He glared at her, and she sank to the bench, setting her satchel on the floor with a plunk.

“Did you sleep well, pet?” Alexander asked cordially, his bulging gaze fixed on Bliss.

She gave Jamie a sidelong look that could only have been described as hateful as he sat down again. “Yes,” she answered, in a voice designed to carry. “I slept very well, thank you.”

This statement elicited a variety of muttered comments from the populace of the dining room.

Jamie, who had just lifted his coffee mug, set it down again with a crash. Above all things, he hated to have his privacy breached and, after giving Bliss a look of undiluted fury, he stood, collected his coat and hat from the row of pegs on the wall behind him, and strode out of the inn to hitch up the team.

It was time he and his new wife started home.

“Do you love him?” Alexander asked gently.

Bliss had been watching Jamie’s abrupt exit with her soul in her eyes, but she turned her attention back to the man her father had wanted her to marry, surprised by his question. “Yes,” she answered miserably.

“He’s only getting the wagon ready, you know,” Mr. Zate assured her. Amazingly, he’d discerned her fear that Jamie was planning to leave the inn without her.

Bliss sighed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her father approaching, and that made her eager to be away. She moved to stand up, but she was too late.

Nils Stafford put one of his huge, heavy hands on her shoulder and forced her back down. “Not so fast,” he said.

Alexander was flushed with indignation. “Now, see here—” he sputtered.

Nils’s fingers now held Bliss’s chin in a painful grasp. He paid no attention at all to his friend’s protests. “You be good to that husband of yours, lass,” he warned. “And you see that he’s good to your old papa.”

Bliss swallowed hard, longing to twist free of Nils’s grip but afraid to try. It was a sin to hate her own father, she knew, but she couldn’t seem to help it. “Jamie’s a stubborn man,” she said evenly. “And he’s not very fond of you.”

“If you’re smart,” Nils replied with a cold smile, “you’ll make sure he knows what a fine, generous father I was.”

“I must insist that you release this woman!” Alexander cried, shooting to his full and thoroughly unimpressive height.

To everyone’s surprise, Nils obeyed, though it was surely through no fear of his traveling companion. Perhaps he felt that he’d made his point.

Bliss hastened to her feet, took up her satchel, and fled the inn, hoping that she’d never see that place, or her father, again.

Yes, she assured herself as she hurried toward the stableyard, where Jamie was harnessing the team in the cool morning light, her life would be different from now on. She’d get this unfortunate marriage annulled as soon as she could get to Auckland—her Aunt Calandra would help her.