“They didn’t ’urt you, did they Duchess?” he rasped, and there was an expression of such tenderness in his eyes that Bliss’s breath caught in her lungs.

Unable to speak, she shook her head.

“God be thanked,” Jamie whispered raggedly, and then he was unconscious.

Bliss was gentle as she cleaned and dressed his wounds, flinching every time Jamie moaned in his sleep.

“What happened, lass?” Cutter demanded, the moment she’d finished the arduous task, covered Jamie with a warm quilt, and turned away. The shepherd still sounded and looked as though he believed her to be responsible for the whole tragedy.

Stubbornly, Bliss put off answering until she’d wrung out the cloth and tossed the last basin of water away in the dooryard. She was washing her hands when she finally said wearily, “We were set upon.” She remembered how the men had torn open Jamie’s coat and shirt for a look at the medallion he wore. “It seemed that they’d known him a long time ago in—in another place; Queensland, I think.”

Cutter was sitting at the table nursing a generous shot of the Scotch whisky he’d said he planned to pour down Jamie’s throat later, if the pain was bad. He let out a long, low whistle. “Queensland, is it?” he muttered, speaking wholly to himself. “Saints in heaven, could they be part of that lot old Increase kept about?”

Jamie had begun to shift and writhe on the bed. “No,” he cried out hoarsely before Bliss could reach his side to lend reassurance and comfort, “don’t ’urt ’er—in the name of God, don’t ’urt ’er—”

Cutter, it turned out, was even quicker than Bliss. He got to Jamie first and laid a huge, gentle hand on his bare shoulder. “Nobody’s hurting anybody, lad,” he vowed, raw emotion grating in his voice. “You’re safe now, and so is the lass.”

Jamie, who had never really come awake, settled back into the depths of a healing sleep. Bliss turned away, to stand staring blindly into the little fire on the hearth, her arms folded.

“Be you his wife?” Cutter asked suspiciously, coming to stand at her side. The old man smelled none too good, but Bliss didn’t care. She faced him with fire snapping in her eyes.

“I am,” she answered coldly. “Do you disapprove?”

Cutter shrugged. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I never thought the lad’d marry.”

“Why not?” Bliss wanted to know. She was beginning to feel weak, and she yearned for something to eat, a hot cup of tea, and a long, uninterrupted sleep.

The shepherd glanced toward the bed where Jamie lay, then shrugged his great shoulders again and said, “I guess there’s no harm in telling it true. He loved a woman, did Jamie, and she did him wrong. Near broke him to pieces, that Eleanor.”

Bliss lowered her head, as cruelly struck by the mention of the mysterious Eleanor as she had been by Jamie’s blithe willingness to abandon her to the mercies of a band of rakehells. It was wounding to know that he had ever loved another woman.