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Ji Yue froze and pulled slowly back, thoughts tumbling through her head like heavy stones. The dowager consort hated her? And the emperor watched her? The very idea was incredible. But if they saw her, if Emperor Xian Feng watched her, then being here was madness! She should leave immediately! And yet she did not stir from Bo Tao’s arms. Why did she not leave?

She had no explanation except for lust. She wanted Bo Tao’s lips on hers. She wanted his hand inside her body. And she wondered-oh, how she wondered-what it would be like to have his jade stalk planted deeply inside her.

“Do you want me to take you back to the virgins’ palace right now?” he whispered. “We can stop this madness here.”

“No,” she whispered. “No, I want to…” She couldn’t finish. No virgin could admit those things aloud. So she waved to the inkstone and brushes. “I want to be of help to you. I was raised to be a political wife, helping my husband in this manner.”

He nodded. “Then so be it.” He stepped away, moving quickly to the door. But then he paused, his expression earnest. “I am not a hanger-on, Ji Yue. I understand these foreigners as no other in China. One day, the emperor will make my position official. I will be the advisor on foreign affairs, perhaps an ambassador, but he likes having someone unofficial to meet with these people. Someone smart who can arrange things unofficially.”

She smiled. “I am a woman. I understand how things can be arranged without the men officially knowing anything at all.”

“Soon things will change for me. Perhaps very soon, but-”

“But not just yet,” she said. “I understand.”

Then their time was up. At his gesture, she extinguished the candle. He waited in the darkness a moment longer, and in that time she heard his breath exhale with such longing that tears sprang to her eyes. Except that it could not be true. She could not hear longing in a man’s breath. Perhaps it was her own need that she felt, her own anguish.

He had not even left the room, and yet she ached for the loss of him. Her body felt cold without him beside her. And her womb cried at its emptiness. She took a step forward to say…she didn’t know what. But before she could form a word, he was gone. He slipped out of the room, leaving her alone.

It was just as well. Her thoughts were impure, her virginity in danger. She knew better than to think of anything but becoming an empress. Her mother had said she was not beautiful, so she needed to be smart. A smart woman would tuck her feelings away, put aside her memories as well as her wishes. She did it with a firmness that would please her ancestors.

Then she went to the shutter and pulled open the latch. Very soon, she would see a white man for the first time in her life. Would he look like a monkey, as she had heard? Would he truly have a stench like a pigpen in August? She could not wait to see.

But as her eyes scanned the receiving hall on the other side of the hidden room, she looked not for the white envoy but Sun Bo Tao. What would he say to the foreign devils? How would he treat their insolence? She held her breath in anticipation.

She didn’t have to wait long. The Dutch group was ushered inside-six men in all. She took careful note of their attire. She knew that distinctions in color and insignia were important in China, so they could be equally vital to these foreigners. As they grumbled and argued in their strange tongue, she had time to make rough sketches of their faces and attitudes.

One was obviously their leader. His gestures were more refined, and he had a habit of stroking his beard or his coat lapels when he spoke. The others fawned upon him in subtle ways. They maintained their arrogance as all men must, but they kept their chins just a bit less pronounced and their eyes shifted left and right more often.

Then Bo Tao appeared. He was magnificent. From his gestures to his sneering lip, he moved to impress. He brought his own retinue of underlings-double the Dutch envoys-and all bowed and scraped as Bo Tao sat in the throne chair. It was not the Dragon Throne, of course. This was a lesser hall, but Bo Tao wore the auspices of power with a majesty that must match the emperor himself. The sight of him stole her breath away.

The preliminaries had begun. A Dutch underling offered a gift: a metal timepiece, she thought, but it was hard to see. Bo Tao accepted it with casual neglect, waving it aside as merely his due. Tea and dumplings were served and the Dutch ate. Bo Tao did not. After a polite interval, the Dutch turned and began the true purpose of their meeting.

But then the oddest thing happened. The one who she thought led stepped back as if unimportant. The one who stepped forward was the man she thought most apelike with his dark curling hair and his wide nose. Surely this was a subordinate, but he spoke in their bizarre tongue, and a ship’s captain translated his words into guttural, dockside Cantonese.

Bo Tao, of course, did not speak such dialect. It would be far beneath his dignity, but Ji Yue did. Her old nurse had been raised in Canton and used to sing songs in that tongue. While another translator changed the Cantonese words into Mandarin, Ji Yue wrote down both what was said in Cantonese and what was passed on to Bo Tao.

And so it went with negotiations back and forth until Ji Yue thought her hand would break from the strain. The Dutch wished for more treaty ports-cities on the ocean where they could sell their wares. Bo Tao refused. China had no interest in Dutch goods, he said. The envoys brought more delightful presents-strange fabrics of string woven in interesting patterns, crockery and machinery of bizarre colors and shapes. How Ji Yue wanted to inspect them all, but from her angle, she could only see tiny sections.

Bo Tao yawned. Then with a sigh he glanced at the window and promised to discuss their proposal with the emperor, but he made no move to leave. At first Ji Yue did not understand why, but then his craftiness became obvious. The real gift had not yet been offered.

The ape-man came forward, and his eyes took on a gleam of arrogance. Ji Yue did not like his manner even though he obviously thought he was acting refined. At his gesture, two men came forward with a mediumsize chest. It was placed in the center of the room. Then the ape man crossed to it and with thick fingers he pulled open the lid.

Ji Yue craned her neck forward to see, then gasped in shock. She might be a cloistered virgin, but even she knew the brown powder called opium. It was a deadly drug that had been declared illegal in China nearly a hundred years ago. But even with the emperor’s edict against it, the white were more and more overt in their attempts to addict the entire population to its evil. Her father knew of dozens of court officials who either smoked the drug themselves or profited from its illegal sales. Clearly the Dutch believed Bo Tao equally corrupt. Or they hoped that the new emperor would reverse his great-grandfather’s edict. They were about to learn otherwise.

Bo Tao’s reaction was immediate. He bellowed with rage, and every man in his retinue drew a sword. Ji Yue was hard put not to scream as the Dutch responded in kind. But they were too slow, and obviously Bo Tao had planned for this. Within seconds every foreigner had a blade at his throat.

Bo Tao’s nearest assistant stepped out from his position beside the throne. While Bo Tao sat with regal disdain, his man stomped over to the chest and spat in it. He spoke not a word, but his meaning was clear. Opium was not wanted in China.

Two blades trapped the ape-man, one on either side of his neck. Already a trickle of blood oozed down his throat. The ape-man was purple with rage, but he didn’t dare move. The assistant walked directly in front of the man and raised a long dagger, setting it carefully-point upward-just beneath the bearded chin. A slight push, and the ape-man would be dead.