She was weeping when she reached him, and her arms went out to pull at his shirt, wanting to strip it from him. Instinctively, she knew that Jamie’s own desire would tear at him like the talons of some great, fierce bird until he had been gratified.

The swiftness of his withdrawal had the impact of a slap across the face. Muttering curses, Jamie bounded off the bed and turned away, his broad shoulders moving as he drew in rapid, gasping breaths.

Bliss sat up slowly, conscious of her nakedness now that Jamie had left her. She groped until she caught hold of a fold in the blanket and used the thick, woolly cloth to cover herself. “What is it?” she whispered.

Jamie rasped another curse and thrust the splayed fingers of one hand through his rumpled hair.

“Jamie?” Bliss pressed, feeling more bereft than she had at any time since her mother’s death.

He was unable—or unwilling—to look at her, and his voice, when he spoke, was hoarse. “If we go on,” he said, after a silence so long that it was agonizing to suffer through, “there’ll be no annulment.”

Few things Jamie might have said could have wounded Bliss more. In the heat of their loving, her desire to be anywhere but at this man’s side had been seared away like dry grass in the path of a raging fire. Now, he was telling her that this wonderful, ferocious intimacy they’d shared had changed nothing.

She drew a deep breath in an effort to steady herself. “Oh,” was all she could manage to say, and the word sounded hollow. Weak.

Again, Jamie shoved a hand distractedly through his hair. “I need a drink,” he said, and then, without once looking back at Bliss, who still cowered on the bed, he left the room.

The tears Bliss had been struggling to hold back broke free, sliding down her cheeks and dripping ingloriously off her chin. Something terrible had happened. Somewhere, in the tangled confusion of all her plans and intentions, she had made a tragic mistake.

She had fallen in love with Jamie McKenna.

Jamie did not return to his bride that night, though she awaited him, listening for his footsteps between bouts of crying. At dawn, Bliss was finally desperate enough to go in search.

Hastily, she gathered up her rumpled shirtwaist, petticoat, and tweed skirt, which had been tossed aside the night before, and put them on. Since her drawers were hopelessly torn, Bliss took another pair from her satchel and shimmied into them, and although she gave her hair a quick brushing, she was too hurried to pin it up. She crept into the hallway, just in time to see Dorrie come out of the kitchen, carrying a tray and humming happily as she headed toward the dining room. There was a certain sway to the woman’s sumptuous hips that, coupled with an obviously cheery mood, caused Bliss to approach the stairway and look up.

Dorrie’s room was directly above hers; the serving girl had said so herself.