"Damn!" The drawers of the walnut secretary held the usual clutter of Kay's possessions, but no earrings. He banged them shut one by one. "Dammit to hell. Where could she have put them?"

"Can I help you, Father?" Susannah slipped from the chair and walked toward him, her voice quietly deferential. Joel had forbidden anyone to braid her hair, so it hung loose and bone-straight. As she stood before him, she looked so anxious that his heart turned over in his chest. Because he was so powerful himself, he felt her absolute helplessness and total dependence on him even more acutely. She was so solemn, so quiet, so overly polite with her old woman's vocabulary and desperate obsequiousness. He could not ever remember feeling so protective of another human being-not even his own daughter. Baby Paige had an army of caretakers to watch out for her well-being. This ancient little girl had no one but himself.

"Your mother left some earrings here."

"Earrings? Might they be blue?"

"Yes. They're sapphires. Why? Have you seen them?"

"Yesterday I saw Mother put some earrings in that bowl on the mantel."

Joel went over to the bowl and pulled out the sapphires. He smiled at her. Her lips curled in response. It was a trembling, uncertain attempt at a smile, but it was a smile nonetheless.

"What a good girl you are," he said softly. "What a very good girl." And then he hugged her.

Without either of them realizing it, six-year-old Susannah had taken the first step toward becoming the efficient wife that Joel Faulconer so badly needed.

Chapter 2

The next year was magical. Joel legally adopted her so that she was now his real daughter-no longer Susannah Lydiard, but Susannah Faulconer. She went to school for the first time, and the teacher praised her because she was the smartest student in the class. She stopped wetting the bed and began to smile more. Everyone except her mother seemed to like her.