Hazel’s heart seized. “No. They wouldn’t allow it. I’m the . . .”

Olive tilted her head. “You’re not, though. Are ye?”

Hazel looked at the stone walls rising all around her. The laundry dripping icicles. The woman still splayed on the cobbles. Buck was out there, trying to get to Ruby, and she was in here. Trapped.

All day long, muddling the laundry and slopping it into buckets and running each piece through the ringer and dragging it to the clothesline, she turned the situation over in her mind. Lying in the straw in the stone cell that night, she stared up into the dark. Would anyone be willing to intervene? Mrs. Crain? Mrs. Wilson? Maeve? One of the mothers with a child at the orphanage? She thought of how impossible it had been for her to see Mathinna and was overcome with despair.

The convict women were powerless. The people with power had no reason to help.

Except . . . maybe . . .

She sat up, gripped by an idea.

The next morning, Hazel took the tin ticket from around her neck. Pressing it into Olive’s hand, she told her what to do.

Six weeks later, when Hazel was released from the crime yard, Olive was waiting.

“It’s done,” she said.

The assignables stood in the long, narrow main yard in two straight lines, facing each other. Shifting nervously from one foot to the other, Hazel scanned the faces of the free settlers as they filed in through the wooden gate. At the end of the line was a man in a long black coat, light gray trousers, and a black top hat. His dark hair curled over the collar of his shirt, and he wore a short-cropped beard.

Once inside the courtyard, he removed his hat and smoothed his hair. Hazel gulped.

It was Dunne.

When he looked over at the rows of women, Hazel caught his eye. He raised an eyebrow in acknowledgment.

A jowly man in shiny leather boots had stopped in front of her. “Ever worked as a cook?”

“No, sir,” she mumbled.

“Can you sew?”

“No.”

“How’re you at laundry?”

“No good, sir.”

“What’s that, prisoner?” the man said loudly, looking around to see if anyone else had witnessed her impudence.

“I’m not any good at all at laundry. Sir.”

“Ye never been a housemaid?”

She shook her head.

“Useless wench!”

“How are you at needlepoint?” asked the next person, a matronly housekeeper.

“Dreadful, ma’am,” Hazel said.

The woman flared her nostrils and moved along.

Finally Dunne was standing in front of her. She did not dare look up. “Your hair is so short,” he said quietly, moving a step closer. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

Self-consciously, she touched the nape of her neck.

He cleared his throat and stepped back. “I have a child in my care and need someone to look after her,” he said. “Have you any experience, prisoner?”

“I have.” She looked up, searching his eyes, but remembered herself. Looking down, she added, “Sir.”