Bliss found mugs and carried them to the table, along with the pot of freshly brewed tea. Anyone would have thought, Jamie observed miserably to himself, that she belonged in this house. Was its mistress.

She sat down across from him and poured tea for him and then herself. Every move was one of dignity, until she took a noisy sip from her cup.

In spite of his confusion and his anger, Jamie laughed, and Bliss glared at him, insulted.

“It’s hot,” she explained.

He inclined his head slightly. “Yes, Duchess,” he replied, fighting to keep a straight face.

In the next instant, without any warning at all, there were tears brimming in her indigo eyes. “You needn’t make fun of me,” she said, sniffling. “It isn’t as though the past few days have been easy for me, you know. I’ve had hardly anything to eat the whole time, and I’ve slept in the most dreadful places.” She stopped and drew a deep and very moist breath. “I have been in terrible danger, too. I might have encountered bushrangers, after all.”

Jamie took a leisurely sip of his tea, then quipped, “Or broken your neck climbing out an upstairs window.”

A single tear streaked down Bliss’s cheek, and Jamie found himself thinking soft, silly thoughts.

“You have no right to hold me prisoner, Mr. McKenna,” she pointed out. “I’m a subject of the Crown, after all—”

“Strange talk, coming from a future Yank,” Jamie interrupted lightly. “They bend their knees to nobody—nary a king or a queen among ’em.”

Bliss blushed, and again Jamie was possessed of a longing to see her without her clothes.

“Sometimes,” she confessed softly, “I wonder if I’m ever going to get away from New Zealand.” She lifted her beautiful eyes to Jamie’s face. “You’re going to take me back to Wellington, aren’t you?” she asked.

Jamie only nodded. For some reason, he couldn’t speak.

“I know you believe that’s the honorable, upright thing to do—”

He waited, willing to listen even though his mind was made up. And Jamie McKenna rarely retreated from a decision, once he’d made it.

“You can’t possibly know what a mistake you’re making, of course,” Bliss went on distractedly. She was a little pale, and he suspected that her hands were knotted in her lap.

He’d seen such female theatrics before.

“Alexander will force me to address him circumspectly, as ’Mr. Zate,’ from the day we’re married,” she said.

“I’ve ’eard of worse things,” Jamie remarked, after taking another swallow of tea.

All of a sudden, Bliss’s small, cold hands were out of her lap and reaching across the tabletop, gripping Jamie’s. “I’ll have to share his bed,” she whispered, “and I don’t love him.”

Jamie thrust himself out of his chair, turning his back. He didn’t want to hear what privileges her husband would have; he didn’t want to think about them. “You’re not my problem, Duchess,” he said, after a lengthy silence. “Not after I leave you off in Wellington, anyway.”