Angelfire

by Linda Lael Miller

  Bliss was nodding, about to explain that her needs were simple, when out of the corner of her eye she saw Walter approaching. Of course, if he should address her as Mrs. McKenna, he would spoil everything. Mrs. Wilmington would never be willing to engage a companion who was married.

  Bliss muttered an excuse to her employer and hurried to intercept Walter, smiling warmly, if in a rather shaky fashion, as she greeted him. “Good morning, Mr. Davis. How are you today?”

  He was looking at her valise. “Quite well, thank you,” he said. “Are you taking a journey?”

  Bliss nodded, hoping that he wouldn’t press for too many details. “I—I’m sorry that our acquaintance was so brief—”

  Walter had caught hold of her arm, and with a forcefulness she wouldn’t have expected of him, he hauled her around to the rear of the crop of potted plants and said in a low voice, “I could have sworn you told me you had a husband!”

  Bliss swallowed. “I do,” she confessed.

  A sympathetic expression crossed his face as he took in the smudges of fatigue beneath her eyes and the red puffiness of her lids—both evidences that she’d been unable to hide. “You’ve been crying. Did he hurt you? The brute—I shall box his ears!”

  Bliss couldn’t help but smile at the images that rose in her mind. There might well be some ear boxing should Jamie and Walter come to blows, but Walter would do the bleeding, not the boxing.

  “Well?” Walter prompted. “Did he do you injury in any way?”

  Bliss shook her head. “No—not in the way you mean.” In the background, Mrs. Wilmington called her name. “I must go now. Good-bye, Walter.”

  “At least tell me where you’re off to,” Walter pleaded, sounding a touch desperate as he followed Bliss back to Mrs. Wilmington’s side.

  “America,” Bliss said, so sadly that Mrs. Wilmington gave her an odd look.

  “A-America!” Walter sputtered. “You can’t do that! You really mustn’t—”

  “Good-bye, Walter,” Bliss repeated, with less warmth than before. The last of Mrs. Wilmington’s baggage had been taken out to the carriage; it was time to leave.

  Bliss was silent during the long drive to the harbor, looking out at the storefronts and hotels of Auckland. Finally, they reached the waterfront.

  It was an ugly place, where bawds lounged against the ramshackle walls of pubs and drunks lay sprawled in the road. Bliss watched in horror as the carriage wheels narrowly missed one reveler’s outstretched fingers.

  The stench of offal and rotted fish was almost enough to set Bliss retching. Mrs. Wilmington must have agreed, for she raised a dainty handkerchief to her sizable nose in an effort to strain some of the foulness from the air.

  The carriage lurched to a stop and the driver came around to peer in the window. His breath was almost as bad as the rest of it, and Bliss recoiled from him.

  “Here we are, mum,” he told Mrs. Wilmington. “It’s this pier where the Queen Charlotte has her moorings.”

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Wilmington said. “Please see that our baggage is carried aboard.” She started to hand the man a pound note, but Bliss interceded by taking hold of the woman’s wrist.

  “Don’t do that, Mrs. Wilmington,” she said respectfully. “Not yet.”

  The carriage driver gave Bliss a look that would have spoiled cabbage, then went around to begin taking trunks and valises from the boot.

  “Why on earth did you do that?” the American woman demanded.

  “I don’t like that fellow’s looks,” Bliss confided. “Maybe I haven’t done much traveling, but I’ve got good instincts and I know a waster when I see one. Like as not, that bloke would have dumped us in the street and made off with your luggage and your pound note!”

  Mrs. Wilmington looked impressed. “My goodness. I’ve always left such matters to Piedmont, and it didn’t even occur to me that the man might be unworthy of our trust.”

  Bliss’s smile must have appeared a little fixed; it took all the self-control she possessed not to go scrambling back to the hotel and hurl herself at Jamie’s feet. “I don’t look for him to help us out of the carriage, either,” she went on. “So we’d just better see to ourselves.”

  With that, she opened the carriage door and lowered herself to the street. Knowing that Mrs. Wilmington would not be so nimble, with her greater age and bulk, she caught the driver’s eye and glared at him until he brought a little step stool forward and set it with a thump on the road.

