Jamie was watching her in astonishment. “You wouldn’t ’ave needed me knife, Duchess,” he remarked. “You could ’ave talked those bleeders to death.”
Bliss was not going to be distracted from her point. “If you didn’t want to marry me, Jamie McKenna, why didn’t you refuse to be bullied into taking the vows? And if you don’t care about me, kindly explain why you left your knife behind in the wagon seat yesterday.”
Jamie shrugged, evidently expecting that gesture to pass as an answer. Bliss noticed that he was very careful not to look at her.
They traveled in complete silence for a great distance, and then Jamie drew the wagon to the side of the road. He wound the reins around the brake lever after setting it in place with an awkward movement of one foot. His face was pale beneath the cuts and bruises.
“Cutter sent along some food,” he said, getting down from the wagon and then walking away from Bliss and disappearing into the trees lining the road.
Bliss, having had nothing to eat since the crust of bread at breakfast, was ravenous. She opened the bundle the old man had packed to find cheese, dried meat, and two slightly withered apples. When Jamie returned, she offered him a share, but he shook his head and turned his attention to scanning the road stretching ahead.
Bliss, concerned, started to protest that he needed food to keep up his strength.
Jamie gave her a bleak look and then said distantly, “Enough, Duchess. I don’t need you telling me when to eat.”
Bliss’s own appetite, usually insatiable, faded away at the lack of warmth in his voice. She wrapped what remained of their meal, tucked the bundle back under the seat, and barely trusting Jamie not to drive away without her, made her way into the woods to attend to some business of her own.
When she returned, Jamie was seated in the wagon, his face set grimly against the pain.
“I’m sure I could drive,” Bliss offered brightly, without thinking before she spoke. “That way, you could lie in the back of the wagon and rest.”
Jamie’s response was a glower and a harsh, “I told you, woman—I don’t want you mollycoddlin’ me. Now back off.”
Bliss’s eyes burned with tears, but she was quick to turn her head away, in the hope that Jamie wouldn’t see. What had happened to the passionate, vulnerable man who had loved and been loved so willingly the night before? And what of the words he’d said just that morning, that Bliss had turned hell to heaven for him?
For all her efforts to preserve her pride, a sob escaped Bliss and Jamie heard her, for he immediately stopped the wagon and, taking her shoulders in his raw-knuckled hands, turned her to face him.
With his thumbs, he brushed the tears from her face. “Try to understand,” he said, his voice no more than a husky whisper. “No one, anywhere, ’as ever scared me the way you do, Duchess.”
It was probably the worst thing Bliss could have said, but the words were out before she was able to stop them. “Not even Eleanor? Or Peony?”
Jamie’s hands, warming and caressing her icy, wind-stung cheeks only a fraction of a moment before, fell away.
By then, there seemed no point in turning back, since the grave mistake had already been made. Bliss compounded it. “Cutter told me that you loved Eleanor,” she said.
Jamie had taken up the reins again, and he brought them down on the horses’ backs with a near-cruel force. “I ought to pull that old gossip’s beard out!” he bellowed over the clomping of hooves and the frightened nickers of the team.
Even though she knew it was highly inadvisable, Bliss couldn’t help laughing at the image that sprang up in her mind. She covered her mouth with one hand and held on to the seat with the other as Jamie drove the team to a near run.
“What’s so funny!” he roared at Bliss, who should have been intimidated but was not.
She laughed until tears were streaking down her face, scalding her cold-reddened skin, and Jamie grudgingly slowed the wagon to a more judicious pace.
“I could do without all this interference!” he fussed, and he sounded so ridiculous that Bliss squealed with amusement and was carried away all over again.
Presently, her mirth subsided, but Jamie’s high dudgeon did not. They had reached their destination and were pulling to a stop in the gathering dusk before he said another word.
“Go and tell Carra to warm some brandy,” he told Bliss abruptly, easing down from the box and moving with obvious stiffness to begin unhitching the exhausted team.
