Tilly Aurmont, a tall, angular woman of indeterminate age, was a bright-eyed spinster who gave the impression of being ever on the alert for evil in all its many forms. She took in Bliss’s soiled, torn evening dress and leaped to the worst possible conclusion.

“Merciful heavens,” the lady cried, laying one hand to her no-doubt hammering heart. “A harlot!”

The condition of her gown might have raised questions in anyone’s mind, but Bliss took serious exception to the term harlot. Her eyes flashing and her cheeks hot, Bliss turned her back on Miss Aurmont and walked out. She would have spent the night in the cold had that good woman not come after her and prevailed upon her to have a warm meal in the kitchen.

Bliss was too hungry to turn down food, but she was eager to clear up any misunderstandings the tattered evening gown might have spawned in Tilly Aurmont’s mind, too. She explained that she’d been wearing the dress, a hand-me-down from Alexander’s sister, at her own engagement party, and realized that she simply couldn’t enter into a loveless marriage even though her father had decreed it.

Leaving Jamie out of the tale entirely, Bliss went on to describe the rigors and horrors of being a woman alone on the road, especially in winter. Midway through a hearty supper of lamb chops, boiled potatoes, and creamed spinach, Bliss had won Miss Aurmont’s complete and wholehearted sympathy.

The spinster seemed to be assessing Bliss’s size as she showed her new tenant a plain but very clean room at the front of the house on the second floor. “Yes, indeed,” she speculated, “I think Mary’s clothes would fit you.” The woman sighed and made a tsk-tsk sound with her tongue. “Poor, poor Mary,” she added as a charitable afterthought.

Bliss was feeling considerably more adventuresome now that she’d eaten and found a safe place to sleep, so she went ahead and asked, “What happened to her? Mary, I mean.”

Miss Aurmont tsk-tsked again. “Died,” she said. “Hadn’t paid her rent in weeks, so, of course, I kept her trunks. Might be, you’d want to part with a few farthings in return for a dress or two.”

Guilt, no stranger to Bliss since she’d encountered that cussed Jamie McKenna, washed over her as she thought of the money she’d taken from his desk.

She drew herself up, took herself in hand. She’d pay Jamie back as soon as she was earning a salary.

At her nod, Miss Aurmont called for her cook and the two women laboriously dragged a dusty trunk down the stairs from the third floor and into Bliss’s room.

It never occurred to Bliss to be squeamish about touching or wearing a dead woman’s clothes. She’d rarely owned a new garment; her coat, now so shabby and old, had once been her mother’s.

She chose a practical black skirt from the trunk, along with two blouses and two complete sets of underthings. Bliss was no sophisticate, but she knew that she’d saved herself a considerable sum over buying such items in retail establishments, and she was pleased. Now she would be able to keep a small sum for emergencies.