Bliss was having trouble controlling her temper, not to mention the raging jealousy that was building within her. She swallowed and nodded her head, unable to speak.
“Yes,” Jamie said, flatly and without hesitation.
Bliss felt as though she’d just been run through with a spear, but couldn’t honestly say she’d been unprepared for that answer.
Telling herself that she had no real right to the feelings she was having, Bliss began folding and refolding the petticoat. Jamie had not become her husband by choice; she could not expect him to hold their marriage sacred.
She had been so busy searching her mind for something sophisticated and worldly to say in response that she was totally unprepared when Jamie gripped her shoulders in his hands and turned her to face him.
He laid an index finger to her lips, and his pale blue eyes danced with mischief and affection. “I don’t think you understand about Peony,” he said.
Bliss’s throat ached. If things were as she suspected, she didn’t want to understand. “I realize that our marriage is a—is a sham,” she told him, in a miserable whisper. “I c-couldn’t expect you to b-be faithful—”
Jamie’s hands had returned to Bliss’s shoulders, where they lay heavily upon her, making it difficult to stand. “A marriage is a marriage, Duchess,” he said, in a voice that was, while gravelly, remarkably tender as well. “I’ll ’ave no other woman in me bed.” He paused to give her a playful swat. “Now, dress yourself in the finest gown you ’ave.”
Bliss’s indigo eyes widened. She had scarcely allowed herself to hope for a chance to wear the evening frocks Jamie had helped her to select. “Are we going somewhere?”
Jamie took his time in answering; first he smiled briefly and sadly, then he kissed her, his lips touching hers as lightly as the passing of a butterfly’s wing. “To supper and, God ’elp us, the opera.”
Heart hammering with excitement at the prospect of such an adventure, Bliss was already lost in a welter of momentous decisions. After all, there were at least five gowns that would be suitable for such an evening, and this was no time to be saving the best for last. There might never be another night like this.
Jamie kissed the top of her head, and there was amusement in his voice, if not in his eyes, as he crossed to the door and took his hat and coat from the brass tree beside it. “I’ll be back in an hour or thereabouts, Duchess,” he said in a curiously hoarse voice. “Do something with that wild tangle of ’air, will you?”
Bliss’s hand rose to touch her hair as she watched the door close behind Jamie. For a change, she wasn’t insulted by his remark, for she knew that he hadn’t meant to hurt her.
Nonetheless, she dashed into the bedroom to peer into the full-length mirror that stood in a corner by the bureau. Sure enough, her thick, titian hair looked untamed and untended. Bliss found her brush and groomed the tresses with a thoroughness born of pride.
Following that, she started a bath running in the magnificent tub hidden behind the screen, then took her splendid new evening gowns from their tissue-lined boxes and spread them out on the bed. The choice was easier than she had expected: she selected the midnight-blue silk, with its beautifully smocked bodice. Tiny azure beads trimmed the full skirt, winking in the fading light.
Her mind spinning at all the evening might hold, Bliss braided her hair into a single plait and wound it into a coronet atop her head in order to keep it reasonably dry. Then, after gleefully stripping away her clothes, she plunged into a hot bath. Just for tonight, she decided, she would not think about the temporary nature of her marriage or Jamie’s fondness for Peony Ryan. For this one evening, she would permit herself to enjoy playing Cinderella.
Heaven knew, she would be back to the pumpkins and mice of reality soon enough.
Bliss took great care with her appearance that night, and more than once she wished for rice powder, rouge for her lips and cheeks, and perfume. Despite the time she spent with her brush and comb, she still looked like a country girl with her hair up.
And it was thus that Jamie found her, wearing only her new pink satin drawers and camisole, both trimmed in the finest écru lace and fitted with tiny pearl buttons.
He was dressed for evening, and he looked so splendid that Bliss’s breath was fairly taken away. She gaped at his snow-white shirt, his crisp black trousers with their perfect crease, his dashing cutaway coat with tails.
“My stars and garters,” she whispered. “You’re God’s own wonder, Jamie McKenna!”
