She descended the staircase into a room filled with men. Tall, well-built men. Short, skinny men. Refined young Frenchmen, all in attendance for selection day.

He came to the Ball to choose his mulatto lover. The woman that he would love forever, but could never marry. The woman he’d start his family of bastards with. The woman he'd hunger for as he laid in his marital bed staring at the ceiling of his loveless bedroom. Remembering the poppy field at the edge of the French Quarter where he deflowered the woman who stole his lustful soul so many years ago.