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rubbed her forehead in distress as no answers emerged. She silently made her way to the other door. This too was unlocked. It opened into an enormous bedchamber. A breeze lifted the dark blue velvet curtains and the white gossamer gauze lining at the tall windows, and drew her gaze to the oversized canopy bed where a man lay. She moved closer to see the handsome blond giant sound asleep there. She did not know him.
    Who was he? Was he the source of her danger?
    Her gaze swung around the spacious room, past the enormous marble hearth, the rich carpet, and three chests of drawers. She looked up at the magnificent oil Brittania on the wall. The depiction of China and India kneeling to an Imperial Britannia pricked a spark of anger.
    So like the English! Puffed-up cocks in a chicken coop, the British were, preening, full of self importance and grandiose notions and utterly blind to the sly Oriental fox that sat waiting on its haunches, watching, ready to pounce ...
    She turned away. She spotted the dark blue chair. A pair of trousers, a thick black belt, and a shirt were draped over it. Boots had been placed neatly beneath. Her eyes darted to the nightstand nearby. A fruit bowl, pitcher, and goblet, and a folded letter alongside a jeweled dagger.
    She did not need a dagger but no one would know that. She picked the knife up before taking the letter. She unfolded it and read past the formal preamble, names that meant nothing to her, except that apparently this man held a family relationship to an English lordship. She began reading:
    August tenth, the year of our Lord, Eighteen twenty-three.
    My dear brother:
    I try to imagine your surprise at finding Lord Clives in your house delivering this carefully penned and sealed letter from me. I can only say desperate times call for desperate measures. These are suddenly desperate times. By the time you receive these words we will be somewhere mid-Atlantic, sailing to Boston, and from there to Washington, where I will at last assume the position of ambassador. Seanessy, suddenly the quaint provincial society and bucolic setting of Washington seem a welcome and much-needed respite from the hot sun, the tangled web of intrigues of the tea and opium wars.
    For Joy is threatened and I will not have that.
    Two of our house servants were found dead, throats slit, the bodies placed in a queer kneeling position on the garden path where Joy is in the habit of walking. I do not have to describe the effect of this on Joy; you can easily imagine, knowing Joy's mindless dismissal of the conventions of her class and the intimacy she inspires from all people, especially her servants. She not only knew the man and woman well, but she knew their families and gave language lessons to their children in the mornings. At first, I assumed the murders the result of some secret family feud: the kind of incomprehensible Oriental barbarism we British cannot hope to fathom. I put my men on it of course and alerted the British counsel, but not wanting to take the chance, I made immediate plans to take Joy and our children away a full two months sooner than we had planned.
    The day we were to hoist sail, even as our trunks were being packed, the North Star was blown up by Chinese dynamite, killing two of our men and injuring another five. No warning. No threat. Sean, the explosions occurred only minutes after Joy, holding little Sean's and Joshua's hands, stepped down the plank.
    I cannot say who is responsible for this, or those persons would be lying in a pool of their own blood. As you will quickly deduce, the threat could be from literally any one of a hundred different players in the opium and tea trade: any one of the major tea merchants in China, any of the ten Ho Cong families. Sean, it could be the Emperor of China himself for all I know. As I am certain Clives is raving at this very moment, it might also be one French Duke de la Armanac.
     
    The Duke de la Armanac. She read the name twice, then again. This