His answer was a long time in coming; after all, Loretta was his mistress, and had been for several years, and he was not without feeling for her. “Yes,” he answered at last, wishing to God that it was in him to lie. “Yes, I want her.”

Loretta lifted her hands to her face and began to weep, and Reeve was reminded of her performance in a recent play. She’d cried just that way in the second act, and just as convincingly.

When the carriage came to a stop before a splendid white house overlooking Rushcutter’s Bay, Reeve got out, helped a distracted Loretta down, and dismissed the driver.

That night, for the first time in years, Loretta and Reeve slept under the same roof without sharing a bed.

Chapter 3

THE NIGHT HAD BEEN A LONG AND SLEEPLESS ONE FOR Maggie; she’d sat upon a thatch of seaweed next to Tansy throughout, clutching her bag to her bosom lest it be stolen away, and cursing the day Philip Briggs had first drawn breath. If it hadn’t been for him, she wouldn’t be in this godforsaken place, so far from the rest of the world.

At dawn the wagons Tansy had promised the night before began to arrive in twos and threes, though by this time a good portion of the emigrant women were gone. Maggie had watched them gather their reticules and bags and boxes and creep out, here one, there another, all through the dark hours.

The rattling of wagon wheels on cobblestones awakened Tansy, and she sat up, stretching her arms high above her head and sighing happily. She might have spent the night in a feather bed with linen sheets for all the distress she showed. “Wide awake already, then?” she chimed sunnily, squinting at Maggie and yawning again.

Maggie shook her head at her friend’s aplomb and then sighed. Tansy was adaptable, that was all. And if she wanted to make a niche for herself in this upside-down, sunshine-in-February place, she’d best learn to be adaptable too. “Most of the women have gone,” she said quite unnecessarily, for anyone with eyes could see that the shed was all but empty.

“Streetwalkers,” Tansy confided in a blithe whisper. “Never a thought in their ’eads of peelin’ potatoes or scrubbin’ floors for a livin’.”

Maggie’s eyes went wide. “You mean, they came here under false pretenses?”

Tansy’s regard was steady and completely lacking in venom. “Didn’t you?”

Maggie blushed and looked away. “It’s hardly the same thing,” she protested.