"I don't know what Pa can have been thinking about, telling us to meet him down here!" As Liza Markham stared over the high wheels of the pony trap her sister was driving, she wrinkled her pert, freckled nose at the slovenly looking men and painted women who crowded the plank sidewalks along the packed-earth street. With its motley collection of wool warehouses, saloons, and other establishments of dubious nature, the area would have given pause to a far more intrepid young lady than Liza.

"I imagine he was thinking that it would be simpler for us to come to the docks than for him to haul a wagonload of convicts through town. This trip wasn't for your exclusive benefit, you know. Pa and Mr. Percival had business to attend to. You were the one who insisted on coming. Remember?" Sarah Markham's usually serene voice was acidic as she cast an irritated look at her young stepsister. Liza was slouched dispiritedly against the trap's curved, padded side. The younger girl looked hot, Sarah thought with a niggle of guilt at her own crossness. But then, Sarah reminded herself, so was she. So, probably, was every resident of Melbourne, Australia, on this scorching afternoon in January 1838. The area surrounding Melbourne had been caught in a heatwave for weeks, and there was no respite in sight. Tempers had been flaring as quickly as the grass plains surrounding the town.

"I needed some new slippers."

"You didn't get any!"

"Is it my fault they didn't have the right color?"

Sarah mentally counted to ten at Liza's sulky response. Her hands tightened automatically on the reins. The piebald mare drawing the trap along at a slow trot threw up her head in surprise. One brown eye rolled back to look reproachfully at Sarah.

"Sorry, Clare," Sarah murmured contritely. Liza gave her a burning look. Sarah knew that her habit of talking to animals -- dumb beasts, as Liza and her mother, Lydia, characterized them -- annoyed her sister. Nearly everything she did, from running the house to taking care of the station's books to keeping a reluctant but necessary eye on Liza, seemed to annoy one or the other of them. But then, they annoyed her, too, Lydia more than Liza, who at sixteen -- six years Sarah's junior -- had at least her youth to excuse her behavior. But over the seven years since Sarah's father had married Liza's mother, Sarah had learned to ignore the petty irritations that Liza and Lydia subjected her to daily. Ordinarily she would not have been so vexed by Liza's insistence on accompanying their father and his foreman to town, which necessitated her own presence as chaperone. But then, ordinarily a trip to town did not entail spending the better part of five hours being dragged about Melbourne's many seamstresses' and cobblers' establishments in the middle of a heatwave in search of a pair of rose-pink satin dancing slippers, which Sarah had told her sister at the outset were not to be found. But Liza, of course, had refused to listen. Gritting her teeth, Sarah had vowed once again to let experience be Liza's teacher. Liza tended to be willful -- Sarah thought that spoiled was a better word for it -- and over the years Sarah had learned the folly of expecting mere words of caution or advice to carry much weight. Liza learned that a stove was hot only after burning her hand on it, and so it had been with the dancing slippers. Until the very last possible source had been explored and found wanting, she had insisted that the slippers would be found. By then -- a scant half-hour ago -- Sarah had been hot, thirsty, sweaty, tired, and thoroughly out of temper. A state from which she had not yet begun to recover.

"Oh well, I suppose I shall just have to wear my black ones."

"I suppose so." Sarah's sarcasm was lost on Liza, as Sarah had known it would be. Liza's despised black slippers were less than three months old; to Sarah's certain knowledge, they had never been worn. But Liza was determined to make a splash at her upcoming seventeenth-birthday ball, which would mark her first official appearance in squattocracy society. She had been planning every detail of her apparel for months, including the acquisition of a pair of dancing slippers to match the rose-pink satin ballgown that Melbourne's leading modiste was now making for her. Sarah thought of the price of that gown and barely repressed a sigh. She was afraid that Liza, with her love of finery, would shortly be as big a drain on the station's funds as her mother was. Ordinarily, Lowella was a thriving sheep operation, but the drought had played havoc with profits. Without sufficient water, the sheep that were their primary source of income were dropping like flies.

