JADE STAR by Catherine Coulter

Jules stared off into the distance, the endless expanse of ocean blurring before her eyes. ‘He used to be a friend,’ she said.

‘I’m sure he still is,’ Kanola said dryly. ‘And he’s not a missionary. He’d give you no orders like your father does, or make you pray on your knees until you’re stiff as a board.’

‘I wish he’d turn his attentions to Sarah. She wants to get married.’

‘Sarah is a stick,’ Kanola said, not mincing matters.

‘She’s also beautiful, fragile, and soft, which is what I’ve always been told men want in a wife.’

‘Ha! And you, I suppose, are a hag.’ Jules’s hair had come loose on her dive, and masses of corky wild curls framed her face. ‘No, not anymore, I don’t guess,’ she said. ‘But I’m about as fragile as one of my peacock groupers.’

4

‘Well, I think you’re lucky you didn’t gain your beauty sooner, else your father would have kept a closer watch on you.’

‘Spoken like a true friend.’ Jules grinned. ‘Incidentally, he still thinks I’m a scruffy twit, looks at me like I give him pain. It’s the red hair, you know, that I got from my French grandmother, the immoral actress. Come on, let’s swim out a bit more. We’ve the time and I’ve got a good fifteen more minutes before the sun does awful things to my skin.’

That was certainly the case, Kanola thought as she watched her friend dive cleanly into the smooth water. Her skin beneath her sarong was as white as her hair was red, and too much sun, even on her lightly tanned face and shoulders made her not only a blotched mess, but sick as well. Kanola slipped into the water after Jules, and swam lazily after her.

‘Would you have a look at that, Captain!’ JamesonWilkes followed Rodney Cumber’s pointing finger. He studied the two very female figures striding cleanly through the water. One was a native, clear enough, but the other … Even from this distance he could tell that she was different, a real find.

5

He was thoughtfully silent for a moment, then said briskly to Cumber, ‘Take three men and lower the boat. Bring the both of them to me.)

‘Aye, aye, sir!’

‘Beg your pardon, Captain, but the other one … she ain’t no native gal, sir.’

‘No, Gallen, I don’t imagine she is,’ Jameson Wilkes said to his first mate. ‘But then again, Bob, we won’t be coming back to Maui, will we?’

Bob Gallen didn’t like the direction he knew his captain’s thoughts were taking. Plowing prostitutes in Lahaina was one thing, even bringing over those Chinese girls to be sold in San Francisco wasn’t too bad, but capturing a white girl was quite another, and it made him feel funny. ‘What if she’s a missionary’s girl?’

‘Then she’s probably a virgin,’ Jameson Wilkes said. ‘Don’t worry, Bob. If she’s married, or is covered with the freckles that usually come along with that color hair, I’ll set her quickly back into the ocean. Let’s wait and see.’

‘I don’t like it,’ Bob Gallen said.

Jameson Wilkes knew the moment the two women recognized their danger. He heard one of them scream, saw them flip over and race back toward shore. But his men would

6

be faster, of course.

‘Kanola, hurry!’ Jules gasped over her shoulder. But Kanola wasn’t as strong a swimmer. Jules slowed and grabbed her friend’s hand.

‘Go on, Jules!’

‘No!’ Jules gasped, swallowing a mouthful of salt water. Wild, terrifying thoughts swirled through her head. She’d seen the whaler in the distance, watched it without a great deal of interest until she heard Kanola cry out. Then she’d seen the boat coming toward them.

She grasped Kanola’s arm, pulling her with all her strength. But it was no use. The sun was shadowed by the men and the boat.

‘Come on, little girlies,’ she heard a man’s gleeful voice call.

‘Dive, Kanola!’

But Kanola was much heavier than Jules, her body no longer as lithe. Jules watched helplessly as one of the men grabbed Kanola by her long, loose black hair and dragged her over the side of the boat. Without another thought, Jules dove deep. She had to escape and get help. It was her only thought as she swam with strong strokes underwater. I must get help! When she could hold her breath no longer, she surfaced, only to see a swarthy grinning face directly in front of her, blocking her way to shore.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *