“I’d swear she was really a McKenna, with that coloring.”

Reeve gave a sigh that seemed weary to Bliss. “Aye,” he said. “The lass is the image of Callie McKenna, God rest her soul.”

Bliss turned to look at her brother-in-law, trying to read his expression. A sensation of leaping anxiety played in the pit of her stomach when she realized that he regretted what he’d just said.

“Your mother?” she pressed.

Reeve would not look at her, and it was then that the awful truth dawned on Bliss.

“Elisabeth is Jamie’s,” she whispered, and it was not the fact of Elisabeth’s birth that caused her nearly unbearable pain. It was Jamie’s failure to tell her.

“Bliss—”

She shot to her feet, unable to endure all that she was feeling. Tears scalded in her eyes, blinding her. “Who was she? Who was Elisabeth’s mother?”

Reeve was silent for a moment. Then, reaching out to take one of Bliss’s hands in his, he answered, “Tis not my place to be explaining, little one. The words have to come from Jamie.”

Bliss whirled and cried out, in her sudden and fiery anguish, “You’ve got to tell me, Reeve, because I can’t stand not knowing! I can’t bear to wait until I see Jamie again!” Through her tears, she could see that he believed her.

He rose slowly to his feet, resting his big hands on her shoulders in an awkward effort to lend comfort. “Do you see the position you’re putting me in, Bliss? To talk of that is to betray a promise I made to my only brother—”

“I didn’t make any promises to your dratted brother,” an angry female voice put in, and both Reeve and Bliss turned to see Maggie standing nearby with her arms folded.

Reeve approached his wife in a way that would have daunted most women, waggling one index finger. “You stay out of this, Yank,” he warned in a tone made all the more dire by its low, even pitch.

Maggie stood firm, her chin out. “Bliss has a right to know about Jamie’s past,” she said.

“Well, she doesn’t ’ave to ’ear it from you!” Reeve roared, slipping ominously into the brogue. Bliss had already discerned that he spoke in the Irish only in Jamie’s company or when his control over his emotions was threatened.

Maggie retreated a step in the face of his anger, but her gray eyes were still snapping with furious conviction. “Stop trying to intimidate me, Reeve McKenna! It isn’t going to work!”

“Isn’t it?” Reeve breathed, backing Maggie so far into a rosebush that thorns caught on her skirts.

“Absolutely not!” she cried intrepidly, trying to free herself from the bush. “You tell her about Eleanor, or I will!”

There was a thundering silence, and then another voice startled them all.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Jamie. “I can speak for meself.”

Bliss spun around, unable to believe her ears, but Jamie was standing there, looking weary and reluctant. A day, a week, an hour before, she would have hurled herself into his arms; now, she stood gazing at him, crushed that he hadn’t trusted her enough to share something so important as the existence of his child.