Angelfire

by Linda Lael Miller

  Bliss sighed and a smile sneaked across her mouth. She let her forehead rest against Jamie’s chest and he thought the seawind-and-wildflower scent of her hair would be his undoing. “I wanted those eggs for a cake,” she said. “I was going to surprise you.”

  Jamie was unaccountably touched. He held Bliss close for a moment, not caring that Cutter and the rest of them would see and give him hell all the while they were away in the sheep camp. “No need for that, Duchess,” he said hoarsely. “As it ’appens, I brought you a few surprises from town.”

  “Surprises?” Her wonderful eyes were dancing when she drew back her head to look up at him in mischievous curiosity, her white teeth sunk into her lower lip.

  Thinking of the lonely, miserable week that lay ahead, Jamie ached. He couldn’t take Bliss along to camp—she had too great a gift for getting into trouble. It was spring, the ewes would be lambing, and there would be no time for keeping track of what the Duchess was up to at any given moment.

  Too, the weather was still cold, at least at night, and camp was a crude place, hardly fit for a man, let alone a lady.

  “Jamie?” Bliss prompted, prodding him a little with that infernal broom of hers. Little wonder she’d gotten off on the wrong foot with the rooster. “What surprises? Show me!”

  He put aside his despair at the prospect of leaving her, even for such a short time, and grabbed her hand, dragging her toward the house.

  Much of Bliss’s frustration over being thwarted by the rooster was assuaged when she saw the things Jamie had brought her. For one, there was a ring—this time just a plain gold band. It was to her liking, though, and she allowed him to place it gently on her finger.

  “Just so nobody gets any ideas,” he said, with such seriousness that Bliss wanted to laugh.

  “What kind of ideas?” she asked, but Jamie only shrugged and averted his eyes.

  After that, he presented her with a cookbook, a box of chocolates, and a beautiful set of combs for her hair.

  Tears filled her eyes, fairly blinding her. “Damn that rooster!” she cried, and then she turned on one heel, clutching Jamie’s gifts to her bosom, and ran up the rear stairway, sobbing.

  “What did I do?” Jamie asked Cutter, who had just stepped through the kitchen door.

  The old man grinned. “All the right things, I reckon.”

  Jamie glared at his friend, all the time wondering if he’d insulted the Duchess by giving her a cookbook. He hadn’t meant to imply that her concoctions were bad—exactly.

  “What things?” he snapped.

  “That’d be your business, mate,” Cutter replied, taking a mug from a shelf and shuffling over to the stove to fill it with day-old coffee. “Could be, though, that them ewes out there in the hills ain’t the only ones what got a baby started.”

  Jamie felt the color drain from his face and the starch go out of his knees. He groped for a chair and collapsed into it, shoving one hand through his hair. He muttered a curse.

  “Would it be so bad as that?” Cutter asked quietly, sitting down across from Jamie at the table.

  Jamie closed his eyes, remembering Eleanor. She’d borne him a child, too, and he hadn’t known until it was too late. “Maybe,” he said.

  Elisabeth believed that his brother, Reeve, was her father. That was probably for the best, yet there wasn’t a day when Jamie didn’t think of his daughter and grieve.

  “Jamie boy,” Cutter insisted gruffly, “Bliss ain’t the same kind of woman as Eleanor was. You know that.”

  Jamie sighed. “Maybe not, but they’ve got one thing in common, me friend—a knack for disappearin’ when they ’ave a mind for it.”

  “This calls for a drink,” commiserated Cutter. If the truth be known, Cutter thought just about everything called for a drink. He disappeared into the study, returning moments later with a bottle of whiskey. This he added in generous measures to his mug of coffee and the one he poured for Jamie.

  “Maybe I ought to go up there and find out why she’s cryin’,” Jamie speculated. The whiskey made that damnable coffee palatable, at least.

  Cutter shrugged. “Like as not, she won’t tell you.”

  Jamie nodded philosophically. “Seems like when you ask a woman what’s the matter, she always says ’nothin’.”

  Cutter laughed. “Aye. Real primlike, she says it, whilst snifflin’ like a lamb with the slobbers.”

