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?”