New Orleans 1860 - Mad Jessie - that's what Lee Kincannon had christened her. Reluctant debutante and adept mistress of Riverbend. Full of grit and fire, Lee suspected that Jessamine Dade could face down an army of men, single handedly. She'd already near bewitched him with her heady violet gaze and made his life seem hardly worth the trouble of keeping himself alive. Jessie knew well the sorrows that had ripped the North and South asunder. But nothing brought the conflict so close to home as the night Lee Kincannon, dauntless riverboat gambler and Confederate irregular, lay hidden in her bed, hovering between this world and the next...