Maggie thought back over all the days Eleanor had spent in Reeve’s household, both in Sydney and at Seven Sisters, and she was awed at the woman’s capacity to ignore her own child. Never once had Eleanor shown the slightest curiosity about Elisabeth, or affection for her. “Whatever could Jamie have seen in her?” she mused.

Duncan only glared at her. He didn’t like being reminded of the man who’d plunged a knife into his shoulder.

Outside the carriage, open spaces stretched in every direction. In the far distance two kangaroos hopped across the ground at amazing speed. “Take me back, Duncan,” Maggie said at length, in an attempt at reason. “Reeve will be furious if you don’t.”

“Reeve is on his way to Auckland,” Duncan answered smoothly, and that seemed to settle that.

“Reeve!”

Some note or nuance of that voice was vaguely familiar. Reeve paused on the ship’s ramp and turned to assess the crowd gathered on shore.

A tall man with fair hair and azure eyes stepped forward, one suntanned arm lifted in tentative greeting. A slender blond woman stood on tiptoe to kiss the stranger’s cheek, then walked away toward the ticket office.

Reeve froze where he was, other passengers boarding the ship surging around him. “Jamie?” He muttered the name softly.

As the man who might be his brother drew nearer, Reeve broke the strange paralysis that had held him and started down the ramp. His throat felt thick and his stomach jittery.

Finally, the two men stood facing each other on the wharf. The stranger looked uncomfortable in his suit and fancy hat.

“Hello, Reeve,” he said quietly.

It was a moment before Reeve could speak. All the waiting and searching and hoping were behind him now; saints in heaven, this was Jamie standing before him.

Jamie’s eyes misted over, though he was grinning in that cocky way that Reeve remembered so well. “I didn’t expect you to come to meet me,” he observed.

Reeve’s anger was sudden and fathomless. “Damned if I did that,” he hissed, lapsing into the brogue. “I was off to New Zealand to find you and break your—”

Jamie flung back his head and shouted with laughter. Reeve was overwhelmed by a raging joy that blurred his vision and made his eyes sting. He stood stiffly in his brother’s embrace for a moment before returning it.

Eleanor watched the reunion, tightly clasping Elisabeth’s hand.

Reeve and Jamie were face to face, two towering men with broad shoulders and an aura of power about them. It was that faculty, mainly, that had attracted Eleanor to each man in his turn. Her heart climbed into her throat as she waited for Jamie to turn and see her standing there, with his daughter. Her daughter.