‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ Caleb asked his bride as he inserted the key in the lock to the doctor’s cottage.

Down below them, the band in the Mechanics’ Institute still played, light from the open doors and windows spilling into the main street. The bride and groom had, with the connivance of Will Penrose and Netty Redley, slipped out of the back door, unnoticed.

Adelaide still clutched her bouquet of gum leaves and roses from Mrs Russell’s garden, the only vegetation that could be found in Maiden’s Creek in March. She leaned against Caleb’s shoulder drawing in the scent of sandalwood and her man. ‘We’ve had the Menzies and I couldn’t bear the thought of a room at The Empress or the Britannia.’

Caleb flung open the door to the doctor’s cottage. ‘Then welcome to our first marital home, Mrs Hunt.’

Adelaide bit her lip. ‘I think, Dr Hunt, that it is appropriate that you carry me over the threshold.’

Caleb’s mouth curled into the familiar smile, the grey eyes twinkling. ‘After all those sandwiches I saw you eating?’

‘I was hungry,’ Adelaide said, as Caleb swept her up into his arms with an overacted grunt.

‘You women have too many skirts,’ he grumbled.

She locked her arms around his neck. ‘This is nice,’ she said and kissed him on the nose.

He ducked as he entered the little cottage, setting her down on the scrubbed wooden boards. Adelaide cast a critical eye around the living room. Posy, with help from Netty and several of the other women in town, had done an exceptional job. Everything gleamed, from the brass handle of the kettle hanging above the hearth, to the mean little glass windows, now decorated with cheerful gingham curtains. A glass vase stuffed with more gum leaves and roses sat in the centre of a gingham cloth covering the disreputable table.

She set her bouquet on the cloth and unpinned her fashionable straw hat, purchased from an expensive milliner in Collins Street. No bride in white with a long veil, she had chosen a dress of soft apricot silk. The tight-fitting bodice had a flattering shawl neckline and a ruched overskirt looped back into a trailing bustle, revealing a simple underskirt of matching fabric with a tightly pleated frill at the hem. It had been a long, long time since she had worn anything so beautiful, and the woman who had stared back at her from her mirror that morning bore no resemblance to the frightened girl who had fled her father’s house over ten years earlier.

As she had helped her dress that morning, Netty—who in a few short weeks would be wed herself to her beloved Amos—burst into tears.

‘You are beautiful,’ she had told Adelaide.

‘All brides are beautiful,’ Adelaide had replied.

Netty shook her head. ‘No … this is not about how you look. It’s your heart, Adelaide.’