Ignoring her, Jamie opened the door and walked out. He returned minutes later carrying a tray, and Bliss again felt that strange, tender misery that had possessed her downstairs when he’d been so understanding about the fire.

“It’s the stew!” she cried, astonished, when Jamie handed her the tray.

He chuckled as he moved nearer the hearth and began unbuttoning his shirt. “Aye. Carra managed to save some of it.”

There was buttered bread, too, and a little bowl of cooked pears swimming in a bright red cinnamon sauce. In the true spirit of her name, Bliss enjoyed her meal. By the time she was finished, Jamie was stretched out beside her in bed. He took the tray and set it aside, then grinned at her.

“You’re a lusty little scamp,” he remarked, and even though his meaning might have been ambiguous, Bliss could find nothing to object to in his expression or his voice. “Everything you do, you do with spirit and flair—and fire.”

Bliss felt almost as though she’d been flattered, but of course with Jamie one couldn’t always be sure. She reached over him to dip a finger into the luscious sauce left in her bowl, and the gesture put her in a position she hadn’t anticipated. Her breast came within a whisper of Jamie’s mouth, and of course he took immediate advantage.

Bliss groaned and allowed her eyes to close. The sensation was almost unbearably sweet; she wanted it to go on and on, forever.

Presently, however, Jamie shifted Bliss onto her back and poised himself above her. His voice was gruff, almost despairing, as he allowed her to feel the full, muscled length of him brush against her satiny flesh. “God ’elp me, Duchess,” he whispered, “I don’t think I can spend another night in the same bed with you and not ’ave you for me own.”

Every inch of Bliss seemed to be tingling, humming like a string on some exotic instrument. Her breath was labored and she suffered a splendid ache as she felt her body expanding itself to accommodate her man. “You are—my husband,” she managed to say.

“Aye, in a manner of speaking.” Jamie spoke sleepily, and he slid downward a little way; he kissed her neck and then her collarbone and then, in a leisurely way, the rounded upper parts of her breasts.

Bliss was trembling, so great was her need for what this man offered her. She knew her heart would be broken whether he withheld the mysteries of lovemaking or bestowed them—either way, she could not win.

She whimpered softly as he eased her legs apart with a motion of one knee and, at the same time, took full suckle at her nipple.

“It’ll ’urt a little,” he said in husky apology when he’d had his fill of her special ambrosia.

Bliss had known that the first time she gave herself to a man there would be pain, and she was beyond caring. She entangled her fingers in Jamie’s butternut hair and guided him back to her breast in silent relinquishment of her body.