"There's Mr. Percival." Liza spoke with obvious relief, as Sarah turned the trap down the narrow street parallel to the wharf, and pointed in a very unladylike manner. Sarah supposed she should reprove her, but at this moment she didn't have the patience or the energy to cope with the quarrel that would inevitably follow. Instead, she followed her sister's gesture with her eyes to where a stocky man in his mid-forties, wearing a wide-brimmed black hat pushed far back on his head, was silhouetted against the tall-masted ships along the wharf.

As usual, Melbourne's wharf was a scene of bustling activity. Provisions and convicts were continually being offloaded and their places on the ships being taken by wool, which was Australia's primary export. The smell of uncured wool lying in bales beneath the broiling sun was nearly overpowering. Combined with the odor of rotting fish, tar, and the salt air of the bay, it assaulted Sarah's nostrils with the force of a bare-knuckled prizefighter. She swallowed, refusing to give in to a sudden surge of queasiness. Determinedly she focused on the sights and sounds: white sails flapping as they were raised or lowered; the gray boards of the wharf groaning as heavy, brass-bound barrels of rum and molasses were wheeled over them; shirtless men with glistening bare backs grunting and cursing as they hefted a variety of items on and off the ships; the raucous cries of red-winged parrots and gaudy cockatoos wheeling in the azure sky and the sudden flutter of their wings as they swooped to snatch a bit of plunder from the wharf. The scene was crude, yet, in the way it spoke of distant lands and travel, exciting. At least, Sarah thought, it would have been exciting were it not for the nauseating odor.

When Liza groaned, Sarah looked over to see her sister pressing a dainty bit of perfumed hanky to her nose. Just like Liza to have one when she needs it, Sarah reflected wryly, knowing that there was no point in searching the pockets of her own serviceable dun-colored skirt for any such item. In the usual run of things, she had no use for such fripperies. But then, in the usual run of things, the world didn't smell so bad, either.

"Let's collect Pa and Mr. Percival and go," Liza said with distaste. As Sarah reined the horse near the wharf, she silently concurred. But as the trap drew to a halt, she saw that Pa was nowhere in sight. Percival stood with his back to them, alone, staring into the glaring sun at one of the ships docked nearby. Securing the reins to the small hitch protruding from the front of the trap, Sarah tried to follow his gaze. But with the sun nearly blinding her she could see little more than the dark outline of denuded masts against the endlessly blue sky.

"Why, Miss Sarah, Miss Liza," Percival exclaimed, turning, his attention attracted by the sound of Clare's hooves as she pawed the ground. "Finished your shopping?"

Neither Sarah nor Liza chose to reply to this still-sore point, but Percival didn't wait for an answer. While Sarah was making one last loop in the reins, he stepped off the weathered boards of the wharf and came around the trap to Sarah's side, his boots raising little puffs of dust as he walked. Percival was the only man of European descent working for her father who was not a convict; Sarah knew that this was not the only reason why he had been made overseer, but it was the most important. A former seaman who had, she had gathered from various tidbits he had let drop, grown up in a bucolic English shire, Percival had a deep hankering to be a gentleman. When the merchant ship on which he had been second mate had docked in Melbourne some ten years before, and he had discovered that in Australia, if a man was not a convict or the descendant of convicts and was of European descent he was considered gentry, he had decided to make England's burgeoning penal colony his home. Six years ago he had come to Lowella, and he had never left. A hard worker with a knack for persuading or coercing those who worked under him into being the same, he had been made overseer within a year. Now Edward Markham consulted him on most decisions, and Percival ran the station with an amazing degree of autonomy.

At the moment, dressed in a black frock coat and intricately tied cravat despite the heat, he looked very much the prosperous grazier. A pleased smile split his seamed face as he looked up at Sarah, lending him a geniality he did not always possess. Sarah returned that smile coolly. But her coolness seemed never to penetrate his thick hide. He was determined to court her no matter how clearly she indicated that his attentions were not welcome. Sarah knew that Lydia and her father -- and Percival himself -- expected her to encourage him. After all, she was, at twenty-two, decidedly on the matrimonial shelf. No other suitor was likely to come along, and she was not getting younger, as Lydia took great pains to remind her. John Percival, being relatively young (forty was not old, said Lydia, who was some years past it), in good health, and not physically repulsive, seemed in her family's view ideal husband material for a prim spinster who was not likely to get another offer. But Sarah determinedly resisted their coercion. If she could not find a man who sparked some degree of warmth in her (Percival sparked nothing but distaste), then she would not marry at all. Which would not bother her in the least!

