“If you want the role,” Reeve answered wearily, settling still deeper into the water and sighing, “Come to Number Fifteen George Street as soon as we dock in Sydney.”

The wench didn’t leave the room, but lingered, still gazing at Reeve’s face, trying, he supposed, to read it. “There is the matter of my agreement to work three years in return for my passage—”

Reeve waved one hand in dismissal, impatient for the chit to be gone. His baser instincts were coming to the fore, probably stirred by the incredible fact that this young woman had inflicted herself upon a naked man and then had the temerity to stay and argue. It seemed to him that a real lady would have fled in a proper state of shame and disgrace. “Good God, Miss Chamberlin,” he snarled, “do you never tire of prattling on and on? I’ll buy your damnable papers if I have to—just get out of here before I forget my manners and take it upon myself to find out exactly to what extent Philip Briggs has deceived you!”

Once again Maggie’s cheeks went from a soft apricot shade to a fierce scarlet. She pulled open the door at last, and fled through it, slamming it closed behind her.

Reeve scowled at the place where she had stood, wondering. Could Maggie Chamberlin possibly have escaped Briggs’s more intimate attentions? Given her brass, it didn’t seem likely. The idea made him furious, and he flung the bar of soap at the door behind her.

Avoiding Mr. McKenna for the short remainder of the voyage was easy: Maggie had only to keep to her own side of the ship and never let her eyes stray toward the first-class section. She took her meals in the women’s compartment, sitting cross-legged on her berth, and her strange mood vexed Tansy into a dither.

She paced back and forth before Maggie’s berth, her arms folded across her chest. “You went to Mr. McKenna’s cabin, Maggie Chamberlin—I know you did!” she charged in a hissing whisper. “John ’iggins saw you with ’is own eyes! What on earth could you ’ave been thinkin’ of to do such a thing? Surely you’re not like them women what got off at Thursday Island—”

Tansy’s intimation stung Maggie, and she didn’t bother to hide the fact. The women who’d left the ship at Thursday Island to be “housekeepers” to lonely men were lightskirts of the crudest sort, after all. Maggie leapt off her berth, her plate clattering forgotten to the floor, and faced Tansy nose-to-nose. “How dare you suggest that I did anything immoral in that cabin, Tansy Quinn!”