Cheated Hearts

Virginia’s antebellum mansions echo with the clink of crystal and the rustle of crinoline, yet beneath the magnolias the Gordon bloodline ferments like over-ripe cider: Barry, the dissolute heir, swills his patrimonial poison while his dutiful brother Tom courts Muriel, the porcelain guardian’s daughter whose gaze already flickers toward the darker sibling. Three continents away, the Rif Mountains devour Tom; Barry, nursing a thirst that only mirages can slake, treks through Tangier’s carmine alleys where the scent of kif and camel leather pricks memory. There the Beekmans reappear—Muriel now a sylph in linen, Kitty Van Ness a brassy counter-melody—and desire rekindles under the white-hot African sun, though Barry binds himself to a chivalric abstinence while chains still clasp Tom’s wrists. Inside the kasbah’s ocher walls he liberates Naomi, a Berber odalisque whose kohl-rimmed eyes promise oblivion; betrayal, scimitars, and a sandstorm later, Barry trades his freedom for his brother’s, discovering that captivity tastes of copper and repentance. Naomi, slit-bellied yet luminous, dies against his chest as the chieftain’s blood soaks the kaftan—an expiation that scours Barry’s craving more thoroughly than any temperance sermon. Back aboard a steamer churning toward Alexandria, Muriel’s hand steadies his trembling fingers around a teacup instead of a tumbler: love, at last, distilled into something potable.