Liza, however, had none of Sarah's reservations where Percival was concerned. In her newly discovered guise of femme fatale -- enhanced, Sarah suspected, by a female impulse to steal her elder sister's only suitor -- Liza turned the full force of her sixteen-year-old smile on Percival. Which, Sarah acknowledged to herself, was really quite something to see. Dressed in a flouncy muslin afternoon dress in her favorite rose pink, with her dusky curls pinned high beneath the floppy straw hat designed to protect her creamy olive complexion from the sun, her coffee-brown eyes sparkling, her white teeth gleaming against lips that had been rubbed with rose petals to match the shade of her dress, Liza gave promise of becoming quite a beauty. If her nose was slightly snub, the sparkle in her eyes made up for it. If her chin was a trifle square, the cupid's-bow mouth with its willful pout compensated beautifully. The freckles dusting her nose did not detract but called attention to the smoothness of her skin. And she was petite, as was the fashion; small but voluptuously rounded, sure to appeal to all susceptible males. To Percival's credit, he did not appear to be much affected by Liza's efforts to captivate him. He responded to her dazzling smile with a perfunctory one of his own, and turned his eyes back to Sarah. Sarah could not help feeling a flicker of amusement at Liza's sudden pout. In consequence, Sarah's second smile at Percival was warmer than any she had previously bestowed upon him. Encouraged, he took off his hat, self-consciously shook his head to settle his untidy, coarse brown hair, and held up his hand to her.

"Wouldn't you like to get down for a minute, Miss Sarah, and stretch your limbs? Mr. Markham had to go aboard the Septimus there, and he may be some time yet."

"Trouble, Mr. Percival?" Sarah frowned, hesitated, then placed her gloved hand in his large, stubby-fingered one. She knew her father hated the convict ships, and only the most dire necessity would make him set foot on one.

"Nothing you need concern yourself about," he answered as he helped her down. Sarah suspected that, like most men, he disapproved of women bothering their heads with what was men's business, and that her authority and involvement in Lowella's operation irked him.

"You'd better tell me," Sarah said quietly, her eyes shifting to the bullock dray pulled up close to the wharf just behind him. It was loaded with perhaps half-a-dozen dirty, scrawny, manacled men, the convicts whose acquisition had been the primary purpose of this unusual mid-week trip into Melbourne. Although convicts were generally assigned by the government to serve out their sentences at hard labor for Australia's landowners, Edward Markham had arranged clandestinely, for a fee, to acquire six brawny men direct from the ship's captain, with whom he had dealt before. Percival had come along to stand guard over the men, although there was really no need: there was nowhere for them to go, and if they ran they would be hunted down like dogs. At the moment, Percival stood with his back to the convicts, ignoring them, as if they were the most God-fearing citizens in the world. And with good reason, Sarah thought, looking over the convicts again. After the long voyage from England, made under conditions that Sarah shuddered even to contemplate, not one of them had a thought in his head about anything save the misery of his own body. Weak from months spent chained in a stiflingly hot hold packed with men, half-starved, most suffering from scurvy, newly arrived convicts were rarely a threat to anyone. It would take a week or more of rest and good food before even the hardiest of them was fit to do the back-breaking work of well digging, for which they had been acquired.

