Angelfire

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Found her in the barn,” Mr. McKenna said, and that was his only comment. He went to the washstand in a far corner of the huge kitchen and poured water from a crockery pitcher into a basin.

  Bliss felt a blush moving beneath her freckles. She smiled lamely at the cook, who responded with a pleasant look but said nothing, and Mr. McKenna made a tremendous splashing as he washed.

  Feeling very self-conscious, Bliss intertwined her fingers in front of her and rocked once or twice on the worn heels of her high-button shoes. “I suppose you’re wondering what I was doing sleeping in your barn,” she piped, though Mr. McKenna had not actually inquired about that peculiar occurrence. “Well, I’ll be happy to tell you.”

  The handsome farmer rolled up the sleeves of his blue cambric workshirt and grinned. “That’s good of you,” he remarked as the cook added another place to the table, which had been set for one, then discreetly left the kitchen. “Won’t you sit down?”

  Bliss was stung by the mocking formality of the question, as well as by the courtly bow her host executed. With a sniff, she settled herself at the table, still wearing her coat. The smell of the fried meat and eggs made her light-headed, she was so hungry.

  “It just so happens that I’m on my way to America,” she announced, scooping food onto her plate with as much dignity as she could manage.

  The ice-blue eyes were twinkling again. “An ambitious jaunt, that. What’s in the States?” Mr. McKenna took what remained of the eggs and mutton, politely failing to notice that Bliss had left him relatively less to eat than one might have expected.

  Bliss swallowed before answering, for even though she had spent the night in a stranger’s barn and been forced by circumstances to accept what amounted to charity, her manners had not deserted her. She thought of all the glowing letters she’d received from her mother over the years, and she could hardly wait to get to the place.

  “Everything,” she said, in a musing, dreamy voice that would surely have brought desultory comment from Alexander—had Alexander been there, that is. She peered across the table at her benefactor, squinting a little because her eyes were tired. “Have you ever been to America?”

  “Do you need spectacles?” Mr. McKenna countered, chewing.

  Bliss was mildly insulted. “No, I don’t,” she snapped, “and it was rude of you to change the subject that way!”

  He looked amused; it was obvious that he didn’t care in the slightest whether other people perceived him as mannerly or not. “Sorry,” he said, with an utter lack of sincerity.

  If Bliss hadn’t been so ravenous and the food hadn’t been so good, she would have gotten up from her chair and walked out of Mr. McKenna’s house at that moment. As it was, she refrained from comment and continued to eat.

  “I know a Yank,” remarked the man across the table from Bliss.

  She stopped eating and leaned forward in her chair. She didn’t mention her mother, for if she did, she’d surely be asked to explain the whys and wherefores of the woman’s departure. “Really?”

  A brisk nod was the only reply; Bliss’s obvious interest seemed to be lost on McKenna.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Well, who is this person?” she demanded.

  The farmer gave her a look of feigned surprise, mingled with amusement, and shrugged his powerful shoulders. “My sister-in-law, Maggie.”

  Bliss scooted forward on her chair. Her mother had told her a great deal about America, but there were still so many questions that sometimes Bliss thought she wouldn’t be able to contain them. “Does she live near here? Might I meet her?”

  McKenna rolled his remarkable blue eyes, as though Bliss’s request had been totally untoward. “No to both questions, love—she lives in Australia.”

  Bliss allowed the inappropriate endearment her host had used to pass unchallenged. She was very curious about this Maggie woman. “Why did she leave America, do you know?”

  “I don’t believe I ever asked her,” he replied, with a pensive frown that furrowed his forehead. “Things have a way of getting hectic when a bloke’s around Maggie McKenna.”

  An odd sensation of jealousy rippled through Bliss’s spirit, and she sat up a little straighter in her chair, her food forgotten even though her hunger had not been assuaged. “You know my first name,” she said stiffly. “In all fairness, I should be given yours.”

  Another grin creased the sun-browned face. “It’s Jamie,” he complied, with a near-elegant nod of his head. Then, before Bliss could say anything else at all, he added, “It’s a very long way to America, you know. Exactly how were you planning to get there?”

