Angelfire

by Linda Lael Miller

  A note had been propped against the ugly mantel clock, and Bliss unfolded it with more eagerness than she would ever have allowed Jamie to see. Duchess, he’d written, I was afraid you’d climb out a window, so I took a chance and left the door unlocked. Mind you don’t do anything stupid. I’ll be back in a few hours. Love, Jamie.

  Bliss touched the word love with her fingertip, allowing it to warm her. Then, after another look at the clock, she realized that she was going to be late for work if she didn’t hurry.

  Hastily, she located her satchel, which had yet to be unpacked, and drew out clean underthings and her spare shirtwaist. She would wear the sateen skirt again, though it, like the blouse, was quite rumpled.

  As Bliss wound her flowing hair into a coronet and pinned it in place, she despaired a little that her pride wouldn’t allow her to let Jamie buy her new and beautiful clothes. It would have been lovely to have things to choose from—this dress for the tea, and that for the races. .. .

  Shaking her head at her own foolishness, she washed her face, cleaned her teeth, and set out, spurning the lift for the stairs. She felt more than one pair of eyes upon her as she crossed the lobby, but she kept her chin high. If people were entertaining malicious thoughts, well, let them think what they liked.

  Outside, the weather was crisply beautiful. The sun was shining brightly in the sky and there was the promise of spring in the air.

  Bliss’s step was light as she hurried toward the tram stop. She hadn’t waited long before it came, crammed with people who worked in offices and shops and hotels.

  During the ride to the end of the line, where Flossy’s establishment was, Bliss thought of Jamie and the way he’d uncovered her the night before and kissed her so gently. Just the memory made her breasts swell with warmth and her nipples harden. She was glad of her heavy coat.

  “Dammit all to ’ell!” Jamie roared as he came out of the bedroom, glaring at Peony as though everything were her fault. “To think I trusted that little—”

  Peony smiled to realize how far gone her friend really was. The longer he knew Bliss, the more he spoke in the brogue, and that meant he was finally letting down his guard a little, allowing himself to be who he was: Jamie McKenna, of Dublin. “Calm down,” she said, tugging at her gloves. “She told you she had a job.”

  “And I told ’er that she didn’t need it!” Jamie yelled, gesturing wildly. “I offered to set her up in a ’ouse, for God’s sake—”

  “For God’s sake, Jamie? Or for yours?”

  He flung down his hat and then sank into a chair, burying his head in his hands. Ah yes, Peony reflected, with another small smile. He was the very picture of despair.

  “I suppose,” Peony ventured, some moments later, “that you generously offered to visit Bliss whenever the spirit moved you.”

  Jamie’s bleak stare confirmed Peony’s suspicions, though he didn’t speak.

  She took a chair, despite the fact that Jamie hadn’t invited her to make herself at home, and loosened the strings on her bonnet. Lord, how she hated having ribbons under her chin. “How pompous you are, Jamie McKenna,” she remarked, making no effort to hide her annoyance. “How infernally pompous.”

  He ignored her reference to his arrogant attitude and sighed. “At least I know where she is this time.”

  “Where?” asked Peony, with a tinge of impatience, for she could not have cared less. She hadn’t felt like taking some bounding country woman shopping anyway.

  “Flossy’s Tearoom,” Jamie answered.

  A peal of laughter escaped her.

  “It’s not funny, Peony!”

  Peony assumed some semblance of dignity, though her lips were still twitching. “Oh, but it is, darling,” she said. “What in heaven’s name does she do, read tea leaves?”

  Jamie was obviously in no mood to be sporting. He glared at Peony.

  She wasn’t the least bit cowed. “Do you want me to tell your fortune, Jamie love?” she asked sweetly. “I can do it without tea leaves, a crystal ball, or even a glance at your palm.”

  He muttered something grossly impolite and thrust himself off the settee, putting on that seedy hat of his in almost the same motion. Of course, it did give him a rakish look, that hat. A look that was most attractive. “Come on,” he grumbled.

  Peony took her time. “Don’t you want to hear what your future holds?” she chimed.

  “I ’ave a damn good idea what me future ’olds, thank you very much!”

