Not once, for all her hysterical planning, had she considered the possibility that the stables might be occupied by anyone with fewer than four legs. For the next minute or so, not a single useful thought entered her head.
It didn’t help that the stableboys seemed to be talking about Jamie. “I’ve seen ’im use the blade before. The big man and the fop—they was wise not to vex ’im more’n they did.”
The other lad agreed, and then luck turned in Bliss’s favor. Someone in the distance began beating on the bottom of a kettle or pot, and both boys leaped up eagerly at the sound. Clearly, the inn’s cook was summoning them to their evening meal.
Bliss remained in the darkness, careful not to breathe until the boys had passed her by and rounded the corner of the building. Then, moving as quickly and quietly as she could, she set down her satchel and took up the lantern the boys had been using, creeping past each stall in the stable in a frustrating effort to recognize the sorrel and the bay that belonged to Jamie McKenna.
Presently, she found the sorrel, though it was hard to be absolutely certain. After all, she could see nothing more than the tail and haunches. She had just set down the lantern and was fumbling to open the stubborn catch on the stall when the voice sounded, startling her so that her heart nearly stopped beating.
“Goin’ out for a ride, are you, Duchess?” Jamie asked.
Bliss whirled, one hand rising to her throat. She felt both terror at being caught and wild relief that Jamie was not in that room above their own, making a “ruckus” with Dorrie. She tried to speak and failed.
To her utter surprise, Jamie’s white teeth flashed in a smile shadowed by the night and by the brim of his leather hat, and his hands came out to rest lightly on her waist. In the next instant, he pulled her close and bent his head to brush her lips with his own.
The sensation was tantalizing, delicious, and completely frightening. Bliss felt her breasts, hidden away beneath her coat and dress and underthings, fill with some warm nectar as they met with the hard contours of Jamie’s chest.
“I—I was going to America,” Bliss said lamely, her mouth still touching Jamie’s.
His laugh was gruff and gentle. “Where else?” he muttered.
A sort of grinding ache had begun in the secret place where Bliss’s femininity was hidden. “It really would be simpler if you’d just let me go,” she told him as the tip of his tongue played at the corners of her mouth and promised other mysterious pleasures.
Jamie lifted Bliss slightly and thrust her forward, so that she was pressed against him. She made a soft whimpering sound as he kissed her at last, thoroughly and with all the passion of a husband about to lay claim to his rights. A trembling began in Bliss’s thighs and spread to her knees, which would barely support her. Jamie caught her as she sagged toward the floor, whisking her deftly up into his arms.
“It would serve you right, Duchess, if I made love to you right ’ere,” he vowed hoarsely.
Bliss was well beyond the point where she could protest. Wherever Jamie chose to take her, she knew she would submit. Gladly. “I th-thought you were in Dorrie’s room,” she said inanely as Jamie put out the lantern and then shifted her weight in his arms and started toward the door of the stables.
She saw his smile in the darkness and read a confidence there that would have annoyed her completely at any other time.
“That’s what I wanted you to think,” he replied. “Dorrie’s been me friend for a long time, love.”
Bliss felt a fleeting, hopeless sort of rage. “She told you everything!” she exclaimed.
Jamie nodded as they approached the front door of the inn, and Bliss, hitherto floating in a sea of physical and emotional sensation, suddenly came surging to the surface of rational thought. In another moment or so, Jamie would carry her through the public dining room, like pirate’s loot, and everyone would know what he meant to do.
“Stop!” she cried, kicking her feet.
Jamie didn’t so much as hesitate. He took the steps as though they were nothing and crossed the crude wooden porch. One of the boys from the stable accommodatingly opened the door from the inside and light spilled over the brigand and his captured bride.
Bliss buried her face in Jamie’s neck, humiliated beyond all bearing, when the diners laughed and called out the odd suggestion. She would have sworn she’d heard one or two of those voices in the robbers’ camp the night before, but even that disturbing thought could not distract Bliss from the mortification of what was happening.
