“This Zate fellow—does he have any idea how much it’s going to cost to feed you?”

Bliss did not appreciate this observation. She ignored it and took a bite from her sandwich, which contained cheese, butter, and sliced chicken.

Jamie left the horses to join her at a little distance from the road, bending to lift a sandwich of his own from the basket. His eyes sparkled with quiet humor as he unwrapped the food. “A man’s got to take his food when he has the chance,” he observed companionably. “How you can eat like a prize bull and stay so skinny is beyond me.”

Bliss nearly choked. “Skinny!” she cried, choosing to overlook the fact that she’d just been compared to a farm animal. “I am not skinny!”

The azure eyes slid lingeringly down the front of Bliss’s ragged old coat and back to her throbbing face. “You’re not fat, either,” he returned, in a strange, husky voice that had a distracted sound to it. Having made this observation, he finished eating and shuffled Bliss toward the wagon just as she was unwrapping her second sandwich.

Without so much as a by-your-leave, he lifted Bliss off her feet, fairly flinging her back into the wagon seat.

“It’s time we were moving along,” he said, quite unnecessarily, as he climbed up beside her and took the reins into his hands.

Bliss was just catching her breath, and embarrassed color mottled her cheeks. “It is,” she began, “most distracting the way you keep grabbing me up like a sack of beans and putting me wherever strikes your fancy!”

He made a startling sound meant to spur the horses on and chuckled grimly at Bliss’s leap of surprise. “You’d be amazed at what strikes my fancy, Duchess,” he said.

Bliss could think of no proper response to that, so she kept her peace and quietly consumed her sandwich.

A pale sun was just setting over the sea when the inn came into sight. Bliss had been riding on that hard wagon seat for hours, cold to the very marrow of her bones, and she had a wild, soaring hope that Jamie would stop for the night.

She closed her eyes for a moment, in sheer relief, when her escort guided the horses through the inn’s wide gateway.

Two grinning stableboys appeared immediately to attend to the tired horses, greeting Jamie with simultaneous cries of, “Good evenin’, Mr. McKenna!”

Ignoring Bliss for the moment, Jamie climbed down from the wagon bed and handed each of the grubby boys a coin. Even though he had to be almost as stiff and sore as Bliss was, he moved with his usual subtle ease.

Presently, after a chat with the lads, he came to Bliss’s side of the wagon and extended his strong arms to her. She moved into them without hesitation, too weary to rebel.

In the warm, well-lighted interior of the inn, other travelers, mostly men, sat at long tables, drinking ale and consuming succulent venison pies for supper.