Angelfire

by Linda Lael Miller

  Only the man facing off with Jamie shook his head. “Our business ain’t with her,” he said. Then, after a slow, hateful look at Jamie, he asked, “You remember me, don’t you, McKenna? Bert Dunnigan?”

  Jamie nodded. “I remember.”

  The sounds of bleating sheep and barking dogs mingled in the brisk, blood-scented air, but Bliss was too furious and too scared to place any importance on that. She and Jamie were in dire straits, and he’d offered her to these monsters in an effort to save himself!

  Dunnigan drew back his fist and planted a sudden, hard blow in Jamie’s midsection, and Bliss heard the air rush from his lungs. He was powerless to defend himself, since his arms were being held, and he was nearly unrecognizable for the blood on his face, but he spat in defiance all the same.

  “I’ve had this to remember you by all these years, mate,” Dunnigan said, pointing to his own disfigured nose. “Now, I’ll have me revenge. You’ll live to tell the story of the day Bert Dunnigan fixed you, but you won’t be so pretty, Jamie boy. I mean to crush that muzzle of yours just like you done to me in Queensland.”

  Recalling how Jamie had tossed her to these lions like a piece of raw meat, Bliss elbowed her way forward to stand at Dunnigan’s side. “Let me do it,” she said, glaring at her husband and knotting one hand into a fist.

  Incredibly, she thought she saw the merest hint of laughter in Jamie’s one good eye. In that instant, she knew she had to defend the man she loved, even though he had betrayed her, and hoping for the element of surprise, she lunged at Dunnigan with her knife raised high.

  A hard slap across the mouth sent her flying backward. There was an anguished grunt as Jamie’s foot wreaked vengeance on Dunnigan for the blow, and then Bliss’s head struck the hard, frost-laced road and the world receded into a darkness shot through with silver sparks.

  As her vision cleared, she saw a dog hurl itself at Dunnigan, snarling like a wolf from hell. The brigands scattered as their leader struggled against the furious beast, screaming for help.

  The bleating sound was all around Bliss. She sat up, dazed, and looked about her in bewilderment. She was surrounded by woolly, fretful sheep. And dear lord, how her head ached—

  A white-haired man with a coarse, bushy beard was crouched amid the sea of confused animals, a shepherd’s staff in his hand. If he’d been wearing a velvet cloak, he would have looked rather a lot like Father Christmas. “Dog!” he commanded sharply. “That’s enough!”

  The animal stepped back, allowing Dunnigan to scramble to his horse and escape.

  “Jamie?” the old man was saying. “Jamie boy, can you hear me, lad? It’s Cutter.”

  Bliss scrambled to her feet and waded through the sheep. “Is he—is he dead?” she choked out.

  The elderly shepherd shook his head. “No, but he’s hurt bad. Help me get him into the wagon, lass—we’ve got to take him someplace warm and see to him proper.”

  Jamie was lying still on the ground, and despite the fact that he’d virtually thrown her to the wolves, Bliss was moved to true despair by the sight. She sank to her knees beside him, heedless of the sheep and the man who called himself Cutter.

  The beggar’s badge lay in the bloody hair that matted Jamie’s chest, catching the wintry glint of the sun, and he stirred when Bliss touched his battered face. “Oh, Jamie,” she whispered in an anguish as great, in some ways, as his. “Why? Why would anyone want to do this to you?”

  Jamie opened his eyes then, tried to speak, and failed. Gently, his fingers caressed Bliss’s swollen cheek.

  “You’re going to have to walk if you can, boy,” Cutter told him with a stern sort of affection. “You’re too big for me and the lass to carry.”

  The hint of a rueful smile touched Jamie’s mouth. “Aye,” he croaked out. “Just ’elp me up, me friend. I can make it as far as the wagon.”

  “And that’s all I’m asking of you, mate,” Cutter assured him. With Bliss’s help, he hoisted Jamie to his feet.

  The strangled cry Jamie gave at the resultant pain made tears sting Bliss’s eyes, but she fought them back. This was no time for sniveling; Jamie needed her.

  Getting their moaning, half-conscious burden into the back of the wagon was a hellish task for both Cutter and Bliss, seeming to take forever. By the time he was settled, Bliss was wet with perspiration and breathing in short, desperate gasps.

