“Who the hell are you?” one of them asked.
Jamie’s blade materialized in his right hand, as it had a way of doing when he was furious. Images of the ugly burns on Peony’s back filled his mind and soured the back of his throat, like vomit. “Me name’s not important, mate,” he said evenly, with an acid smile. “And I’m straight out of the worst dream you ever ’ad.”
A few screams never meant much of anything at Shallie’s, especially when they came in the night, and nary a man so much as looked up from his mug when Jamie McKenna came back down the same set of stairs he’d climbed earlier and strode outside. There were some people it was just better not to see.
Bliss liked Maggie McKenna the instant she saw her. She was a beautiful blonde, with wide gray eyes and a ready smile, and she flung herself into Reeve’s arms without a care for the disapproving looks she got from the other people on the wharf.
“Hello, Yank,” Reeve said tenderly, and then he kissed her before turning to introduce his traveling companions. He presented Peony first, and then, with a sparkle in his eyes, he said, “And this is Bliss. She’s Jamie’s wife.”
Maggie’s wonderful charcoal eyes rounded in delight and her face glowed. “Jamie’s married!” she crowed in her strange accent. “I don’t believe it!”
Bliss was about to offer the golden ring as proof when Maggie hugged her and then planted a kiss on her cheek.
“Welcome to the family, Bliss,” she said, putting one arm around Reeve’s waist and one around her sister-in-law’s, Peony walking a little ahead and to the side as they started up the wharf. “These McKenna men are stubborn, but there are ways to keep them in line,” Maggie went on to say.
“Jamie will appreciate this,” Reeve commented dryly. His brogue had relaxed now to a mere lilt in his voice. “Your telling his wife how to keep him in line, I mean.”
“I’m assuming,” Maggie proceeded in bright tones, “that the same things that work with you, Reeve McKenna, will work with Jamie.”
Listening to the banter between Maggie and Reeve, Bliss was more homesick than ever for Jamie. She averted her eyes, in the hope that no one would see the tears gathering there.
Maggie gave her a slight squeeze, as if she’d sensed that her sister-in-law needed reassurance, and Bliss felt a little better just for having a friend. She’d grown up entirely without them, after all.
It was at the base of the wharf, when Reeve was off seeing about the baggage, that Peony had her fainting spell. Walter Davis and his grandfather had just paused to bid Bliss farewell and every good fortune, and when the old man extended a clawlike hand to Peony and smiled, she simply crumpled to the ground.
When Bliss couldn’t revive her immediately, Maggie had hurried away to find Reeve.
“Imagine that,” said the elder Mr. Davis, leaning on Walter for support, and that strange, grimacelike smile was still on his face.
Moments later, Reeve arrived and lifted a conscious but dazed Peony into his arms. In the shuffle of getting her into the hotel, where a messenger was dispatched to find a doctor, Bliss forgot all about Walter and his grandfather.
Peony was pale as death when she opened her eyes from a second swoon. She was lying on a sofa in the hotel lobby, with Maggie waving smelling salts under her nose, and the first thing she said was, “Increase. Dear God in heaven, that was Increase.”
Bliss was uneasy at the mention of that name. She frowned. “Where?”
Peony trembled. “That old man who stopped to speak to you. Bliss, that was Increase Pipher.”
There was a wicker chair behind her and Bliss backed into it, the muscles in her knees having melted to nothing. “It’s impossible,” she breathed, looking wildly from Peony to Reeve to Maggie. “That was only Walter’s grandfather.”
Peony was shaking her head very slowly from side to side, and her eyes were vacant of all expression.
Quickly, Maggie took Peony’s hand in hers and began patting it. “There now,” she said in her odd, flat voice. “No one’s going to hurt you, not with all of us around.”
Presently, the doctor arrived and Peony was led away to a room, examined, and put to bed under light sedation. Reeve had already told Bliss that they would all be staying in the hotel that first night, since it was a fair distance to Seven Sisters, his plantation, and she was glad to retire to her own room. There, she tried to put her thoughts in order.
