Jamie was watching her in astonishment. “You wouldn’t ’ave needed me knife, Duchess,” he remarked. “You could ’ave talked those bleeders to death.”

Bliss was not going to be distracted from her point. “If you didn’t want to marry me, Jamie McKenna, why didn’t you refuse to be bullied into taking the vows? And if you don’t care about me, kindly explain why you left your knife behind in the wagon seat yesterday.”

Jamie shrugged, evidently expecting that gesture to pass as an answer. Bliss noticed that he was very careful not to look at her.

They traveled in complete silence for a great distance, and then Jamie drew the wagon to the side of the road. He wound the reins around the brake lever after setting it in place with an awkward movement of one foot. His face was pale beneath the cuts and bruises.

“Cutter sent along some food,” he said, getting down from the wagon and then walking away from Bliss and disappearing into the trees lining the road.

Bliss, having had nothing to eat since the crust of bread at breakfast, was ravenous. She opened the bundle the old man had packed to find cheese, dried meat, and two slightly withered apples. When Jamie returned, she offered him a share, but he shook his head and turned his attention to scanning the road stretching ahead.

Bliss, concerned, started to protest that he needed food to keep up his strength.

Jamie gave her a bleak look and then said distantly, “Enough, Duchess. I don’t need you telling me when to eat.”

Bliss’s own appetite, usually insatiable, faded away at the lack of warmth in his voice. She wrapped what remained of their meal, tucked the bundle back under the seat, and barely trusting Jamie not to drive away without her, made her way into the woods to attend to some business of her own.

When she returned, Jamie was seated in the wagon, his face set grimly against the pain.

“I’m sure I could drive,” Bliss offered brightly, without thinking before she spoke. “That way, you could lie in the back of the wagon and rest.”

Jamie’s response was a glower and a harsh, “I told you, woman—I don’t want you mollycoddlin’ me. Now back off.”

Bliss’s eyes burned with tears, but she was quick to turn her head away, in the hope that Jamie wouldn’t see. What had happened to the passionate, vulnerable man who had loved and been loved so willingly the night before? And what of the words he’d said just that morning, that Bliss had turned hell to heaven for him?

For all her efforts to preserve her pride, a sob escaped Bliss and Jamie heard her, for he immediately stopped the wagon and, taking her shoulders in his raw-knuckled hands, turned her to face him.

With his thumbs, he brushed the tears from her face. “Try to understand,” he said, his voice no more than a husky whisper. “No one, anywhere, ’as ever scared me the way you do, Duchess.”