The first a marker of seduction, Hazel thought. The second its result.

Folding the ticket in the handkerchief and tucking it in her pocket, she thought about what Evangeline had said about the rings of a tree, how the people we love live on inside us, even after they’re gone.

Ruby.

It wasn’t a name Evangeline would’ve chosen. But to Hazel it was a way to mend a broken heart. To erase a false accusation. To reclaim a treasure.

Ruby. Precious girl.

Hobart Town, 1840

A shout came from high in the rigging: “Van Diemen’s Land!”

On the main deck, there was an excited rustling. The Medea had spent nearly four months at sea, through storms and suffocating heat and icy rain. The women were sick of each other and even sicker of the ship. They ran to the railing, but there was little to see. A distant smudge on the horizon.

Hazel made her way down the ladder to gather her things. She’d become adept at navigating the crowded deck and going up and down the swaying ladders with Ruby tied to her front. Thanks, in part, to the better food and clean bedding, Hazel was stronger, her eyes were brighter, her skin a little rosy. Even getting up twice in the night to carry Ruby to Olive’s bed, she slept better than she ever had on the orlop deck.

Dunne was at his desk in the anteroom, writing in a ledger, when she knocked on the door and went in. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said, rising. “There’s something we need to discuss. I have not yet filled out the birth certificate. If I state officially that you are Ruby’s mother, you’ll be permitted to visit her in the nursery at the prison. Would you want that?”

Hazel cupped Ruby’s warm head in her hand. “Yes.”

He nodded. “I’ll note on the chart that you had an infection and cannot feed her, and she’ll be given a wet nurse. Olive, if she agrees. You’ll be allowed to spend your days with her, at least for a few months. Eventually they’ll send her to an orphanage.”

“An orphanage?” She held Ruby a little closer.

“It’s protocol,” he said. “But as her mother, you can claim her when you’re released, if you wish.”

Hazel thought of the women in the bunks, envious of her privileges. “What if someone tells the authorities I’m not the mother?”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“Have ye never felt jealousy, Dr. Dunne?”

“You saved this child’s life, Miss Ferguson. I believe you’ve earned the right to call yourself her mother.”

She couldn’t help smiling. She had earned the right, hadn’t she?

“At any rate,” he said, “it would be a convict’s word against mine.”

Back on the deck a little while later, Hazel stood at the railing with Olive and her sailor, holding Ruby in her sling as the ship turned toward the harbor.

They sailed past whalers and a cargo ship and a litter of small boats. Dolphins dipped in and out of the water; white gulls with gray wings cawed overhead. A narrow strip of shoreline sloped into hills of multihued green, with glassy sheets—lakes, Hazel supposed—in the distance. Seals lounging on outcroppings of rock reminded her of the prostitutes who picnicked in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow in the summer, hiking their dresses above their knees and fanning themselves with newspapers.