  By the time Bliss came stomping down the rear stairway, her eyes all puffy and her nose red, Jamie had consumed enough whiskey to make him forget what it was that was troubling him so much.

  He gave Bliss a perfectly harmless pinch as she passed him and she whirled around and fairly broke his knuckles with a wooden spoon. Cutter, who’d downed his share of the whiskey, howled with amusement, while old Dog crouched in the corner by the stove and whimpered.

  It turned out that Dog had the best handle on the situation.

  “Jamie McKenna,” Bliss said through her teeth while Jamie was still rubbing his sore fingers, “you march right out to that henhouse and gather those eggs. If you insist on keeping that wretched rooster, then you can deal with him yourself!” With that, she shoved a basket into his hands and set to putting away the supplies he and Cutter had bought in town.

  Cutter ran for the door like a man with hot grease in his mouth, but even when he was outside, his guffaws of laughter sounded clearly in the kitchen.

  Jamie muttered every oath he knew as he stormed outside, egg basket in hand. He was never going to hear the last of this. He’d be the laughingstock of every sheep camp in New Zealand.

  Jamie sat at his desk in the study, head bent over a pile of ledger books, hand moving swiftly as he figured. Bliss was in the rocking chair near the fire with a book in her lap.

  She’d been over the beginning four times and still hadn’t made sense of it. “Jamie,” she ventured.

  He didn’t look up. “What?” he asked shortly.

  “I only cried because you brought me all those lovely things and I couldn’t even surprise you with a yellow cake.”

  Jamie’s pencil stopped its rapid motion, but he was far too stubborn to meet her eyes. “No worries,” he said remotely.

  Bliss set her book aside, got out of the chair, and approached her husband, standing behind him to massage his taut shoulders. “I don’t believe you, Mr. McKenna,” she said softly. “I think you’re very worried.”

  “Shows what you know,” he muttered, but his muscles were relaxing beneath Bliss’s hands and, probably without even knowing it, he let the pencil fall to his ledger book.

  Bliss bent and kissed his temple. “I know more than you think I do,” she persisted.

  Jamie sighed. “Is that so, then?”

  “Yes,” she said firmly. “I know that I embarrassed you in front of Cutter, and I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m about to—I get very cranky when—” Her voice fell away, in utter embarrassment.

  Jamie turned in his chair to look up at her and what she saw in his face hurt her terribly. He understood what she was trying to say, that she’d have the curse any day, and he was relieved.

  Relieved that his irksome wife wasn’t about to burden him with a child he didn’t want.

  She backed away from him, fighting back the tears that were always so close to the surface. “Oh Jamie,” she whispered brokenly. “Jamie.”

  He stood and reached out for her, but she shrank back, shaking her head.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said.

  “Bliss—”

  Again, she shook her head. “I—I think it’s best that you’ll be going away for a while,” she managed to say.

  She’d forgotten how quickly he could move; he’d caught her chin in his hand and forced her to meet his eyes before she had an inkling of what he intended. “Does that mean you’re plannin’ to leave again?” he demanded in a furious undertone. “If it does, Duchess, tell me now.”

  A soft, ragged sob escaped Bliss. “I won’t go, Jamie McKenna, till you send me
away!”

  He searched her face, as though desperate to believe her, and then released her. “Go to bed,” he said harshly, and went back to his damnable ledger books and his figures.

  “I will go to bed when and if I choose,” Bliss said with dignity, “and it won’t be with you, Mr. McKenna.”

  “Fine,” Jamie snapped, concentrating on his books.

  Bliss picked up the volume she’d closed earlier and, after a moment’s thought, slammed it down on the desk as hard as she could. The report was as loud as a gunshot and, she noted with satisfaction, she had Jamie’s full attention.

  “What the ’ell are you tryin’ to do?” he demanded, glaring at her.

  “I want to know why you don’t want me to have your child,” Bliss informed him bluntly, and even though everything she valued, everything she loved, was riding on his answer, her look was level. Fearless.

  “It’s a big responsibility, a child,” he hedged, averting his eyes.

  “Not good enough, Jamie,” Bliss persisted, folding her arms. “You seem happy to make love to me. Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that a baby could be conceived?”

