In the hallway, she collided with Mr. McKenna, who was wearing his heavy coat again and carrying her bedraggled old carpetbag.

“Looking for this, then?” he asked, with that touch of the Irish making a soft, lilting music in his voice.

Greedily, Bliss reached out for her bag and clutched it close. After a moment, though, she relaxed. “I can be most forgetful,” she confessed.

Jamie said nothing in response; he simply looked at Bliss in an odd way for several seconds and only when Carra cleared her throat did he turn and walk away.

“I’ll be back with the tub in a few minutes,” Carra said, her eyes never quite meeting Bliss’s as she lingered in the hallway. “The water will take a while to heat, of course.”

“Of course,” Bliss responded, wanting nothing so much as to be alone with her thoughts. It was a pity, she reflected, that Alexander had never engendered the feeling of angry sweetness in her that Jamie McKenna did. Had that been the case, she wouldn’t have run away.

She gave the door a push and it closed with a click. Biting her lower lip, she carried her bag to the chest and set it down. After a few moments of struggle with the catch, she opened the satchel and took out her journal. In her haste, she had left Wellington without her pen and ink.

After tucking the journal back inside her bag, Bliss went to the door and opened it decisively. She would further trouble the long-suffering Carra for a bottle of ink and a nibbed pen.

She was down the rear stairs and partway through the kitchen—enormous kettles of water had already been set on the stove to heat—when she heard the conversation drifting toward her from the hallway that led to the front of the house.

“Just let her go on to Auckland and catch a ship to the States,” Carra was saying, her voice low but full of anger.

“They’d chew her up and spit her out, those Yanks,” Jamie muttered. He was clearly annoyed, though his hostility seemed to be directed toward the entire population of the United States instead of Carra.

“What concern is that of yours?” his housekeeper demanded.

There was a chilly pause and then Jamie responded, with a cutting lightness, “I found her in me barn, love. I guess I ’ave a proprietary interest.”

Instinct told Bliss that she was about to be discovered; she whirled and dashed back across the kitchen, pretending to arrive as Carra stormed in, glaring.

It didn’t seem like a good time to ask for a pen and ink. “I came to see if you needed any help,” Bliss lied.

Carra’s wide brown eyes burned with a pagan fire. “I’ve gotten along remarkably well without your help until now,” she replied.

Bliss retreated a step, at a loss for words.

Carra muttered something, crossing the room and wrenching open the door of a huge and well-stocked pantry. She disappeared inside and then came out, moments later, carrying an enormous copper washtub. “You can bathe here,” she said, letting the tub clatter to the floor. “I’m not about to carry water upstairs for you.”