Bliss knew he was hurting and, for that reason, she was willing to forgive an attitude that would normally have been insufferable. “I think,” she said, bunching her skirts in her hands and climbing down from the wagon seat with care, “that I can manage to heat brandy without Carra’s help, Mr. McKenna.”
Jamie made a rude, grumbling sound and went on about his work. After allowing herself a notion of putting her tongue out at him—Bliss doubted that he’d even noticed the gesture—she turned and started across the barnyard toward the sturdy house. A light burned in the parlor window, and Bliss quickened her pace at the promise of warmth and food and maybe a taste of brandy for herself.
Carra met her at the front door with a face turned to stone. “You came back,” she said.
Bliss knew the time was wrong to announce that she and Jamie were married. She wasn’t without sympathy for Carra, after all, because she knew what it was to love Jamie McKenna and have no hope of ever being loved in return. “Yes,” she answered simply. “But I doubt that I’ll be here for long. Carra, Mr. McKenna was—injured—on the journey. I’m going to warm some brandy for him, and I wonder if you’d mind making a nice fire in his room so that he can rest in comfort.”
Carra’s determined dislike seemed to be giving way, at least briefly. She nodded, an expression resembling politeness visible in her eyes before she turned toward the stairway.
Bliss found the brandy Jamie had asked for toward the back of the house, in an austere-looking room that seemed to be a study. There were account books stacked on the neat surface of the desk and, on impulse, mostly because she’d never seen Jamie’s handwriting, she opened the cover of one.
Columns of neat and very impressive numbers filled the pages. Jamie’s penmanship was as practical-looking as the manner in which he’d furnished his house, and Bliss was smiling when the voice sounded unexpectedly and startled her.
“Thinking like your dear father, are you?” Jamie asked.
Bliss’s smile faded as she realized what the man was implying. He actually thought she was examining his books to see how she could profit by the marriage. “If you weren’t already beaten to a pulp,” she said stiffly, “I’d kick you in the shin.”
He ran a hand through his hair and then approached, taking the brandy bottle from Bliss in a peremptory grab. “Good night—Mrs. McKenna,” he said, and every word had the lethal sharpness of the knife he was rarely without. He’d turned his back and was leaving the room when Bliss stopped him quite effectively.
“You needn’t say good night to me yet,” she said, her tone deliberately coy. “There’ll be time for that when we’ve put out the lamp and snuggled down into our lovely warm bed.”
Jamie turned slowly to face her, the brandy bottle clutched tightly in his hand.
“That’s right,” Bliss said, responding cheerfully to his silence. “I mean to share your bed tonight. After all, Mr. McKenna, we are man and wife.”
Before he could reply, Bliss swept past him, leading the way along the hallway and up the stairs. A backward glance revealed that Jamie’s jaw was stubbornly set, but he was following.
Chapter 9
CARRA WAS PUTTING AN EXTRA QUILT ON THE BED, AND A BRIGHT fire already blazed in the hearth, when Jamie and Bliss walked into the room. The Maori girl’s beautiful dark eyes slashed from one to the other. Carra said nothing.
Bliss knew that if Carra was to be told of the marriage, however unconventional it was, Jamie should be the one to do the talking. With some difficulty, she pried
the brandy bottle out of his hand and left the room.
The kitchen was warm and lighted by lamps, and there was a savory lamb stew simmering on the cookstove. The delicious scent made Bliss’s stomach grumble, and she hastened to find a pan for heating Jamie’s brandy. He could have his nip of the sauce if he wanted; for herself, Bliss wanted a bowlful of that stew.
She found a small kettle and poured half the brandy into it, setting it on the stove. Then, after locating a bowl and spoon, she served herself supper. Bliss hadn’t realized, until she began to eat, how ravenous she really was.
She’d taken only a few bites when the unexpected happened. The brandy must have gotten too hot, for there was a sizzling sound, followed by a whoosh-whoom fit to freeze the blood, and then the entire stove seemed to be ablaze.