  With Bliss’s assistance, Mrs. Wilmington descended.

  Bliss was looking all around her as she and her employer walked down the pier and up a long, slanting ramp to the ship.

  The craft had three smokestacks towering above its decks, and a man in a blue uniform came forward, even as Mrs. Wilmington was speaking to the purser about Bliss’s passage, to collect the younger woman’s tattered valise.

  “Hello there,” he said, drawing out the first word in a jaunty fashion.

  Bliss thought of Jamie, swallowed hard, and took back her valise with an eloquent jerk of her hand. Men. They were all alike—always trying to charm a lady. “Go away,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the young seaman with a crisp salute. His ears were red with embarrassment as he hurried off in another direction.

  By that time, Bliss was feeling a little sorry for him. Since there was nothing for it, she sighed and turned her attention back to the arrangements at hand. Her passage to America was assured; she would share a stateroom with Mrs. Wilmington.

  Between one instant and the next, some instinct made the small hairs on the back of Bliss’s neck stand up in alarm. She turned at the sound of a slight fracas on the boarding ramp to see Jamie striding around the insolent carriage driver, who had been struggling with Mrs. Wilmington’s baggage.

  Bliss took a step backward, but even as she did so, she knew there was no place to run. A part of her rejoiced in that knowledge, but her pride demanded that she fight for her rights.

  Jamie came to a stop directly in front of her, swept off his hat, and smiled winningly. “Well, ’ello, Duchess,” he said. “Exactly where did you think you were goin’?”

  “Now, just one moment,” blustered Mrs. Wilmington, who looked uncertain. “Who are you, young man, and what do you mean by this affront?”

  Bliss’s face flamed as Jamie answered the woman in the politest tones. “Beggin’ your pardon, mum, but me name is James Marcus McKenna and I’m this lady’s ’usband.”

  “Is this true?” Mrs. Wilmington demanded of her companion, in a withering voice.

  “No,” Bliss lied firmly. “I’ve never seen this dreadful person before in my life.”

  At this, Jamie threw back his head and laughed. “Allow me to introduce myself, Duchess,” he said, catching her by the waist and flinging her over one shoulder as though she were a bag of barley. “I’m the bloke that’s goin’ to show you the error of your ways.”

  Bliss gave a shriek and kicked, but it did little good, so she began striking Jamie with her valise. That didn’t help, either.

  “Young man,” protested Mrs. Wilmington, with what seemed to Bliss a serious lack of conviction. “I’ll call for assistance if I must!”

  “You do that, m’lady,” Jamie responded, and a motion of his right shoulder told Bliss that he’d doffed his hat to the woman. “Keep in mind, though, that you’re goin’ to need an army.”

  The blood was beginning to rush to Bliss’s head. Again, she slammed her satchel into Jamie’s back. “Damn you,” she spat, “let me down!”

  “I’d love to,” Jamie replied smoothly, venturing dangerously close to the side of the ramp. “Trouble is, Duchess, that the water’s some filthy ’ere. God knows what diseases you’d get if I threw you in.”

  Frustration made Bliss emit another shriek, and Jamie responded by landing a hard swat on her upended bottom. Neither Mrs. Wilmington nor anyone else came forward to help.

  “Help!” Bliss screamed at the top of her lungs, clasping
her satchel’s grip in one hand and holding her bonnet on with the other.

  Jamie laughed. “Don’t waste your breath, love. None of these louts’ll ’elp you. It’s the neighbor’ood, you know—it’s gone down’ill these past fifty years.”

  “I hate you,” Bliss whispered furiously, and at that moment, she meant it.

  Again, Jamie’s hand rose to her bottom. Only this time, he gave her an arrogant squeeze instead of another smack. “I feel the same way about you, me precious darlin’,” he responded warmly, and there was no break in his stride.

  Bliss was seething. “Put—me—down!”

  “If I do,” Jamie replied, “it’ll be to turn you over me knee. Is that what you want, Duchess—with all these people lookin’ on and all?”

  “No!” Bliss cried in a strangled voice. Trust Jamie to threaten her with the one thing more humiliating than being carried down a ramp and along a pier over a man’s shoulder!

