Bliss tried not to look about her as she set her satchel out of the way near a brass umbrella stand etched with tiny rickshaws and Chinamen and pagodas, but her curiosity made it a hard bargain. “I know I should have written before I came—” she started to apologize.

“Nonsense,” Calandra Pennyhope interrupted, in her chirping voice. “I was just having tea beside the fire. Of course you’ll join me.”

“Of course,” Bliss echoed without certainty, unfastening the buttons of her coat as she followed her aunt into a tiny parlor so filled with furniture that it would be impossible to make a sudden move without overturning something.

“Do sit down,” Miss Pennyhope said. She indicated a chair near the hearth and waited patiently while Bliss wended her way through settees and hassocks and plant tables to take her seat. On the mantelpiece, a little brass clock with roses painted upon its ivory face chimed nine times.

Bliss blushed at this reminder of how early it was to go calling and draped her shabby coat carefully across her lap.

“You so resemble dear Lilian,” commented Miss Pennyhope when she’d settled herself in her rocking chair and poured tea for her guest. “I knew you instantly.”

“Thank you,” Bliss said moderately.

“You will address me as Aunt Calandra, I hope?” From her tone of voice, it sounded as though the woman did indeed hope to be spoken to in just that familiar fashion.

“Yes, certainly,” Bliss agreed. She took a sip of her tea, wanting to add lemon and sugar but suddenly too shy to so presume.

“I was, of course, devastated by what Lilian did,” Calandra confessed when the silence stretched. “I was some time recovering from the shock, I don’t mind telling you.”

She paused and sighed sadly. “Mama and Papa, God rest their souls, never wanted her to marry your father, you know. They said he had a contentious disposition.”

That was an understatement to Bliss’s way of thinking, but she saw no point in bringing up abuses she’d suffered at Nils Stafford’s hands at this juncture. She had bigger and more serious concerns.

“If her letters are any indication, Lilian is still very stubborn and high-spirited,” Calandra went on, her teacup poised near her mouth. “It only goes to prove that you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him wear his shoes.”

Bliss blinked, certain that her aunt would correct herself, but the older woman only flushed with conviction and nodded her head.

“Yes, indeed,” she added at length. “My sister is most stubborn.”

Unsure of how to broach the subject of Jamie, Bliss sipped her tea in a mannerly fashion and kept her quandary to herself.

“What brings you to Auckland?” Calandra finally asked, a note of cheerful interest in her voice. “Have you come to seek a post of some sort?”

Bliss nodded. “Yes, Aunt Calandra.” She took a deep breath and then blurted out, “I want to join Mama in America, earning my passage by teaching children or keeping an elderly woman company, but there is a problem.”