“I’m aware of that, Mrs. McKenna,” the fellow responded. “I wonder if I could speak to your sister-in-law alone?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Bliss saw Reeve shake his head, and she was infinitely grateful. She gave a loud, wailing sob that wasn’t entirely feigned and clasped one hand over her face. “Oh, Jamie,” she called, “why did you leave me?”

“Don’t overact,” Maggie warned in a sharp undertone as she hustled Bliss toward a distant settee. She seated her solicitously and even patted her on the head. “There, there, dear,” she said.

Bliss sobbed again, but more moderately this time, and the captain, she saw through her splayed fingers, looked chagrined as he strode over and sat down beside her.

“I’ll try to make this as painless as possible, Mrs. McKenna,” he said gently. “Tell me, when did you last see your husband?”

Bliss took a wild guess as to what she was supposed to say. “Today,” she began. Then, at Reeve’s glower, she retracted that with, “No, it was yesterday.”

Reeve’s nod was nearly imperceptible.

Bliss sniffled and accepted the handkerchief Maggie thrust at her, using it to hide behind. “He told me that our marriage had been a mistake,” she squalled. “There’s no room in his life for me or for our baby!”

Reeve’s lips twitched slightly, and there was a light in his blue-green eyes.

“Then he is most definitely a fool and a rounder,” sympathized the captain, going so far as to touch Bliss’s hand. “You’re better off without him, my dear lady.”

Bliss gave a cry that would have done a banshee proud and buried her face in Maggie’s hanky.

“You can see how upset my sister-in-law is,” protested Reeve’s wife, patting Bliss’s shoulder with tender industry. “I do think you could let us all return to our beds, Captain.”

The officer sighed and then spread his hands. “We shouldn’t have disturbed you,” he apologized. “It was our hope that we might be able to have a talk with Mr. McKenna—we only wanted to question him, you understand.”

“After you’d shackled him, of course,” Reeve put in dryly, lifting a glass of whiskey to his mouth.

The captain looked annoyed. “Good night,” he said in clipped tones, striding toward the doors opening onto the entry hall, his troops following wearily behind him.

When Bliss was upstairs again, she did not undress and crawl back into bed, but sat in the window seat, staring out at the night. She examined the situation from every angle, and there was no escaping it. There was one person in all the world who could save Jamie, and she was that person.

She went to the door of her room and looked in one direction and then the other, squinting. There was no one up and about.

Cautiously, she began creeping toward the stairs. She went down one, down another. And came nose to chest with a human wall.

Looking up, Bliss made out Reeve’s square jaw and caught a glint of moonlight in ebony hair.