Richard Blade looked up at the forty-foot aluminum mast to the spinnaker fittings at the masthead. Then he looked forward to the big orange spinnaker, straining and pulled drum-tight by the rising wind.

And then he raised his voice to carry over the wind and shouted to be heard below in the cabin of the motorsailer, «Annie! Come on deck and take the wheel while I go forward and drop the spinnaker. It's getting on to blow.»

A muffled acknowledgment floated out from behind the polished teak door. Then the door swung open and Lady Annette Pangborn popped out, mounting the steps to the cockpit with the poise and balance of a seasoned sailor. She was wearing a bikini that concealed only nominal portions of her tanned, fashion-model's body. She slipped gracefully into the padded helmsman's seat and took the chromed wheel from Blade. With a winch handle swinging in one hand he went forward along the heaving deck.

He didn't care much for having to drop the spinnaker. Its two thousand square feet of orange nylon almost gave the deep-keeled motorsailer the performance of a racing sloop. But the blue sky to the southwest was beginning to turn gray and the blue gray waters of the English Channel were beginning to heave up higher and higher in white-capped waves. The motorsailer was lurching and heaving in a way she had not done that morning when they left the French coast behind.

The oiled winch worked smoothly, but he had not expected it to do anything else. Everything aboard Annie's motorsailer was the result of abundant money and good judgment. She had inherited both from four generations of shipping magnates. If Annie ever married, Blade expected that she would do her best to send that same money and judgment on to another few generations. But the English Channel was as likely to turn to onion soup as Annie was to marry.