Duncan met them at the door, looking handsome in his white suit, and immediately claimed a dance with Maggie. Arching an eyebrow at Reeve, who was still irritable, he said, “It’s my prerogative as host.”

Reeve subsided and somewhere in the crowd of laughing, chattering people, fiddles began to play. “So it’s come to this, has it,” Duncan teased as he and Maggie began to turn in a slow waltz through a parlor that appeared to run the length of the house. “We’re only friends and neighbors, allowed to dance once or twice a year.” He sighed pragmatically.

Maggie laughed. “There was a time, Mr. Kirk, when I thought we could never be friends.”

“You’re right,” Duncan conceded, frowning. “What’s the matter with Reeve anyway? He looks as though he could bite a railroad tie in half.”

Maggie pretended she hadn’t heard the question, and when that dance ended, she was immediately pulled into her husband’s arms for the next.

“Jealous, darling?” she teased.

“Don’t push your luck,” Reeve replied.

Throughout the evening he stayed close to Maggie, claiming her every dance and ignoring wistful glances from Eleanor, who had obviously had plans of her own for the night. Maggie gave the woman a winning smile every chance she got, and when the hour was late and the McKennas were back in their darkened carriage beginning the drive home, she took the promised revenge. It was to be hoped that the driver couldn’t hear Reeve’s moans of helpless pleasure.

Chapter 25

THE WHITE-CAPPED WATER WAS A JADE-GREEN COLOR under a sky of the fiercest blue. Jamie McKenna stood at the railing of the small, fleet steamer, scanning the horizon for any sign of land.

“Suppose he isn’t there, Jamie?” Peony asked, moving to stand beside him. The wind blew her golden hair back from her face. “Suppose he’s in Sydney?”

Jamie didn’t feel like talking; he merely shook his head, expecting Peony to understand because she was the oldest and dearest friend he had. Instinct had prompted him to look for Reeve in Brisbane instead of Sydney.

Peony, a beautiful woman of forty, stared wistfully out to sea. Jamie saw her give an involuntary little shudder and then hug herself.

“Cold?” he asked, ready to take off his suit jacket, a garment he despised, and lay it over her shoulders.

Peony shook her head, but she lifted her lacy shawl into place. “I was just—remembering.”

Jamie had his own memories of Queensland, and all of them were painful. He smiled and slipped a reassuring arm around her. “We agreed there’d be no looking back, didn’t we?”

Her expression was pensive as she gazed upon some horrific sight that Jamie couldn’t see. “Increase is still alive,” she reflected, in a near whisper, “and if he gets wind that you’re in Australia, he’ll have you killed.”