It seemed to Bliss that an eternity passed before they’d reached their room again. Once the door was closed, Jamie released his bride, at the same time flinging her satchel onto the bed. Without taking his eyes from Bliss’s burning face, he took off his hat and tossed it aside, then shed his coat and gloves.
Bliss turned away before he could advance to his shirt or his trousers, and Jamie’s response was a gruff chuckle.
“Tell me, Duchess,” he asked, in a near whisper, his hands closing gently on Bliss’s rigid shoulders. “Were you so anxious to get away from me that you’d chance meetin’ your admirers again?”
Bliss thought of the men who’d captured her when she’d made her last bid for freedom and shuddered to think what they might have done to her if it hadn’t been for this man and the remarkable terror he inspired. “I don’t think anyone could be that unlucky,” she answered in a small voice. “Not even me.”
Gently, Jamie turned Bliss around to face him. He was unbuttoning her coat—and avoiding her eyes—when he said, “I was only teasin’ earlier, love, when I told you to be in bed and ready. I’d never take you unless you were willin’.”
Bliss was touched. She was also tired and overwhelmed. Her eyes brimmed with unaccustomed tears—she was not one to cry easily or often. “The trouble is,” she whispered, “you can so easily make me willing, Mr. McKenna.”
Jamie smiled sadly and planted a soft kiss on her forehead. “How you flatter me, Duchess,” he scolded, sliding her coat back off her shoulders and down her arms. It fell, forgotten, to the floor. “You’ve never been with a man, have you?”
He made the words sound almost like a reprimand and, however foolishly, Bliss wished for a moment that she could lay claim to at least one scandalous assignation. Since she couldn’t, she simply shook her head.
“Saints be praised,” Jamie said under his breath, and then he began unfastening the buttons of Bliss’s prim shirtwaist. She stood powerless, speechless, as he pulled the blouse free of her skirt. Only a moment later, she was standing before him in her thin camisole.
He paused to caress her breasts, first one and then the other, his touch making Bliss’s blood surge hotly through her veins and causing her nipples to harden and turn dark.
“A-are you going to h-have me?” she whispered as he removed her good tweed skirt, which was closely followed by her petticoat.
Jamie bent his head to taste the tender skin at the place where Bliss’s neck and shoulder met, chuckling at the shiver and soft moan she could not suppress. “I mean to teach you pleasure,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “As to the other, Duchess—that decision belongs to you.”
Bliss’s heart beat faster when she felt the worn ribbons at the front of her camisole give way to Jamie’s fingers, and heat washed over her in crushing waves as she was bared to him for the first time.
Chapter 6
BLISS HAD NO MEMORY OF WALKING OR BEING CARRIED TO THE bed; instead, she felt as though she had been hurled there by a hurricane wind. There was no breath in her lungs, and her eyes and ears perceived only dimly, so dazed was she by the power this man had over her.
A delighted whimper broke from Bliss as Jamie stretched out beside her and continued to caress her breast. A strange, compelling heat was building within her, gathering strength with every pass of Jamie’s skillful fingers. She was certain that the loving could get no better than this, certain that she would explode at any moment.
It was just then that
he bent his head and encircled one taut, puckered nipple with the tip of his tongue, surprising Bliss with a new joy. She gasped, entangling her fingers in his tarnished-gold hair, and arched her back.
A throaty chuckle penetrated the fog of enchantment sheltering Bliss from the realities of the world. Somehow, Jamie knew what she’d been thinking, and he proved it by whispering, “This is only the beginning, Duchess. Only the beginning.”
Bliss murmured something senseless, still holding Jamie close, but when he suckled, she couldn’t help moaning like a person racked with fever. The sense of thrumming suspense within her grew in magnitude until it was nearly unbearable, but Jamie would not be lenient; instead, he traveled a path of soft kisses to the breast he had not yet won and submitted that tender softness to the same excruciating pleasure its twin had known.
