Bliss started toward Jamie, meaning to embrace him, but he sidestepped her. Oddly, that hurt more than any “blistering” could have.

Before anything more could be said, two stewards appeared to carry away the trunks Peony and her maid had packed for Bliss earlier.

Barely ten minutes later, she and Jamie were in a carriage, riding toward the railway station. After Jamie had bought their tickets, they boarded the train.

It was the first time in Bliss’s life that she had ever set foot inside such a conveyance, let alone been a passenger. In a way, she supposed, it would make up for the missed experience of sailing over the seas in one of Her Majesty’s steamships.

She looked at Jamie from under lowered eyelashes as he ushered her into the dining car and seated her at a table before removing his hat and joining her. He seemed so tired and beleaguered that Bliss longed to comfort him.

“I didn’t get a chance to thank you for rescuing me from that dreadful man,” she said.

Jamie glared at Bliss over the top of his menu, and she was too intimidated to press the point. A waiter appeared, wearing a suit every bit as grand as the one worn by the president of that retail establishment in Auckland, and Bliss studied his shiny buttons and velvet-smooth coat with wide eyes as Jamie gave their orders.

“Thank you for consulting me as to what I might like to have for supper,” Bliss said with a sniff. “Maybe I don’t want broiled fish. Did you ever think of that?”

“And maybe,” Jamie replied evenly, “I could take you back to our sleepin’ car and raise welts on your backside after all. Did you ever think of that?”

Bliss subsided, and when the fish arrived, she ate it without complaint, even though it did taste like a blend of kelp and driftwood.

When Jamie had had all the dinner he wanted, which wasn’t much, judging by the food he left on his plate, he stood to leave without so much as a word of explanation to Bliss.

“You’re just going to leave me here?” she asked, feeling a bit panic-stricken. She’d never been on board a train before, and she had no idea where to go when it was time to leave the dining car.

Jamie paused, his expression absolutely unreadable, and said, “I’m off to the club car, Duchess, where a man can smoke and ’ave a drink in peace.”

Resentment flared within Bliss. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t had a hard day herself. “I’ll just come with you, then,” she said, about to rise from her chair.

But Jamie held her firmly in place by laying one hand to her shoulder. “Sorry, Duchess,” he said with the slightest hint of a smile in his eyes. “No women allowed.”

Bliss knew all her freckles were standing out on a field of bright pink. “No women—that’s preposterous!”

Jamie shrugged. “Maybe so, dear ’eart, but such is the way of it. If you try to go in there, they’ll throw you out on your pretty little—ear.”