  He spoke as though all her plans had been canceled, and Bliss bridled with annoyance. “Why, I was planning to swim, of course,” she answered tartly.

  Jamie favored her with an unfriendly look that brought a strange warmth to her blood. “Whoever named you Bliss was a fanciful sort,” he said. A moment later, he was waving his fork at her accusingly. “You’ve run away from a husband or a father, haven’t you?”

  He’d struck very close to the truth—so close that Bliss’s face heated and she had to avert her eyes for a moment. When she had recovered her aplomb, she met Jamie’s snapping gaze squarely and replied, “Not a husband, actually. I was only betrothed to Alexander—we never married.”

  Jamie scowled at her, as though she’d caused him great trial and turmoil by sleeping one night in his barn and eating some of his food. “I’ve got better things to do,” he informed her, “than take you back to wherever you came from, lass.”

  Bliss pushed away her plate and slid back her chair. No one was taking her back to Wellington and that grasping, drooling old man her father wanted her to marry, ever. “I’ve imposed upon you quite long enough, Mr. McKenna,” she said, in a cold voice. “I’ll be on my way now.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Jamie responded flatly, finishing his breakfast. “It’s winter out there and you’re obviously a bit down on your luck. You’ll have a bath and get yourself into bed.”

  Bliss felt her throat close painfully. Her ink-blue eyes went round and she managed to squeeze out one squeaky word. “Bed?”

  Mr. McKenna’s laughter came suddenly, uproariously. “And now she thinks I want me way with ’er,” he marveled aloud, once his mirth had subsided a little. His voice was thick with the brogue that had only been hinted at before.

  Her face bright red behind its sprinkling of freckles, Bliss was too insulted to be relieved that her virtue was in no immediate danger. “I just thought—well, a man living all alone, so far from civilization—”

  “I don’t live alone,” Jamie reminded her, “and Auckland’s near enough.”

  Bliss would have been pleased to learn that Auckland, her destination, was close by, if she hadn’t felt so bothered by the idea of that lovely Maori woman living there in that sturdy, no-nonsense house. She sniffed haughtily to hide her uncertainties and said, “If I can truly be sure that you won’t molest me, Mr. McKenna, I would very much appreciate that bath you offered.”

  A spark danced in his eyes. “I’m not sure I can bathe you, Duchess, and still stay within the bounds of civilized behavior.”

  Rich color throbbed in Bliss’s face. “I wasn’t speaking literally, of course,” she told him in tones of cold rigidity, “and you are a rascal for implying that I was.”

  The laughter lingered in Jamie McKenna’s gaze even though the rest of his face showed a most serious composure. “Have you had quite enough to eat,” he asked quietly, glancing pointedly at Bliss’s empty plate, “or should I have another sheep slaughtered?”

  Before Bliss could think of a suitably scathing response, the Maori woman returned. Her skin was a warm sandalwood color and her rich black hair flowed down her back in glistening ebony waves. Her figure was at once slender and womanly, and she wore a skirt and an off-the-shoulder blouse. The scent of some mysterious spice floated around her as she cleared the table, her dark eyes meeting neither Jamie’s gaze nor Bliss’s.


  Bliss was dying to know the woman’s name, but she was damned if she’d ask. The relationship between Mr. McKenna and his cook was none of her affair, after all.

  Oh, but the low, companionable note in his voice as he addressed the lady made Bliss ache in an inexplicable way. “Carra, Miss Stafford is in need of a bath, a fire, and a feather bed, in roughly that order,” he said. “Will you see to it?”

  Even though the two hadn’t touched, it was almost as though Jamie had reached out and squeezed Carra’s slender brown hand. Carra nodded before turning to carry the plates and flatware away to the cast-iron sink.

  Bliss put her feeling of bereftness down to her hasty flight from Wellington and the rigors involved. She lowered her eyes, and when she looked up again, Jamie was gone and Carra was standing beside the table, waiting politely for Bliss to notice her.