Percival still had not replied to Sarah's question. Annoyed, she looked back to find him eying her with blatant admiration, and she knew he meant for her to notice it and feel flattered. If it weren't growing so tiresome, Percival's pursuit of her would have been almost funny, Sarah thought, frowning at his cow-eyed look that she guessed was supposed to represent the very ultimate in bedazzlement. He behaved as if smitten by a raving beauty, which she knew perfectly well she wasn't. She didn't even come close. Tall for a woman, in her sleeveless white linen shirtwaist and plain round skirt she was all sharp lines and angles where she knew men preferred a softer, rounder shape. The color of her hair was good -- a rich, tawny gold -- but it was thick as a horse's tail and almost as straight. Years ago, after countless nights spent tortured by the rag curlers Lydia had insisted she try, Sarah had given up attempting to achieve a fashionable coiffure. Nowadays she contented herself with bundling the wayward mass into a huge, shapeless knot at the nape of her neck. It took nearly two dozen hairpins to secure it, and even then tendrils were always escaping, not to curl charmingly around her face as Liza's did, but to straggle limply down her neck and back, and make her itch. Her face, with its high cheekbones and forehead and pointed chin, was totally lacking in the soft prettiness that characterized her stepmother and sister. Her skin, while fine and smooth, had a distressing tendency to tan, probably because she was always forgetting her hat under the hot Australian sun. Only her eyes had any real claim to beauty. They were as gold as guineas, a gleaming topaz set aslant beneath thick lashes that were dark at the base and as tawny as her hair at the tips. Even Liza and Lydia -- the latter grudgingly -- agreed that Sarah's eyes were quite out of the ordinary. The only trouble was that, combined with her prominent cheekbones, pointed chin, and too-thin body, they gave her the look of a scrawny cat. And men, Sarah had found, tended to prefer fluffy kittens.

"Mr. Percival," she prompted with an edge to her voice as he continued his perusal. His eyes jerked up to her face, and he had the grace to flush slightly. Sarah returned his look with a level one, and his flush deepened. "You were going to tell me why my father went aboard a convict ship?"

"There was a problem with the convicts." The words were said reluctantly.

"What kind of problem?" Sarah made no effort to hide her irritation. Percival's attempts to keep her in what he considered her proper, female place were maddening. She supposed that if she married him, he would expect her to confine her activities to the running of the house, and to leave to him everything that had to do with the sheep station. Which, she guessed, was why he wanted to marry her in the first place. As Edward Markham's only child, she could reasonably be expected to inherit Lowella in preference to her stepmother and stepsister. Which, Sarah thought with a wry inward smile, only showed how little he really knew her father. Edward was always inclined to take the easy way out of messy situations, and the future disposition of Lowella was potentially a very messy situation indeed. Her father was fond of her, she thought, but no more than that. Certainly he was not so besotted with her as to leave her the station in preference to Lydia, who periodically questioned him with transparent guilelessness about his will. Sarah suspected that she also questioned her father's lawyer, with some success -- Lydia was a very attractive woman. And if Lydia were to find out that she had been denied ownership of a vast, profitable sheep station...! Sarah couldn't blame her father; she wouldn't want to be around on that day, either.

"We contracted for six, and paid for them too, in cash, not kind. When we got here, they had six waiting for us, all right. But the bos'n, who's a chum of mine, tipped me off that we were being cheated, in spirit if not in fact. He said one of the men was a rogue, a real troublemaker, and they couldn't get anyone else to take him so they were trying to palm him off on us. But I passed the word along to your da, and he flatly refused to take him. As Mr. Markham said, and I agree, we don't need no troublemakers on Lowella. Not with the way things have been going lately."

Sarah nodded agreement. With the convicts whose labor was Australia's lifeblood far outnumbering the landowners who worked them, the situation on the cattle and sheep stations on New South Wales was extremely volatile. Lowella had always been peaceful -- their convicts were well treated -- but their neighbors had not always been so fortunate. There was no sense in bringing in a rogue convict to stir up trouble on Lowella.

"Didn't Pa just tell them we don't want that kind at Lowella?"

Percival grimaced. "Sure he did. But the mate said a deal's a deal. And your da said, the hell -- begging your pardon, Miss Sarah -- it is. The mate backed down and agreed to take the convict back, but he didn't have the authority to give your da back his money. And you know how Mr. Markham has been lately about money."