  “There’s an inn back that way,” she said, crawling up beside Jamie and looking about for something to cover him with. She was trying to pull his shirt and coat closed when another shepherd joined them.

  “The cottage is closer,” Cutter answered shortly, before turning to explain the situation to his companion.

  When he’d done that, the tall white-haired man set his staff in the wagon bed and climbed up into the box without so much as a look or a word for Bliss. Dog jumped in beside her and laid his muzzle on Jamie’s chest, making a sympathetic whining sound in his throat.

  Bliss held Jamie’s head in her lap as they traveled over steep, rutted roads, despairing at every groan her wounded husband uttered, struggling against tears of confusion, fear, and pure agony of the heart. She would love Jamie McKenna all her life, she was certain, but she would never, never forgive him for offering her to those men. . . .

  After an inordinately long distance, the rig lumbered to a stop in front of a small, isolated stone cottage. Cutter climbed over the box into the bed of the wagon and caught Jamie’s chin in his callused hand, giving him a gentle shake.

  “Wake up, lad. We’re here now.”

  Jamie’s eyes rolled open. “Aye,” he said, and the word was a ragged sigh. “I suppose I ’ave to walk somewhere again.”

  Cutter’s chuckle sounded almost like a sob. “That’s right, mate. You ain’t lost any weight since we picked you up down there on the road.”

  Her eyes stinging, Bliss turned her head for a moment, in an effort to recover her composure. Far down on the main road, the sheep were moving in a shifting, bleating mass of grayish white, driven by a second shepherd and several barking dogs.

  After taking a deep breath, Bliss again helped Cutter with the laborious task of moving Jamie from the wagon to a bed in the corner of the little cottage’s main room.

  “This is—me wife,” Jamie said, in an anguished attempt at cordiality, as Bliss and Cutter placed him carefully on the mattress. Bliss knew that he was talking to distract himself from the pain, and the familiar scalding sensation seared her eyes and branded the back of her throat.

  “Charmed.” The shepherd spared barely a glance for Bliss; his manner was so stiff that it almost seemed he blamed her for Jamie’s condition.

  Jamie laughed, but the sound was half groan. “They fixed me up right and proper,” he said, as if that weren’t perfectly obvious from the bloody state of his flesh and his clothes. “But ’e didn’t get to break me nose, Cutter.”

  “Aye,” Cutter teased, with gruff fondness. “You’re as bonny as you ever were, Jamie me boy.”

  “I’ll need hot water and clean cloths,” Bliss announced, feeling forgotten.

  Cutter gave her an unreadable look, then nodded his bushy head and went off to fetch the things she’d asked for. It was then that Jamie raised one scraped, unsteady hand to caress her face.

  “They didn’t ’urt you, did they Duchess?” he rasped, and there was an expression of such tenderness in his eyes that Bliss’s breath caught in her lungs.

  Unable to speak, she shook her head.

  “God be thanked,” Jamie whispered raggedly, and then he was unconscious.

  Bliss was gentle as she cleaned and dressed his wounds, flinching every time Jamie moaned in his sleep.

  “What happened, lass?” Cutter demanded, the moment she’d finished the arduous task, covered Jamie with a warm quilt, and turned away. The shepherd still sounded and looked as though he believed her to be responsible for the whole tragedy.

  Stubbornly, Bliss put off answering until she’d wrung out the cloth and toss
ed the last basin of water away in the dooryard. She was washing her hands when she finally said wearily, “We were set upon.” She remembered how the men had torn open Jamie’s coat and shirt for a look at the medallion he wore. “It seemed that they’d known him a long time ago in—in another place; Queensland, I think.”

  Cutter was sitting at the table nursing a generous shot of the Scotch whisky he’d said he planned to pour down Jamie’s throat later, if the pain was bad. He let out a long, low whistle. “Queensland, is it?” he muttered, speaking wholly to himself. “Saints in heaven, could they be part of that lot old Increase kept about?”

  Jamie had begun to shift and writhe on the bed. “No,” he cried out hoarsely before Bliss could reach his side to lend reassurance and comfort, “don’t ’urt ’er—in the name of God, don’t ’urt ’er—”

  Cutter, it turned out, was even quicker than Bliss. He got to Jamie first and laid a huge, gentle hand on his bare shoulder. “Nobody’s hurting anybody, lad,” he vowed, raw emotion grating in his voice. “You’re safe now, and so is the lass.”

