Samuel executed a sweeping, Petruchio-style bow. “We shall not speak of partings and other sadnesses, m’lady. This is a day for making merry.”

Laughing, Maggie slipped her arm through Samuel’s and allowed him to escort her inside the menagerie. She had a wonderful afternoon, seeing zebras and elephants, monkeys and wombats, koala bears and kangaroos.

Remembering Mathilda, the kangaroo she had petted at Parramatta that recent day that seemed so far in the past, Maggie felt her spirits sag just a little. Things had not been quite so complicated then.

Samuel was quick to try to cheer her. “Did you know that the Aborigines have a legend about the ’roos, and how they came to be?”

Maggie shook her head, at once touched at Samuel’s unflagging concern and intrigued by the prospect of a story. He led her back to the same bench and they sat down again, Samuel’s hand holding Maggie’s own.

“It seems there was a terrible windstorm,” he said, in his storyteller’s voice. “Strange animals were blown through the sky, and their hind legs grew longer and longer, they were trying so hard to reach the ground.

“It was a dreadful storm, tearing grass and bushes from the ground and even uprooting trees. The Aborigines hid in the rocks, watching in horror, as you can imagine.”

Maggie smiled and nodded, and Samuel went on. “As it happened, to the utter amazement of the onlookers, one of these odd animals became caught in the branches of a tree that was still clinging to the earth, and it was hurled to the ground. The creature looked all around, and then went hopping away.”

Maggie laughed and clapped her hands. “Samuel, that was marvelous.”

“Of course it was,” he said with gentle humor. “Now, let’s go and have something to eat. As it happens, I am quite ravenous.”

Samuel’s prosperity extended to having a carriage at his disposal, and he ushered Maggie to it and seated her inside. They drove to a restaurant in a hotel overlooking Rushcutter’s Bay, and Maggie quite forgot her troubles as she laughed at Samuel’s stories and consumed an enormous supper of roast beef, potatoes, and corn.

At the end of the meal Samuel invited Maggie to attend a performance of the play and see how her understudy was carrying on, but she shook her head. It was time to go back to Reeve’s house and face things as they were.

Samuel got out of the carriage and escorted her to her door, planting a gentlemanly kiss on her forehead.

“Thank you, Samuel,” she said softly. “You made an impossible day better.”

He smiled. “I’m off to convince yet another Kate that the moon is not the sun,” he said, and then he strode back down the walk to his carriage.