Immediately, Jamie drew her into his arms, sheltering her against his hard chest, and his fingers moved gently in her fiery hair as she wept for what had been given—and lost.

It shouldn’t have been such a brutal surprise, waking up and finding Bliss gone, but it was. It was.

Jamie’s bruised ribs protested ferociously as he flung back the covers and bounded out of bed, his heart beating too rapidly for comfort and his breath tearing in and out of his lungs. It would have been a relief to delude himself for a few minutes, to let himself believe that Bliss was only downstairs, or outside somewhere, but he knew better.

The satchel was gone and that meant that Bliss had flown. The little fool—hadn’t she learned anything when she’d run away before and found herself in the hands of men who’d just as soon use her to death as look at her?

Jamie swore under his breath as he wrenched on clean clothes, stockings, boots. He ran splayed fingers through his hair in lieu of combing it and dashed out the door, nearly colliding with Carra in the hallway.

“When?” he demanded of the girl, without even slowing his pace as he moved toward the main stairway. There was no point in mincing words, for he knew Carra understood what he was asking.

“Hours ago, I think,” Carra called after him. “You’ll never catch her now.” There was just the slightest hint of exultation in the young woman’s tone, and Jamie reminded himself that it would be imprudent to strangle her, that her father was a powerful chief with a gift for vengeance.

He stopped at the base of the stairs, gripping the newel post in one hand and breathing too fast. After a moment or two, Jamie knotted one hand into a fist and slammed it down hard on the banister. “Damn that little—”

“Better she’s gone,” Carra said in a songlike voice. “We don’t need her.”

Maybe you don’t, Jamie reflected in miserable silence, but I do. And after I swore to God I’d never need anybody the way I need her.

Again he raked the fingers of one hand through his hair. “She’s my wife,” he said.

Carra was so quiet for so long that Jamie finally turned around to see if she was still there. She stood at the top of the stairs, biting down hard on her lower lip, her enormous brown eyes brimming with tears.

He felt like the worst kind of no-gooder, but Bliss’s safety was paramount in his mind. “She’d be on her way to Auckland,” he mused, climbing the stairs at a slow, thoughtful rate. Once Bliss reached the city, she would undoubtedly head for the docks; she’d made it clear enough that she wanted to work her way to America as someone’s governess or companion.

Jamie shuddered as he considered just a few of the things that could happen to a young woman alone in the harbor district and stepped up his pace. Within half an hour, he had eaten, extracted a promise from Carra that the animals would be fed and watered in his absence, and saddled his horse.