Tansy was pleased. “So Philip the Wonderful ’asn’t ’ad ’is way with you, then. That’s something, considerin’ ’ow the bleeder’s duped you up to now.”

“We’re back to that again!” Maggie stormed, folding her arms over her chest and jutting out her stubborn chin. “You’re just jealous, Tansy Quinn, because there’s nobody waiting for you in Sydney!”

“Don’t be too sure of that, miss,” Tansy retorted loftily. “I ’ad me pick of the lads at Government ’ouse, I did.” She paused to sniff. “And I don’t talk through me nose, neither, like certain Yanks I could name.”

Maggie was stung, just as Tansy had wanted her to be. She turned onto her side, with her face to the wall, and ignored her friend until she went away.

When Tansy and everyone else in the compartment had gone off to have supper, a luxury Maggie’s pride forced her to forgo, she got out of her berth and paced. It did bother her, no matter how strenuously she might deny it, that Philip had induced her to travel to Australia as an emigrant instead of as his wife. After all, if something went wrong, if he failed to marry her, she would be obligated to work three years, and since she’d never done anything except perform in second-rate revues in one shoddy London theater, her options would certainly be limited. She would end up scrubbing floors and rinsing chamber pots, sure and certain.

Her fingers trembling just slightly, Maggie pulled her carpetbag from beneath her berth and opened it. Reaching past her spare dress, a woolen even warmer and more somber than the gray one she’d shed a short time before, she brought out her personal papers. There was her birth certificate, proof of her American citizenship—she would need that if she ever decided to return to the United States. That didn’t seem likely, given the great distance involved. Along with the certificate was the advertisement Philip had clipped from the London Times and presented with a pleased flourish.

Alone, sitting cross-legged on her berth like an Indian, Maggie read the smudged print even though she already knew it by heart.

Free emigration.
Wanted for Australia, young men and women.
Must be over eighteen.

“It only makes sense for you to travel this way, Magpie,” Philip had enthused. “You pay a pound for your kit—blankets and sheets and soap, things of that nature. And you’ll need to have an emigration form signed by a doctor and a clergyman and the theater manager, proving that you’re a good sort and all. Shouldn’t be any problem, that. We’ll use the money saved on your passage to buy a set of china plates or a fine new rug for the parlor.”