  “I didn’t think so,” he agreed reasonably.

  Bliss was seriously considering throwing up when Jamie came to a jarring stop. She heard the creak of a carriage door, and then she was set, none too gently, on the floor of that vehicle, which put her at eye level with a very irate Jamie.

  His nose was nearly touching hers. “If you ever do anything like that again, Bliss,” he warned, “I swear by all that’s ’oly that I’ll blister you.”

  There was no doubt in Bliss’s mind that Jamie meant what he said, at the moment at least. She scooted backward until she was inside the carriage, then hauled herself up onto one of the seats. Not once in all that time did her eyes stray from Jamie’s face; if he made any sudden moves, she wanted to be ready.

  He rapped at the outside of the carriage with his knuckles and the rig bolted forward.

  “How did you find me?” Bliss asked in a small voice, still watching Jamie.

  He settled back in the seat, as though hauling women off ships over one shoulder were a normal morning’s work, sighing and tugging his hat down over his eyes. “I ’ave me sources,” he said.

  Bliss ached to kick him, but there was such a thing as pressing one’s luck. Besides, even though she didn’t plan to admit it anytime in the next hundred years, she was relieved not to be going to America, even if it did mean that she might never see her mother again.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked, to distract herself.

  Beneath the brim of his hat, Jamie grinned. “I don’t know—maybe I’ll ’ang you by your thumbs in one of the shearin’ sheds. Two or three days of that ought to teach you your place.”

  “My what!” Bliss cried, scooting forward on the seat and forgetting all caution. She snatched the hat from his head to force him to look at her, but the advantage, as usual, was his.

  More quickly than Bliss would have believed he could move, Jamie had pulled her out of her seat and onto his lap. She defended herself with both feet and both hands, but he subdued her by forcing her into a kiss. She squirmed for a moment, then went limp with a soft moan.

  One kiss followed another, and Bliss was in a daze when the carriage came to a stop. It took her several seconds to recall what had gone on that morning, but when she did, she was furious.

  She drew back one hand to slap Jamie, but the look in his eyes stopped her—it was an odd mingling of challenge and tenderness, that look.

  Jamie set her off his lap and got down from the carriage, taking Bliss’s satchel with him. She waited for him to offer her a hand, but he didn’t, nor did the carriage driver.

  Finally, red-faced, Bliss got out of the rig on her own and followed her husband inside the lobby of the Victoria Hotel. Since he took the lift, Bliss climbed the stairs.

  It was a pitiful rebellion, and she knew it, but under the circumstances it was the best she could do.

  When she let herself into the suite, Jamie was seated comfortably on one of the settees, reading a newspaper and looking for all the world as though he’d never gone to the wharf and carried his wife off the Queen Charlotte like a pair of saddlebags.

  Chin high, Bliss retreated to the bedroom, but there was no solace to be found there, either.

  Peony and her maid were packing the clothes Jamie had bought for Bliss into sturdy-looking trunks.

  “What’s going on here?” Bliss demanded, folding her arms.

  Peony excused the maid before squaring off with her adversary. She pointed to a chair with such authority that Bliss felt called upon to sit down.

  “Now,” the older woman began in a low but not-to-be-ignored voice, “you listen to me, you little hoyden, and you listen well!”

  Bliss glared at her. “I don’t have to take this,” she said, even though she knew she did.

  Peony was pacing back and forth, her beautiful complexion tinted with pink, her green eyes flashing like the stone in the ring Jamie had offered Bliss. “Oh yes, you do,” the woman sputtered. “If you think differently, you just try getting past that man out there!”

  Bliss swallowed. She’d run enough risks for one day.

  “What, pray tell,” Peony went on, “were you trying to do?”

  “Escape,” Bliss answered. The word squeaked out of her throat, and she felt her face growing hot at the memory of her grandest failure.

  With a sigh, Peony sat down on the edge of the bed, looking directly into Bliss’s eyes. “Why?” she asked bluntly. “I may not know much, Mrs. McKenna, but I have grasped the fact that you love your husband.”

  Bliss bit her lower lip. She’d rather die than let Jamie’s mistress see her cry. “I love him, but he loves you,” she said with quiet dignity. “He was with you last night. In—in your room.”

