All his life, Rush Cousins had been haunted by the mystery of his shadowed past. His search for his roots led him at last to Ashland Plantation, an elegant, decaying estate deep in the Mississippu Delta, where he presented himself as nothing more than a handyman in need of work...The disguise brought him closer to Ashland's long-buried secrets...But it also meant he had to find some way to distance himself from his sudden, stunning passion for the plantation's beautiful, embittered mistress, Annabelle Ames-a woman whose lonely obsession with the past strangely seemed to mirror his own...