“She’s a fine lass,” Reeve reflected, and Jamie knew his brother was speaking of Bliss. “The kind of wife any man would be glad to ’ave, Jamie.”

“Aye,” Jamie agreed wearily, after a sip of his brandy. It should have steadied him, but it didn’t. “The Duchess is the best thing that’s ever ’appened to me, Reeve. You must know that.”

Reeve turned, his blue-green eyes fierce as an Irish sea in winter. “Why do you treat ’er the way you do, then—like there were a dozen more where she came from, to be ’ad for a ha’penny?”

Jamie tossed back the rest of his drink and set the glass down hard on a highly polished table. “So you know, do you, ’ow I treat me wife?” he demanded in a scathing undertone, all the old anger he felt toward Reeve welling up within him.

“Damn your eyes, Jamie,” Reeve growled, gesturing toward the French doors, “she came through ’ere not ten minutes ago, lookin’ as though the soul ’ad been torn out of ’er! What the devil did you say—or do?”

It was all Jamie could do to retain his composure. He retrieved his glass and went back to the liquor cabinet, keeping his back to Reeve as he poured another double shot of brandy. “You know,” he said evenly, “if I ’ad any sense at all, I’d just ride out of ’ere and forget I ever ’ad a wife—or a brother.”

Reeve was light on his feet for a big man. Jamie hadn’t heard him approach, and he was stung to fury when a fist caught him by the shoulder and wrenched him around. He knocked Reeve’s hand away and whiskey flew, leaving a plume-shaped amber stain on Maggie’s white settee.

“I’ll throw your own words back at you, little brother,” Reeve breathed, taking a hold on the front of Jamie’s shirt. “If you ’ave somethin’ to say, say it!”

Adrenaline surged through Jamie’s body. The last time he’d fought Reeve, nearly three years before, in Brisbane, he’d lost. That wouldn’t happen again. “Take your ’ands off me, Reeve,” he said.

Reeve’s grasp on his shirt relaxed, was relinquished. “You can say anything you want to me, lad,” he warned, looking as ferocious as ever, “but you won’t mistreat that little bride of yours. Not under this roof.”

Jamie felt a muscle twitch in his cheek; he stilled it by sheer force of will. “You’ll not be tellin’ me ’ow to do anything,” he spat. One part of him craved to make peace with Reeve; another, a terrified boy with his hands tied to an acacia tree and his back bared to a madman’s whip, wanted to rage at the brother who hadn’t been there when he needed him. “Did I ever tell you ’ow Bliss and I came to be married?” he went on when Reeve was silent.

“Aye,” Reeve answered with weary irony in his tone. “You were forced into it, if I remember correctly. Well, I’m tired of ’earin’ it, Jamie boy. You ’ad your blade, didn’t you? Since when is one old man, with or without a gun, enough to force the likes of you into anything?”