She watched him wend his way through the crowd, then turned to Netty, who scanned the crowd with obvious anticipation.

‘There’s Amos,’ she said as the unmistakable figure of the coach driver entered the hall, his hat clutched in one hand. On seeing Netty, his face broke into a grin and he raked the fingers of his empty hand through his damp ginger curls. As he pushed through the crowd towards them he was waylaid by another woman. He cast a helpless glance at Netty as the woman persuaded him outside to join a lively polka.

‘Who is that?’ Adelaide asked her crestfallen friend.

‘Elsie Draper, from the bakery,’ Netty replied. ‘She’s had her eye on my Amos for months.’ She sniffed as the couple circled within arm’s length, Amos casting Netty a desperate glance.

‘Go,’ Adelaide snapped. ‘You don’t have to keep me company.’

She watched Netty push her way through the crowd to rescue her beau from the clutches of Elsie Draper. Adelaide’s stomach lurched as she recognised that her peevish demeanour came from nothing less than envy—envy that no man in this room looked at her the way Amos Burrell looked at Netty Redley.

Caleb appeared at Adelaide’s side with a glass of lemonade. He took a sip of the watery brew and pulled a face. ‘I would kill for a whiskey,’ he said.

She laughed. ‘Not with those two ladies in charge. You could do what some of the other men are doing.’ She indicated a small knot of miners covertly topping up their glasses from a hip flask.

Caleb downed his lemonade as they watched the dancing couples. ‘It’s been a long time since I took to the floor, Adelaide, and it’s disappointing that I can’t oblige you with a dance today.’

‘I don’t dance, Caleb.’

He glanced at her, one eyebrow raised in mock disbelief, and she felt a frisson of regret that every word she uttered must confirm this man’s opinion of her as a dried-up old maid.

‘Ah, Hunt. Hoped I would run into you.’

They turned at the sound of Sergeant Maidment’s voice. Out of his uniform he looked almost unrecognisable. He touched his fingers to the brim of his bowler hat. ‘Mrs Greaves.’

‘Sergeant. Do you have some news for me?’ Caleb asked.

‘I went up to Pretty Sally to have a word with the O’Rileys and they’ve gone. Packed up their camp and headed north to Aberfeldy three days ago.’

‘That’s good news. Thank you, Sergeant.’

Maidment shook his head. ‘They’ve probably gone looking for Hannigan. I don’t envy him if they find him.’

‘Hannigan seems better at making enemies than he does friends, Sergeant,’ Adelaide said.