As wild as the Mississippi, Lily Gaines grew up amid the steamboat traffic of Natchez Under-the-Hill. Her gentle parents let her do as she pleased, but that was before yellow fever swept through the small river town and left young Lily an orphan, faced with a life in the workhouse. And before the arrogant, wealthy Nicholas St. James arrived to keep the promise he'd made to her parents—to look after Lily by making her his wife.
