Without answering her, or meeting her eyes. Jamie helped her into the saddle and mounted behind her. She felt a delicious and entirely inappropriate sense of pleasure at his nearness.

They were making their slow and weary way back toward the inn before Jamie condescended to speak.

“What the hell did you say to those bleeders to send them packing like that?”

Bliss smiled, despite her exhaustion and the strange pain that Jamie’s anger stirred within her. “I told them that my husband would cut out their livers,” she replied.

Jamie was silent for a long moment, then, grudgingly, he gave a grunt of amusement. “May God have infinite pity on that poor bastard, wherever and whoever he may be.”

Stung anew, Bliss sat up straighter and held more tightly to her satchel, which Jamie had no doubt found in the road when he’d gone out looking for her the night before. “As far as those rascals are concerned, that ’poor bastard’ is none other than your own self, Mr. Jamie McKenna. They were either scared to death of you or understandably repelled by the mere mention of your name!”

The strong, gloved hands drew back on the reins and the sorrel came to a brisk stop. Jamie’s voice rumbled past Bliss’s ear. “Maybe you’d prefer to walk back to the inn, Duchess, rather than suffer me company.”

Bliss’s chin jutted out. She was dizzy with weariness but far too proud to beg Jamie’s indulgence. “The choice is yours, Mr. McKenna,” she said with quiet dignity.

At a subtle, silent command, the horse bolted forward, moving at a trot, then a lope, then a gallop. Bliss held on as best she could, and by the time the inn came into sight, she was half sick with fatigue.

Jamie dismounted in the busy dooryard, ignoring the frank stares of those travelers standing outside, smoking and exchanging flasks. With a tenderness Bliss would not have dared to hope for only minutes before, he lifted her down and carried her toward the door. One of the stable-boys followed with Bliss’s satchel, his eyes wide in his grubby face.

“Found ’er, did you?” was Dorrie’s desultory comment as Jamie crossed the near-empty dining room where she was clearing tables, Bliss still cradled in his arms.

“Bring food and hot water for a bath,” Jamie responded brusquely, proceeding toward the room at the rear of the building, beside the kitchen.

Bliss had never expected to see that particular chamber again. She uttered a sound of protest when Jamie dropped her unceremoniously onto the bed, then snuggled down to go to sleep.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Jamie protested, taking one of her hands and hauling her back to an upright position. “You’re staying awake until you’ve had a bath and something to eat.”

Having made this pronouncement, he began unbuttoning Bliss’s now-grimy woolen coat. When he’d tossed that aside, he flipped her over like a pancake and began working at the fastenings of the evening dress she’d run away from Alexander in.