Synopsis: Dragon Flower (working title)

After disaster overtakes her parents, a wealthy English couple, while the family is traveling through China (or maybe Tibet ~ I like that idea), 13-year old Lily Alexandria Wellstone is taken in by an obscure sect of Buddhist warrior monks in an isolated monastery deep in a high mountain pass. While in their care, she is trained in the ancient arts of kung-fu (wushu) and becomes a formidable fighter. Five years later, when her paternal grandmother dies & leaves her entire sizeable fortune to Lily, half of her relations back in England scurry to find her whereabouts while the other half tries to keep her from being found so they can inherit in two years (when she will be declared legally dead). (Need to research that.) Her mother's eldest brother, William, Earl of ________, has friends in strange places, and he prevails upon one of them ~ a rakehell who is currently persona-non-grata in the ton due to an unfortunate incident involving the wife of a senior member of the Prime Minister's cabinet ~ to go to China (where the English are also not welcome) in the midst of the Opium Wars, find Lily, and bring her back. That's really about as far as I've gotten so far, although I am imagining some pretty interesting exchanges between hero (whose name I don't recall just now ~ it's on a notecard at home) and Lily.