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survival.
    A man did what he must.
    “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” exclaimed the auctioneer. “Too much talk diverts us from the choicest offering of the night.”
    Mounting the table, he raised the hide garment so that the girl’s private parts were visible. The men were suddenly attentive.
    A man did what he must. That same rule applied to the problem of heirs, Charles realized. If he was to rebuild his fortune in Carolina—and at last he had a glimmer of hope, something he had lacked for year—she had to accept certain realities. He had no intention of leaving his beloved Jeanne. At the same time he could no longer be overly scrupulous about fidelity.
    “Gentlemen, who will begin the bidding for this comely tribal maiden? Who will give me a price of—?”
    “Stop.” With outward thrusts of his hands, Charles parted the group of men ahead of him.
    “What’s that, Main?” said the auctioneer, while the gentlemen Charles had pushed dusted their sleeves and sneered behind his back. He might be a Protestant, but he was also a churl. What else would you expect of a Frenchman?
    Standing as straight as he ever had, Charles stared down the surprised, faintly annoyed auctioneer.
    “I’ve changed my mind. She is not for sale.”
    Slowly he looked to the girl. The auctioneer let her garment fall. Her large eyes were fixed on Charles. She understood.
    He knew better than to try to stay the night at a Charles Town lodging house. Not even the most sordid of them, down near the point of the peninsula where the two rivers met and flowed into the ocean, would welcome a white man with an Indian woman who was obviously not his slave.
    Instead he found a secluded glade not far from the palisade. There, despite the risk of snakes and the threat of insects, he spread his blankets, placed his loaded weapons within reach, lay down beside her in the hot, damp dark, and took her.
    He knew only rudimentary words of her language, none a term of endearment. Yet she knew his need and was eager for his touch. His mouth on her mouth, his hand on her belly—this was what she had wanted almost from the first. He had seen it in her eyes and failed to comprehend.
    Charles was an accomplished lover, tender when necessary. The knowing, courtly ways had not been completely forgotten. Jeanne’s plight and her need for consideration had assured that. Yet toward the end the style of his lovemaking changed. A slow, lazy rhythm was replaced by a quicker, more purposeful one. His excitement increased. So did hers. Passive pleasure became frantic response. Lying on wet, fertile earth, a hundred kinds of life buzzing or crying out around them and scores of stars pricking the black sky, they clasped each other.
    That night he planted his seed as methodically as he was to plant the crops that would create the Main fortune.
    At that period Charles Town consisted of something less than a hundred rude homes and commercial buildings. Many of the Barbadian men talked of erecting those spacious, breezy houses typical of the islands from which they had come. But it would take a better economy, a thriving future, to bring that about. The town’s air of gentility was obviously feigned and not a little shabby.
    It didn’t seem so to Charles the next morning. The day was bright and clear, the air freshened by a northeast wind off the harbor. He strolled to the wharf with the Indian girl following a step behind. His bearing had changed, touched now with certainty, force.
    Charles couldn’t help noticing the scornful stares of the gentry who were abroad. To have a liaison with a woman of color, whether brown or black, was acceptable. To flaunt it in public was something else.
    The expressions of the gentlemen soon put a new thought in his head. Most Carolinians were infernally snobbish about their pedigrees. If he sired a child known to be half Cherokee, they would never admit him or the child to their circle, regardless of how much money he might accumulate—and never