At six o’clock, when the first guests arrived, the air was still thick with heat. Lady Franklin, consulting with the musicians and Mrs. Crain, decided to push back the time of the dancing until half eight, when surely it would be cooler.

Sir John, sleek as a wombat in a form-fitting tuxedo, met Mathinna and Eleanor—wearing a custard-colored, scoop-neck taffeta gown that matched her hair—on the stone apron of Government House. “Don’t we all look smart! Lady Franklin insists that I dance with you, Mathinna. Are you ready to be the center of attention?”

She was. All day she’d felt a flutter of anticipatory pleasure. Now her skin gleamed with rose balm and her hair was oiled and sleek, tied in velvet ribbons that matched the black ribbon around her waist. She wore new red stockings and spit-polished shoes. Her scarlet dress had been ironed with starch, and the full skirt swished around her legs.

“I can’t imagine she’ll embarrass you, Papa, as long as she remembers the steps,” Eleanor said.

“My only worry is that I may embarrass her,” Sir John replied with a gallant flourish. “Frankly, I’d thought my cotillion days were behind me.”

Offering his elbows, he escorted them to the tent, where Eleanor joined a gaggle of young ladies in sherbet dresses and Mathinna and Sir John were quickly surrounded by a throng. Some of the partygoers were familiar to Mathinna, but many were strangers. She greeted the people she recognized with a smile and tried to ignore the ones staring at her, mouths ajar.

A dowager with cake-icing hair tottered over. “I heard you acquired a savage, Sir John, but I hardly believed it. And here it is—in a ball gown!”

A dozen heads pivoted toward Mathinna like a school of fish toward a heel of bread. Feeling herself flush, she took a deep breath and looked at Sir John. He gave her a wink, as if to say that the woman’s rudeness was merely part of the game.

“It is a she, Mrs. Carlisle,” he corrected the dowager, “and she is called Mathinna.”

“Does it—she—understand us?”

“Indeed. In fact, I would say that she probably comprehends far more than she lets on. Isn’t that so, Mathinna?”

She knew what Sir John was asking her to do. He wanted her to astonish them. With a regal nod, she said, “Vous serez surpris de voir combien je sais.”

Gasps and a smattering of claps.

“Extraordinary!”

“What did she say?” Not everyone spoke French, of course.

“I believe it was, ‘You’d be surprised how much I know,’” said Sir John, looking around with a self-satisfied grin. “She’s cheeky, this one.”

“Charming,” the dowager said. “Where did you find her, exactly?”

“Well, it’s quite a story,” Sir John said. “On a trip to Flinders Island we spotted her cavorting around a campfire, with no shoes and barely any clothes. A pure primitive.”

“Fascinating. And here she is, in a satin dress!”

“I can’t help showing her off. Say a few more words in French, Mathinna,” Sir John said.