“Jamie McKenna will cut your livers out for this!” she cried in a loud and tremulous voice.

There was an unexpected silence, broken at last by the head cutthroat, the smelly giant in the sheepskin coat. “Who?” he asked, almost politely.

“My husband,” Bliss answered, her chin high. “Mr. Jamie McKenna.” All right, maybe Jamie wasn’t her husband, she reasoned to herself, but this was no time to be splitting hairs. The situation was desperate.

“Shit,” said the man who’d come forward from the fire to look Bliss over so insolently. “I don’t believe this.” He strode over to the giant and gave him a push. “Out of all the women in New Zealand, you’ve got to pick McKenna’s to carry off?”

All of the sudden, the camp was in a flurry of activity. Men were gathering belongings, saddling horses, riding away. Incredibly, within the space of a few minutes, Bliss found herself standing beside the fire, abandoned. Forgotten.

Had circumstances been different, she would have considered it an affront. After pacing restlessly back and forth for a few minutes, Bliss finally sat down on a log and held out her hands to the campfire.

Jamie’s arrival was hardly dramatic. He simply appeared out of the darkness, rounding the log and sitting beside Bliss.

“Some help you were,” she said, with an offended sniff. “If it had been up to you to save me, I’d be in a sorry state by now, wouldn’t I?”

“I’ve been around for a while,” he answered evenly. Bliss sensed that a struggle was going on inside him, but she didn’t care to explore the matter.

She wondered if he’d heard her claim him as a husband, but didn’t voice the question. Instead, she sighed and said, “Well, I guess we’d better be getting back to the inn.”

Jamie made no move to rise from the log, and his voice was frighteningly quiet. “Do you ’ave any idea what those men were plannin’ to do to you?”

Bliss gulped a mouthful of air. “Yes. But I’m safe now, aren’t I? No thanks to you, I might add. At the very least, Jamie McKenna, you might have rescued me.”

Jamie spread his hands wide, and even though Bliss had at last found the courage to look directly at him, she could not read his expression in the flickering light of the dying campfire. “There were a dozen of them. Do you think I’m stupid?”

Roundly annoyed, Bliss flew to her feet. The rapid motion made her dizzy, but even as she swayed, Jamie caught her by the hand and wrenched her downward, so that she was sprawled across his lap. For an instant, she was too stunned to react.

She felt the cold through her petticoat and drawers as he flung her coat and the skirt of her dress up, and in that moment the awful truth struck her. She was enraged, and began to twist and squirm, making a furious sound in the depths of her throat.