  There was a stairway at the back of the kitchen, and Carra led the way up it. The second floor of the house was as practical and austere as the rooms Bliss had glimpsed downstairs. A certain sadness possessed her; she sensed that Mr. McKenna didn’t truly live here—this was only a place where he sometimes stopped.

  “Mr. McKenna travels a great deal, doesn’t he?” she asked, in a quiet voice, as Carra pushed open the door of a room at the far end of the hallway.

  The Maori woman looked back at Bliss over one smooth brown shoulder and nodded, a flicker of surprise appearing, just briefly, in her eyes. “Yes.”

  There were a lot of other questions Bliss wanted to ask, and all of them were patently improper. She was going to have to learn to curb her curiosity before it got her into serious trouble.

  With the utmost courtesy, Carra waited to one side of the doorway until Bliss had entered. The room was spacious, or perhaps it only appeared so because the narrow bed, wash-stand, and chest took up so little space. There was a small stone fireplace on one wall, and Mr. McKenna’s attractive housekeeper crossed the room to kneel on the hearth and wrestle with the damper.

  The chill of winter was upon Bliss’s soul, as well as her body. Hugging herself and speaking in a very bright voice, she tried to make conversation. “Did you know that it’s summer in America at this very moment?”

  Carra showed her true feelings for the first time: a look of indulgent disdain moved across her face and then was gone. “I’ll bring up the tub and some hot water soon,” she said. Her tones were melodic, her accent no different from Bliss’s own. “Have you a bag?”

  Bliss remembered the satchel she’d left behind in Mr. McKenna’s barn and clapped one hand to her mouth. Lord knew she had little enough in the way of worldly goods now that she’d left Wellington in such a hurry. She was going to have to be more careful or her best dress, her leatherbound diary, and the ribbon-bound letters her mother had sent from San Francisco would be lost as well. “I’ve left it in the hay,” she said, starting toward the door.

  In the hallway, she collided with Mr. McKenna, who was wearing his heavy coat again and carrying her bedraggled old carpetbag.

  “Looking for this, then?” he asked, with that touch of the Irish making a soft, lilting music in his voice.

  Greedily, Bliss reached out for her bag and clutched it close. After a moment, though, she relaxed. “I can be most forgetful,” she confessed.

  Jamie said nothing in response; he simply looked at Bliss in an odd way for several seconds and only when Carra cleared her throat did he turn and walk away.

  “I’ll be back with the tub in a few minutes,” Carra said, her eyes never quite meeting Bliss’s as she lingered in the hallway. “The water will take a while to heat, of course.”

  “Of course,” Bliss responded, wanting nothing so much as to be alone with her thoughts. It was a pity, she reflected, that Alexander had never engendered the feeling of angry sweetness in her that Jamie McKenna did. Had that been the case, she wouldn’t have run away.

  She gave the door a push and it closed with a click. Biting her lower lip, she carried her bag to the chest and set it down. After a few moments of struggle with the catch, she opened the satchel and took out her journal. In her haste, she had left Wellington without her pen and ink.

  After tucking the journal back inside her bag, Bliss went to the door and opened it decisively. She would further trouble the long-suffering Carra for a bottle of ink and a nibbed pen.

  She was down the rear stairs and partway through the kitchen—enormous kettles of water had already been set on the stove to heat—when she heard the conversation drifting toward her from the hallway that led to the front of the house.

  “Just let her go on to Auckland and catch a ship to the States,” Carra was saying, her voice low but full of anger.

  “They’d chew her up and spit her out, those Yanks,” Jamie muttered. He was clearly annoyed, though his hostility seemed to be directed toward the entire population of the United States instead of Carra.

  “What concern is that of yours?” his housekeeper demanded.

  There was a chilly pause and then Jamie responded, with a cutting lightness, “I found her in me barn, love. I guess I ’ave a proprietary interest.”

  Instinct told Bliss that she was about to be discovered; she whirled and dashed back across the kitchen, pretending to arrive as Carra stormed in, glaring.

  It didn’t seem like a good time to ask for a pen and ink. “I came to see if you needed any help,” Bliss lied.

  Carra’s wide brown eyes burned with a pagan fire. “I’ve gotten along remarkably well without your help until now,” she replied.

