Oh, but the low, companionable note in his voice as he addressed the lady made Bliss ache in an inexplicable way. “Carra, Miss Stafford is in need of a bath, a fire, and a feather bed, in roughly that order,” he said. “Will you see to it?”

Even though the two hadn’t touched, it was almost as though Jamie had reached out and squeezed Carra’s slender brown hand. Carra nodded before turning to carry the plates and flatware away to the cast-iron sink.

Bliss put her feeling of bereftness down to her hasty flight from Wellington and the rigors involved. She lowered her eyes, and when she looked up again, Jamie was gone and Carra was standing beside the table, waiting politely for Bliss to notice her.

There was a stairway at the back of the kitchen, and Carra led the way up it. The second floor of the house was as practical and austere as the rooms Bliss had glimpsed downstairs. A certain sadness possessed her; she sensed that Mr. McKenna didn’t truly live here—this was only a place where he sometimes stopped.

“Mr. McKenna travels a great deal, doesn’t he?” she asked, in a quiet voice, as Carra pushed open the door of a room at the far end of the hallway.

The Maori woman looked back at Bliss over one smooth brown shoulder and nodded, a flicker of surprise appearing, just briefly, in her eyes. “Yes.”

There were a lot of other questions Bliss wanted to ask, and all of them were patently improper. She was going to have to learn to curb her curiosity before it got her into serious trouble.

With the utmost courtesy, Carra waited to one side of the doorway until Bliss had entered. The room was spacious, or perhaps it only appeared so because the narrow bed, wash-stand, and chest took up so little space. There was a small stone fireplace on one wall, and Mr. McKenna’s attractive housekeeper crossed the room to kneel on the hearth and wrestle with the damper.

The chill of winter was upon Bliss’s soul, as well as her body. Hugging herself and speaking in a very bright voice, she tried to make conversation. “Did you know that it’s summer in America at this very moment?”

Carra showed her true feelings for the first time: a look of indulgent disdain moved across her face and then was gone. “I’ll bring up the tub and some hot water soon,” she said. Her tones were melodic, her accent no different from Bliss’s own. “Have you a bag?”

Bliss remembered the satchel she’d left behind in Mr. McKenna’s barn and clapped one hand to her mouth. Lord knew she had little enough in the way of worldly goods now that she’d left Wellington in such a hurry. She was going to have to be more careful or her best dress, her leatherbound diary, and the ribbon-bound letters her mother had sent from San Francisco would be lost as well. “I’ve left it in the hay,” she said, starting toward the door.