Stunned, Rayna glanced at Meade, who seemed as mystified as she was, then looked at Libby again. “I don’t understand what’s going on here, Mrs. Longstreet.”

“Nor do I, Libby,” Meade added. “I think it’s time you started answering questions instead of just asking them.”

“I’m sorry,” she told them, unable to repress her smile. “It’s just that we’ve waited so long for this.”

“For what?” Meade asked.

Libby opened the box and removed the Thunder Eagle necklace from its velvet cushion. Before she could begin her explanation, Rayna gasped.

“That’s Skylar’s—or very much like it,” she told Libby, reaching eagerly for the necklace.

Libby was shocked. “Your sister has one like this?”

Rayna nodded as she examined the necklace. “It’s not nearly as fine as this.

She made it herself from a description our Apache storyteller used to relate about . . .” She paused, unable to think of the names.

“Willow and Gray Wolf?” Libby supplied.

“That’s right.”

“Then she does remember,” Libby said softly, smiling at Jedidiah.

“Libby, what in blue blazes are you talking about?” Meade demanded to know.

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She looked at him. “Morning Star.”

Meade frowned and searched his memory. “You mean Case’s sister? Oh, but, Libby, surely you don’t think Skylar could be—”

“She is,” Jedidiah said adamantly. “Miss Templeton just gave us the proof of it.”

“You mean the necklace?” Meade asked.

The old frontiersman shook his head and tapped his fist against his heart.

“I taught Morning Star how to say ‘Princess pretty.’ No other Apache child could have known those two words.” Tears were still glistening in his eyes as he looked at Rayna. “Your sister is the daughter of Willow and Gray Wolf.

She’s the sister of Case Longstreet”—his voice broke completely—”and she’s my pretty little princess.”

Waving one hand in the air as though to shoo away his tears, he rose abruptly and stalked out.

Rayna felt her own tears returning. She could barely comprehend the enormity of what these people were telling her, but all she could think about was how happy Skylar would be to know she had another family who loved her this much.

Meade was having a little more difficulty accepting the truth. “Libby, this is too coincidental,” he said skeptically.

“No, it’s not, Meade,” she replied calmly. “It’s fate, and perhaps the mysterious workings of Case’s guiding spirit. Case never gave up believing his sister was alive, and he’s had a number of visions recently that led him to believe he might soon be reunited with Morning Star.”

Meade lowered his head and looked at her cynically. “More visions?”

Libby smiled patiently. “He was right about Crook’s return, wasn’t he?”

Reluctantly, Meade admitted that he had been.

Rayna was growing more confused by the minute. “I don’t understand any of this. Visions? Guiding spirit?”

Libby took her hand and patted it gently. “Let me explain. It’s a story I love to tell, and God willing, it will soon have a happy ending.”

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17

The next morning Rayna forced herself to perform the most difficult task she’d ever done. After breakfast she escaped to the solitude of her borrowed room and began drafting a letter to her parents.

Crook had been conspicuously relieved to have the dreadful burden of conveying the news removed from his shoulders, and Rayna knew that it would be better for her parents to learn it from her than from a stranger—

even a well-meaning one like Crook.

She softened the details of Skylar’s ordeal as much as she could, but she made no attempt to lie. It could be weeks, possibly even months, before Skylar was located, and neither Raymond nor Collie would believe a fabrication about bureaucratic complications. They would open the letter expecting to read that Crook had helped her or that he hadn’t. Rayna knew she owed them the truth.

And she also had the amazing job of telling them that she was staying in the home of Skylar’s brother.

Rayna wasn’t sure how she felt about that particular twist of fate. Skylar would be overjoyed—if they ever found her—but finally having a link to Skylar’s past was strangely disturbing to Rayna. As selfish as it sounded, it 204

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seemed almost as though she’d lost some special, ineffable quality of her relationship with her sister. Rayna had had Skylar to herself for so many years, and now she was going to have to learn to share her with a brother neither of them had known existed.