  Incredibly, Peony smiled. “Yes, you little twit, Jamie did come to my room. He was so drunk he wouldn’t have been able to touch the floor with his hat without help.”

  Bliss felt her eyes go round. For the life of her, she couldn’t say a word, but she remembered that Jamie had smelled of whiskey when he’d joined her in bed.

  “I don’t know what you did to him,” Peony said evenly. “I haven’t seen him hurting that way since—well, in a long time.” She paused, then went on. “Bliss, Jamie and I don’t sleep together. We never have.”

  Bliss sank her teeth into her lower lip and ducked her head. She wanted so desperately to believe Peony, but she didn’t. “He loves you. He’s told me so himself,” she said.

  Peony’s voice was remarkably gentle, given her earlier ire. “There are many kinds of love,” she reminded Bliss. When there was no response, she stood up and began packing clothes again.

  “Am I going somewhere?” Bliss wanted to know.

  “Yes. If you want to know any more than that, you’ll have to ask your husband. Frankly, I’m tired of wasting my breath talking to someone who refuses to listen.”

  Feeling chagrined, Bliss rose out of her chair with dignity and went back to the front room. Jamie was sharpening that lethal-looking blade of his against a bit of round stone, and he didn’t look up at her approach.

  “Peony says I’m going away,” she ventured, standing a little distance away.

  “Aye,” Jamie answered hoarsely. “And so am I. We’re going ’ome, Duchess, to the farm.”

  So he’d given up the gilded cage idea. At least she’d succeeded there. Bliss lowered her head for a moment. “What about Peony? Is she going, too?”

  Jamie still didn’t look up. “She refuses to leave her business,” he said.

  “But you asked her?”

  At last, Jamie met Bliss’s gaze, and she saw a weary challenge in his eyes. “Yes, Duchess, I asked her,” he answered.

  Bliss felt utterly defeated. “I see.”

  Jamie shook his head. “No, I don’t think you do,” he replied, and once again, he was sharpening his knife.

  Bliss took a single, tentative step nearer. “Explain it to me, then,” she said. “I do want to understand.”

  The blade made a rhythmic, scraping sound against the stone. “Aye,” Jamie respon
ded skeptically. “That was evident this mornin’.”

  “I love you, Jamie. Believe it or not, that’s why I left you.”

  His jawline tightened and he was stubbornly silent. The friction between blade and stone grew fiercer.

  Bliss would almost have preferred the high-handed, jocular Jamie who had carried her so unceremoniously off the Queen Charlotte. At least that one had been willing to speak to her.

  Just then, Peony and her maid came out of the bedroom. Jamie shoved his knife back into its scabbard and, without a word or a look for Bliss, donned his hat and coat and left with the two women.

  Jamie’s only farewell to his wife was the grating of his key in the lock.

  Bliss went to the desk and began a letter to her mother, weeping as she explained that she wouldn’t be coming to America.

  Chapter 18

  AFTER GIVING THE DOORKNOB A FEW FRUITLESS JIGGLES, BLISS moved to the suite’s window and looked out.

  It was a long way to the ground.

  On an impulse, she progressed to the bedroom and pulled back the draperies. A metal staircase, no doubt for the purpose of escaping fires, met her widening eyes.

  “Eureka!” she breathed. Having read the word once in a book, Bliss had been waiting for a chance to try it out

  The window catch was high up, so she dragged a chair over, climbed up to stand in its velvet-upholstered seat, and began working at the lock with her fingers. After almost a minute of unrewarded efforts, she sighed and looked around for something to pry the thing open with.

  Just then, someone knocked at the door of the suite. Bliss got down from the chair and dashed into the front room.

  “Hello? Who’s there?” she called, pressing her ear to the door.

  “It’s Walter—Walter Davis.”

  Bliss, hoping for a maid or a waiter—someone with a key—was disappointed. Too, she had her suspicions as to who had told Jamie where she’d gone that morning. “Traitor!” she called back.

  Even through the heavy door, Bliss heard Walter’s sigh. “I had to tell him, Bliss. The man was frantic.”