Fairly delirious by that time, Bliss began to toss and writhe on the bed, even though the last thing she wanted was to escape this man’s persistent attentions. When he added a new element to her sweet torment by deftly working her drawers down to midthigh and then touching her in that place where no one had ever touched her before, the exultation was so great that Bliss’s reason fled. She tilted her head far back in utter abandon, while her heels dug into the mattress with the ferocity of her effort to raise herself to Jamie in proud acquiescence. Her hands left his hair to tear wildly at her drawers, which prevented the absolute vulnerability she craved.
Jamie was still absorbed in the breast he was enjoying, but with a husky, fevered cry of his own, he grasped the skimpy muslin bloomers in one hand and freed Bliss of their bondage with a single, swift motion of his hand. She heard them rip and did not care. Cool air washed over her bare skin, but instead of soothing her, it only increased her frenzy.
Round and round Jamie’s fingers moved in the moist warmth of her femininity, each pass causing Bliss’s hips to soar higher. Presently, he released her nipple from the pleasant teasing of his tongue and lips and began kissing her belly. The strokes of his hand grew slower and slower until she sank, quivering, to lie still on the mattress, terrified that he would abandon her before the mysterious pinnacle she’d been climbing toward had been reached.
“Oh, Jamie, please,” Bliss whispered, unsure of what she was pleading for, but so desperate to obtain it that begging was no longer beneath her.
His fingers shifted, so that he was holding her open, like a flower, exposing the bud hidden away beneath. When his mouth suddenly closed over her, the pleasure was so savage that Bliss flung her arms back over her head to grasp the iron rails of the bedstead in frantic fingers and gave a hoarse, lusty groan. Of their own accord, her hips began rising and falling, writhing and twisting from side to side, but Jamie followed, unshakable, drawing Bliss over the edge of a great precipice. Shuddering wildly, she soared on wings of ecstasy for long, breathless moments, then began to drift softly toward earth, where Jamie awaited her.
She was weeping when she reached him, and her arms went out to pull at his shirt, wanting to strip it from him. Instinctively, she knew that Jamie’s own desire would tear at him like the talons of some great, fierce bird until he had been gratified.
The swiftness of his withdrawal had the impact of a slap across the face. Muttering curses, Jamie bounded off the bed and turned away, his broad shoulders moving as he drew in rapid, gasping breaths.
Bliss sat up slowly, conscious of her nakedness now that Jamie had left her. She groped until she caught hold of a fold in the blanket and used the thick, woolly cloth to cover herself. “What is it?” she whispered.
Jamie rasped another curse and thrust the splayed fingers of one hand through his rumpled hair.
“Jamie?” Bliss pressed, feeling more bereft than she had at any time since her mother’s death.
He was unable—or unwilling—to look at her, and his voice, when he spoke, was hoarse. “If we go on,” he said, after a silence so long that it was agonizing to suffer through, “there’ll be no annulment.”
Few things Jamie might have said could have wounded Bliss more. In the heat of their loving, her desire to be anywhere but at this man’s side had been seared away like dry grass in the path of a raging fire. Now, he was telling her that this wonderful, ferocious intimacy they’d shared had changed nothing.
She drew a deep breath in an effort to steady herself. “Oh,” was all she could manage to say, and the word sounded hollow. Weak.
Again, Jamie shoved a hand distractedly through his hair. “I need a drink,” he said, and then, without once looking back at Bliss, who still cowered on the bed, he left the room.
The tears Bliss had been struggling to hold back broke free, sliding down her cheeks and dripping ingloriously off her chin. Something terrible had happened. Somewhere, in the tangled confusion of all her plans and intentions, she had made a tragic mistake.
She had fallen in love with Jamie McKenna.
Jamie did not return to his bride that night, though she awaited him, listening for his footsteps between bouts of crying. At dawn, Bliss was finally desperate enough to go in search.
Hastily, she gathered up her rumpled shirtwaist, petticoat, and tweed skirt, which had been tossed aside the night before, and put them on. Since her drawers were hopelessly torn, Bliss took another pair from her satchel and shimmied into them, and although she gave her hair a quick brushing, she was too hurried to pin it up. She crept into the hallway, just in time to see Dorrie come out of the kitchen, carrying a tray and humming happily as she headed toward the dining room. There was a certain sway to the woman’s sumptuous hips that, coupled with an obviously cheery mood, caused Bliss to approach the stairway and look up.