Jamie was staring himself, and Bliss’s compliment did nothing to jar him out of his stupor. Finally, he muttered something that sounded like, “Hollyberry, rather be God,” and shook his head as though dazed.
“I didn’t put on my dress because I knew I wouldn’t be able to do up all those buttons,” Bliss announced with bright innocence.
Jamie’s Adam’s apple moved up and down his throat like a lift traveling between floors. “Aye,” he managed to croak out. “That shouldn’t be a problem.” He stood rooted to the floor like a kauri tree, for all that, and Bliss had to walk over to him, once she’d wriggled into her dress, and turn her back so that he could fasten the buttons.
His fingers, usually so deft, were awkward and slow.
She finally turned, when he’d progressed about midway up her back, and demanded, “What on earth is troubling you, Mr. McKenna?”
A smile ignited blue fires in Jamie’s eyes before progressing to his mouth. “What indeed?” he countered gruffly. “Tell me, Mrs. McKenna, just ’ow fond of opera are you?”
“I wouldn’t know, never having been,” Bliss replied, giving her husband a suspicious, determined look. “I’ll have none of your smooth talk, either. You offered me supper and an opera, and you’ll make good if you know what’s best for you.”
Jamie laughed and gave her a resounding kiss. “Supper and an opera it is,” he said, with that curious gentleness that always excited Bliss. “After that—” He let his words fall away and shrugged.
Bliss was quick to turn her back again. “The buttons, if you will,” she said formally. Damn and blast, if he set her now to thinking of his lovemaking, she’d be squirming uncomfortably all evening.
The lobby of the Victoria Hotel was all sparkling light and genteel chatter. Jamie left Bliss beside a potted palm while he went off on one of his mysterious errands, and she hoped he couldn’t hear her stomach growling as he walked away.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” fretted a female—and foreign—voice, on the other side of the potted palm. “Oh, Henrietta, how will I ever face making such a journey without my Piedmont?”
Bliss was wondering what on earth a Piedmont was when another voice supplied the answer. “It was truly unfortunate, Minerva, that your husband passed away so far from home.”
Dramatic snuffling sifted through the palm leaves. “You have no idea, Henrietta, what it did to me to see Piedmont buried on foreign soil. Of course, there was no possibility of taking him home to Sacramento—”
Sacramento. Bliss’s heart pounded at her rib cage. Sacramento was in California. How far could that be from San Francisco, where her mother was living? She drew a deep breath, rounded the potted plant, and offered a half curtsy to the two women standing on the other side.
“Excuse me, ladies,” she said sweetly, “but I couldn’t help overhearing a part of your conversation. My name is Bliss Stafford, and I wonder if one of you isn’t in need of a companion to—to share your journey back to America?”
The heavier of the two women stepped forward, squinting nearsightedly at Bliss. “You look unsuited for such a lowly station, Miss Stafford,” she observed.
Reminded that she was wearing the expensive blue gown, Bliss cast about wildly for a sensible response, while keeping her smile firmly in place. “I am accompanying my current—employer—to supper and the opera tonight. Mr. McKenna and his—his wife wanted me to be suitably clothed.”
“I see,” said the elderly American lady.
“Perhaps I should consider this young woman as a companion,” she told her friend as an aside. Then she gave a long, sad sigh that turned Bliss’s tender heart willy-nilly. “It will be desperately hard to leave poor Piedmont behind, of course.”
“Of course,” Bliss commiserated tenderly.
“Give her your calling card, Minerva,” said Henrietta, elbowing the woman.
Over Minerva Wilmington’s husky shoulder, Bliss saw Jamie striding toward her. She curtsied again and tucked the calling card into her blue beaded handbag. “I’ll contact you tomorrow, Mrs. Wilmington,” she said warmly.
The old woman harumphed. “There’ll be a proper interview, you know,” she warned, evidently feeling that Bliss was assuming too much.
“Yes, naturally,” Bliss answered, and then she moved around the two women to offer her hands to Jamie and smile up at him with tender devotion.
Jamie looked at her quizzically for a moment, then said, “The carriage is ’ere, Duchess.”
