“You nearly skewered me!” Bliss protested, struggling to her feet and dusting bits of straw from her shoulders. It is virtually impossible, she reflected to herself, to maintain a dignified manner when one has just slept in a pile of hay.

Hugging herself, she began stomping both feet in an effort to get warm. She hadn’t eaten since the morning before, when the last of the food she’d stolen from the refreshment table at Alexander’s party had run out, and her stomach rumbled loudly.

The farmer grinned, showing pearly-white teeth. “You’ve got some gall, lass. This happens to be my barn you’re trespassing in.”

Bliss thought she heard a faint lilt of the Irish in his voice, but she considered this only briefly. There were too many other matters that needed thinking about. Such as extracting herself from this unsettling situation. She thrust out her chin and challenged, “I haven’t hurt your stupid barn, now have I?”

This time, the man laughed outright. With a shake of his handsome head, he flung the pitchfork deftly into the hay. Bliss shuddered, thinking how easily she could have been pinioned to the floor of this isolated stable.

“Name’s McKenna,” the farmer said, turning to walk away even as he made this announcement. It was plain that he expected Bliss to follow meekly after him. Because she was hungry and cold, she could not have done otherwise, but it was irritating to comply with an order so offhand that it hadn’t even been uttered aloud.

“Stafford,” Bliss answered in kind, bracing herself for the winter cold as they left the relative shelter of the barn. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the farm the night before, having taken shelter at a very late hour, but now she saw that it was a substantial place with a house built of white stone and sheep dotting the deep green of the hillsides. The whisper of the sea and a certain salty scent to the air told her that the water was not far away.

Mr. McKenna’s boots made a crisp sound on the board steps leading up to the porch of his house. Bliss decided that with a place this size, there must surely be a Mrs. McKenna and a covey of children. The thought filled her with a vague sense of regret.

Reaching the front door, which was made of some heavy, unplaned wood, McKenna opened it and stepped back, for all the world like a gentleman might do, to let her pass ahead of him.

With a queenly lift of her chin, Bliss proceeded into the house. The scent of meat and eggs being fried teased her nostrils and her stomach grumbled again, spoiling her attempt at nonchalance.

“Is that all the name you have, then?” Mr. McKenna asked, hanging his hat on one of several pegs beside the door. “Just Stafford?” His pale blue eyes twinkled as he shrugged out of his coat.

“Bliss,” she admitted, though grudgingly. Since her flight from Alexander’s party several days before, she’d been secretive about her name. Not that any great number of people had asked.