It seemed to require a great effort to dredge himself out of his stupor. “What’re . . . ye . . . talking about?”

She tipped the bowl so he could see. “These pretty blossoms are called angel’s trumpet—though some call them breath of the devil, and for good reason. We have a plant just outside the front door. I’m sure you’ve seen it before; it’s fairly common. There’s a bush in the neighbor’s garden across the street. Even a few at the governor’s house.” She set the bowl back on the sideboard. “If you’re lucky—and I think there’s enough poison in your bloodstream that ye are—you’ll become delirious before the convulsions start. You’ll probably end up in a coma before ye die. So that’s a mercy.”

“Ye—ye nasty bunter!” he gasped.

“Don’t worry. It’s not as bad as drowning. From what I hear. Though maybe it is.” She shrugged. “Do ye feel spoony? Short of breath?”

He nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“It shouldn’t take long. By morning . . .” Her voice trailed off. She held up her palms as if in apology. “There’s really nothing anyone can do.”

He lurched forward, struggling to pull himself to his feet. Sagging against the table, he knocked the empty teacup onto the floor, where it shattered. He collapsed in a heap beside it. “You’ll pay,” he groaned.

Looking down at him, she said, “I don’t think so, Mr. Buck. Ye came in to the practice complaining of stomach pains. Turned out you’d eaten a poisonous flower, probably to feel its effects. I didn’t judge ye for it. Only God can do that. Sadly, there’s no antidote. All we could do was try to make ye comfortable.”

He lunged toward her, wrapping his hand around her ankle. Leaning down, she peeled his fingers off her leg one by one. “Ye are no longer strong enough to overpower me, Mr. Buck. That moment has come and gone.”

By the time Maeve and Ruby returned, Buck was in the shed out back. Hazel had led him, panting, drooling, to the cistern for fresh cold water, and then she’d locked him in. Every now and then, over the next few hours, they heard an odd noise, a shriek or a cry, but it sounded very far away. The walls of the shed were made of sandstone and lined with wood that Dunne had cut and stacked to get them through the winter.

Later that evening, Hazel opened the back door of the house and walked out into the dewy grass. She gazed up at the moon, a smear of yellow in the purple bruise of the sky. Then she went to the door of the shed and stood quietly, listening. She heard the purring of insects in the undergrowth, the lazy chirping of birds singing themselves to sleep. There was no sound from inside.

When she and Maeve unlocked the door of the shed the following morning, Buck was dead.

The authorities were glad to put the matter to rest. Buck was an escaped criminal, after all. A convicted murderer and a hardened fugitive. He was known to be an alcoholic and an addict; it was no surprise he’d overdosed on a readily available hallucinogen.

Two days later, a pair of convict laborers transported Buck’s body in a cart to St. David’s Park, a formal English garden with sandstone walls. At the far end of the park was the prisoners’ cemetery, surrounded by shrubbery and foliage, including a commonplace but lovely bush with pendulous pink flowers. They buried Buck without ceremony in an unmarked grave.

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.