  “Six or seven redheaded children, I should think,” Peony mused, just to raise some steam from beneath Jamie’s collar. “By the way, I’m getting hungry. Where are we lunching?”

  Jamie took Peony’s elbow in his hand and ushered her out of the suite. “Where else,” he muttered, “but Flossy’s Tearoom?”

  When Bliss arrived at the tearoom, there was a “closed” sign in the window and she could see Flossy through the dusty glass, packing things into boxes. Boldly, she let herself in, expecting bad news.

  Instead, Flossy blessed her with a broad and slightly rotted smile. “He’s finally gone and struck lucky, that boy of mine.” She beamed. “Got himself a little patch of land in Australia.”

  Bliss smiled, slipped out of her coat, and began helping her erstwhile employer pack plates. While they worked, Flossy regaled Bliss with plans for the future. She’d just be cooking for her son now—her days of working her fingers to the bone were past.

  She gave Bliss a kindly, worried glance. “But I’ve gone and forgot about you, missy. What are you going to do, without work?”

  Bliss smiled. She’d visit each of the shipping and passage agencies regularly, with the exception of the one with questionable dealings in the Orient, and one day things would come right for her. “I’ll be fine,” she said.

  Flossy didn’t look persuaded. “Sweet little dearie like you,” she fussed. “Ought to have a husband to look after her.”

  Bliss had not mentioned Jamie to her friend, and she didn’t plan to bring up his name now. After all, hers wasn’t the kind of marriage one went around boasting about. “Someday,” she said, and she thought of herself standing beside some nice man in America, before a preacher. He’d be a decent, trusting soul, and she’d be a bigamist, for even if Jamie divorced her, Bliss would always be his wife in her heart.

  Flossy reached out and patted Bliss’s hand, and then the two women fell to work, chatting as they packed up everything that could be wrapped in newspaper or crated. The time passed quickly, and Bliss was beginning to feel the first stirrings of real hunger—she hadn’t had time for breakfast—when she looked up and saw the fancy carriage come to a stop in front of the tearoom.

  “Oh no,” she groaned as Jamie got out of the coach and came striding across the sidewalk. Of course, he paid no attention at all to the “closed” sign; he simply opened the door and walked in.

  Worse than that, Bliss craned her neck to see, that awful woman was right behind him.

  Jamie did not behave in the way Bliss would have expected him to at all. He smiled, in fact, and swept off his hat, inclining his head to Flossy, who seemed charmed.

  Bliss swallowed and then said, “Flossy, this is my—friend, Jamie McKenna.”

  Flossy was actually blushing under the dazzling warmth of Jamie’s audacious smile. “Why, I believe I’ve heard your name before,” she said.

  Jamie’s expression was one of ingenuous humility. Bliss had never wanted to kick him in the shin so badly as she did at that moment. “Looks like you’re going out of business,” he said cautiously, for, of course, he didn’t know whether the circumstances of Flossy’s retirement were favorable or not.

  Flossy set that concern to rest by beaming and launching into a lengthy discourse on the attributes of her only son, who was going to take care of her for the rest of her natural days.

  Since Bliss had heard the story before, she had time to sneak a curious look or two at the woman who had accompanied Jamie to the tearoom. She was just as enchanting up clos
e as she had been from a distance. The fact that she seemed to be over forty was no consolation, for that gave her a sophistication that Bliss couldn’t hope to match.

  “You might as well just leave with your friends,” Flossy told Bliss cheerfully, forcing money into her hand. “And I’m sorry the position didn’t work out better than it did.”

  Bliss looked down at the wages Flossy had given her. “But this is a week’s pay—”

  “You keep it,” Flossy said firmly. “It’ll make me feel better about leavin’ you high and dry the way I did.”

  Bliss thanked Flossy and put the money into the pocket of her sateen skirt, knowing that the woman’s pride was at stake, and then impulsively gave her a quick hug. Following that, she took her coat down from its peg and put it on, fully intending to take a tram rather than ride with Jamie.

  His lady love had gone to wait in the carriage, and when Flossy retreated to the kitchen in an effort to hide the fact that her eyes were moist, Bliss looked up at her husband and said flatly, “I will not sit in the same carriage with that hussy.”

