With a weary sigh she eased back onto her heels and discovered that her reflection had been replaced by another. Startled, she looked up and found Sun Hawk standing over her, his arrival as dramatically unexpected as the first time she’d seen him.
“Why do you speak to the water?” he asked without ceremony or introduction, his head cocked in curiosity as he looked from Skylar to the bucket and back again.
Though Skylar had discovered many gaps in her knowledge of the Apache language, it was easy for her to slip into speaking it because her friends rarely spoke English any longer. She also knew from long experience that the Apache rarely wasted time with pleasantries. They spoke their minds and expected others to do the same. Skylar was finding that more difficult to adapt to than the constant use of their language, and locating her voice and her wits with Sun Hawk towering over her made it even harder. “I was speaking to my sister,” she replied after a moment.
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Sun Hawk’s dark brows went up in surprise. All of his people claimed kin-ship with various animals, but he had never known anyone related to water before. “The water is your sister?” he asked, crouching beside her.
“No,” she answered, wondering how she could explain her way out of this when her mind had turned to muddled mush. “When I looked in the water, I thought of my sister, and the words in my heart were spoken aloud.”
Sun Hawk nodded thoughtfully. “Why do you not say the words to her yourself rather than asking the water to do it for you?”
“Because she is far away.”
“She is free? Living in the mountains?” he asked with a kind of envy that Skylar might not have understood a fortnight ago.
“She is free, but she lives on a ranch far above this place.”
“Why was she not brought here with you and your father?”
Skylar was finding it increasingly difficult to remain still with Sun Hawk so close. His deep voice aroused feelings inside her that she didn’t want to be having. He was dealing with her matter-of-factly, and she wanted to be able to respond with the same detachment. “Because my Apache father is not hers.
My sister is not of the People.”
Sun Hawk frowned. He had heard this woman call Consayka “my Apache father” once before, and this puzzled him. And now he learned that she had a sister who was not a sister. Odd. There was so much about the Verdes that he did not understand, and this woman was the greatest mystery of all. Since the night he had first seen her in the glow of the fire, her eyes as wide as those of a startled doe, Sun Hawk had watched her. She was as beautiful as a sunrise, and her people treated her with great deference, yet it did not seem to Sun Hawk that she belonged here. He had learned that she was called Skylar, but the name was even more incomprehensible than she was.
That was why he had approached her when he saw her kneeling by the stream. He did not like mysteries. He wanted to understand her and the other Verdes so that he would know how to react if trouble sprang up between this woman’s people and his. Gradually he was learning about the others through his conversations with Consayka, but the old man had never volunteered any information about his daughter, and Sun Hawk could not ask for fear that his curiosity would be misinterpreted.
The best course, it had seemed to him, was to talk to the woman called Skylar directly.
“Why do you refer to your father so strangely?” he asked.
Skylar wasn’t sure how to answer him. “I have had three fathers,” she finally told him, unable to hide her sadness. “The first was a White Mountain Apache, but I do not remember him very well. I was taken from my village and sold as a slave to a white man named Templeton who took me home and 89
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loved me as much as he did the daughter of his blood. Now I have been taken from that family, and my good friend Consayka has given me his protection by calling me his daughter. It is an honor I carry proudly.”
Now Sun Hawk understood why she seemed so different. “You lived among the white men willingly?”
“I was only five years old, and these people were kind to me. What choice did I have?”
Sun Hawk nodded, but he did not think the white man Templeton had done this woman a real kindness. “Is it hard for you to be an Apache again?”
“You have seen that it is.” She lowered her eyes. “I want very much to go home.”
Sun Hawk looked down at her, studying the way her dark lashes brushed against her cheeks. She was beautiful and sad, but there was nothing he could do to help her. It surprised him to realize how deeply he regretted that, and how profoundly she touched him.
Perhaps I have been in mourning too long, he thought. The thought startled him so much that he stood up abruptly, drawing Skylar’s questioning gaze up with him. Her eyes were soft, but Sun Hawk had been immune to soft eyes for nearly two years.
If it was indeed time for him to lay his beloved wife to rest, it could not be for this woman whose heart yearned to be far away.
Without another word he turned on his heel and departed, leaving Skylar wondering what had happened and why he had looked at her so strangely.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were nervous,” Meade said, looking down at Rayna’s hands. They were clasped together, resting demurely in her lap, but her knuckles were white and there was nothing serene about her posture. Her whole body fairly radiated tension.
“I am nervous, Major, and this isn’t a good time to tease me about it,” she said matter-of-factly as she looked across the room to General Whitlock’s office door.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make light of your dilemma,” he said, then fell silent again. He really hadn’t meant to be callous; it was just that he always had difficulty controlling his burgeoning feelings for her when she looked vulnerable like this. In the last two days he’d spent a considerable amount of time with her, and in that time he’d experienced more emotional ups and downs than he had at any other point in his life. One moment he wanted to strangle her; the next, she had him laughing out loud with her tart repartee. A single glance from her could reduce him to speechlessness. She could flay him alive with her razor-sharp tongue, and the absurdity was that he had begun to look forward to the lashings. It was insane.
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General Whitlock had returned to Fort Marcy within twenty-four hours of learning that he was no longer the king of this particular hill. Meade had tried immediately to set up an appointment for Rayna, but to no avail. And it was just as well, he’d reasoned. Whitlock had arrived in a high dudgeon and had gone on an uncontrolled rampage, like a child whose favorite toy had been taken away. His bellowing and barking could be heard throughout the building as he took out his wrath on everyone who crossed his path. It wouldn’t have been a good time to try to get him to admit that he or anyone in his command had made a mistake.
Fearing that the general’s temper hadn’t had nearly enough time to mellow, Meade had counseled Rayna to wait another few days before putting her suit to Whitlock, but naturally she hadn’t listened. With or without Meade’s help she had been determined to get an audience with the general at the first possible moment, and Meade had been too much of a gentleman to abandon her.
He had pressed Lieutenant Bascomb to schedule an appointment and had demanded that Rayna allow him to accompany her to the meeting. To his amazement, she had agreed without a fight.
And now they were waiting in Whitlock’s anteroom, Rayna with her hands turning white in her lap and Meade trying to ignore his sympathy for her—as well as other, stronger emotions.