Prologue

Adam sat in a chair next to the bed watching his wife and child sleep, knowing that very soon utter chaos would erupt in the currently peaceful house. Having just arrived from San Francisco in a private coach, his first priority had been to get Rebecca and the baby settled comfortably while they waited for Dr. Paul Martin to decide the next steps to be taken to bring his wife back to him. She was there in body, but her mind, her spirit and her emotions…even her recognition of him was clouded behind a shroud of opium addiction.

His child would be around two years and three months old, but he hadn't even been introduced. Rebecca had given birth after she had been kidnapped and sold into white slavery. He hadn't known she had been pregnant when she was taken, and as far as he knew, she hadn't either.

After finding that Rebecca had married a Cartwright, her missing brother, Robbie, had intended to hold her for ransom. Unfortunately the men he had allied himself with had other plans…to sell her into oblivion and disappear, never to be traced to the kidnapping. Her brother had been killed on the way to San Francisco; the knowledge of why trapped only in Rebecca's mind.

Following the trail to San Francisco, Adam found he had been only a few hours too late to prevent the man who bought her from leaving on a ship bound for the unknown. Now, as he sat watching her sleep, he remembered standing on the dock in San Francisco for hours, looking out over the ocean for any sign of her and finding none.

The State Department spent three long years chasing after General Wei Jun, a known opium smuggler for the British. It was rumored that he had paid the highest price ever in the slavery trade for Rebecca to become his wife because of her blonde hair, fair skin and unusual eyes, one the green color of the lofty Ponderosa pines in the forest and the other, the amber of a field of hay in sunshine.

It had been the Chinese community of San Francisco through their secret society of Tong who had finally lured General Wei back to San Francisco with the promise of $25,000 in silver ingots to view, touch, and pay their respects to Wei's Yellow Flower. The small war that had taken place had left General Wei and his men dead. The Cartwrights had provided the silver which the Tong had kept; a small price to pay for the return of Adam's wife, and as it turned out, his child, the identity of whom, with his thick, black curls and dimples, there could be no mistake.

The woman who had taken care of Rebecca for those three years, Chi Mei, had also been Wei's slave and had come back to the Ponderosa with the Cartwrights to help care for Rebecca and the baby. After Rebecca had called to her before they left San Francisco, Adam knew Rebecca trusted Chi Mei; at that moment, Chi Mei had been the only one she trusted.

During those three years without his wife, he could only imagine what horrors she had endured. Now, sitting next to her, he knew he was about to find out everything. He didn't want to know for himself, already feeling he hadn't protected her, that he hadn't kept his promises to her, that he had been unable to find her. But he knew that in order to bring her back, he would have to understand and face all the fear, all the anger, all the pain in her…and all her disappointment in him…that suddenly being without the opium would bring to the surface.

And the child…the innocent, small boy who would never comprehend what had been done to him…what she had done to him to save him, and who might not be strong enough to survive the withdrawal of his need. Adam had resisted holding him, wanting to ignore the love that already filled his heart for the child…his son…questioning whether he had the strength to save them both, knowing full well he might have to say goodbye to a son he could touch, but never know.

Even if Rebecca could successfully beat the addiction, would she be the same? Would she still be the woman he had fallen in love with so easily; a woman who wasn't educated or refined, a woman who had been poor all her life, but a woman whose eyes saw wonder in everything, who heard beauty in words that many people couldn't comprehend, and a woman who sought out the good in everyone, regardless of how bad a person was. She had always had a smile for everyone, including old Mrs. Bailey who, after her husband died, had become bitter toward the world. Rebecca had changed Mrs. Bailey's life in one act of kindness, one word of interest, one caring soul. That was his Rebecca.

After resolving that he would never find a woman he could love who would stay with him, he prayed that God would send him an angel; and then she appeared in one of the Ponderosa's south pastures, close to death. He remembered how he had been drawn to that pasture that day when there was no reason for him to be there. Adam chuckled out loud, remembering the mental conversation he imagined having with God when he had made up his mind to ask her to marry him, trying to make sense of the voice in the back of his head that kept telling him to go to the south pasture the day he found her.

God: Adam, go to the south pasture.

Adam: Why? I don't need to go to the south pasture.

God: Adam, when you ask God for something, don't you think you should trust him?

Adam: I asked for an angel. How could there possibly be any heavenly beings in the south pasture?

God: Are you forgetting who I am?

Ben Cartwright carefully pushed the door of the bedroom open, creasing his eyebrows as he listened to his son's quiet laughter. "What's so funny?"

"I was just remembering a conversation I had with God," said Adam, smiling, looking back toward Rebecca.

Ben raised his eyebrows, surprised that his son would have had a conversation with God, and wishing he could have been a fly on the inside of Adam's skull, listening. Remembering why he had come, his smile disappeared. "Paul is here."

Adam's smile was gone as quickly as his father's. "I don't want her left alone…in case she wakes up and doesn't know where she is."

"What about Chi Mei?"

"She needs to be part of this, Pa. She knows what Becca's gone through. We need to know that."

"Come on, then. I'll send Joe back up."

Adam hesitated, then slowly rose from the chair, looking back at his wife before he left the room, dreading what he knew was about to begin.