Chapter One

Belle Cantrell felt guilty about killing her husband, and she hated that. Feeling guilty, that is. A lady shouldn't do something she's going to feel guilty about later was a rule Belle kept firmly in mind, along with its corollary: No sense in feeling guilty about all the little pleasures life has in store for you.

But Claude's death hadn't been a pleasure at all. She'd fallen in love with him at fifteen, galloping down clay roads with the leaves of autumn swirling around them. They'd discovered the nooks and crannies of passion in his mother's darkened parlor on a rolling sea of dark wine velvet, amid a flotilla of lacy white antimacassars, when his parents were away.

By sixteen she was pregnant. They married before the baby was born, and in spite of numerous and persistent offers, Belle had never had, nor wanted, another man in her sixteen years of married life. It wasn't as if she aspired to sainthood. She didn't even know if she'd have felt guilty about committing adultery, A lady shouldn't do something she's going to feel guilty about later. The Primer of Propriety but she knew better than to take the risk. Now, after almost a year and a half of mourning, a peculiar, guilty longing had begun to float around in the back waters of her mind, swamping her at odd moments.

She decided to bob her hair.

She squared her shoulders as she approached Arnold's barbershop, housed in the Nix Hotel, where traveling men slept on dirty sheets, laundered only occasionally but always freshly ironed between guests. She'd never been inside a barbershop. She'd read about exotic places called beauty parlors opening up in big cities, where they applied youth-restoring creams to a lady's face and knew all the secrets of curling irons, but if you wanted a haircut, you had to go to a barbershop. And in Gentry, Louisiana, that meant Arnold's.

She paused on the street. Red and white paint was flaking off the barber pole, showing the wood beneath it. Why hadn't she noticed it before? She peered through the plate-glass window, streaked with grime. A balding man sat in the second chair, hidden under shaving cream, while Arnold scraped his face with a straight-edged razor. Belle took a deep breath, drew herself up, and, with head held high, opened the screen door. The odor of day-old ashtrays and cheap cigars assaulted her. Arnold looked up, his razor raised. His gaze was not welcoming.

At that moment, her stepfather, Calvin Nix, owner of the hotel, sauntered in from the lobby. Mr. Nix was only five feet two, but he was quick and clean. He sat down in the first chair for his morning shave and Arnold's all-important, stress-reducing, laying on of hot towels. A shoeshine boy crouched in obeisance at his feet. Through the brown-speckled mirror, he saw his stepdaughter standing in the doorway. His face lit up. "What you doing here, sugar?" His voice was a shade too welcoming.

The smell of sulfur impregnated the air.

At that moment, Belle's mother, Blanche, stepped out of the front door of the hotel and onto the brick sidewalk. With her fine posture and thick salt-and-pepper hair arranged in an old-fashioned upsweep, she'd become one of Gentry's leading Matrons for Morality in her latter years. "Belle! What in tarnation do you think you're doing?"

Belle swung around. "Hey, Mama."

Blanche Nix glared. There was enough impropriety lurking in the memories of the high-minded residents of Gentry without her daughter providing her with any extra sources of embarrassment. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You know a barbershop's no place for a decent lady."

A high-pitched whistle shrieked.

Belle turned and saw the nine-thirty train to New Orleans rumble into the depot across the street, belching out great clouds of sooty smoke. She had fifteen dollars in her purse. She let the screen door bounce behind her.

Blanche shook her head as she watched her daughter run for the train.

Two hours later Belle was standing in the barbershop of the Monteleone Hotel in New Orleans, where gleaming plate-glass mirrors reflected brass chandeliers, and expensive aftershave lotions perfumed the air. A rotund barber turned. If he was surprised to see her, he didn't let on. Belle pulled herself up into her best imitation of a Southern aristocrat. "Does anyone here know how to bob a lady's hair?" Her voice was clear. It didn't break once.

"Yes, ma'am. I surely do. Now you just sit right down," the barber said, patting the first chair. What hair he had left was beautifully manicured.

A little boy shrilled, "Look, Papa, a lady -- " He didn't get a chance to finish before his father shushed him.

A man under the razor in the second chair strained to look at her, causing the barber to nick his customer's cheek. Belle pretended not to notice, but a spot of blood spread over the virginal clouds of white shaving cream. It seemed like an omen.

A bad omen.

Belle swallowed hard and climbed into the first chair. The barber shook out a big white cape. "Wait," she said.

All activity stopped. The bootblack looked up from the shoes of the man being shaved. Scissors and razor were held in suspended animation. Everyone turned toward Belle.

She pulled a picture out of her purse. She'd cut it out of Vogue magazine two weeks before while she'd screwed up her courage. Underneath, the caption read: "Bobbed hair is the mark of the new woman. Young, easy to take care of, it's for a woman who wants to get on with her life."

"Do you think you can cut my hair like this?"

"Don't you worry none," the barber said.

Belle hated it when someone told her not to worry. How dare he tell me how to feel, she thought. She took one last look at her thick pompadour of deep brown hair that . . .

Excerpted from The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell © Copyright 2012 by Loraine Despres. Reprinted with permission by HarperCollins. All rights reserved.