Just the memory stung in Bliss’s blood like snake venom. She got herself a good distance from the bed, then fitfully smoothed her skirts and hair. “If you think I give a damn whether you want me or not—”

“I do think you give a damn,” Jamie interrupted gently, and even though Bliss was trying hard to ignore him, she could see out of the corner of one eye that he was holding out a hand to her. And she wanted so desperately, for all of it, to go to him.

“Go hang yourself,” she blustered.

Jamie laughed and then made a strangled sound at the pain the indulgence had cost him. A long time passed before he spoke, and when he did, his voice was soft and serious. “Bliss, look at me.”

She didn’t want to obey, but something inside her decreed that she must. Bliss turned wounded eyes to her husband. “I hate you,” she informed him, out of self-defense.

He sighed. “I think we’ve established that, ’aven’t we?” he replied. He patted the mattress with one hand, and Bliss’s determined heart softened a little because she could see that the knuckles were all but stripped of skin.

If her heart had softened, she reflected, her head hadn’t. She took a chair from Cutter’s crude table, set it at a safe distance from the bed, and sat down, her arms folded across her chest. Everything in her manner was meant to tell Jamie that she’d listen, but what he said had better be worth hearing.

He smiled again, at her ire, and then sighed heavily. “What do you think would ’ave ’appened, Bliss, if Dunnigan ’ad guessed that you’re more important to me than the breath in me lungs?”

For a moment, Bliss was too stunned to speak. Then she remembered how crafty men could be when they were trying to get themselves out a fix. She set her jaw and refused to answer.

“Very well, then,” Jamie conceded magnanimously. The brogue, so much in evidence moments before, faded away. “He’d have had his way with you, love, and then given you over to his men. Chances are, you and I’d have been shaking hands in heaven by now.”

Bliss looked down at her lap. “That’s a convenient excuse, Jamie McKenna. How do I know you weren’t just trying to save your own hide?”

Jamie settled back against his pillows. “Look inside your heart,” he replied wearily, and then he fell silent.

Bliss slid forward in her chair, peering at him in the shadowy light from Cutter’s kerosene lamps. “Are you asleep?” she demanded.

There was no answer, so Bliss went to stand in front of the fire, with her back to Jamie and all the complicated questions he raised. As Cutter made a great to-do outside and then came in, she shook her head in despondent wonder.

If only she hadn’t picked Jamie McKenna’s barn to sleep in that night.

Cutter made a dramatic business of suppressing a yawn. “I guess I’ll just go on up to the loft and rest me eyes,” he said pointedly. And when Bliss looked away from the fire, he was halfway up a ladder affixed to the far wall of the cottage.