“Fire!” Bliss shrieked, jumping out of her chair and casting frantically about for something with which to fight the flames. She saw nothing that would do.
There was a clatter on the rear stairway and then Jamie arrived with a blanket in hand, beating out the fire. Carra and Bliss were both choking on the smoke by then, and Bliss’s eyes felt as though they were awash in scalding water.
When Jamie was sure the fire was out, he opened the back door and one of the windows, coughing. The fresh but frigid air that poured into the room was no colder than the impatience in Jamie’s eyes when he looked at Bliss.
“The brandy?” he asked, in tones too dulcet for Bliss’s comfort.
She retreated a step, her heart in her throat, and nodded. Guilt washed over her; the blunder she’d made had been a serious one, the kind her father would have punished her for.
Jamie closed his eyes for a moment and then gave a long sigh. The smell of smoke was acrid in the air. “Thank God you weren’t hurt,” he said after an interval of silence.
Carra was already about the business of cleaning up the mess on and around the stove; if she was aware of the interchange between Jamie and Bliss, she showed no sign of it.
Bliss was still braced for an explosion. “Aren’t you going to say that that was a stupid thing to do?” she asked, staring at her husband in dread and amazement.
“Do I have to say that, Bliss?” he countered, and his voice was gentle.
Her throat tightened and she shook her head, moved in a way that made it impossible to speak.
Jamie approached her and took her hands into his for a moment, giving them a light, reassuring squeeze. “Go to bed,” he ordered quietly. “You’re exhausted.”
Bliss wanted to protest, but she couldn’t. She nodded her acquiescence and climbed the rear stairway.
She was in bed and watching the flames dancing in Jamie’s fireplace when he came into the room. It had been nearly an hour since the calamity in the kitchen.
“I’ve ruined the stew,” Bliss said forlornly.
Jamie gave a lopsided grin and shook his head. “Aye, Duchess, you’ve probably done that, for a fact.”
“The worst part is,” she confided, the covers tucked beneath her chin, “that I’m still hungry.”
Jamie’s response to that was a throaty burst of amusement, which he quickly suppressed. Humor continued to dance in his blue-topaz eyes, however. “We can’t ’ave that. I’ll go back downstairs and see what I can find.”
Bliss bolted upright, shaking her head. Being a little hungry seemed a proper penance, given the fact that she’d nearly caused a catastrophe of the most horrific porportions. “No. You need to rest—”
Ignoring her, Jamie opened the door and walked out. He returned minutes later carrying a tray, and Bliss again felt that strange, tender misery that had possessed her downstairs when he’d been so understanding about the fire.
“It’s the stew!” she cried, astonished, when Jamie handed her the tray.
He chuckled as he moved nearer the hearth and began unbuttoning his shirt. “Aye. Carra managed to save some of it.”
There was buttered bread, too, and a little bowl of cooked pears swimming in a bright red cinnamon sauce. In the true spirit of her name, Bliss enjoyed her meal. By the time she was finished, Jamie was stretched out beside her in bed. He took the tray and set it aside, then grinned at her.
“You’re a lusty little scamp,” he remarked, and even though his meaning might have been ambiguous, Bliss could find nothing to object to in his expression or his voice. “Everything you do, you do with spirit and flair—and fire.”
Bliss felt almost as though she’d been flattered, but of course with Jamie one couldn’t always be sure. She reached over him to dip a finger into the luscious sauce left in her bowl, and the gesture put her in a position she hadn’t anticipated. Her breast came within a whisper of Jamie’s mouth, and of course he took immediate advantage.
Bliss groaned and allowed her eyes to close. The sensation was almost unbearably sweet; she wanted it to go on and on, forever.
Presently, however, Jamie shifted Bliss onto her back and poised himself above her. His voice was gruff, almost despairing, as he allowed her to feel the full, muscled length of him brush against her satiny flesh. “God ’elp me, Duchess,” he whispered, “I don’t think I can spend another night in the same bed with you and not ’ave you for me own.”
