He lunged toward her, wrapping his hand around her ankle. Leaning down, she peeled his fingers off her leg one by one. “Ye are no longer strong enough to overpower me, Mr. Buck. That moment has come and gone.”

By the time Maeve and Ruby returned, Buck was in the shed out back. Hazel had led him, panting, drooling, to the cistern for fresh cold water, and then she’d locked him in. Every now and then, over the next few hours, they heard an odd noise, a shriek or a cry, but it sounded very far away. The walls of the shed were made of sandstone and lined with wood that Dunne had cut and stacked to get them through the winter.

Later that evening, Hazel opened the back door of the house and walked out into the dewy grass. She gazed up at the moon, a smear of yellow in the purple bruise of the sky. Then she went to the door of the shed and stood quietly, listening. She heard the purring of insects in the undergrowth, the lazy chirping of birds singing themselves to sleep. There was no sound from inside.

When she and Maeve unlocked the door of the shed the following morning, Buck was dead.

The authorities were glad to put the matter to rest. Buck was an escaped criminal, after all. A convicted murderer and a hardened fugitive. He was known to be an alcoholic and an addict; it was no surprise he’d overdosed on a readily available hallucinogen.

Two days later, a pair of convict laborers transported Buck’s body in a cart to St. David’s Park, a formal English garden with sandstone walls. At the far end of the park was the prisoners’ cemetery, surrounded by shrubbery and foliage, including a commonplace but lovely bush with pendulous pink flowers. They buried Buck without ceremony in an unmarked grave.

Hobart Town, 1843

For so long, fear had cramped Hazel’s heart. Now she felt only relief, as if she had killed a venomous snake that was lurking under the house. Even so, she was afraid to tell Dunne the truth about what had happened. She could live with it, but she didn’t know if he could.

“I don’t know how he’ll react. He’s so . . . moral,” Hazel said to Maeve.

“And we’re not?”

She thought about this for a moment. “I’d say we live by a different code.”

Maeve shook her head. “I’d say ye can’t know what code ye live by until it’s tested. You’re afraid he’ll go to the authorities?”

“No, no.” She hadn’t even considered that. But—might he?

“He’s no saint. He altered that birth certificate,” Maeve pointed out.

“True. But that’s hardly murder.”

A week later, when Dunne’s ship was scheduled to arrive from Melbourne, Hazel was standing at the bottom of the gangplank with Ruby, waiting for him.

He broke into a smile when he saw them. “What a pleasant surprise!” Crouching down, he gave Ruby a hug. “How have you been?”