The small farmhouse Duncan had brought her to stood in the middle of a field of towering and neglected sugar cane, and Maggie settled herself at the kitchen table. There was just one room; from where she sat she could see both the bed and the cookstove. “You’re very fortunate that Reeve is on his way to Auckland, Duncan Kirk, because he’d have your hide for this.”

Duncan sighed and shook his head. “I seem to suffer from a certain madness where you’re concerned.”

Maggie was annoyed and she longed for a good stout cup of tea. “Don’t be melodramatic,” she said, getting up from her chair to riffle through the various tins stored on the shelves beside the stove until she found one that contained orange pekoe. “We’ll never get all the way back to Brisbane before dark, and that means we’ll have to spend the night. It’s a fearsome bother, Duncan—Elisabeth’s at sea, Cora will be worried sick and, of course, I’ve missed my ship to Sydney—”

Duncan sank forlornly into a chair. “The driver’s taken the carriage back to Brisbane for the night anyway.” He sighed. “I’ll sleep in the barn, of course.”

“Of course,” Maggie agreed primly. With that, determined to make the best of a difficult situation, she took the teapot from the back of the stove and set out to find the pump. The kettle would require a good rinsing, having sat unused for a time. She found the wellhouse and was pumping cold water into the pot when she saw a horse and buggy careen through the whispering cane and stop in the dooryard.

Eleanor was standing in front of the seat brandishing a small handgun that glistened blue-black in the fading sunlight. “Duncan!” she screamed.

Maggie’s heart began to pound. She dropped the teakettle, ready to run, just as Duncan came out of the cabin, his thumbs tucked into his vest pockets, his attitude plainly condescending. “Now, Eleanor, don’t make a fool of yourself—”

A shot whined in the otherwise still air, and Maggie cried out in utter shock as Duncan folded to the ground and Eleanor turned toward her, holding the pistol in both hands. Maggie plunged into the cane, running as fast as she could.

To her horror, she heard Eleanor in wild pursuit; the overgrown sugar cane rustled and snapped as it fell beneath the horses’ hooves and the floor of the buggy. Maggie’s heart burned in her throat as she zigzagged this way and that, trying to stay out of her pursuer’s path. Please, God, she prayed as she stumbled on, don’t let me die. Don’t let my baby die.

Just as Maggie burst into a clearing, where a small gully had been worn away in the ground by the driving Queensland rains, she heard a shout in the distance. Reeve. The voice was Reeve’s.