Hobart Town, 1843

For so long, fear had cramped Hazel’s heart. Now she felt only relief, as if she had killed a venomous snake that was lurking under the house. Even so, she was afraid to tell Dunne the truth about what had happened. She could live with it, but she didn’t know if he could.

“I don’t know how he’ll react. He’s so . . . moral,” Hazel said to Maeve.

“And we’re not?”

She thought about this for a moment. “I’d say we live by a different code.”

Maeve shook her head. “I’d say ye can’t know what code ye live by until it’s tested. You’re afraid he’ll go to the authorities?”

“No, no.” She hadn’t even considered that. But—might he?

“He’s no saint. He altered that birth certificate,” Maeve pointed out.

“True. But that’s hardly murder.”

A week later, when Dunne’s ship was scheduled to arrive from Melbourne, Hazel was standing at the bottom of the gangplank with Ruby, waiting for him.

He broke into a smile when he saw them. “What a pleasant surprise!” Crouching down, he gave Ruby a hug. “How have you been?”

“I showed a man my fairy garden and then he got very sick,” Ruby said.

Hazel cringed. It hadn’t occurred to her that Ruby would blurt it out.

“Did he? And is he all better now?” Dunne asked.

“No, he isn’t.”

“Oh dear.” He looked up at Hazel, seeking explanation.

“Yes. It’s . . . a long story.” Her heart quavered in her chest. “I’ve got the horse and buggy. I thought we might take a picnic to Mount Wellington. Would that be nice?”

“Very nice,” he said.

 

“In Melbourne there’s talk of ending transport altogether,” Dunne said. “Lots of newspaper editorials. It doesn’t look good in the eyes of the rest of the world.” They were sitting on a large flat rock, the picnic spread out around them. The wind from the sea was warm on their faces and the trees were lush and green. Eagles dipped and soared; low-hanging clouds puffed in the sky. Below them, long swells frothed into sandstone rocks as white as bone.

“Do ye think it will happen?” Hazel asked.

“I do. It must.”

Children and grandchildren of the early convicts were settled citizens now, he said. The place was becoming almost respectable. “It would be wise for Britain to remember the rebellion of the American colonies before they lose what goodwill they’ve got left,” he said.

Hazel gave him a distracted smile. Go slow, she thought. Ease into it. But that wasn’t her style. When Ruby slid off the rock in search of sticks to build a fairy house, Hazel turned to him. “I need to tell ye what happened.”

“Oh—yes,” he said, sitting back. “The man who got sick.”

She took a breath. “Danny Buck was in the garden with Ruby when I returned from the wharf ten days ago. He had a knife. He said he would kill her, and he threatened to rape me.”

His eyes widened. “My god. Hazel.”

“Ye know that bush by the front step?” she said, forging ahead. “Angel’s trumpet, it’s called.”

“The one with pink flowers.”

“Yes. The sap is toxic. Too much of it is fatal.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It is. And—anyway—it was.”

He looked in her eyes. “It was.”

“Yes.” When he didn’t respond right away, she added, “We called the police, and they took him away. The plant is a narcotic; overdoses aren’t unusual.”

“I see.” He exhaled through his nose. “My god,” he said again.

For a few moments they sat in silence, watching Ruby in the distance as she snapped tiny sticks in half and arranged them in piles. Was he horrified? Appalled? She couldn’t guess. “I don’t . . .” Hazel paused, picking her words carefully. “I don’t regret it.”

Dunne nodded slowly.

“I’m relieved he’s gone.”

He sighed, running his hand through his hair. “Look. I actually think you were . . . that was . . . incredibly brave. You saw what you needed to do, and you did it. You saved your life, and Ruby’s. I’m only sorry I wasn’t there.”

He reached for her hand, and she let him hold it. She looked down at Ruby in the grass, bending over a clump of flowers, and then back at Dunne, at his dark hair curling around his ears, his trim beard and dark lashes. She listened to the dull roar of seawater in the distance, gushing out of caves.

Tentatively she ran a hand along Dunne’s forearm. He turned clumsily toward her, knocking over the plate of cheese and apple slices between them. Reaching up to his face with both hands, she pulled him close. She felt his skin warm beneath his beard and smelled his sweet, appley breath, and then his lips found hers, his hands through her still-cropped hair. Closing her eyes, she breathed him into her.

“Mama, let’s make a bracelet!” Ruby shouted, running toward them, holding up a cluster of daisies.

When Hazel pulled away from Dunne, she felt as she had when her feet touched solid ground for the first time after four months at sea. Unsteady, disoriented, the world around her vibrating.

 

After weaving a daisy chain, Hazel sat on the rock while Dunne helped Ruby construct her fairy village in the clearing below. As light faded over the mountain, Hazel gazed out at the jagged, green-tinged cliffs rooted in the sea. How far she had traveled to get here! From the wynds of Glasgow to the bowels of a slave ship to a prison halfway around the world. And now to a sandstone cottage in a frontier town where she was free to ply her trade. To mother a child who needed her. To live in peace with a man she might be beginning to love.

She thought of the moments that had saved her. Watching The Tempest in Kelvingrove Park. I was the man i’ the moon when time was. Evangeline teaching her to read. Olive’s unexpected generosity and Maeve’s camaraderie. Dunne’s compassion. Ruby, the good that had overcome the heartbreak, the promise that Evangeline never lived to see fulfilled. Maybe Hazel had saved Ruby’s life, or maybe she would’ve survived regardless. But Hazel knew with certainty that Ruby had transformed hers.

She was starting to believe that she belonged in this terrible, beautiful place, with its convict-built mansions, its dense bush and strange animals. The eucalyptus with their half-shed bark and woolly foliage, orange lichen that spread like molten lava across the rocks. Here she was, rooted to the earth. Her branches reaching toward the sky, the rings inside as dense as bone. She felt ancient, as if she’d lived forever, but she was only nineteen years old. The rest of her life in front of her like a ribbon unfurling.