With a bleak smile, Zate held up one pasty hand in a bid for peace. “Contrary to what you—and probably the young lady herself—might believe, I would have been a very good husband to Bliss. I am a wealthy man, and not disposed to the same unkindnesses as her father.”

Jamie’s interest was caught. Since his throat had opened again, he took a sip from his coffee, found it cold, and frowned in distaste. “What unkindnesses?” he demanded.

Zate shrugged, but there was compassion in his face. Jamie assessed him to be a weak man, but not a cruel one. “She hasn’t told you?”

Jamie shook his head and, for just a fraction of a second, his gaze strayed to the lighthouse keeper, who was laughing with Dorrie on the other side of the room. “We ’aven’t ’ad much time for talkin’,” he muttered.

The pain in Zate’s face made it clear that he’d misunderstood the remark, and Jamie did not correct him. There came a point when such mercies only made matters worse.

“Stafford’s long been anxious to be rid of the girl,” Zate confided, for God only knew what reason. “He’s made no bones about it, and I suspect that he’s beaten her on occasion.”

Jamie felt a surging, choking rage rise in his throat like bile. Not since he’d been forced to stand still for Increase Pipher’s lash had he known such hatred. He was possessed by it. “That’s not a charge that should be made lightly,” he said as Dorrie came swishing toward him to replace his cold coffee with a hot, fresh mugful.

His mood softened slightly. God bless her, Dorrie did know what a man liked.

Zate sighed as Jamie watched the serving girl walk away with a sort of weary appreciation in his eyes. “At least,” Bliss’s would-be husband pointed out, “I would have been faithful.”

Jamie was instantly angry. It was bad enough that he’d had to let Bliss believe she’d married a man without honor. He would not endure even the implication from anyone else.

He knotted his right hand into a fist and slammed it down onto the tabletop, causing cups, plates, and utensils to rattle. But before he could give voice to his ire, Bliss herself appeared at his side, carrying her satchel and groomed for traveling.

“I’m ready to leave now,” she said, in a clear voice.

Jamie was embarrassed at the interest displayed by everyone else in the dining room, as well as annoyed that Alexander Zate had remembered to stand up in the presence of a lady while he hadn’t. Belatedly, he rose to his feet.

“Sit down,” he told his wife, in a somewhat strangled undertone.

There was a defiant snap in Bliss’s blue, blue eyes, and a bright pink flush glowing behind her freckles. “Yes, Mr. McKenna,” she replied, making no effort to moderate her tone.

Jamie was painfully aware of the attention focused on this domestic tidbit. He supposed everyone in the place knew that he hadn’t spent the night with his bride, and that awareness galled him almost as much as Bliss’s scathing obedience.