‘What other people do we need? I plan to find a river — a real river that flows even in the drought — and build a house above it. We will hire servants who can love and respect their mistress, and we will busy ourselves with plants and sometimes we will travel and camp out, so that we may find more plants. We shall be extremely happy, Miss Clancy.’

‘But the company of society . . .’

His face hardened. ‘I have been exiled because of my bastardy, courted for my wealth. I do not like my fellow man much, Miss Clancy. But I do love you. May I call you Maria?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘And may I kiss you?’

This, indeed, would be the test, if any man was able to press his face to hers. She waited while he did, felt his lips on hers, then felt them open, felt his body pressed on hers, his hands moving, exploring. She moaned and tried to move closer.

At last he laughed. ‘I think we will fill our days well, Maria. And our nights too.’

She flushed and let him take her hand. And even though the moon had not risen, the air was filled with starlit gold.

They were married six weeks later, the next time a preacher of any denomination visited Gibber’s Creek. The bride wore yellow silk, one of Flora’s dresses left behind as entirely too old-fashioned, and a traditional lace veil. And when the groom failed to lower the veil again after he had kissed her, none of the few watchers sought to push it back.

Ezekiel had accompanied her up the aisle. Clancy stood as the groom’s best man. Maria had hoped Flora might have returned for the occasion, but although she sent a brooch as a wedding gift — one of her mother’s, brought from England — her letter of delighted congratulations did not give any excuse for staying in Sydney. And Ezekiel saw only a man who was taking away his housekeeper: this daughter who, if she had been properly formed, he might have used to arrange a marriage with a useful business connection.

If, just possibly, Ezekiel would miss his daughter’s company, he did not say so, either at the church or at the brief reception at the Gibber’s Creek Hotel, which still retained some of its gold rush glory. The luncheon was attended only by Clancy and Ezekiel, Mr Drinkwater and two fellow members of the British Royal Society for the Advancement of Science, who had heard along the gossip gullies that crossed New South Wales that one of their own was marrying in a town called Gibber’s Creek.