Evangeline felt a rough poke in her back. “So what’d ye do?”

She turned to face a ruddy-cheeked woman of substantial girth, half a dozen years older than her at least, with a frizzy blond bob and a snub nose.

Evangeline’s first impulse was to tell her to mind her own business, but instinct hadn’t served her particularly well lately. “What did you do?”

The woman grinned, revealing a row of teeth as small and yellow as corn kernels, with a wide gap in the front. “I took my due from a cad who didn’t pay what he promised.” She patted her stomach. “Soon to be a father, and now he’ll never know.”

With a sly wink, she added, “Hazard of my profession. Bound to happen sooner or later.” She shrugged. Wagging her fingers at Evangeline’s stomach, she said, “I’m not feelin’ tewly anymore, at least. It doesn’t last. So ye know.”

“I know,” Evangeline said, though she didn’t.

“So what’s your name?” When Evangeline hesitated, the woman said, “I’m Olive.”

“Evangeline.”

“Evange-a-leen,” Olive repeated, as if saying the name for the first time. “Posh.”

Was it? Her father had chosen the name, he told her, because it was a derivation of the Latin word evangelium, meaning “gospel.” “I don’t think so.”

Olive shrugged. “We’re all the same in here, anyway. I’m sentenced to transport. They gave me seven years, but it might as well be a life sentence, from what I heard. Ye?”

Evangeline recalled seeing small items in the newspaper over the years about the incorrigibles—men, she thought—transported on convict ships to Australia. Murderers and other deviants exiled to the far side of the earth, ridding the British Isles of the worst of its criminals. She’d shivered with horrified delight at the details, as strange and otherworldly as stories from Greek mythology: bleak gulags and workhouses carved into rock in the middle of nowhere, separated from civilization by miles of desert sand and deadly predators.

She’d never felt sorry for these men. They had it coming, after all, didn’t they? They were predators themselves.

“I haven’t been before the judge,” she said.

“Well, who knows—maybe ye won’t be sent away. Ye didn’t murder someone, did ye?”

Evangeline wished Olive would keep her voice down. She hesitated, then shook her head.

“Theft?”

She sighed and chose the least incriminating charge. “I was accused—wrongly accused—of stealing a ring.”

“Ah. Let me guess.” Lacing her fingers together, Olive cracked her knuckles. “Some cad gave it to ye in exchange for favors. Then denied it.”

“No! It wasn’t in exchange for . . .” Was it? “He’s . . . away. I was accused in his absence.”

“Uh huh. He knows you’re up the pole?”

Evangeline had never heard the expression, but its meaning was obvious. She shook her head.

Olive thumbed her chin, then looked Evangeline up and down. “Ye were the governess.”

Was her tale of woe so utterly predictable? “How do you know that?”

Lifting her hand to her mouth, Olive made a starburst with her fingers. “The way ye talk. Book smart. But ye don’t have the airs of a lady. Pity you’re not so smart in the ways of the world, Evange-a-leen.” She shook her head and turned away.