He was looking at her valise. “Quite well, thank you,” he said. “Are you taking a journey?”

Bliss nodded, hoping that he wouldn’t press for too many details. “I—I’m sorry that our acquaintance was so brief—”

Walter had caught hold of her arm, and with a forcefulness she wouldn’t have expected of him, he hauled her around to the rear of the crop of potted plants and said in a low voice, “I could have sworn you told me you had a husband!”

Bliss swallowed. “I do,” she confessed.

A sympathetic expression crossed his face as he took in the smudges of fatigue beneath her eyes and the red puffiness of her lids—both evidences that she’d been unable to hide. “You’ve been crying. Did he hurt you? The brute—I shall box his ears!”

Bliss couldn’t help but smile at the images that rose in her mind. There might well be some ear boxing should Jamie and Walter come to blows, but Walter would do the bleeding, not the boxing.

“Well?” Walter prompted. “Did he do you injury in any way?”

Bliss shook her head. “No—not in the way you mean.” In the background, Mrs. Wilmington called her name. “I must go now. Good-bye, Walter.”

“At least tell me where you’re off to,” Walter pleaded, sounding a touch desperate as he followed Bliss back to Mrs. Wilmington’s side.

“America,” Bliss said, so sadly that Mrs. Wilmington gave her an odd look.

“A-America!” Walter sputtered. “You can’t do that! You really mustn’t—”

“Good-bye, Walter,” Bliss repeated, with less warmth than before. The last of Mrs. Wilmington’s baggage had been taken out to the carriage; it was time to leave.

Bliss was silent during the long drive to the harbor, looking out at the storefronts and hotels of Auckland. Finally, they reached the waterfront.

It was an ugly place, where bawds lounged against the ramshackle walls of pubs and drunks lay sprawled in the road. Bliss watched in horror as the carriage wheels narrowly missed one reveler’s outstretched fingers.

The stench of offal and rotted fish was almost enough to set Bliss retching. Mrs. Wilmington must have agreed, for she raised a dainty handkerchief to her sizable nose in an effort to strain some of the foulness from the air.

The carriage lurched to a stop and the driver came around to peer in the window. His breath was almost as bad as the rest of it, and Bliss recoiled from him.

“Here we are, mum,” he told Mrs. Wilmington. “It’s this pier where the Queen Charlotte has her moorings.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Wilmington said. “Please see that our baggage is carried aboard.” She started to hand the man a pound note, but Bliss interceded by taking hold of the woman’s wrist.

“Don’t do that, Mrs. Wilmington,” she said respectfully. “Not yet.”

The carriage driver gave Bliss a look that would have spoiled cabbage, then went around to begin taking trunks and valises from the boot.

“Why on earth did you do that?” the American woman demanded.