“I’d prefer to wait, if you don’t mind. You see, my sister and I have never been very close. And I’m not sure she even knows I’m alive. I was listed as missing on the Titanic, you see. So, you can understand that I want to pick exactly the right moment to meet her—in case it is her, of course. And if you’d not say anything to her now, that would be better. ’Twould be an awful shock for her.”

I’d rushed through my words, and I wasn’t sure at all that Kearney believed me. I was nervous, and he could see it. He was the kind of a boyo who missed nothing.

“Shall we find a place for lunch?” he asked. “I was fixin’ to take you into the hotel, but now that I know . . .”

He let the words trail off.

* * *

When we stopped at the first oil field, I held my breath. Huge wooden contraptions rose into the sky. Cables were tied to some class of a metal tool wrenching up and then dropping down into a big hole. What really fascinated me were the lines of rough-looking fellers walking back and forth on broad, wooden planks like they were on seesaws.

“Who are them boyos?” I said to Kearney.

“Ah, I thought you might find them interesting. They’re what we call roughnecks, and they’re every bit as violent as they look. A pretty young woman like you would want to stay well out of their way.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Kearney. I can look after myself.”

It had been raining and I was in mud up to my ankles, my lovely pink shoes sinking farther into the ground with every step.

Kearney looked down and smiled. “I think you would have been much better off in boots, Miss Sweeney.”

I glared at him. I suppose he thought I was a useless woman. Well, I’d show him! I walked around the derricks, ignoring the whistles of the men on the planks, racking my brain to remember what I’d read in a big notebook Sullivan had given me to read on the train. I threw out as many questions as I could think of to show him I wasn’t a fecking eejit altogether. They must have been good because Kearney lost the grin on his face and answered every one of them with respect.

Funnily enough, something about the place stirred my blood. For all the dirt and mud and the rough customers walking the planks, there was an air of excitement. Maybe it was the recklessness of it that drew me—that people would gamble all the money they had in the world in hopes that a shower of black oil would burst into the sky, and if it didn’t, they’d have to crawl home penniless.