Every inch of Bliss seemed to be tingling, humming like a string on some exotic instrument. Her breath was labored and she suffered a splendid ache as she felt her body expanding itself to accommodate her man. “You are—my husband,” she managed to say.
“Aye, in a manner of speaking.” Jamie spoke sleepily, and he slid downward a little way; he kissed her neck and then her collarbone and then, in a leisurely way, the rounded upper parts of her breasts.
Bliss was trembling, so great was her need for what this man offered her. She knew her heart would be broken whether he withheld the mysteries of lovemaking or bestowed them—either way, she could not win.
She whimpered softly as he eased her legs apart with a motion of one knee and, at the same time, took full suckle at her nipple.
“It’ll ’urt a little,” he said in husky apology when he’d had his fill of her special ambrosia.
Bliss had known that the first time she gave herself to a man there would be pain, and she was beyond caring. She entangled her fingers in Jamie’s butternut hair and guided him back to her breast in silent relinquishment of her body.
Jamie took a long time pleasuring Bliss; the fire was burning low in the grate, the lamps had gone out, and the room was full of shifting moon shadows when he could no longer deny himself full satisfaction.
“Are you sure?” he asked raggedly, and Bliss, floating dazed in a state of exhausted contentment, nodded her head.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh yes.”
She felt the startling size and power of him at the portal of her womanhood and knew only the vaguest flash of fear.
Jamie trembled with restraint as he entered her, giving Bliss more and more of him as she urged him nearer, her hands moving fitfully from his buttocks to the small of his back. Her name fell from his lips over and over again, in a low, frantic whisper.
When he passed the barrier nature had set in place, Bliss gasped and tensed her body, and Jamie was instantly still. His mouth hovered over her own, then strayed to her jawline and the tender place underneath her ear. “There’s no ’urry, then, is there?” he muttered, and Bliss didn’t know whether he was reassuring her or himself.
As the discomfort subsided, Bliss began to feel the same fevered excitement as before, when Jamie had pleased her so relentlessly, so sweetly. By instinct, she began to move beneath her husband and he rose and fell in perfect rhythm with the pace she set.
She was caught unaware when the balance of power shifted to Jamie. Without warning, he was in command, and he guided Bliss skillfully, inexorably, toward a peak they had never scaled together before. They reached the summit at precisely the same instant, their moist bodies straining for the most complete union possible, ragged cries of triumph torn from their throats.
When
the last joint tremor had subsided, Jamie rolled, gasping, onto his back and groaned aloud. Bliss knew without asking that the pain, from which he’d had a short surcease, had descended upon him again.
She was filled with tenderness and all the emotions of a young woman who has given not only her heart, but her body, to one very special man. Raising herself on one elbow, she stroked his fleecy chest with the palm of her hand and placed a gentle kiss on his forehead.
Jamie clasped her fingers with an abruptness that startled her. Holding her hand in his, he rasped, “I’m sorry, Duchess. God in heaven, I’m so sorry.”
Bliss was crushed. He was apologizing for making love to her? She had so hoped that she’d pleased him, despite her inexperience, and thus dispensed with all his myriad doubts, but now reality was dawning. Merciless, glaring reality.
Her father had repeatedly warned her that men were utterly without honor when it came to such things. Jamie had assuaged his own needs because the opportunity had been so brashly presented, and taking was not the same thing as caring.
Not at all.
Realizing what she’d done, Bliss gave a wail of despair and grief.
Immediately, Jamie drew her into his arms, sheltering her against his hard chest, and his fingers moved gently in her fiery hair as she wept for what had been given—and lost.
It shouldn’t have been such a brutal surprise, waking up and finding Bliss gone, but it was. It was.
Jamie’s bruised ribs protested ferociously as he flung back the covers and bounded out of bed, his heart beating too rapidly for comfort and his breath tearing in and out of his lungs. It would have been a relief to delude himself for a few minutes, to let himself believe that Bliss was only downstairs, or outside somewhere, but he knew better.
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