  Bliss retreated a step, at a loss for words.

  Carra muttered something, crossing the room and wrenching open the door of a huge and well-stocked pantry. She disappeared inside and then came out, moments later, carrying an enormous copper washtub. “You can bathe here,” she said, letting the tub clatter to the floor. “I’m not about to carry water upstairs for you.”

  So much for the ignorant native, cowed by the conquerors, Bliss thought to herself. With a lift of her chin, she countered, “I’ll carry the water myself. I don’t make a habit of bathing in strange men’s kitchens.”

  “That,” retorted Carra sourly, “is a big relief.”

  Bliss had tried hard to refrain from asking impertinent questions, but one slipped past her resolve. “Do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you bathe right here, in Mr. McKenna’s kitchen?”

  Carra stared at her for a moment and then laughed, and there was a begrudging warmth in her face. “You are an odd little creature. Tell me, do you always ask such outrageous questions?”

  Bliss sighed and began unbuttoning her coat. “Yes, most times I do.”

  Carra’s expression had turned solemn again, in the wink of an eye. She regarded Bliss in silence for an instant, then took the patched, hay-flecked coat from her arms and carried it outside.

  Bliss bent to pick up the copper tub—it was lighter than it looked, but still cumbersome—and lugged it upstairs and into her room. To her discomfort, Jamie McKenna was kneeling on the hearth, lighting the fire he’d laid. When the blaze caught, he rose, turning to face Bliss.

  There was a deadly kind of grace in the way he moved; Bliss sensed that Jamie McKenna was a man who could look after himself, even in the most desperate situations.

  She let the tub fall to the floor with a clanging ker-thump, feeling stricken in a way that defied explanation.

  “Carra’s refused to haul up your bathwater, has she?”

  The question was mundane enough to bring Bliss back to her senses. “Yes, but that’s quite all right. I can carry my own water.”

  Jamie’s gaze was fixed on Bliss’s bodice, and she remembered that she was wearing the black silk gown she’d had on when she’d raced out of Alexander’s house in Wellington. Pearl and jet beads trimmed the hemline and the plunging neckline.

  “What happened?” Jamie asked quietly, moving his eyes to Bliss’s blushing face with obvious effort. “Exactly what—or who—are you ru
nning away from?”

  Bliss felt the strangest urge to pour out her heart to this impudent stranger, to tell him all about her father’s determination to marry her off to Alexander Zate, but in the end she held her peace. The less Mr. McKenna knew, the better.

  She drew a deep and rather shaky breath. “I’ve already told you,” she said. “I plan to travel to America.”

  Jamie arched one eyebrow and ran a hand through his rumpled, wheat-colored hair. “Where the streets are paved with gold,” he gibed.

  Bliss squared her shoulders. “I don’t believe that nonsense.”

  “Good,” he responded, and that strange irritation was back in his voice again. “Because that’s exactly what it is. Nonsense, claptrap, drivel.”

  He blurred a little, and Bliss squinted to bring him back into focus.

  “You are very prejudiced, Mr. McKenna.”

  Jamie looked insulted. “What?”

  “You dislike Americans, and I can’t think why. Your own sister-in-law is one, after all.” Bliss jutted out her chin a little way, to show that she didn’t approve of his narrow viewpoint. “But, then, you referred to her as a ’Yank,’ didn’t you?”

  Jamie’s handsome face was mottled with annoyance, and the brogue was back, thicker than before. “I’ll not be defendin’ me opinions to the likes of you, miss, and it so ’appens that I love me brother’s wife very much! They don’t come any finer than ’is Maggie!”

  I love me brother’s wife. The words lodged in Bliss’s mind like a fishbone in the throat, scratching painfully and making it hard for her to breathe. She couldn’t think why an insight into a stranger’s innermost feelings should hurt her so.

  She turned away, baffled by the effect this man had on her, and whispered inanely, “Have you a pen and ink that I might borrow?”

  There was no reply, but for the rhythmic sound of Jamie’s bootheels as he crossed the bare hardwood floor. The door closed behind him with a click that, for all its quietness, made Bliss start slightly.