  He didn’t answer, and Bliss could only conclude that he didn’t want her to be the mother of his children. Perhaps he found her wanting, or he had someone else in mind.

  She took her book and left the study without looking back, Dog slinking along after her, and when she’d reached the top of the stairs and entered the room she and Jamie shared, she locked the door.

  It would have been easier, she supposed, if she’d been able to go right to sleep, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. She tossed and turned, her heart aching.

  Sometime later, she heard Jamie in the hallway. When he tried the doorknob, Bliss held her breath, but he only said, “Good night, Duchess,” in a low, despairing voice, and went away.

  It was all Bliss could do not to run after him and beg him to lie beside her, where he belonged, and to hold her in his arms. She resisted, though, and somewhere in the blackest, bleakest part of the night, she fell asleep.

  When she awakened the next morning, Bliss knew that the house was empty, except for Dog, who was whining in the hallway. Feeling unbearably lonely, she pushed back the covers and moved to sit up.

  The cramps grabbed at her like a powerful, squeezing fist, and she lay back down with a groan of pain. Not only was the house barren; so, for the time being anyway, was her body.

  Tears seeped through her eyelashes. Maybe Jamie didn’t want her to bear his child, but she would. If it was the last thing Bliss ever did, she vowed to herself, twisting the golden band on her finger and biting down on her lower lip, she would bear that stubborn blue-eyed Irishman’s baby.

  Chapter 20

  BLISS WAS IN NO MOOD FOR AN EXTENDED TUSSLE WITH THAT hell-born rooster. After a careful search of the premises, she found a dirty, rusted old washtub in the barn and hauled it to the doorway of the chicken coop. Dog stood nearby, looking on, his head tilted to one side.

  “Oh Caesar!” Bliss called sweetly, turning the wooden latch on the wire gate and opening it wide. “I’m here to gather the eggs!”

  He appeared from out of nowhere, flapping his wings and carrying on fit to scare the devil himself, but Bliss was ready for him. Swiftly, she lowered the upended washtub, trapping the nasty rooster beneath it.

  Dog yipped in delight, running round and round in circles, and Bliss hummed as she gathered the eggs, leaving Caesar as he was when she went inside the house. The bird needed time to consider the error of his ways.

  She was aproned and squinting at the words in the cookbook Jamie had given her when she heard a wagon coming up the road. Dog dashed toward the front of the house, barking uproariously.

  Bliss was certain that Jamie was back from the sheep camp. She dropped the cookbook and ran her hands over her flyaway, tumbledown hair, wishing that she’d taken the time to put it up. . . .

  She ran out of the kitchen and along the hallway to pull aside a curtain in the front parlor and look out. If Jamie turned toward the barn instead of coming directly to the house, she would have time to dash upstairs, exchange her flour-dusted dress for a clean one, and wind her hair into a ladylike coronet.

  The wagon lumbered toward the house, but the driver was not Jamie; Bliss had never seen the man before. The woman sitting rigidly upright beside him, however, was all too familiar.

  It seemed that Peony Ryan had come to call.

  Tight-lipped, but determined to be mannerly, Bliss opened the front door and went out. Dog stood just behind her, growling uncertainly.

  Peony was pale as death. “Is Jamie here?” she asked in a faint voice as the driver pushed the rig’s brake lever into place and wrapped the reins around it.

  Bliss shook her head and, after a sharp word to Dog, started down the stone walk. She was no longer self-conscious about her wild hair and floury dress, as she had been a moment before.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  “Peony, what is it?” she asked as the strange man leaped down from the wagon to walk around the other side and extend his arms to his passenger.

  Peony closed her eyes and went a shade whiter. “I must see Jamie,” she said, clinging to her escort’s arm for support as he guided her toward the house. “Where is he, Bliss? Will he be back soon?”

  Bliss hurried ahead, racing up the steps and across the porch to hold the front door open. “He’s in the sheep camp, with Cutter and the others,” she answered breathlessly. In her anxiety over Peony’s obvious state of ill health, she’d forgotten all the reasons why she disliked the woman.

  The man led Peony into the parlor, helped her into a chair, and then went back outside, without a word, probably to fetch her baggage.

