“Why, to Brisbane, of course!” Maggie answered, wrenching her carpetbag from beneath the berth. Her hair was falling about her shoulders in great untidy loops, but there was no time to fuss with it. Carrying all her earthly belongings in that one battered bag, she bounded out of the women’s compartment and onto the deck.

Sure enough, there were four dinghies making their way toward shore. The last dazzling light of a tropical sunset blazed on the water, making it very difficult to see.

Suddenly a head wearing a straw bushman’s hat appeared over the ship’s railing, startling Maggie so badly that she leapt backward a step and gasped, one hand pressed to her bosom.

Aquamarine eyes assessed her boldly from a tanned, ruggedly hewn face, and the man who had climbed the rope ladder dangling down the ship’s side swung deftly over the railing to stand facing Maggie.

An insolent smile revealed straight white teeth, and the hat was swept off with a flourish, to show a profusion of tousled black hair. The man was enormous, and even when he bowed a pirate’s dashing bow, he still seemed to tower over Maggie.

Having recovered much of her composure by then, Maggie dismissed the bushman with a withering glare and started around him, bent on making her way down that rope ladder, into a dinghy, and across that placid-looking water to Brisbane.

“I’m afraid you’re too late, lassie,” said John Higgins as he climbed up the ladder and vaulted over the railing. “The last boat’s gone.”

Maggie’s frustration had reached its peak. She stomped one foot and gestured toward the bushman with her free hand. “If this—gentleman—came aboard, there must have been a boat to bring him across! And if there was a boat to bring him across—” She paused here to look over the railing. The dinghy that had carried this unconventional passenger over the water was paddling away toward shore. “Come back!” Maggie screamed.

“A Yank,” observed the bushman in a tone that bespoke sympathy and tolerance.

“Aye,” agreed John Higgins with a long-suffering sigh.

Maggie stomped her foot again and then kicked at the ship’s side. “Damn, damn, double damn!” she yelled.

“It can’t be as bad as all that,” said the bushman, presuming to stand beside Maggie at the railing. His grin was beguiling in an obnoxious sort of way, and there was a faint Irish lilt to his voice.

“It ain’t,” Tansy put in suddenly with a sigh. She had linked her arm through John Higgins’s. “That ’orse’s—”Tansy paused, clearly remembering her earlier promise to keep her opinion of Maggie’s betrothed to herself. “That Mr. Philip Briggs of’ers will be waitin’ in Sydney, I’ll wager.”