"I do indeed," Sarah said with wry amusement. Edward, whose lineage included a canny Scots grandmother, could be formidable in the pursuit of money he felt was owed him. She had no doubt that whoever was in charge of the ship would return it to him double-quick. "So Pa went aboard the ship to get his money back. Do you think he'll be long?"

Percival pursed his lips, cocking his head as he considered. "He's been gone quite a while already."

"Sarah, where's Pa? If I don't get out of this heat soon, I'll just die!" Liza's plaintive cry brought Sarah's attention back to her. The younger girl was perspiring, her cheeks now more red than rose. She had taken off her hat and was feebly waving it in front of her face. As Sarah looked at her, Liza dropped the hat into her lap, as if fanning herself had suddenly become too much work. Sarah frowned. For all her dark hair and olive skin, Liza did tend to feel the heat. Much more than Sarah herself did. Despite Sarah's fair coloring and deceptive slenderness, she was blessed, or cursed, depending on one's point of view, with the constitution of an ox. While Liza, who appeared to be the sturdier of the two, was far more prone to illness and upsets.

"You won't die, Liza," Sarah said firmly. Catering to Liza's love of the melodramatic was always a mistake. Usually it led to a scene complete with tears.

"No wonder you're an old maid, Sarah! You don't have the least sensibility!" Liza burst out. Sarah could not control a sudden, quick flush of embarrassment as she realized that Percival, who stood no more than a pace from her side, must have heard, although he gave no sign. It was one thing to acknowledge privately that at twenty-two she was well past the common age for marriage; it was another to have Liza announce it to the world. Not that Sarah particularly minded being a spinster. Better an old maid than an unhappy wife, she had decided long ago, when Percival had first made her an offer. The laws of the day made a wife her husband's chattel, completely subject to him in all things; Sarah shuddered at the thought of being so much in any man's control. At least she was content as she was. She knew that she would be desperately unhappy as Percival's wife.

"Sarah, my head aches!" Liza's moan brought Sarah out of her musings. She eyed her sister severely, not yet having forgiven her for that humiliating remark in front of Percival. But Liza's white face and the perspiration dotting her forehead convinced Sarah that the younger girl really was in some distress. Sarah moved quickly around the trap to touch Liza's hand. As she had suspected, her skin felt cold and clammy.

"I feel dreadful, Sarah!"

"I know you do, love." Sarah's sympathy was genuine. Liza could not be allowed to remain any longer in the sun, and there was no shade in sight. Something had to be done, and from long experience Sarah knew that she was the one who would have to do it. She sighed. "I'll go fetch Pa, Liza, and then we can be on our way. You'll feel better once we get away from the wharf."

"Please hurry, Sarah!"

"Miss Sarah, you can't!"

Liza and Percival spoke at the same time, Liza in an anguished undertone and Percival with disapproval. Percival continued, "You can't have thought -- you can't go aboard a convict ship! It's not proper for a lady!"

Sarah took a deep breath, and turned away from Liza to meet Percival's eyes with a calm that was beginning to fray. What an awful, awful day this had been from the start! She didn't know how much more aggravation she could take without losing her temper, which was something she rarely did. Living with Lydia and Liza, one rapidly learned control.

"I am well aware of that, Mr. Percival. But I see no alternative -- unless you're suggesting that we simply wait here until Liza faints with the heat. She will, you know. I've seen her do it."

"But, Miss Sarah..."

"I'm going to go fetch my father, Mr. Percival. There's nothing more to be said."

Despite the finality of her words, he refused to give up. "If you'll permit me, I'll fetch Mr. Markham."

"And leave me here to watch over the convicts?" Sarah shook her head. "I'll go. I won't be long. Liza, did you hear? I'll be back directly. And for goodness' sake, put on your hat!"