Dorrie’s room was directly above hers; the serving girl had said so herself.
Full of despair and desperate hope that her suspicions were wrong, Bliss started tentatively up the stairs. She had progressed only a step or two when Jamie suddenly appeared on the upper floor, tucking his shirttails into his trousers as he started down.
He stopped cold, a look of wary puzzlement in his eyes, while Bliss stared up at him, too horrified to speak. The most she could do was pray silently that she wouldn’t humiliate herself by bursting into tears.
“Duchess—” Jamie began, in a low, grating voice.
Bliss could not bear to hear him lie to her. The blunt and terrible truth was that he had turned to Dorrie for what he’d refused to take from his own wife.
With a lift of her chin, Bliss took her skirt in one hand and retreated back down the stairs. “You needn’t explain,” she said, longing to tear her gaze from Jamie’s but unable to manage the feat.
He hesitated, looking worried, and then shrugged and spread his hands slightly. “Aye, love—as always, you’re right. I’ll not be explainin’.”
“Very well,” Bliss agreed stiffly, and at last she was able to turn and walk away. It was a good thing that Jamie didn’t follow, for her eyes were very moist.
“Blast and damnation,” Bliss muttered to herself, dashing away tears with the heels of her palms as she took refuge in the room where she’d been brought so near to full womanhood and then abandoned on the brink. All her father’s neglect and cruelty hadn’t been enough to reduce her to tears, yet Jamie McKenna had managed to do it several times in the short course of their acquaintance.
Bliss slammed the door hard and leaned back against it, as if to keep out all the contradictory feelings Jamie had stirred to life within her. Of course, it was too late for protective measures. She was bonded, perhaps for all eternity, to a man who had no use for her.
There was a tap at the door, startling Bliss so that she leaped away and then asked in a tremulous voice, “Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Mistress McKenna,” sang Dorrie’s voice. She sounded so happy that Bliss wanted to slap her. “Open up now, for I ’ave your breakfast.”
Rare was the trauma that could sour Bliss’s appetite. Slender though she was, she was almost continuously hungry—like a shark, her father had been fond of
saying. She wrenched open the door, scowling hatefully, and Dorrie came swishing and swaying through the opening, face glowing, eyes alight.
She set the tray down on the bedside table and chirped, “Can’t think why you’d want to eat in ’ere, all alonelike and everything.”
Bliss only glared at her.
“Be about it,” Dorrie ordered, making a shooing motion at Bliss with her apron. “Jamie boy, ’e’s wantin’ to be on the road while the sun’s shinin’.”
Bliss turned her head, gazing blindly at the spectacular view of the inn’s barnyard. “I imagine you know all about what Jamie wants, don’t you?” she reflected, only realizing that she’d spoken aloud when it was too late.
“That I do, mistress,” Dorrie replied, and that smug note was back in her voice. “That I do indeed.”
Bliss took a slice of bacon from her plate and shoved it into her mouth, mostly to keep from answering. Heaven knew, she’d made enough of a fool of herself as it was, writhing and moaning for Jamie McKenna like a wanton, then as much as admitting defeat to the woman he’d preferred over her.
Dorrie slipped out, leaving the new Mrs. McKenna to her singular miseries and her breakfast.
Jamie was hungry, and he knew the day ahead would be long and difficult, but he could not bring himself to eat. His throat closed whenever he so much as looked at the food lying untouched on his plate.
Images of Bliss spun in his mind, shifting and changing like the bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope. Just remembering the way she’d entrusted herself to him the night before made him ache all over. He lifted his mug of coffee to his mouth and then set it down again, with a resounding thump, knowing that he would never be able to swallow the stuff.
His jaw clenched tight as he relived—for perhaps the dozenth time—his encounter with Bliss, on the stairs, earlier that morning. He knew that she believed he’d spent the night with Dorrie, and it took all the forbearance he possessed not to go to her and correct the misconception.
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