A single one filled her mind. While she and Jamie had been making love and war in that suite at the Victoria Hotel, Pipher had been across the hall, plotting demon’s tricks. And how very amused he must have been by Jamie’s naive little wife. Increase had enjoyed her blithe chatter, no doubt, and taken her confidences into consideration as he prepared to destroy the man she loved.
Bliss brought her notebook from her baggage and continued her letter to Jamie, her pen racing across the paper as she told him about the man she’d thought was Walter Davis’s grandfather. Shadows had fallen on the sea by the time a knock sounded at her door. With a weary sigh, Bliss laid down her pen and walked across the room to admit her caller.
It was a flushed, bright-eyed Maggie. Bliss was still a new bride, but she knew well enough what had made her sister-in-law glow like that, and her yearning for Jamie was as sharp as broken glass.
“It’s just occurred to Reeve and me,” Maggie confided with some embarrassment, “that you might be waiting on us—to go to supper, I mean. Here it is, so late—you must be starving.”
Bliss was hungry, but she hadn’t suffered for it because she’d just realized that her stomach was empty. “I’ll be all right, provided the dining room is still open,” she said.
Maggie laughed. “I wouldn’t have had the nerve to come here if I hadn’t checked first and found out that it was,” she admitted. “How is your friend, Mrs. Ryan? Have you looked in on her?”
Bliss felt a degree of shame. She’d been so involved in her letter to Jamie that for hours she hadn’t even thought of Peony, except to record an account of her swoon at the foot of the wharf. “I’ll go and see how she is right now,” she muttered, starting through the doorway.
Maggie stopped her with a gentle hold on her arm. “Bliss, who is that woman and what does she have to do with Jamie?” she asked. “Reeve wouldn’t tell me a thing, so I’m counting on you.”
Bliss wasn’t sure how to answer, and her face must have reflected this, for Maggie quickly spoke again.
“We’ll talk about it at supper,” she promised. “Reeve’s sound asleep, so he won’t be there to order me to mind my own business. And something tells me that your friend will want to eat in her room.”
Bliss smiled, even though she was exhausted and so lonesome for Jamie that she was likely to die of it. She closed her door and went across the hall to knock at Peony’s.
“Yes?” a voice called sleepily.
Bliss tried the door and found it unlocked. She went inside, approaching Peony’s bed. “How are you?” she asked softly.
“I just want to sleep,” Peony replied in rummy tones.
Bliss nodded and left the room to join Maggie in the hall, and then the two of them went downstairs to enter the dining room and place their orders. Both asked for venison pie, which was delivered promptly, and they ate with hearty appetites.
“Reeve tells me that you have two children,” Bliss ventured, wanting to put off talking about Peony’s relationship with Jamie for as long as she could.
Maggie nodded. “Elisabeth—but of course you know that she’s not really ours—and James. We named him for your husband, of course, but we call him J.J. to avoid confusion.”
Bliss’s tired mind had snagged on Maggie’s odd remark about the little girl. “What did you mean when you said that Elisabeth isn’t really yours? Is she adopted?”
Maggie’s lovely skin blanched a little beneath her light suntan and the glow that a man’s loving leaves behind it. “Adopted?” she echoed.
Bliss felt uneasy, as though she were expected to play a game
without knowing all the rules. “I guess if Jamie were here,” she said, “he’d tell me that I’m sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
“If Jamie were here,” Maggie muttered, “I’d wring his neck!”
“What?” Bliss asked, still uneasy and puzzled as well.
“Never mind,” Maggie answered with grim resolution. “Tell me about Mrs. Peony Ryan.”
Bliss dropped her eyes. “Both of them deny it—and I’ve got to admit that they’re pretty convincing,” she confided in a small voice, “but I can’t help thinking she’s Jamie’s mistress.”
“Thunderation!” cried Maggie, with such spirit that several of the other diners turned to stare. “You can’t be serious! Does Reeve know this?”
Bliss swallowed, a little awed by Maggie’s fury. Of course, one looked for brashness and a temper in a Yank. “I would imagine he knows,” she said. “He and Jamie spent hours talking—mostly in private.”
Maggie shoved back her chair and shot to her feet. “Great Zeus!” she exclaimed. “I’ll murder that Irishman with my own hands if he’s been a party to something like that!”
