The pillow Dorrie had been fluffing fell from her arms, and she looked at Bliss with enormous eyes and a mouth rounded into a horrified O.

Bliss glanced back over one shoulder at the door, all too aware that Jamie might return at any moment. A part of her yearned for that, and for the conquering that would inevitably follow, but Bliss took her emotions firmly in hand and pressed, “If you could just—just invite him to your room or something. That would give me time to take one of the horses and get away.”

Dorrie’s mouth finally closed, but she looked pale and her eyes were still big as saucers. “You want me to bed Jamie—your own ’usband—and this your weddin’ night?”

The very thought caused Bliss incomprehensible pain, but she refused to give in to her baser instincts. For the moment, however, she could not speak.

Dorrie looked appalled. “Didn’t you learn nothin’, mum, by what ’appened last night?”

Bliss shivered with remembered terror, but quickly recovered her self-control. Given Jamie’s anger over being forced into a marriage he hadn’t wanted, the two situations weren’t so different. It was a matter of numbers, that was all: she was about to be thoroughly used by one man instead of a dozen.

“Do you want to help me or not?” she countered.

A certain mischievous lechery was shining in Dorrie’s swollen eyes. “Well, it ain’t a ’alf nasty job, pleasin’ that man,” she mused.

Bliss’s cheeks burned hot. Even though she had only the vaguest knowledge of what it meant to “please” a man, she hated the idea of someone else rendering the service to Jamie. “What’s your answer?” she demanded. “May I count on you or not?”

Dorrie extended one chafed and callused hand to seal the unholy bargain. “Aye, Mistress McKenna. When Jamie’s proper into ’is cups, I’ll lead ’im upstairs.”

Bliss gathered the few belongings she’d taken from her satchel earlier and repacked them, feeling the need to make preparations even though it might be a long time before it was safe to leave. “How will I know when you’ve—when you and Jamie are t-together?”

Dorrie paused in the doorway. “My room is right above this one, love,” she said, with a sort of coy smugness in her voice and in her face. “You’ll know when you ’ear a ruckus.”

Bliss fought down an urge to cross the rough wooden floor and box Dorrie’s ears. She’d made her choice and she must abide by it. After all, she could not both go to America and stay in New Zealand with Jamie McKenna.

Still, she felt tears gathering in her throat as she proudly turned her back, waiting for Dorrie to go on about the business of seducing the one man Bliss had ever truly wanted.

A full hour passed before Bliss heard the promised hubbub upstairs. With tears stinging her eyes, she took her satchel into her hand and, for the second time in twenty-four hours, opened the window and climbed outside.