  Instead of getting angry, as Bliss would have expected, or waxing sullen, Jamie threw back his head and laughed. “Careful,” he said when he’d gotten control of himself again. “If Peony ’ears you call her that, she’ll scratch out your eyes.”

  Bliss flushed with conviction. “Just let her try it,” she warned.

  Jamie opened the door of the tearoom for Bliss, a look of speculation on his face. “I think it would be a pretty fair fight, now that you mention it. And you are goin’ to ride in the carriage with ’er—friend.”

  Bliss tried to move away, but Jamie’s grasp on her elbow, while painless, was unyielding. “I couldn’t very well refer to you as my husband,” she pointed out.

  Jamie’s jawline was a little tight, even though he was smiling. “Are you ashamed of me, Duchess?”

  Bliss whirled and glared up at him, her eyes smarting with tears only he could have caused her to shed. “I might ask that same thing of you,” she spat. “How dare you bring that—that strumpet with you?”

  “That what?”

  “Pansy or Posie or whatever her name is!”

  The carriage door flew open with a crash. “Now, just a minute here,” the paramour cried, ascending none too gracefully and storming toward Bliss. “I’m willing to put up with a lot, but I draw the line at being called a strumpet!”

  Bliss was about to push up her sleeves and wade into the fray when Jamie stepped between the two women and said, “Enough,” with sufficient sternness to quiet both of them.

  “My name is Peony,” said that lady, after several seconds had passed. “Not Pansy, not Posie—Peony! And I swear I’d stalk off in a fit if that weren’t my carriage!”

  Jamie sighed. “That would be impractical, wouldn’t it?” he asked.

  Bliss was full of anger and pain, unable to believe his cruelty in flaunting this woman under her nose this way. She wondered what he hoped to accomplish. “I’ll take the tram,” she said, gazing toward the stop with longing.

  Every inch the gentleman, Jamie squired Peony back to the carriage and helped her inside, while Bliss stood stiffly on the sidewalk, ready to die of the humiliation. He’d made his choice. He meant to leave her standing there....

  Bliss turned and started, with forlorn determination, toward the tram stop. Her throat was so thick she couldn’t swallow, and tears were slipping down her cheeks, and she was damned if she’d ever let Jamie McKenna know how he’d hurt her.

  Except that he fell into step beside her, settling his hat on his head with a practiced motion of one hand and grinning insufferably. Behind them, the coach containing his mistress rattled away from the curb, traveling in the opposite direction.

  Chapter 13

  BLISS SAT STIFFLY IN THE TRAM SEAT, REFUSING TO SO MUCH AS glance at the man beside her. If Jamie thought pretending that nothing was wrong could make up for the fact that he’d virtually taunted her with his mistress, he was sadly mistaken.

  “I’ve done nothin’ wrong, Duchess,” Jamie said. “Therefore, I’ll not be apologizin’.”

  A matron across the aisle listened intently for Bliss’s response.

  After tossing the woman a look meant to convey how she felt about snoops, Bliss folded her arms and said cynically, “Of course it’s not wrong. You’re a man, so everything you do is right.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Bliss saw that Jamie’s nostrils had flared slightly, and a thin white line edged his jaw. He muttered a string of curses and the woman across the aisle grew red in the face.

  “You’re impossible to reason with,” Jamie accused.

  Bliss sat up very straight and willed herself not to cry, wondering all the while what had happened to her. She’d always had a secret contempt for women who sniveled and mewled every time something displeased them, and now it seemed that she was battling back tears at every turn.

  Aunt Calandra would probably say that there was no point in crying over a bird in the bush, she reflected, and that brought a tenuous smile to her lips.

  “That’s better,” Jamie said softly, catching his hand under Bliss’s chin and making her look at him. “I’m not your enemy, Duchess,” he added.

  Bliss was afraid to let her guard down. Whether or not Jamie McKenna was an enemy was certainly debatable; no one else on the face of the earth had the power to bring her this low. She blinked in an effort to clear her eyes and Jamie took one of her hands in his and examined it.

  “One day in that place, and your ’and is red and sore—”

  Bliss wrenched her fingers free of his and sat up very straight. “Don’t make so much of a little chafing, Jamie,” she warned. “I’m no stranger to hard work.”