Heat climbed Bliss’s face and her eyes went so wide that they hurt. She couldn’t speak for the life of her.
“And wait until I see Jamie McKenna again!” Maggie fumed on. Then, without warning, she stormed out of the dining room, leaving Bliss to endure the resultant attention alone.
She smiled at the men and women who were staring at her in stupefaction. “It’s just that she’s an American,” she said bravely, and everyone went back to eating their dinner.
It took more than an embarrassing scene to ruin Bliss’s appetite. She finished her venison pie, and when Maggie didn’t return after a reasonable time, she ate her sister-in-law’s portion as well. It seemed probable that she’d need to keep her strength up if she was going to be a part of this McKenna mob.
Chapter 23
THE CHILD WAS BEAUTIFUL, WITH LONG, DARK HAIR AND AQUAMA-rine eyes that should have marked her as Reeve’s. As Bliss watched the little girl scamper happily after a dog in the garden at Seven Sisters, she felt an odd uneasiness that had been plaguing her intermittently since her arrival two weeks before.
“She’s lovely, isn’t she?” she asked as Reeve sat down beside her on the stone bench facing the place where Elisabeth played.
Her dark-haired, handsome brother-in-law nodded. His coloring was very different from Jamie’s, and yet there was a distinct resemblance between the two men, something of the soul rather than the body. “I think so,” he said, and his voice sounded hoarse.
“I’d swear she was really a McKenna, with that coloring.”
Reeve gave a sigh that seemed weary to Bliss. “Aye,” he said. “The lass is the image of Callie McKenna, God rest her soul.”
Bliss turned to look at her brother-in-law, trying to read his expression. A sensation of leaping anxiety played in the pit of her stomach when she realized that he regretted what he’d just said.
“Your mother?” she pressed.
Reeve would not look at her, and it was then that the awful truth dawned on Bliss.
“Elisabeth is Jamie’s,” she whispered, and it was not the fact of Elisabeth’s birth that caused her nearly unbearable pain. It was Jamie’s failure to tell her.
“Bliss—”
She shot to her feet, unable to endure all that she was feeling. Tears scalded in her eyes, blinding her. “Who was she? Who was Elisabeth’s mother?”
Reeve was silent for a moment. Then, reaching out to take one of Bliss’s hands in his, he answered, “Tis not my place to be explaining, little one. The words have to come from Jamie.”
Bliss whirled and cried out, in her sudden and fiery anguish, “You’ve got to tell me, Reeve, because I can’t stand not knowing! I can’t bear to wait until I see Jamie again!” Through her tears, she could see that he believed her.
He rose slowly to his feet, resting his big hands on her shoulders in an awkward effort to lend comfort. “Do you see the position you’re putting me in, Bliss? To talk of that is to betray a promise I made to my only brother—”
“I didn’t make any promises to your dratted brother,” an angry female voice put in, and both Reeve and Bliss turned to see Maggie standing nearby with her arms folded.
Reeve approached his wife in a way that would have daunted most women, waggling one index finger. “You stay out of this, Yank,” he warned in a tone made all the more dire by its low, even pitch.
Maggie stood firm, her chin out. “Bliss has a right to know about Jamie’s past,” she said.
“Well, she doesn’t ’ave to ’ear it from you!” Reeve roared, slipping ominously into the brogue. Bliss had already discerned that he spoke in the Irish only in Jamie’s company or when his control over his emotions was threatened.
Maggie retreated a step in the face of his anger, but her gray eyes were still snapping with furious conviction. “Stop trying to intimidate me, Reeve McKenna! It isn’t going to work!”
“Isn’t it?” Reeve breathed, backing Maggie so far into a rosebush that thorns caught on her skirts.
“Absolutely not!” she cried intrepidly, trying to free herself from the bush. “You tell her about Eleanor, or I will!”
There was a thundering silence, and then another voice startled them all.
“That won’t be necessary,” said Jamie. “I can speak for meself.”
Bliss spun around, unable to believe her ears, but Jamie was standing there, looking weary and reluctant. A day, a week, an hour before, she would have hurled herself into his arms; now, she stood gazing at him, crushed that he hadn’t trusted her enough to share something so important as the existence of his child.
