason: Captain Joshua Prentice, he�s your reason."

Gabrielle stared from Flossie to Stephen. "You�re making that up."

Flossie grabbed for her bonnet and rammed it back on her head. "Tell her, Stephen," she ordered.

Stephen�s expression was sober and his eyes were pleading. "Nobody planned for this to happen, Gabrielle. You have to remember that news travels along the shore like a log rides the river current. At our next stop downriver, the crowd was furious. They told the captain how many miles they had traveled to see the tightrope-walking act. They asked for their money back. Then when they thought about the trouble they had gone to to get there, they threatened to get their money back double if they had to beat it out of the crew."

Flossie nodded to assure her what Stephen said was true.

"That�s when your father asked me to try to fill in for you. I am a gymnast, you know, and there�s not too big a jump between what I have always done and tightrope-walking. The boat stayed over that next night and I did my first show. It wasn�t any great performance, but it satisfied the people who had been so threatening the night before."

"Did Father have to let them all in free?" she asked, knowing how her father hated to be bullied into anything.

He nodded, then grinned that half-embarrassed way. "But let�s face the facts, Gabrielle. I�m nothing like as much fun to look at as you are. I had to add a little to the act to make it worth their money."

"Add a little?" Gabrielle asked. "What does that mean?"

"Part of the way he rope-walks on his hands," Flossie explained. "And that�s why I brought that handbill along. Your father has this wonderful idea�"

"Could we talk about the new act in the buggy?" Stephen asked. "Captain Prentice is going to be pacing the deck with his binoculars, watching for us to get back."

Flossie reached for Gabrielle�s hand. "Come on, love," she coaxed. "Give your father a chance."

Her father! It hadn�t occurred to her that anyone but Stephen himself had come up with that traitorous idea. But her father was right. Stephen could do anything with his superb balance and slender, muscular body. Lost in thought, she let Stephen lead her back to the buggy. When she looked at him, he was watching her soberly.

"I�m really sorry, Stephen," she said. "I feel like an absolute fool for having lost my temper like that. Forgive all those things I said. I just didn�t know."

Instead of untying the reins, Stephen put his arm across the back of her seat and leaned toward her. "Then you didn�t really mean them?" he asked quietly.

She shook her head. "I was angry and I didn�t know."

"A few minutes ago I was congratulating myself that we might finally become friends," he told her. "Now that doesn�t satisfy me. I�ve already told your father that if you decided against that land person and came back to us, I wanted his permission to try to persuade you to marry me."

When she gasped in astonishment, he laughed softly. "Oh, Gabrielle," he said. He shook his head and took her gently by both shoulders. "You are so skilled at what you do, and act the lady that you are so much of the time that I forget how young you are. If you had known anything at all about men, you would have known that I couldn�t stand to be near you because I was out-of-my-mind in love with you. I couldn�t listen to you sing without wanting to kill every man in the room for hearing you, too."

"But, Stephen," she cried. What could she say? Maybe he didn�t need to know how much his angry treatment had hurt her. But the very thought that he cared that much made her breath quicken.

"I guess I thought I had forever," he went on quietly. "I knew from the very beginning how deeply your father loved you. I knew I had to prove myself to him first. I had to wait until he knew I was serious, both about you and about being a showboat captain. I was terrified that he might turn me down, maybe even throw me off the boat." He grinned down at her. "I have your father�s permission to court you. Now I need yours."

From the backseat, Flossie spoke quietly. "I can see the billing now: Madame Gabrielle and Monsieur Etienne in the Death-Defying� and so forth."

Gabrielle looked at him. She had always thought him talented, and one of the handsomest men she�d ever seen, but she had never seen him like this, gentle and maybe a little fearful of what answer she might give.

David, smiling and confident, was suddenly full in her mind. "I almost always get my way," he had told her.

Did she want Stephen to court her? She certainly hadn�t wanted David to! How many times had she told him she didn�t know him well enough even to talk about marriage? But Stephen was different from David in so many ways�all of them good. She and Stephen shared so many things: their pride in the work they did, their respect for her father, and their mutual dreams of spending their lives on the river.

There wasn�t any really ladylike way to give an honest answer. It wouldn�t be honest to tell him no, but neither did she want to be rushed and pushed again. She raised her eyes to Stephen�s and saw something special there, a patience that said he felt she was worth waiting for. He was really willing to court her, not try to sweep her off her feet with elaborate praise, warm embraces, and the offer of fine houses and land. Not until the words were out did she realize how prim she sounded. "I think I would enjoy that very much, Stephen."

Flossie laughed from the backseat. "What a disappointment. I thought I would be forced to get out and walk about a mile up that road while you started this heavy courting."

Stephen smiled back at her. "Forget the walk up the road, Flossie. Gabrielle and I understand each other. If you want to create something to last forever, you don�t try to throw it together overnight."

As he spoke, he leaned to Gabrielle. It was wonderful to feel Stephen�s lips touch hers gently, to feel his arm close around her protectively and feel safe and comfortable there.

And when she and Stephen knew each other well enough and decided that it was time, she wouldn�t wonder if she was turning to him to escape anything the way she had with David. When that day came, she would be turning to him only for love.

Flossie sighed from the backseat. "Very well. If there�s not going to be a grand finale, I might as well take another nap. But don�t forget that I�m dying of thirst back here."

Stephen laughed softly as he brought the horse to a brisker canter. Reaching over, he laid his free hand over Gabrielle�s on the seat between them, and smiled at her with eyes as deep as the river.