  Jamie, who had never really come awake, settled back into the depths of a healing sleep. Bliss turned away, to stand staring blindly into the little fire on the hearth, her arms folded.

  “Be you his wife?” Cutter asked suspiciously, coming to stand at her side. The old man smelled none too good, but Bliss didn’t care. She faced him with fire snapping in her eyes.

  “I am,” she answered coldly. “Do you disapprove?”

  Cutter shrugged. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I never thought the lad’d marry.”

  “Why not?” Bliss wanted to know. She was beginning to feel weak, and she yearned for something to eat, a hot cup of tea, and a long, uninterrupted sleep.

  The shepherd glanced toward the bed where Jamie lay, then shrugged his great shoulders again and said, “I guess there’s no harm in telling it true. He loved a woman, did Jamie, and she did him wrong. Near broke him to pieces, that Eleanor.”

  Bliss lowered her head, as cruelly struck by the mention of the mysterious Eleanor as she had been by Jamie’s blithe willingness to abandon her to the mercies of a band of rakehells. It was wounding to know that he had ever loved another woman.

  A single tear streaked down the side of her face and, as luck would have it, Cutter noticed.

  It softened him somehow. “Oh, lass—I’m sorry,” he said. “If you be Jamie’s wife, it’s sure that you’ve given him your heart, and here I am telling you things to cause you pain.”

  With a brave sniffle, Bliss wiped her cheek dry with the back of her hand. She lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders. “There’s no love lost between Mr. McKenna and me,” she said. “We had our own reasons for marrying—purely practical reasons.”

  There was a gentle twinkle in Cutter’s eyes, which were a soft green in color. “Aye, lass,” he agreed. “Whatever you say. Now, be you hungry or in need of tea, the way ladies sometimes is?”

  Bliss couldn’t help smiling a little. Jamie’s friend had a certain crude charm, now that she thought about it. “I’d like a cup of tea very much, if you have it,” she responded, casting a doubtful look toward the shelves beside the stove, where Cutter’s meager store of foodstuffs seemed to be kept. “And I am just a bit hungry, thank you.”

  Pleased that there was something he could do to make up for his earlier gaffe, Cutter shooed Bliss toward the table, and when she was seated, he filled a kettle with water dipped from a bucket and set it on to boil. Then, he brought out cheese and bread and Bliss ate generous helpings of both, being careful not to look at the food too closely.

  While tea usually made her feel wide-awake, that cupful set her to yawning and sent her stumbling toward the bed where Jamie lay. Seeing there was room, she lay down carefully, not wanting to cause him discomfort, and closed her eyes.

  She was only dimly aware that Cutter had spread Jamie’s blanket so that it covered her, too.

  Jamie was awake when Bliss opened her eyes, hours later, at first uncertain where she was. When she saw his swollen, bruised, and lacerated face, she remembered everything and sat bolt upright.

  She was full of sleepy exultation to see that Jamie was well enough to grin at her, and that gave her license to be angry with him. “May God curse the day you were born, Jamie McKenna!” she hissed, flinging back the blanket and moving to scramble off the bed.

  Jamie restrained her with surprising strength, considering what he’d been through. Cutter cleared his throat and made some excuse about seeing to the horses, then hurried out of the cottage.

  “Oh, no, Duchess,” her husband said evenly. “You’re not goin’ to make a remark like that and then flit off like a butterfly. What’s the matter?”

  “What’s the matter?” Bliss mimicked furiously, trying in vain to pull free of his grasp on her wrist. “What’s the matter indeed!”

  Light dawned in Jamie’s pitiably distorted face. “Oh,” he said, remembering, and his fingers went slack against Bliss’s flesh. “It’s got to be that business about my tellin’ Dunnigan to take you.”

  Just the memory stung in Bliss’s blood like snake venom. She got herself a good distance from the bed, then fitfully smoothed her skirts and hair. “If you think I give a damn whether you want me or not—”

  “I do think you give a damn,” Jamie interrupted gently, and even though Bliss was trying hard to ignore him, she could see out of the corner of one eye that he was holding out a hand to her. And she wanted so desperately, for all of it, to go to him.

  “Go hang yourself,” she blustered.

