She bit her lower lip, gathering the courage to hear the answer to the question she was about to ask. “Was it—bad?”

“Yes,” Walter answered, and Bliss heard all the brokenness and pain of mortal man echoing in that one word. “Yes, it was bad.”

“And J-Jamie?”

“He didn’t break, Bliss,” Walter marveled. “He was like a man made of stone. But you could feel the hatred coming out of him like heat from a fire.” He paused, tensing, and then whispered an oath.

Bliss turned her head to see for herself what was coming and then wished she hadn’t. Increase was approaching, carrying a blade as formidable as Jamie’s in one hand.

Muttering to himself all the while, he crouched and rent the back of Bliss’s bright yellow dress, as well as the camisole beneath, with the point of the knife. She trembled slightly as she felt a warm spring breeze touch her bare skin.

Visions loomed in her mind; she saw the ugly whip, wrapped as a wedding present and delivered to the suite she and Jamie had shared at the Victoria Hotel, and then the terrible, ridgelike scars on her husband’s back. Bliss closed her eyes and prayed silently for the courage to bear whatever she must.

Jamie saw a mist rising out of the ground, like smoke. He knew it would grow denser and denser, until it finally enshrouded his mind and extinguished his sanity.

A few yards away, Bliss was kneeling in the dirt, her yellow dress torn open to the waist, her arms outstretched on the wagon wheel, tightly bound at the wrists. Jamie did not feel his own injuries, he felt Bliss’s.

The sun was still fairly high. He ran a dry tongue over even drier lips and waited, as his enemy wished him to do. That was Increase’s favorite form of torture, after all; he wanted Jamie to sweat, and sweat he would. It might be hours before the old man used that whip on Bliss, and it might be minutes.

For now, Increase was inside that tent of his, in the center of camp.

The things Pipher had done to Peony rose in his mind, but Jamie forced them back. When he thought of them, the smoky mist grew thicker, more deadly. . . .

One hour passed, and then another. At intervals, Bliss looked back at Jamie over one naked, freckle-spattered shoulder, willing him to be strong. Jamie didn’t know which would kill him first, the fear of seeing her suffer or the awesome, aching love he felt for her.

Increase’s men began to move restlessly around the camp, no doubt hankering for the sport of watching another woman die. Bile rose in the back of Jamie’s throat, and his numb hands craved the sweet labor of vengeance. The men brought out bottles and cards and began amusing themselves as they waited.

By the time Increase made his appearance, strutting out of the tent with the coiled bullwhip in one hand, his cohorts were drunk to a man, but Jamie had no interest in them now. All his attention was fixed on Bliss; he saw her look at Increase and then lift that insolent little chin of hers, and in that moment his love for her bit into his middle like the teeth of an animal.