“Aye,” Reeve agreed as his wife tore her skirts from the rosebush and glared at Jamie.
“Welcome back!” Maggie snapped, and her words were so utterly at variance with her tone that Jamie chuckled.
Reeve was not amused, however. He grasped Maggie by one elbow and propelled her toward the house. Elisabeth and her dog continued to play in the near distance, undisturbed, and Jamie watched the child with such an injured expression in his eyes that Bliss nearly forgave him his deception.
Nearly, but not quite.
“I planned to tell you, Duchess,” he said after long moments had passed.
“When?” Bliss demanded, dashing at her tears with the back of one hand. “After our children were born?”
His jawline tightened at the challenge in her tone. “I never intended for us to ’ave children, Bliss,” he countered coldly. “I married you to keep from bein’ shot, in case you’ve forgotten.”
The words affected Bliss like a slap across the face. Oh, she’d never forgotten the circumstances of their wedding, not for a moment, but she had believed that Jamie had grown to love her just as she loved him.
He’d told her so.
The starch went out of her knees and she sank to the bench in horror as the realization struck her. Each time Jamie had said “I love you,” he’d been in the throes of passion. Had he ever truly meant the words?
He took a step nearer, and the edge was gone from his voice. “Bliss, listen to me,” he began, sitting down beside her on the bench and reaching for her hand.
She promptly wrenched it away.
Before Jamie could say anything more, Elisabeth caught sight of him and came running over to fling her arms around his neck. “Hello, Uncle Papa!” she crowed.
Jamie said something to the little girl that Bliss couldn’t make out, for she was suddenly overcome with pain. It was like a haze within and around her, pervading her very spirit, inescapable, torturous.
She bounded to her feet and ran toward the house, fleeing from her anguish, fleeing from her confusion.
Fleeing from Jamie.
After a short and innocuous conversation with Elisabeth, Jamie gave the child the trinkets he’d brought for her and entered Reeve’s house through the French doors opening onto the garden.
His brother was alone in the parlor, standing beside a teakwood liquor cabinet and pouring a drink for himself. Maggie’s touch was everywhere, giving the room a fragrant, bright spaciousness.
“I could use one of those,” Jamie said, nodding toward the drink in his brother’s hand.
Reeve glared at him. “Fix your own,” he replied.
Fine welcome he was getting around here, Jamie thought, but he suppressed his annoyance. After all, he wasn’t entirely without fault in this situation. He should have told Bliss about Eleanor and the child she’d borne him long before now, he wasn’t denying that. He poured a generous portion of brandy into a glass. “If you’ve got somethin’ you want to say, brother,” he began quietly, “say it.”
“She’s a fine lass,” Reeve reflected, and Jamie knew his brother was speaking of Bliss. “The kind of wife any man would be glad to ’ave, Jamie.”
“Aye,” Jamie agreed wearily, after a sip of his brandy. It should have steadied him, but it didn’t. “The Duchess is the best thing that’s ever ’appened to me, Reeve. You must know that.”
Reeve turned, his blue-green eyes fierce as an Irish sea in winter. “Why do you treat ’er the way you do, then—like there were a dozen more where she came from, to be ’ad for a ha’penny?”
Jamie tossed back the rest of his drink and set the glass down hard on a highly polished table. “So you know, do you, ’ow I treat me wife?” he demanded in a scathing undertone, all the old anger he felt toward Reeve welling up within him.
“Damn your eyes, Jamie,” Reeve growled, gesturing toward the French doors, “she came through ’ere not ten minutes ago, lookin’ as though the soul ’ad been torn out of ’er! What the devil did you say—or do?”
It was all Jamie could do to retain his composure. He retrieved his glass and went back to the liquor cabinet, keeping his back to Reeve as he poured another double shot of brandy. “You know,” he said evenly, “if I ’ad any sense at all, I’d just ride out of ’ere and forget I ever ’ad a wife—or a brother.”
Reeve was light on his feet for a big man. Jamie hadn’t heard him approach, and he was stung to fury when a fist caught him by the shoulder and wrenched him around. He knocked Reeve’s hand away and whiskey flew, leaving a plume-shaped amber stain on Maggie’s white settee.
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