  Bliss gazed at her visitor in puzzled concern. “Please,” she said, “what’s happened to you?”

  Peony’s skin was chalky, and she began to weep, something Bliss wouldn’t even have been able to imagine her doing before. “I can’t speak of it—just send someone to find Jamie—”

  Bliss had no idea where to begin looking for her husband, and there was no one to send. She cast a desperate look toward the stranger when he brought in two matching leather valises and set them on the parlor floor.

  “My name’s Sam Winters,” he said politely, with a tip of his weather-beaten hat. He was a sturdily built man, of medium height, with craterlike pockmarks visible above the lines of his dark brown beard and eyes that were nearly black.

  Bliss nodded and glanced anxiously at Peony before introducing herself. “I’m Mrs. McKenna,” she said.

  Peony was sitting on the edge of a chair, her eyes tightly closed again, her color slightly better. “I do need some tea, and poor Sam is probably starving. He’s traveled all this way with little or nothing to eat.”

  Wishing that Jamie were there, Bliss went into the kitchen and put water on to boil. Like Dog, Sam had followed her, and since he looked like a kindly sort, she ventured to ask, “What happened, Mr. Winters?”

  Sam took off his hat and, when Bliss nodded that it was all right, his heavy coat, too. “She was hurt, Mrs. McKenna. She was hurt bad.”

  Bliss felt weak. “How?” she asked, measuring tea leaves into a blue crockery pot.

  It was clear that Sam hated to answer. “She was—assaulted, missus. Two men broke into her house, they did, and—and one of them, well, he burned her with a hot poker.”

  Horror washed over Bliss; she could no longer think about the tea or what she might give Sam to remedy his hunger. She went back to the parlor, where Peony sat, her breath slow and shallow.

  “Come with me,” Bliss said, helping the woman carefully to her feet. “You need to lie down.”

  Peony flinched and rested on Bliss’s strength for a moment. Tears had left streaks through the layer of dust on the older woman’s cheeks. “I know how this must appear to you—”

  Bliss shook her head and interrupted. “Why did you travel all this way when you’re in such obvious pain? Why didn�
�t you summon a doctor?”

  She led Peony toward the downstairs bedroom Cutter had used. Bliss had aired the place out and changed the sheets that morning, thank goodness.

  Peony didn’t answer until Bliss had closed the door and begun helping her out of her clothes. “I did see a doctor, Bliss,” she answered with grim impatience. “And I was afraid to stay in Auckland.” Her lovely green eyes were glistening with tears again. “I should have listened to Jamie.”

  Bliss felt a chill as she had her first look at the burn in the middle of Peony’s back. It was angry and seeping, and it seemed to form initials, or a sign of some sort. “In the name of God, who would do such a thing?”

  Peony sighed, holding her arms crossed in front of her bosom in an effort to be modest. “Friends of the man who wanted me to bear his mark,” she answered. “His name is Increase Pipher.”

  Bliss mulled the name over while she went back to the parlor for Peony’s satchels, but she couldn’t place it. If she’d heard of the man before, it had escaped her memory.

  Peony put on a cotton nightdress, with Bliss’s help, and crawled into bed on her stomach. She must have been exhausted, for by the time Bliss had returned with her tea, she was sound asleep.

  Bliss entered the kitchen, where Sam was sitting patiently at the table, and went on out through the rear door. Behind the chicken coop, where Caesar was still trapped underneath the washtub, she threw up until there was nothing left in her stomach.

  She paused at the well to splash cold water on her face afterward and rinse out her mouth, then walked resolutely into the house again.

  “Sit down, Mrs. McKenna,” Sam pleaded. “You look near as peaky as Mrs. Ryan.”

  Bliss thought of the brutality that had been inflicted on Peony and did as Sam asked. Her hand shook visibly as she poured tea for herself and took a cautious sip. “Sam, are you a friend of Mrs. Ryan’s?”

  Sam shook his head, looking hungrily at the bowl of fresh fruit sitting in the middle of the table. “My brother-in-law drives her carriage,” he answered. “I be a seafarin’ man, myself, between voyages. After this awful thing had happened, Mrs. Ryan wanted someone to bring her to your husband. We came as far as we could on the train, then hired a wagon.”