Rayna suspected that their mother would feel much the same way. That certainty made writing the letter that much more difficult.

“Rayna, are you finished with the letter?” Meade asked, tapping lightly on her door before stepping inside.

She pulled herself out of the confused reverie she’d slipped into. “Very nearly.”

“Good,” he said, feeling the same quickening of his heartbeat that he always felt when he saw her. She was dressed as she had been last night, in the skirt and blouse of her traveling suit, and the sun that poured in on her through the window gave her a radiance he could hardly bear to see. “I don’t mean to hurry you, but if we’re going to make it back from town by dark, we need to leave soon. Unless, of course, you’d rather wait until tomorrow to post the letter.”

Rayna shook her head. “No. I want to get this behind me, and I know Mother and Papa are anxious to hear something.”

“I wish we had better news.”

“So do I.”

They looked at each other for a long moment; then Meade started backing out of the room. “I’ll let you finish while I hitch up the team.”

“I won’t be long,” she promised, returning to the letter.

Meade turned at the door, but something seemed to pull him back.

“Rayna . . .”

She glanced up. “Yes?”

“We’re going to have to talk eventually.”

She knew what he was referring to, but it wasn’t something she felt equipped to deal with. “I don’t think we have anything to talk about, Meade.

Why don’t we leave it in the past where it belongs?”

He searched her face. “Can you really do that?”

Of course she couldn’t. What had happened between them on the trail was so much a part of her she didn’t think the memory would ever fade. Her pride wasn’t about to let her admit it, though. “I don’t see why not,” she replied, drawing her shoulders up a little straighter. “You made your feelings clear, and I believe I did, too.”

“But neither of us was thinking straight.”

“I was. And I think you were, too. You offered to marry me out of a mis-guided sense of honor, and I refused. If what happened between us was a mistake, I don’t plan to spend the rest of my life paying for it.”

If it was a mistake? Wasn’t she sure? Meade wondered. He knew very well that he’d been wrong to give in to his need to make love to her. The least she 205

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could do was hate him for it. Any proper lady of breeding would have. But then, Rayna didn’t know the meaning of the word “proper.” She was a force unto herself who bowed to no rules except her own.

“Very well,” he said after a moment. “If that’s your final word . . . ?”

“It is,” she replied, hoping she had effectively covered her disappointment that he hadn’t told her it hadn’t been a mistake. “Now, may I finish this letter so that we can go?”

“Of course, your majesty,” he said sarcastically, bowing his way out of the room.

Trying to shut Meade out, Rayna looked over the long letter she’d written and added one final assurance that she would do whatever had to be done to guarantee Skylar’s return. As she signed the letter and sealed it with wax, she tried not to think about the effect this news was going to have on her father’s weakened heart.

After stowing the letter in her carpetbag, she checked Jenny’s room to be certain she’d left nothing behind, then put on her jacket and went downstairs.

Libby was waiting to see her off, and Meade was just returning from having brought the wagon around. As he came through the front door, he glanced up the stairs at her and frowned.

“What are you doing with your bag?” he asked crossly.

“I’m taking it into town.”

“Why?”

Rayna thought her reasons should be perfectly obvious. “There’s no telling how long the search for Skylar could take, and I can’t impose on your family indefinitely. I think it’s best that I take a room in Bannon.”

Libby stepped forward and met her at the bottom of the stairs. “I do wish you’d reconsider, Rayna. Having you here is certainly no imposition,” she assured her.

“And besides,” Meade added, “do you really think you can bear the sus-pense of not knowing whether we’ve heard from Case? What are you going to do? Ride out here every day to see if we’ve had word?”

Rayna hadn’t considered that. “Well, of course not,” she said hesitantly. “I suppose I just assumed someone might be able to notify me if—”

Meade cut her off with an exasperated glance. “Rayna, Eagle Creek is in the middle of the fall roundup. I don’t see how we can spare someone to go traipsing into town every day to give you a report.”

“I don’t expect daily reports,” she said tightly.