Bliss allowed herself to be ushered away, holding her royal-blue velvet cloak close around her as they stepped outside into the cold. Spring would arrive soon; the night air didn’t have its usual wintry bite.
She balked at the sight of the carriage—it was the one she’d refused to ride in that very morning. The familiar driver tipped his hat and smiled. “Good evenin’, mate,” he said to Jamie. Another nod, formal and brisk, had to pass as a greeting to Bliss.
When Bliss would have resisted, Jamie grasped her elbow in steel-hard fingers and fairly thrust her over to the door and inside the richly outfitted rig. “You said we were going to supper!” she accused, ruffled.
“And so we are,” Jamie told her, his nose not even an inch from hers. “It’s time you got the straight of what’s goin’ on ’ere.”
When his words sank in—they were having supper with the elegant Peony Ryan—Bliss dived for the door on the opposite side of the carriage, but for all her haste she was too slow. Jamie caught her by the back of her blue silk skirts and pulled. Hard.
Bliss landed smartly on the seat. “You’re just lucky you didn’t tear my dress, you bloody idiot!” she cried, pushed beyond all semblance of decorum.
“What sweet memories you bring back, Duchess,” Jamie said, confident in his strength and his sheer cussedness. “Didn’t you say something similar to that”—he paused to raise one of her hands to his lips and kiss it elegantly—“on the morning we met?”
“I called you a bloody fool,” Bliss said, wrenching her hand free and settling back in the seat, arms folded across her chest. “And I meant it, too.”
The corner of Jamie’s mouth quirked. “I ’ave no doubt that you were sincere, love,” he replied as the carriage lurched out into the evening traffic.
Bliss sat up very straight and moved to one side so that there was a small distance between herself and Jamie. “I don’t suppose it matters that I hate the idea of having supper with Peony Ryan.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Jamie answered smoothly. “It doesn’t matter.”
Bliss folded her arms and bit down hard on her lower lip. Because having a tantrum would do no good at all, she focused her thoughts on tomorrow’s interview with Mrs. Minerva Wilmington. She would wear something dignified, businesslike. . . .
A sensation of almost intolerable loneliness swept over her at the prospect of leaving New Zealand—and Jamie. This, when he didn’t even want her, and insisted on rubbing her nose in the fact that he kept a mistress!
She glared out at the night, perilously close once again to the tears she despised. “I should have stayed in Wellington, with Alexander,” she said.
Jamie’s chuckle rumbled in the carriage like thunder in the far distance. “You’d ’ave been most un’appy with that arrangement, Duchess, and so would Alexander.”
Bliss whirled, forgetting the hurt she’d wanted so to hide, and spat, “Is that so, Jamie McKenna? Well, it just so happens that you’ve given me nothing that Alexander couldn’t have—he’s very well fixed, you know!”
Before Bliss was fully aware of what was happening, Jamie had shifted her so that she sat astraddle his lap. As though it were his right, he opened her cloak and kissed the curves of her breasts where they showed above the low neckline of her gown.
A groan that mingled defiance and surrender escaped Bliss as Jamie deftly began raising her skirts.
“Never challenge me that way, Duchess,” he whispered against the fevered skin of her breast. “Me manly pride won’t ’ave me let it pass.”
Bliss could feel his hand moving along her inner thigh, teasing her through the soft fabric of her new bloomers. “Damn—your—manly pride!” she spat, but she bent her head back in absolute surrender as he managed to bare one of her nipples for suckling.
“It’s times like this,” he said, between sessions of greedy enjoyment, “when I think they named you right and proper after all. This, sweet Duchess, is bliss.”
His fingers were dispensing with the tiny buttons that did up the front of her drawers. Soon enough, he stole beneath the fabric and Bliss moaned with glorious tension as he caressed her.
“We can’t,” she whimpered, in sweet desperation. “Oh—my—”
He possessed her in one smooth and searing motion while continuing to make free with her breast. “Ummm,” he responded. “Tell me you want me, love.”
