She sensed that Walter was working up his courage long before he spoke again.

“Bliss, what happened? Why are you aboard this ship without your husband?”

Bliss looked down at the handkerchief wadded between her hands. Walter had a gift for asking questions that were entirely too personal, but he did it in such a way that one felt it would be mean-spirited not to answer. “There’s a man Jamie hates,” she said miserably. “A terribly cruel, vindictive man.”

Walter looked distinctly uncomfortable, and he didn’t speak, but his knuckles were white, so tight was his grip on the railing. There was still a faint bruise around his eye, a reminder of his own encounter with Jamie.

Bliss drew in a deep breath and let it out again. She’d begun, she might as well finish. “I’m so frightened, Walter. This man laid Jamie’s back open with a whip, years ago, and he had the most horrid thing done to our—our friend, Mrs. Ryan. Now Jamie’s determined to find him.”

“And do what?”

Bliss closed her eyes for a moment. She knew that Jamie would kill Increase Pipher if he came face-to-face with him, and she was terrified that her husband would either be hanged for the crime or die in the process of taking vengeance. “I don’t even want to think about it,” she said.

“I believe I’d better look in on Grandfather,” Walter replied, and as abruptly as that, he was gone.

Bliss kept her vigil at the railing until she could no longer see New Zealand. Then, because she needed so much to feel close to Jamie, she hurried back to the cabin to record the day’s experiences in the letter she’d begun aboard the train.

Jamie spent three days and nights in the worst part of Auckland, the welter of pubs, opium dens, and whorehouses encircling the harbor, before he was approached by one of the men he’d been waiting for.

“Is it about Mrs. Ryan, mate?” the man asked, dropping into a chair across the table from Jamie’s. He was a little bleeder, wearing a layer of filth that probably dated back to his childhood, and he looked familiar.

Jamie’s right hand rested idly on the hilt of his blade, still in its scabbard on his hip. With his left, he raised a glass of whiskey to his mouth, took an unhurried sip while he studied the man with a thoughtfulness he knew was unnerving. “What’s your name?” he finally asked.

“Johnson,” replied the emissary from the city’s underbelly. “Nate Johnson, Mr. McKenna.”

Jamie smiled, slowly and viciously, and took another draft of his whiskey. He remembered Johnson now; he’d been with Dunnigan on the road that day. He’d been brave enough then, the bastard, with Jamie sprawled on the ground, half-conscious. Aye, Johnson had been pleased to put a boot to him.

But he was sweating now. Copiously. “I weren’t in on burnin’ the lady,” he sputtered, shaken by Jamie’s silence. “I swear to God I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that, Mr. McKenna.”