  Jamie laughed and then made a strangled sound at the pain the indulgence had cost him. A long time passed before he spoke, and when he did, his voice was soft and serious. “Bliss, look at me.”

  She didn’t want to obey, but something inside her decreed that she must. Bliss turned wounded eyes to her husband. “I hate you,” she informed him, out of self-defense.

  He sighed. “I think we’ve established that, ’aven’t we?” he replied. He patted the mattress with one hand, and Bliss’s determined heart softened a little because she could see that the knuckles were all but stripped of skin.

  If her heart had softened, she reflected, her head hadn’t. She took a chair from Cutter’s crude table, set it at a safe distance from the bed, and sat down, her arms folded across her chest. Everything in her manner was meant to tell Jamie that she’d listen, but what he said had better be worth hearing.

  He smiled again, at her ire, and then sighed heavily. “What do you think would ’ave ’appened, Bliss, if Dunnigan ’ad guessed that you’re more important to me than the breath in me lungs?”

  For a moment, Bliss was too stunned to speak. Then she remembered how crafty men could be when they were trying to get themselves out a fix. She set her jaw and refused to answer.

  “Very well, then,” Jamie conceded magnanimously. The brogue, so much in evidence moments before, faded away. “He’d have had his way with you, love, and then given you over to his men. Chances are, you and I’d have been shaking hands in heaven by now.”

  Bliss looked down at her lap. “That’s a convenient excuse, Jamie McKenna. How do I know you weren’t just trying to save your own hide?”

  Jamie settled back against his pillows. “Look inside your heart,” he replied wearily, and then he fell silent.

  Bliss slid forward in her chair, peering at him in the shadowy light from Cutter’s kerosene lamps. “Are you asleep?” she demanded.

  There was no answer, so Bliss went to stand in front of the fire, with her back to Jamie and all the complicated questions he raised. As Cutter made a great to-do outside and then came in, she shook her head in despondent wonder.

  If only she hadn’t picked Jamie McKenna’s barn to sleep in that night.

  Cutter made a dramatic business of suppressing a yawn. “I guess I’ll just go on up to the loft and rest me eyes,” he said pointedly. And when Bliss looked away from the fire, he was halfway up a la
dder affixed to the far wall of the cottage.

  “Cutter?” she ventured shyly.

  “Aye, lass,” the old man replied, hoisting himself into the loft with a lusty grunt of fatigue. “What is it?”

  “Thank you,” Bliss responded. “Thank you for everything.”

  Cutter uttered a gruff disclaimer and crawled off into the shadows of the loft. Within minutes, he was snoring fit to shake the floorboards.

  Smiling, Bliss banked the fire, blew out the lanterns, slipped off her soiled shirtwaist and skirt, and crawled into bed beside Jamie. He stirred as she settled beneath the blanket, but didn’t awaken.

  For the next little while, Bliss lay looking up at the darkness, silently thanking God that Cutter and Dog had come along when they had. If it hadn’t been so, she had to confess, she and Jamie might truly have been “shaking hands in heaven” at that very moment.

  There was a shifting on the mattress beside her, along with a muffled groan. “Duchess?”

  Bliss laid her hand on Jamie’s arm. “Yes, my love,” she said softly, “I’m here.”

  At her touch and words of quiet reassurance, Jamie went back to his rest.

  Much later, in the depths of the night, Bliss opened her eyes, uncertain as to whether she’d been roused by a sound or a feeling. Fear possessed her, and she groped in the darkness with frantic hands. Finding the bed empty, except for herself, she whispered, “Jamie?”

  “Here I am, darlin’,” he told her. She heard the door close and the draft that had chilled her began to dissolve.

  “What are you doing out of bed?” she asked angrily as she felt the mattress give under his weight.

  He stretched out beside her. “No gentleman over the age of two stays in bed to do what I just did,” he said.

  “Oh,” came the meek response. “Well, good night, then.”

  There was a mischievous silence. “I need something for the pain,” Jamie said.

  Bliss sighed. “There’s Scotch on the table. Shall I get it for you?”

  Beneath the blankets, his fingers began unfastening her camisole. “It isn’t Scotch I want,” he replied in a low and husky voice, cupping her bare breast in his hand and training the nipple to the shape he wanted with the pad of his thumb.