Full of despair and desperate hope that her suspicions were wrong, Bliss started tentatively up the stairs. She had progressed only a step or two when Jamie suddenly appeared on the upper floor, tucking his shirttails into his trousers as he started down.

He stopped cold, a look of wary puzzlement in his eyes, while Bliss stared up at him, too horrified to speak. The most she could do was pray silently that she wouldn’t humiliate herself by bursting into tears.

“Duchess—” Jamie began, in a low, grating voice.

Bliss could not bear to hear him lie to her. The blunt and terrible truth was that he had turned to Dorrie for what he’d refused to take from his own wife.

With a lift of her chin, Bliss took her skirt in one hand and retreated back down the stairs. “You needn’t explain,” she said, longing to tear her gaze from Jamie’s but unable to manage the feat.

He hesitated, looking worried, and then shrugged and spread his hands slightly. “Aye, love—as always, you’re right. I’ll not be explainin’.”

“Very well,” Bliss agreed stiffly, and at last she was able to turn and walk away. It was a good thing that Jamie didn’t follow, for her eyes were very moist.

“Blast and damnation,” Bliss muttered to herself, dashing away tears with the heels of her palms as she took refuge in the room where she’d been brought so near to full womanhood and then abandoned on the brink. All her father’s neglect and cruelty hadn’t been enough to reduce her to tears, yet Jamie McKenna had managed to do it several times in the short course of their acquaintance.

Bliss slammed the door hard and leaned back against it, as if to keep out all the contradictory feelings Jamie had stirred to life within her. Of course, it was too late for protective measures. She was bonded, perhaps for all eternity, to a man who had no use for her.

There was a tap at the door, startling Bliss so that she leaped away and then asked in a tremulous voice, “Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Mistress McKenna,” sang Dorrie’s voice. She sounded so happy that Bliss wanted to slap her. “Open up now, for I ’ave your breakfast.”

Rare was the trauma that could sour Bliss’s appetite. Slender though she was, she was almost continuously hungry—like a shark, her father had been fond of saying. She wrenched open the door, scowling hatefully, and Dorrie came swishing and swaying through the opening, face glowing, eyes alight.

She set the tray down on the bedside table and chirped, “Can’t think why you’d want to eat in ’ere, all alonelike and everything.”

Bliss only glared at her.

“Be about it,” Dorrie ordered, making a shooing motion at Bliss with her apron. “Jamie boy, ’e’s wantin’ to be on the road while the sun’s shinin’.”

Bliss turned her head, gazing blindly at the spectacular view of the inn’s barnyard. “I imagine you know all about what Jamie wants, don’t you?” she reflected, only realizing that she’d spoken aloud when it was too late.