“For what?” Jamie immediately asked.

Bliss sighed and settled back against the pillows. “I’d planned to show you what a fine wife I’m going to be,” she lamented.

Jamie muttered a command to Dog, and the animal slunk away to settle itself by the hearth with a whimper. Bliss smiled. “I thought he was Cutter’s pet,” she said.

“No sheepdog is a pet,” Jamie answered, and he spoke with a seriousness that gave Bliss pause. “They earn their keep.”

“And if they don’t?” Bliss asked, supposing that wives were expected to earn their keep as well.

“We shoot them,” Jamie replied.

Bliss felt cold, even though the room was warm. “As easily as that? You just dispense with the poor beasts because they’ve displeased you?”

Jamie sighed and began undressing. “Cutter and I are off the ’igh country for a time, Bliss, startin’ day after tomorrow. Do you think we could manage to get along in the meantime?”

Bliss was near tears again. Lord, she hated how she’d become so weepy these past few weeks. It was all she could do not to grasp Jamie’s arm and beg him not to leave her behind, and her throat was so constricted that she could barely speak. “I want to go along,” she said hopelessly.

“Not this time.” Jamie tossed back the covers to lie down beside her, and the fading firelight flickered over his bare flesh with a pagan rhythm. “It’s too cold in the ’ills, Bliss.”

Bliss knew by Jamie’s tone that there was no point in arguing; he’d made up his mind, and for now at least, she wouldn’t oppose him. “What if those dreadful men come here and try to hurt me?” she demanded.

Jamie’s hand rested lightly on her naked thigh, causing little sparks of splendor to crackle through her veins. “They won’t,” he said with a quiet assurance that was all very well for him to espouse when he wasn’t going to be in any danger.

Bliss trembled as his fingers moved along her upper leg, laying claim to the satin flesh they passed over, and Jamie laughed, his voice at once soft and gruff.

“If you were any kind of husband, Mr. McKenna,” Bliss whispered as a lovely ache began deep in her middle, “you wouldn’t go off and leave me to fend for myself!”

He rolled over to give her a lingering kiss that set her languid senses throbbing. “If I thought you wouldn’t be safe ’ere,” he retorted, nibbling at her lower lip, “I’d take you with me. And as for that remark about the kind of’usband I am, love—”

Bliss groaned as he slid down to take leisurely suckle at her breast. In the coming minutes, she was forced to concede that Jamie McKenna was the grandest of husbands.

The look of concentration on Bliss’s face was so intense that Jamie had to stop and watch her. Holding an upended broom with both hands, she advanced toward the rooster guarding the henhouse door. At the last second, the bird flew at her in a flurry of squawking rage, and Bliss shrieked, dropped the broom, and whirled to run away, colliding hard with Jamie.