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My silence bothered him, but I couldn't help it. I was speechless. One part of me wanted to laugh and shout and ridicule such a story. No daughter of Grandmere Catherine's could be such a creature; but another part of me, that part of me that had fantasized such things with Paul told me it might be true.

"I don't believe him of course," Paul said quickly. "I think it happened the way your grandmother told it. He came around here and he seduced your mother, otherwise, why would he have owned up to it so quickly when Grandpere Jack confronted him and why did he pay him any blackmail money?"

I took a deep breath.

"Did you say that to your father?" I asked.

"No. I didn't want to have any arguments about it."

"I don't know how we'll ever know the whole truth about it," I said.

"What's the difference now?" Paul muttered angrily. "The result is the same. Oh, my father complained again and again about how Grandpere Jack came to him and blackmailed him, and how he had to pay him thousands of dollars to keep the matter secret. He said Grandpere was the lowest of the low who belonged with the slimy things in the swamp. He told me how my mother felt sorry for him, especially because of Grandpere Jack, and how she agreed to pretend to be pregnant so my birth would be accepted by the community as the legitimate birth of a Tate. Then he made me promise I wouldn't say anything to my mother. He told me it would break her heart if she knew I discovered she wasn't really my mother."

"I'm sure it would," I said. "He's not wrong about that, Paul. Why hurt her any more than she has been hurt?"

"What about me?" he cried. "What about . . . us?"

"We're young," I said, thinking about Grandmere Catherine's words of wisdom.

"That doesn't mean it hurts any less," he moaned.

"No, it doesn't, but I don't know what else we can do about it, but go on and try to find other people who we can love and care for as strongly as we love and care for each other now."

"I can't; I won't," he said defiantly.

"Paul, what else can we do?"

He fixed his eyes on me, the defiance in his face, the anger and the pain, too.

"We'll just pretend it isn't so," he said, reaching out to take my hand.

I couldn't stop the tingle that had begun around my heart and then shot through my blood to fly through my stomach and my legs and make my breath quicken. Suddenly everything about him, everything about us was forbidden. Just his merely sitting on my bed, holding my hand, gazing at me with such longing was taboo, and just like most anything prohibited, it carried an elevated excitement along with it. It was like teasing fate, testing, exquisitely tormenting our own souls.

"We can't do that, Paul," I said, my voice barely a whisper.

"Why not? Let's ignore that half of ourselves and think only about the other half. It won't be the first time such a thing happened, especially in the bayou," he said. His hand moved up my wrist, the fingers sliding softly over my skin as he lifted himself to sit closer. I shook my head gently.

"You're just upset and angry now, Paul. You're not thinking about what you're saying to me," I told him. My heart was pounding so hard, I thought I would lose my breath.

"Yes, I am. Who knows about us anyway? Just your grandpere Jack and no one would believe anything he would say, and my father and mother who wouldn't want anyone to know the truth. Don't you see? It doesn't matter."

"But we know; it matters to us."

"Not if we don't let it matter," Paul said. He leaned forward to kiss my forehead. Now that we both knew the truth of his origin, his lips felt as hot as a branding iron. I backed away abruptly and shook my head, not only trying to refuse his advances, but refusing the excitement that was building in my own heart.

My blanket fell away and my nightgown dropped so low most of my bosom was visible. Paul's eyes lowered and rose, climbing slowly back to my neck and shoulders and my face.

"Once we do it, once we ignore the ugly past and make love, we will be able to do it easier and easier every time afterward, Ruby," he said. "Don't you see? Why should the other half of ourselves, the better half be denied? We haven't been brought up as brother and sister; we've never thought of ourselves as related.

"If you just close your eyes and forget, if you just let your lips touch mine," he said, drawing close again.

I shook my head, closed my eyes, and sat back as far as I could, but Paul's lips touched mine. I tried to deny him, to slide myself out from under, but he pressed onward, more demanding, his hands finding the bare flesh of my exposed bosom, his fingers turning so the tips would touch my nipples.

"Paul, no," I cried. "Please, don't. We'll be sorry," I said, but I felt myself slipping as the tingle grew into a wave of warm desire. After so much sorrow and so much hardship, my body craved his warm touch, forbidden as it was.

"No, we won't," Paul insisted. His lips grazed my fore-head and moved down the side of my face as his hand slipped completely under my nightgown to fully cup my breast. He lifted it to bring his lips to my nipple and I felt myself weaken. I couldn't open my eyes. I couldn't speak. I continued to slide under him and he pressed forward, insistent, driven, unrelenting in his determination to batter down not only my feeble resistance, but all the morals and laws of church and man that not only forbid our erotic t

ouching, but looked down on it with disgust.