Bliss eyed him suspiciously. He sounded as though they would be together for the next fifty years, and that certainly wasn’t the case. She waited, a stubborn set to her jaw.

“I’ve come up with a solution to our problem, Duchess,” he said, turning away to approach a cabinet on the far side of what appeared to be a sitting room. Bliss had not seen a bed.

A feeling of weary tension coiled in her stomach, dispelling her hunger for a moment. Jamie was about to say that he was going to divorce her. She braced herself and whispered, “Yes?”

“We’ll stay married,” he went on, taking a bottle and one glass from the cabinet and blithely pouring himself a drink.

Bliss felt both stinging fury and sweet relief. “What?” she croaked, for that was all she dared say, all she could think of to say.

Jamie turned to face her, looking very pleased with himself, and leaned comfortably back against the cabinet. “We’ll make the best of a bad bargain, you and I. I’ll buy you a house and a carriage and some clothes and jewelry—”

Bliss saw a frightening picture forming, a portrait of herself as a kept woman. Knowing that her knees wouldn’t support her any longer and that she’d turned pale, she sank into a plushly upholstered chair and clenched the arms so hard that her knuckles turned white. “And—and you would visit me whenever you had nothing better to do?” she interrupted, her voice small with shock.

Jamie was looking at her curiously. “I’m not a man who thrives in the city, Duchess,” he said. “But you’d like it here. There are theaters and orchestras and shops—”

Bliss shot to her feet. “By God, Jamie McKenna,” she screamed, “if I can’t be a real wife to you, then I won’t be a wife at all!”

By now, Jamie was staring at Bliss as though she’d just sprouted an extra head. He was saved from having to reply by a brisk knock at the door, which he was forced to answer because Bliss was rooted to the floor, her arms folded in defiance.

The food that Jamie had no doubt requested by way of the lift operator had arrived, and the scent weakened Bliss’s resolve to give no ground. Deciding that she would be able to think more clearly on a full stomach, she marched over to the serving cart and began looking under lids.

Jamie watched with amusement, and a touch of smugness, as she filled a plate with venison, potatoes and gravy, and tender baby carrots swimming in butter. She was already chewing as she walked to a settee near the fireplace and sat down.

“You needn’t think,” she said, through a mouthful of the succulent meat, “that this means I’m agreeing to your outrageous proposal. I won’t be a bird in a gilded cage.”

Jamie rolled his eyes and began filling a plate of his own. “You haven’t the table manners for it anyway,” he replied.