Maggie’s hesitation was largely pretense; she was certain that she loved Philip Briggs, and there was nothing to hold her in London. She had merely been stranded there after her parents had died in Switzerland; she had no real friends, one good dress, and a tiny room in a back-alley rooming house. She had nothing to lose, it seemed to her.

Opening her eyes, Maggie sighed away the sweet memories and geared herself toward the adventure ahead. Of course Philip was waiting for her in Sydney, ready to marry her and free her from her emigrant’s agreement.

Tansy had returned to the compartment and was sitting on her trunk, her tongue caught between her lips, busily writing in her journal. Apparently sensing Maggie’s perusal, she pulled in her tongue and sat up very straight.

“Thought you was sleepin’,” she said noncommit-tally.

Maggie had never had a friend quite as loyal as Tansy, and she didn’t want to offend her. She yawned and sat upright as well as she could without banging her head on the berth above hers. “I was,” Maggie lied. “Will you be seeing Mr. Higgins again after we dock in Sydney?”

“Not likely,” Tansy answered. “A seafarin’ man ain’t for me. Gone too much. I want a bloke what I can cuddle up to of a night.”

Maggie smiled and hugged herself, feeling cool and comfortable in her oft-washed and neatly patched chemise. Soon enough she’d have Philip to “cuddle up to of a night.” She’d find out what came of a passion such as her own when it was fulfilled in the marriage bed. “Do you suppose it feels good—what men and women do together in the night, I mean?”

Tansy gave a rather bawdy chuckle and whispered, “Lordy, I know it feels good. Whether it’s in the night or the broad light o’ day!”

Maggie colored richly. There was a breeze coming in through the portholes on the far side of the compartment and it rippled pleasantly, sensuously, over her arms and legs. Beneath her chemise her plump breasts seemed to swell in response to it. “You’re only boasting, Tansy Quinn! You don’t know any such thing!”

“Oh, but I do,” insisted Tansy, a sparkle in her blue eyes, her voice low. “There’s a groomsman at Government ’ouse, in Melbourne, what can make me ’owl like ’is lordship’s best ’ound!”

Maggie was roundly shocked, just as she suspected Tansy had intended her to be, but she was curious too. Vaguely, she remembered lying in her corner of a colorful circus wagon, as a little girl, and hearing odd, muffled moans in the night. She had assumed that her mother or father had eaten one too many sweet apples and gotten a stomachache, but now she wondered. “Go on!” she scoffed, her cheeks stinging.