"You know I can't go. I've already been here too long." She clenched her hands as she watched a dozen women run into the water. "And you should not go, either. Have you learned nothing? You should not sleep with the English. They bring disease and they care nothing for you."

Lihua grinned. "You worry too much. It's not certain that Captain Cook's sailors gave our people the French sickness, and these English care enough to bring me pleasure for the night. It is all a woman can ask."

It was all Lihua ever asked, Cassie thought with exasperation, all any of them ever asked. Pleasure for the present, pay tomorrow. Ordinarily she had no quarrel with the philosophy, but not when she could see danger looming.

"Come with us," Lihua coaxed. "Besides the sailors there are two who lead, a chief and his uncle, who captains the ship. I will let you have the chief, who knows many ways to please a woman. He is very beautiful and has the grace and the lusty appetite of that stallion you love so much."

"Chief? There is a noble chief on board that ship?"

"The sailors say it is the same as our chiefs. They call him Your Grace."

A duke. She felt a faint stirring of memory of that long-ago day in Marseilles. Foolishness-there could be no connection. "What is his name?"

"Jared."

"No, his last name."

Lihua shrugged. "Who knows? Why should I ask such things? It's not his name that makes me cry out with pleasure. It is his big-"

"Lihua, come along," Kalua, Lihua's sister, called from the surf. "You cannot convince her. And why give her the chief? We will share him as we did last night. She would not know what to do with him." She added with teasing scorn, "She is a virgin. She lies with no one."