Liza moaned again and closed her eyes. She made no move to obey about the hat. Sarah shut her own eyes for a moment in a silent appeal to heaven -- why did Liza have to choose this day to be difficult?--then set off briskly for the Septimus. The men on the quay eyed her, some curiously, others with emotions she preferred not to recognize. But she passed among them without difficulty, aided, no doubt, she thought with amusement, by her plain appearance. Or maybe they left her alone simply because they were just too tired and dispirited to pursue her. Despite the fact that they were convicts, and backbreaking work under near-intolerable conditions was part of the punishment for their crimes, she could not help pitying them as they were forced to labor without pause under the menacing eyes of overseers armed with whips and rifles, while the sun blazed down mercilessly on their uncovered heads. Then Sarah silently chided herself, wondering what her father would say if he knew of her embryonic emancipist feelings. In Melbourne, as in the rest of Australia, there were basically two classes of residents: the emancipists, who felt that convicts, former convicts, and the offspring of convicts were as good as any other member of Australian society and should be treated as such; and the exclusionists, who considered past and present convicts and their descendants a lower form of life, not to be spoken of in the same breath as decent folk. The emancipists, for obvious reasons, tended to be convicts, former convicts, or the children of convicts, and consequently had difficulty getting the authorities to listen to their pleas for equal treatment. Like most landowners, Edward was staunchly exclusionist, and Sarah had been brought up to consider convicts very much beneath her.

The Septimus was tied up close to where Percival waited with the dray. Like many of the convict ships plying the ocean between England and Australia, she looked as if one good-sized wave would capsize her. Her timbers had weathered to a uniformly dull gray, and if she had ever seen a coat of paint there was no longer any evidence of it. Her middle sagged like that of a swaybacked horse, and her bare masts and halfheartedly furled sails had a shabby look. Making her way up the rickety gangplank, Sarah's attention was briefly caught by the scene before her. Half a dozen tall ships were anchored farther out in the bay, their bare, black masts stretching into the cloudless azure sky. Another ship, her sails useless because there was no wind, was being towed across the water to the dock by a small flotilla of rowboats. The bay itself was beautiful, with the sun glinting like diamonds off water that ranged from palest sea green to emerald to sapphire to near purple.

Sarah was still absorbing the view when she became aware that, while she was alone on the gangplank, there was much activity on the Septimus's deck. Squinting against the glare, and trying to ignore the headache that was beginning to throb at her temples, Sarah tried to make out what was happening. A shifting, muttering crowd of men was gathered near the center of the ship, their attention focused on something that was taking place in their midst. Their bared, sweat-streaked, muscular backs prevented her from seeing exactly what that something was. Sarah toyed with the idea of returning to the dock and waiting in the safety of the little group from Lowella for her father to join them, but then the thought of Liza's probable reaction to her retreat spurred her on. Much as she disliked the idea of getting too near that masculine mob, she preferred it to dealing with Liza in hysterics. Swallowing her reservations, Sarah resumed her walk up the swaying ramp. As she drew closer, she became aware of a sharp cracking noise repeated at regular intervals. It slashed with unexpected violence through the other sounds of the dock -- the gentle lapping of the sea, the fluttering of sails, the voices of the men before and behind her. Sarah frowned as she set foot on the lightly rocking deck of the Septimus, trying to fathom what that sound could be -- and what could be happening at the center of the mob to cause the men to focus so much sullen yet fascinated attention toward one spot. Then came a faint whistling sound, inaudible from farther away, followed by another harsh crack. Then -- she was almost sure -- she heard a man's guttural moan. Sarah's eyes widened with slowly dawning horror.

She moved cautiously around the gathered men toward the far rail of the ship, where the crowd was thinner. No one paid any attention to her, for which she was thankful. Every eye was focused on what was happening at the center of the crowd. The whistling sound that preceded each jolting crack was clearly audible now, and the cracks themselves were so loud that they made her want to flinch. And the moans that followed -- Sarah no longer had any doubt that they were made by a man: a man in agony.

Picking her way through coils of rope and dropped tools, Sarah finally reached the rail. From there she could see a little way through the crowd. There was still one man, a tall, thin fellow with bushy fair hair, whose back blocked her view. As if sensing her need, he chose that moment to shift sideways, and she saw past him. Horrified, Sarah wished he had not.