  To her utter surprise, Jamie kissed her fingers, and there was a sad, faraway look in his eyes. Bliss sensed that he was thinking about someone in the distant past, perhaps in Ireland, but she dared not allow her heart to soften.

  After an excruciatingly long time, and many stops, the tram finally reached the center of Auckland. There was something proprietary in the way Jamie took Bliss’s elbow and helped her off the car. She suspected that he was really more concerned that she’d run away than lose her footing.

  Instead of starting off for the hotel, he led her in the direction of a fancy retail establishment that towered four stories above the street. A man in an impressive uniform, with shimmering gold epaulets, stood outside, opening the door for those entering and departing, and Bliss thought he must surely be the proprietor, he looked so grand and important.

  When she confided this to Jamie in an awed whisper, he laughed. “Whatever you say, Duchess,” he conceded, and the warmth in his eyes enabled Bliss to believe that he cared for her, at least a little.

  Jamie was treated with the same respect here that he had been accorded at the hotel, and Bliss’s anger flared anew when a gentleman in a fancy suit came forward and asked, “Will we be dressing the lady today, Mr. McKenna?”

  Bliss flushed with embarrassment at this and demanded, in a scathing undertone, as Jamie propelled her after the officious salesman, “Do you do this often?”

  He grinned. “Do I do what often?” he countered.

  “Dress a lady,” Bliss whispered, wanting to stop and stomp her foot.

  The grin broadened. “I prefer undressing them, actually.”

  Bliss sighed. There was simply no point in carrying on such a ridiculous conversation. If she did, she would only be beating her head against a brick wall.

  The salesman led them into a private salon on the uppermost floor—to Bliss’s relief, there was no lift—where a woman in flowing garb greeted them.

  “My, my,” she said, dragging her eyes over Bliss’s secondhand clothing. “Some professional attention is definitely called for.”

  Bliss longed to turn and storm out, but she knew she’d never get past Jamie, and she wanted to spare herself any unnecessary humiliation. This woman’s awed horror provided quite enough mort
ification as it was.

  The saleswoman smiled obsequiously at Jamie. “What are your preferences, sir?”

  Enough was enough. “What do you mean, what are his preferences?” Bliss demanded to know. “He’s not going to be wearing these clothes, I am!”

  Jamie swept off his hat and scratched his head, but he knew better than to open his mouth or even grin.

  The clerk was not so prudent. She gave a tinkling laugh and trilled, “Well, of course he’s not! What a ridiculous thing to say.”

  Bliss was advancing on the woman when Jamie caught hold of her upper arm and dragged her back, so that she collided with his chest. Familiar sensations were stirred by the contact, and she could not permit herself to meet his eyes.

  “Can’t I take you anywhere, Duchess?” he asked in a beleaguered tone that made Bliss want to stomp on his instep. “If it isn’t too much to ask, could you mind your manners?”

  Since his voice had begun to take on a lilt of the Irish, Bliss didn’t respond. If Jamie wanted to buy her clothes, let him—some of them would come in handy in America, no doubt. The others she would simply leave behind, in the hotel room.

  Even though Jamie’s arms had been filled with boxes when he and Bliss had left the store, so much clothing had been purchased that deliveries arrived at the hotel all afternoon.

  Bliss could barely hide her excitement, there were so many beautiful things—rich velvets, fine lawns and silks, bloomers, camisoles and petticoats, trimmed in lace. Oh, it was going to be most difficult indeed to leave such treasures behind when she struck out for America.

  Jamie, who had been reading while Bliss examined her purchases, stood up and stretched. The pure animal grace of the gesture forced some unpleasant facts back into Bliss’s mind.

  “Do you love that woman?” she asked forthrightly, though she couldn’t look directly at Jamie. She was standing behind one of the suite’s matched settees, running her fingers over the soft shimmer of a petticoat.

  “Who? Peony?” Jamie yawned, sounding surprised that such a topic could come up. Perhaps, Bliss reflected, he was one of those who believed it behooved a man to have a mistress as well as a wife. Lord knew, the idea was common enough.