Free Tai-Pan by James Clavell Page A

Anger swept her face, hardening it, aging it. “You men do what you please, but we women can’t. Good Christ, how can I go to bed with a European? They couldn’t wait to tell others and shame me before all of you. This way no one’s harmed. Except me, perhaps, and that happened a long time ago.”
    “What did?”
    “You’d better know a fact of life, Tai-Pan. A woman needs men just as much as man needs women. Why should we be satisfied with one man? Why?”
    “How long has this been going on?”
    “Since I was fourteen. Don’t be so shocked! How old was May-may when you bought her?”
    “That was different.”
    “It’s always different for a man.” Mary sat down at the table in front of the mirror and began to brush her hair. “Brock is secretly negotiating with the Spaniards in Manila for the sugar crop. He’s offered Carlos de Silvera ten percent for the monopoly.”
    Struan felt a surge of fury. If Brock could work that trick with sugar, he could dominate the whole Philippine market. “How do you know?”
    “His compradore, Sze-tsin, told me.”
    “He’s another of your—clients?”
    “Yes.”
    “Anything else you want to tell me?”
    “You could make a hundred thousand taels of silver from what I’ve told you.”
    “Have you finished?”
    “Yes.”
    Struan got up.
    “What are you going to do?”
    “Tell your brother. You’d better be sent back to England.”
    “Leave me to my own life, Tai-Pan. I enjoy what I am and I’ll never change. No Europeans—and few Chinese—know I speak Cantonese and Mandarin except Horatio and now you. But only you know the real me. I promise I will be very, very useful to you.”
    “You’re off home, out of Asia.”
    “Asia is my home.” Her brow furrowed and her eyes seemed to soften. “Please leave me as I am. Nothing has changed. Two days ago we met on the street and you were kind and gentle. I’m still the same Mary.”
    “You’re na the same. You call all this nothing?”
    “We’re all different people at the same time. This is one me, and the other girl—the sweet, innocent virgin nothing, who makes silly conversation and adores the Church and the harpsichord and singing and needlework—is also me. I don’t know why, but that’s true. You’re Tai-Pan Struan—devil, smuggler, prince, murderer, husband, fornicator, saint and a hundred other people. Which is the real you?”
    “I’ll na tell Horatio. You can just go home. I’ll give you the money.”
    “I’ve money enough for my own passage, Tai-Pan. I earn many presents. I own this house and the one next door. And I’ll go when I choose in the manner I choose. Please, leave me to my own joss, Tai-Pan. I am what I am, and nothing you can do will change it. Once you could have helped me. No, that’s not honest either. No one could have helped me. I like what I am. I swear I will never change. I will be what I am: either secretly, and no one knowing except you and me—or openly. So why hurt others? Why hurt Horatio?”
    Struan looked down at her. He knew that she meant what she said. “Do you know the danger you’re in?”
    “Yes.”
    “Say you have a child.”
    “Danger adds spice to life, Tai-Pan.” She looked deeply at him, a shadow in her blue eyes. “Only one thing I regret about bringing you here. Now I can never be your woman. I would like to have been your woman.”
     
    Struan had left her to her joss. She had a right to live as she pleased, and exposing her to the community would solve nothing. Worse, it would destroy her devoted brother.
    He had used her information to immense profit. Because of Mary, The Noble House had almost a total monopoly of all opium trade for a year, and more than made back the cost of their share of the opium—twelve thousand cases—that had ransomed the Settlement. And Mary’s information about Brock had been correct and Brock had been stopped. Struan had opened a secret account for Mary in England and paid into the account a proportion of