He had thought he had made good time, was disconcerted to find it was well after ten o’clock, closer to eleven, and he had missed one meeting and a delegation was seated in an adjacent room impatiently awaiting his arrival.

He thrust his hat at James Greensmith, his secretary.

‘Good morning, Mr Dunlevy,’ said Greensmith, jumping to his feet.

An impressive stack of papers and completed correspondence lay before him on the desk and a great deal of work appeared to have been done.

‘The Premier’s secretary delivered some confidential papers which I have placed on your desk, Mr Dunlevy,’ Greensmith announced. ‘Three telegrams came in, two of which require a reply. A number of reporters from the daily newspapers have requested comments relating to the incident last evening. I sent them packing, naturally. The delegation from Goulburn are awaiting your presence, as you see. The ones from Orange were here and waited some time but have now departed. And Mr Judd was looking for you.’

He was very well dressed, James Greensmith—perhaps a little too well dressed for a man who was another man’s secretary. Alasdair noticed this; he had noticed it before but now it struck him anew. And Greensmith had sent the newspapermen packing, had he? That was a little high-handed of him. There was something about the fellow’s eagerness, his excessively smart attire, that caused Alasdair to suspect his secretary had been making the most of his employer’s absence to plan his own future, that some portion of the completed correspondence was on his own behalf to men whom he had identified could advance his own career—including, no doubt, some well-connected member of the Legislative Council whose eldest daughter Greensmith had identified as a potential future wife.

It was unpleasant to feel one was being made a fool of.

‘They will have to wait,’ announced Alasdair, regarding the three-man delegation from Goulburn with distaste. ‘I have a meeting with the Premier this morning.’

He went into his office and closed the door, leaving Greensmith to fumble through the ministerial diary. He would find nothing. The meeting had been arranged in a hasty aside in the corridor of Parliament House two days earlier as the Premier had hurried from one place to another, its purpose off the record and undisclosed—though a place on the Premier’s next tour of the north seemed, surely, the most likely reason.

There was also, of course, the small matter of the Solicitor-General’s position, which was now vacant.

His meeting this morning with the Premier. It was the reason he had gone to see Verity. He had said nothing to her, naturally, but the knowledge of it had driven him to her. Curious, the impulses that drove a man. Her scent was all about him, her essence in his head. He would carry these things with him into his meeting with the Premier.