So much for the ignorant native, cowed by the conquerors, Bliss thought to herself. With a lift of her chin, she countered, “I’ll carry the water myself. I don’t make a habit of bathing in strange men’s kitchens.”

“That,” retorted Carra sourly, “is a big relief.”

Bliss had tried hard to refrain from asking impertinent questions, but one slipped past her resolve. “Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you bathe right here, in Mr. McKenna’s kitchen?”

Carra stared at her for a moment and then laughed, and there was a begrudging warmth in her face. “You are an odd little creature. Tell me, do you always ask such outrageous questions?”

Bliss sighed and began unbuttoning her coat. “Yes, most times I do.”

Carra’s expression had turned solemn again, in the wink of an eye. She regarded Bliss in silence for an instant, then took the patched, hay-flecked coat from her arms and carried it outside.

Bliss bent to pick up the copper tub—it was lighter than it looked, but still cumbersome—and lugged it upstairs and into her room. To her discomfort, Jamie McKenna was kneeling on the hearth, lighting the fire he’d laid. When the blaze caught, he rose, turning to face Bliss.

There was a deadly kind of grace in the way he moved; Bliss sensed that Jamie McKenna was a man who could look after himself, even in the most desperate situations.

She let the tub fall to the floor with a clanging ker-thump, feeling stricken in a way that defied explanation.

“Carra’s refused to haul up your bathwater, has she?”

The question was mundane enough to bring Bliss back to her senses. “Yes, but that’s quite all right. I can carry my own water.”

Jamie’s gaze was fixed on Bliss’s bodice, and she remembered that she was wearing the black silk gown she’d had on when she’d raced out of Alexander’s house in Wellington. Pearl and jet beads trimmed the hemline and the plunging neckline.

“What happened?” Jamie asked quietly, moving his eyes to Bliss’s blushing face with obvious effort. “Exactly what—or who—are you running away from?”

Bliss felt the strangest urge to pour out her heart to this impudent stranger, to tell him all about her father’s determination to marry her off to Alexander Zate, but in the end she held her peace. The less Mr. McKenna knew, the better.

She drew a deep and rather shaky breath. “I’ve already told you,” she said. “I plan to travel to America.”

Jamie arched one eyebrow and ran a hand through his rumpled, wheat-colored hair. “Where the streets are paved with gold,” he gibed.

Bliss squared her shoulders. “I don’t believe that nonsense.”

“Good,” he responded, and that strange irritation was back in his voice again. “Because that’s exactly what it is. Nonsense, claptrap, drivel.”

He blurred a little, and Bliss squinted to bring him back into focus.

“You are very prejudiced, Mr. McKenna.”

Jamie looked insulted. “What?”

“You dislike Americans, and I can’t think why. Your own sister-in-law is one, after all.” Bliss jutted out her chin a little way, to show that she didn’t approve of his narrow viewpoint. “But, then, you referred to her as a ’Yank,’ didn’t you?”