“I’ll just take the stairs, thank you very much,” she said.

Jamie’s hand shot out, caught Bliss by the upper arm, and wrenched her inside the cubicle just before the operator closed the door with a disturbing clank. Bliss shut her eyes tightly as the conveyance began to lurch upward.

Jamie’s chuckle was low and warm. “You’re safe with me, Duchess,” he said.

Bliss gave her husband a wry look. If ever anyone had misstated a case!

His fingers entangled themselves in her hair, which was now badly in need of brushing, and the mischief still danced in his blue eyes. Bliss thought he might actually kiss her in front of the lift operator and, even worse, that she might let him. She reminded herself that she was little more than an amusement to this man and twisted away.

Jamie shrugged and leaned back against the wall, his arms folded, while the metal box made its laborious way skyward. Finally, to Bliss’s relief, it stopped and the operator grasped some kind of lever and opened the door.

Bliss leaped into the hallway, the way a climber might spring from a narrow mountain ledge to a wider one, and Jamie was grinning as he joined her, carrying her satchel. He and the lift operator exchanged a few words that she couldn’t hear, and then Jamie led the way to a door at the end of the hall.

There was a number on it, in glistening brass: 29. Bliss swallowed nervously as Jamie took a key from his coat pocket and unlocked the door. At the twisting of a switch, the room was flooded with light, and it looked like a palace to Bliss, who had never been inside a hotel until then.

Before she could do more than peer past one of Jamie’s shoulders, however, he turned and lifted her easily into his arms.

As he carried her over the threshold, Jamie kissed Bliss with a thoroughness that set her tingling in the most sensitive places, and she was breathless and flushed when he set her on her feet.

His lips brushed her forehead and one of his hands moved in her hair. Bliss knew that Jamie was in the grip of some powerful emotion; she could feel it pulsing around him like an aura, but what he said was commonplace enough.

“I suppose you’re ’ungry, Duchess.”

Bliss hadn’t been aware of the fact until he mentioned it; now her stomach ground painfully. She nodded.

Jamie laughed and tossed aside his hat and coat, then proceeded to unbutton Bliss’s. “I’ve sent word to the kitchen,” he said, in the tone of one speaking to a weary child. “In the meantime, why don’t you lie down for a while?”

Bliss immediately bristled. Recalling the intensity of Jamie’s kiss, not to mention the games he’d wanted to play in the carriage, she blushed with temper. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she snapped.

He grinned. “Aye,” he replied easily. “But there will be time for that later. Lots of time.”