The torment was exquisite; only Jamie could have torn her between the needs of her body and the dictates of her pride. “I—want you,” she gasped, half-blinded by the sensations he was stirring.
“Tell me where,” he said, then circled her distended nipple with the tip of his tongue.
Bliss hated him, momentarily, for the power he wielded, and she vowed that she would avenge herself somehow, someday. “Here!” she cried in delicious defeat.
But Jamie had not extracted the last concession yet. “When?” he asked, his voice throaty.
“Now,” Bliss answered feverishly. “Oh, damn you, Jamie, now—now!”
It was a tricky bit of business, making love in a carriage, but Bliss should have known that Jamie could manage it. Without so much as a wasted motion, he turned her away from him and lowered her onto his lap, where all his glorious maleness waited to sheathe itself in her femininity.
Bliss saw dazzling light, and nothing more, as he slowly brought her down the length of him. When he was fully inside her, he lowered the bodice of her dress so that he might caress her bare breasts with his hands while his rod caressed the velvety depths of her.
For a few excruciatingly sweet moments, he let the natural motion of the carriage do his work for him. Then, ever so slowly, with low, desolate groans of his own, he grasped her narrow waist in his hands and began to raise and lower her in a steadily building rhythm as old as the stars.
There was an awesome trembling in Bliss’s legs as she neared release; she truly feared that she would cry out in her ecstasy, and loudly enough for the carriage driver to hear. For all that, she could not contain what would be unchained by Jamie’s pleasuring; she gave herself up to it completely and so did Jamie.
“Do you suppose he heard us?” Bliss fretted, once the last waves of elation had ebbed away and she’d laboriously put all her senses back in their proper places.
“Who?” Jamie asked, almost irritably. He was fully presentable again, within moments, while Bliss had to right her drawers, straighten her petticoats, and smooth her skirts.
She resented it heartily. “The carriage driver!” she snapped.
Jamie ran a hand through his hair. “’Ow should I know?” he muttered. “It isn’t like I give a damn, Duchess!”
Bliss was livid. “You have so little concern for my reputation?”
Jamie was putting her bodice back in place. “What reputation? You’re me wife—if I want to ’ave you on top of the carriage, I will.”
Perhaps it was Jamie’s audacity that made Bliss unbearably furious. Or maybe it was the fact that the law stood behind him in such matters.
Whatever the case, she was outraged beyond all bearing and, for the second time since they’d met, she moved to slap Jamie, putting all her strength behind the blow.
He rendered the gesture impotent by grasping her wrist just as her palm would have struck his cheek. “Is that the thanks I get,” he hissed, “for making you ’owl like the Banshee at an Irishman’s deathbed?”
Before Bliss could think of a response to that, the carriage came to an unexpected stop. If it hadn’t been for Jamie’s grip on her wrist, in fact, she would have gone toppling into the opposite seat.
“I want you to divorce me,” she said with chilly dignity. “Immediately.”
With an insolent sort of tenderness, Jamie kissed her. “Me plans ’aven’t changed, Duchess,” he answered smoothly. “I’m settin’ you up in a ’ouse first thing tomorrow. I rather like ’avin’ a wife.”
The driver opened the door just as Bliss would have told Jamie McKenna what she thought of him, his parentage, and his private parts.
“Here we are, sir,” crowed the driver, pleased as punch.
The lights of a house that surely belonged to Peony Ryan glowed in the darkness.
Chapter 14
JAMIE PRACTICALLY HURLED BLISS UP THE STEPS LEADING TO Peony’s elegant town house. Not even for food, she had decided, could she bring herself to endure this kind of humiliation. Just as she would have whirled on her troublesome husband and given him the kind of kick he’d long remember, the door opened and light spilled out of the house.
“Damn,” Bliss muttered.
The young maid who had come to admit her mistress’s guests took in Bliss’s dress with undisguised admiration. “Ain’t that some gown, now?” she trilled. “Did you buy that for ’er, Mr. Jamie?”
Bliss was getting damn good and sick of people acting as though she weren’t even there. She slanted a look at Jamie, only to catch him winking at the maid.
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